Worldwake EDH General Review – Omnath, Locus of Mana

I think someone's been watching Princess Mononoke lately

With Worldwake coming up around the corner, it’s that time to update your EDH decks. Sure you don’t have to, but there might be some great cards that you’d love to put in your decks. Other times, there are new Generals that are printed to give you more options to build new decks.

While there will be some websites and blogs doing set reviews, I’m still up in the air to decide what to do (voice your opinion in the poll, please!). Currently, I’m going to review the first EDH General from Worldwake. If you want to keep away from all spoilers, don’t go under the jump.

(Remember, we’re only going to be reviewing WotC approved spoilers. To see the list, click here)

Onto the first EDH General: Omnath, Locus of Mana.

Well, I don't see insects...

Doug Beyer introduced this guy into the Magic Multiverse. How good is it? Good. Some (at these early stages) are even calling this a high money card in the set (it’s always fun to go back and look at reviews of sets after a while and see how many people looked over certain cards and how many overestimated them). It’s great that the two abilities of this guy tie together so nicely (like that rug I had).

The first ability he has isn’t a new concept (as seen on Upwelling), but the second is an interesting twist that’s only been printed on a few cards. Luckily, most of those cards are Green so we can throw them in a deck with this guy as General.

Let’s take a look at the full text:

Green mana doesn’t empty from your mana pool as steps and phases end.
Omnath, Locus of Mana gets +1/+1 for each green mana in your mana pool.

It’s important to note two things:

1. You have an End Step. The mana doesn’t end at the end of any turn, not at the end of the turn. Mana stays with you for as long as you want.

2. It’s only Green mana, Channel by itself doesn’t work since it’s colorless mana. But if a card says “use this mana for X”, it stays in your mana pool.

Let’s take a look at Green cards that add more than one Green mana to your mana pool that you can use in this deck:

• Citanul Hierophants
• Dawn’s Reflection
• Devoted Druid
• Eladamri’s Vineyard
• Elemental Resonance
• Elvish Aberration
• Elvish Archdruid
• Elvish Guidance
• Fertile Ground
• Fyndhorn Elder/Greenweaver Druid
• Heartbeat of Spring
• Heritage Druid
• Keeper of Progenitus
• Magus of the Vineyard
• Mark of Sakiko
• Overgrowth
• Overlaid Terrain
• Priest of Titania
• Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
• Sacellum Godspeaker
• Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro
• Sakiko, Mother of Summer
• Sasay’s Essence
• Shizuko, Caller of Autumn
• Utopia Sprawl
• Vernal Bloom
• Viridian Joiner
• Wildgrowth
• Wirewood Channeler

As you can see, most of these cards are Elves, so it might be a good idea to build your deck around that theme (a snakes sub-theme would work as well). Of course, there are some cards that also build on the mana in your mana pool as well.

• Doubling Cube
• Glissa Sunseeker
• Manaplasm (in a way)

One of the other benefits of having the Upwelling on legs is to play almost anything you want (within reason) whenever you want. Instants, creatures with flash, or if you have a Vedalken Orrery in play, then anything you want, really. With the new M10 rules changes where you don’t get mana burn, it allows you to go crazy since you can’t be hurt by it. The whole strategy of this is to balance the effect of keeping mana in your pool to beef up your General, or to just use it as a walking Upwelling. It will take a little time and see what the situation calls for to should shrink your General to play that card or if you want to keep the mana in your pool.

While adding mana to your pool through conventional means is good (tapping a creature/land), remember that Green has other ways of “generating” mana as well. Untapping lands has always been a great way of getting mana on another opponent’s turn. Yes, you can turn that mana into a bigger General. Awesome, right?

• Awakening
• Early Harvest
• Earthcraft
• Garruk Wildspeaker
• Krosan Restorer
• Llanowar Druid
• Magus of the Candlelabra
• Nature’s Will
• Patron of the Orochi
• Rude Awakening
• Seedborn Muse
• Stone-Seeder Heirophant
• Tangleroot

At the moment, if you’re looking for a new General to play in Mono-Green besides that one you’ve been annoying your playgroup with (Rofellos), Omnath might be a good change of pace. You can still run alot of the same cards, even have the Elf Legend in your deck since it works so well together. This is can a big beater (for only 3 mana), something that Green is known for, yet can you can do different things then just smash face.

Final word: I would suggest running this guy. We don’t know what else Worldwake holds, but there’s enough fun printed at the moment to run him. At the moment, I would suggest an Elf package (Nissa seems good) to make him as large as quickly as possible, but it’s just as easy to just have him be a Green Mana Battery for your other spells. There’s different ways you can take him, but expect to see one common thread: lots and lots of mana.

I would suggest getting one.