Upgrading Commander Precon - Tricky Terrain (Omo, Queen of Vesuva)

Modern Horizons 3 was a great gift for Commander players, even though this was a Modern-focused set. We got four new precon Commander decks, which are all incredibly fascinating, both because they came to us in a Modern-based set, and because their themes are also quite unusual.

In today's article, let's upgrade the most unusual of these 4 decks: Tricky Terrains, with Omo, Queen of Vesuva as our commander! This build focuses on different interactions between nonbasic lands, like Gates, Deserts, Urza lands, and much more. It also has interactions between with all types of creatures.

Tricky Terrains is a Simic deck, which is a color combination known for its unstoppable power and many expensive spells that impact the game drastically whenever they go into play. The combination between green's aggressiveness and blue's wisdom has a lot of harmony and synergy - just like this build.

Omo, Queen of Vesuva and Jyoti, Moag Ancient were our commander options, but, as we've mentioned before, we'll use Omo, Queen of Vesuva this time. Jyoti, Moag Ancient has some potential, but we want to focus on the "everything" counters Omo puts on creatures and lands.

Furthermore, as this list doesn't interact with land creatures as much as a Jyoti deck would like to, we'll dedicate a list entirely to this elemental at the end of this article. We'll take advantage of land creatures to make the most out of its buff effect.

Omo's "everything" counters are entirely new, so we'll interact with Gates, Locus lands, Deserts, and Urza's lands. Urza's Tower, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Mine were already in Tricky Terrain's original list, but you just need one of them on the board with two lands with everything counters to create extra mana.

It will be interesting to work with lands like these, Cloudpost, and the new Trenchpost. With this in mind, let's delve into our upgrades!

Cards We Removed

The original list had 44 lands, which is a lot, even though its name is Tricky Terrains. We removed the lands above and added Baldur's Gate to create a lot of mana and interact with other cards already in the list, like Magus of the Candelabra and Wonderscape Sage.

Maze's End will act as another win condition for us, considering everything counters turn lands into gates. However, keep in mind that they need to have 10 different names for this to make sense.

Our total number of lands dropped to 41 after we removed the cards above. Jyoti, Moag Ancient didn't interact much with the rest of the deck, and its effect relies on whether you played your commander on the board or not. So, we removed it, as it also doesn't impact the game immediately.

Some other cards were just not that effective, like Poison Dart Frog, Satyr Wayfinder, and Floriferous Vinewall, so we removed them too. Finally, we removed a few strong cards, like Nissa, Steward of Elements and Vivien Reid, because they didn't make much sense with our goal.

New Creature Types

As Omo is supposed to be a "kindred deck for all types of kindred", we had to use the best lords for our types of creatures.

Starting with Elves, we added Priest of Titania and Elvish Archdruid. They create mana for each Elf on your board, and thus might just give you a lot of mana. This means you'll be able to cast expensive spells like Apex Devastator or "X-cost" cards like Hydroid Krasis and Finale of Revelation for a huge amount of "X".

Lands like Dark Depths really shine when you have a lot of mana available to play. Horizon of Progress ramps lands for you even when you're passing, and Lazotep Quarry gives you a copy of an important creature, like some Lord, Terastodon, Ulvenwald Hydra, or Scute Swarm.

We also brought you a few more blue lords, like Azami, Lady of Scrolls, to draw cards, Herald of Hoofbeats to make your creatures with an everything counter basically unblockable, and Lord of the Unreal, to protect them.

It's interesting to think how you can give an Ulvenwald Hydra or a Terastodon these buffs thanks to Omo. Timber Protector, another new addition, will protect all your Treefolks by making them indestructible.

Finally, we added Hakbal of the Surging Soul and Aven Courier. Hakbal of the Surging Soul will filter for you some of the 41 lands in this list thanks to its explore effect, as you get to choose what you'll draw if the top card in your deck isn't a land. The fact it ramps or draws you cards when it attacks is also useful.

Aven Courier might not be a lord, but it lets you share your everything counters to your permanents whenever you attack with it - either your creatures or lands. The more everything counters, the better - particularly on lands, as you'll then create more mana with Baldur's Gate, Urza lands, or Cloudpost.

Interacting with Lands and Answers

As we mentioned before, we added Baldur's Gate and Maze's End. I'll stress that there are many types of lands you can search with Maze's End, like Baldur's Gate, Basilisk Gate, Simic Guildgate, Planar Nexus, and Talon Gates of Madara. By the way, there's a cool interaction with Talon Gates of Madara - as we added Crop Rotation to get important lands, you can get Talon Gates of Madara with it. Like so, you can save an essential creature, or protect yourself against some enemy creature, thanks to its "phasing out" effect. You can even stop someone's elaborate combo this way.

As we play more than 10 lands that go onto our battlefield tapped, we added Spelunking.

You can even get 4 life from Spelunking if you put either Planar Nexus or Sunken Palace in play with it. This enchantment lets you win at "instant" speed with Maze's End if you put it into play untapped - then, you just need to activate its ability.

Besides Propaganda, we added Collective Restraint for more safety. Collective Restraint usually works like a Propaganda in a Simic deck, but, thanks to Omo's everything counters, your opponents will need to pay 5 mana to attack you with a creature.

If Propaganda is in play, they'll have to pay 7 mana. This will give you a little bit of peace mid-to-late game, particularly against aggressive decks that spam many creatures on the board. Defensive cards like this may completely change the course of your match, and even guarantee you a victory.

As counters, we added the classic Counterspell to deal with any problematic spell throughout the game. This deck has only Counterspell, Arcane Denial, and Summary Dismissal as counters, and there's only one problem when you use them: Apex Devastator. Unfortunately, this is a bad interaction in this list, but the worst thing that could happen is that you'll have to put some of these spells back at the bottom of your deck when they pop up as you cascade.

Growth Spiral's long-lost brother also made it to our list: Planar Genesis. This card is from Modern Horizons 3 and fits our build like a glove as it either ramps or puts a card in your hand from a selection of 4 cards.

Finally, we have Cyclonic Rift, which is essential in any blue deck nowadays to answer well-built big boards. Cyclonic Rift unfortunately has the same issue with Apex Devastator as our counters, considering you can't use its overload when you cascade.

This is our upgraded Tricky Terrains! We changed 16 cards, and, though apparently small, they were significant, even more so because now there's another win condition!

Omo's "everything counters" game plan is great and incredibly fun - it also lets you build her in several ways, so get creative!

This Jyoti, Moag Ancient deck is entirely different from the upgraded list we presented above - it focuses on landfall and land creatures. We also added many support cards for this theme, like Blossoming Tortoise, Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, Embodiment of Insight, Earth Surge, and many other cards.

Tricky Terrains turned out to be an incredibly fun deck, which you can build as creatively as you want. I, myself, was quite interested in Omo, Queen of Vesuva, and I want to see how her builds look like moving forward. She is flexible, and quite different from what we are used too as well.

Do you like this list? Do you prefer the alternative list with Jyoti? Have any suggestions? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!