How To Build An Arcanis The Omnipotent Commander Deck In MTG

The Grand Coliseum of Otaria attracted fighters from all over the plane, and the most mysterious of those fighters was Arcanis the Omnipotent. One of Magic: The Gathering‘s most enigmatic characters, Arcanis offers incredible power, but no answers.

Arcanis the Omnipotent is the epitome of blue’s thirst for knowledge, represented by drawing a ton of cards. While a big hand doesn’t usually win games, the more cards you have, the more options are available to you. And if you can turn a full hand or empty deck into a win condition, that’s even better!

Sample Decklist

The Commander

Arcanis the Omnipotent is a 3/4 legendary Wizard that costs six mana, three generic, and three blue. Little is known about Arcanis: despite being humanoid in shape, there’s no given species, and even though the flavor text on some prints refers to Arcanis as male, even that is questionable.

Arcanis the Omnipotent was a pit fighter in the Grand Coliseum of Otaria, so Arcanis may just be a stage name. What we do know about them is that they can tap to draw three cards at no additional cost, and can return to your hand for just four mana, dodging boardwipes and commander tax.

With only three power and no evasion, Arcanis isn’t going to be swinging at your opponents. Four toughness makes them a decent blocker, especially since you can block, tap to draw, and bounce them back to your hand to avoid lethal damage.

What Arcanis the Omnipotent does well is draw a lot of cards, especially when paired with ways to untap them. Thankfully, there are several pathways to victory in blue from drawing cards, from combos to creatures that grow larger with your hand.

How To Play The Deck

Mono-blue can struggle in Commander: Counterspells and Unsummons are still strong, but you can be spread thin trying to deal with three opponents. Even if you draw enough cards to offset the loss of card advantage, you still need to be able to pay for all of your instants and still progress toward your own win condition.

Arcanis helps by not only filling your hand, but by allowing you to make your full hand your win condition. Pairing them with creatures that grow as you draw more cards, like Body of Knowledge, or check for the size of your hand or deck, like Twenty-Toed Toad and Thassa’s Oracle, allows you to draw victory out of thin air.

Control elements are still there, since they’re the best way to mitigate threats in blue, but they’re mostly to give you the freedom to find your win conditions and to play your expensive commander. You should include enough asymmetrical board wipes to make your opponents think twice about attacking you, and a couple of ways to mitigate attacks.

Blue has poor mana acceleration, but several ways to untap permanents. Leveraging these early on will allow you to reuse your Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and other mana rocks for extra mana that your opponents may overlook, leading to them overextending and casting into your Counterspell.

Ramp

Blue suffers from some of the worst ramp options in the game, but you’ll need a lot of mana because Arcanis the Omnipotent is expensive at six mana. This deck leans heavily on artifacts for acceleration, but curates them for secondary effects that are beneficial to the gameplan.

Thought Vessel is just short of being a staple, but it makes the cut here because it eliminates your hand size cap. This is vital because you’ll be drawing a lot of cards, and you have several payoffs for having a large hand. Decanter of Endless Water should be included for the same reason.

Paying three for a rock is a little steep, which is why Commander’s Sphere isn’t as ubiquitous as Arcane Signet or even Thought Vessel. Patriar’s Seal has a secondary ability that allows you to untap a legendary creature, though, which will allow you to reuse Arcanis the Omnipotent’s ability whenever you aren’t using it for mana.

For a surge in mana production, High Tide doubles the mana produced by Islands, including nonbasic ones like Mystic Sanctuary. Extraplanar Lens has a similar, but permanent effect, as long as you exile an Island when you cast it.

Both of these affect all players, so be careful when playing with other blue players.

High Tide affects all lands with the land type “Island”, while Extraplanar Lens looks for the card name. Using Snow-Covered Islands will prevent most players from getting any benefit from your Extraplanar Lens,

In colors where mana acceleration is scarce, it’s important to include ways to decrease mana costs. Sapphire Medallion reduces the cost of all your blue spells by one generic mana, which affects almost every spell in this deck.

Eluge, the Shoreless Sea is even stronger. It turns your nonbasic lands into Islands, then reduces the cost of your instants and sorceries based on how many Islands you control. It only affects the first instant or sorcery you cast each turn, but by the time it sees play, that should translate to a free Counterspell each turn.

Draw

Drawing cards is key to this deck’s strategy, and the main thing that Arcanis the Omnipotent wants to do. Your commander can tap to draw three cards at any time with no mana cost, which is an incredible value.

Since Arcanis the Omnipotent is always available from the command zone, the deck includes lots of ways to boost their abilities. Cards that can untap Arcanis, like Ioreth of the Healing House and Aphetto Alchemist, give you access to more cards the more of them you have in play.

Marvin, Murderous Mimic directly copies Arcanis’s ability, along with every other activated ability among creatures you control. Paired with Arcanis the Omnipotent and Ioreth of the Healing House, this leads to an infinite draw combo.

Arcanis isn’t the only way to draw cards. Body of Knowledge not only grows larger along with your hand, it also draws you cards each time it takes damage, making it an ideal blocker that will become a bigger threat every time an opponent attacks you.

Teferi’s Ageless Insight pours jet fuel into your draw engine, doubling all of your card draw except the first card in your draw step. Suddenly, Arcanis the Omnipotent taps to draw six cards. With a big enough hand, dropping Windfall with Teferi’s Ageless Insight in play means you can just pick up your whole deck.

Draw Payoffs

Drawing a lot of cards gives you a lot of options, but it doesn’t win you the game. To turn Arcanis the Omnipotent’s powerful draw engine into victory, you’ll need to include some payoffs. Multiple options increase the chances of getting one of them into play early enough to be effective.

Clinquant Skymage and Chasm Skulker both start off small but grow bigger, gaining a +1/+1 counter for each card that you draw. Clinquant Skymage can get around blockers thanks to flying, or provide you with aerial cover, while Chasm Skulker is resilient against removal: when it dies, you gain a swarm of 1/1 Squid tokens, based on how many +1/+1 counters it had.

Chasm Skulker’s Squid tokens have islandwalk.
Use Eluge, the Shoreless Sea to turn some of your opponents’ lands into Islands
, and they’ll be hesitant to kill Chasm Skulker and give you an army of unblockable creatures.

Psychosis Crawler’s power and toughness are directly tied to the number of cards in your hand, which makes it a bigger threat right out of the gate. It doesn’t get the permanent boost of +1/+1 counters when you draw cards, but each card you draw will drain your opponents’ life. It makes tapping Arcanis feel like getting an Ancestral Recall and three Lightning Bolts for free!

Homunculus Horde is a demonstration of exponential growth, and will win you the game in a couple of turns if left unchecked. Drawing a card after casting it will make a copy with the same ability. Tapping Arcanis the Omnipotent to draw three cards on your opponent’s turn will give you four. Untapping him to the same on the next turn yields eight. Two cycles will get you 256 2/2 Homunculi to attack with.

Finally, include a few ways to win by hand size or by having an empty deck. Twentiy-Toed Toad hands you a win if you have twenty cards in your hand when it attacks, which isn’t a difficult feat to pull off, although your opponents will see it coming a mile away.

Laboratory Maniac is a classic card to include, which has one effect: If you would draw a card when there are no cards left in your deck, you win instead of losing. Jace, Weilder of Mysteries has the same effect, on top of a +1 ability to mill two cards from one opponent (or yourself, if you’re feeling spicy) and draw a card and a -8 ability to draw seven cards and then check for an empty deck.