The official Tricky Terrain preconstructed deck from Modern Horizons 3 features one of the most unique and mathematically fascinating mechanical engines ever introduced to Simic (Blue-Green). Led by the elusive Omo, Queen of Vesuva, this deck completely shatters traditional tribal and land-type restrictions by introducing a brand-new resource: Everything Counters.
Omo turns your ordinary board state into a fluid, hyper-flexible puzzle:
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The Calling: Whenever Omo enters the battlefield or attacks, you put an everything counter on up to one target land and up to one target creature.
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The Perfect Clone: Lands with everything counters are every land type in addition to their other types (Gates, Urza’s, Deserts, Locuses, etc.). Creatures with everything counters are every creature type (Sliver, Eldrazi, Merfolk, Rogue, etc.).
In this PreconForge Guide, we will analyze the official out-of-the-box card list, eliminate the slower pieces that don’t maximize Omo’s specific identity, and explore how to turn these everything counters into a lethal, game-ending engine.
The Strategy: Maximizing Cross-Type Exploitation
Out of the box, the deck includes an unbelievable land package containing the full Urza „Tron“ trio (Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power Plant, Urza’s Tower) and the Locus core (Cloudpost and Glimmerpost).
Omo’s everything counters make individual cards count as everything simultaneously. Because the deck natively runs these locus and locus-adjacent setups, putting an everything counter on just one other land suddenly turns it into a Locus, an Urza’s land, and a Gate all at once. This instantly causes your Cloudpost or your Tron lands to tap for an astronomical amount of mana. Our upgrade strategy is to lean aggressively into this type-checking exploitation by removing non-essential mid-range cards and adding high-tier tribal payoffs and additional land search targets.
Top 5 Cards to Cut from the Official Precon
To make room for targeted tribal and land payoffs that capitalize directly on your everything counters, remove these five pieces from the official box:
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Hydra Broodmaster: A massive 6-mana monstrous creature designed to sink mana and generate basic Hydra tokens. While the deck generates tons of mana, pouring it into non-evasive vanilla tokens doesn’t push Omo’s unique cross-type strengths.
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Fog Bank: A simple 2-mana defender. While it’s a fine casual defensive wall, it is incredibly passive and doesn’t advance your game plan or interact with your land engine.
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Curse of the Swine: A mass-exile spell that replaces your opponents‘ threats with 2/2 Boar tokens. While decent removal, it operates at sorcery speed and doesn’t advance your own synergy lines.
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Floriferous Vinewall: A defender that looks at the top six cards of your library for a land. Since you already run premium cards like Sylvan Scrying and Expedition Map to tutor exactly the utility lands you need, this wall is a weak filler card.
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Desert of the Indomitable (and Desert of the Mindful): These cycling lands natively enter the battlefield tapped. Because Omo can easily turn your untapped utility lands into Deserts using everything counters, you don’t need to clog your mana curve with slow, natural tapped Deserts.
Budget Upgrades (Under $3 per card)
These affordable additions will allow you to abuse the land-type stacking rules and introduce powerful, cheap tribal synergies.
The Missing Gate Architecture
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Baldur’s Gate (alongside Gond Gate): The precon includes Basilisk Gate, but adding Baldur’s Gate unlocks a massive secondary mana font. Since lands with everything counters count as Gates, Baldur’s Gate can be tapped to add mana of any color equal to the number of Gates you control, doubling down on your explosive mana generation.
Cross-Tribal Budget Payoffs
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Wirewood Symbiote: An exceptional utility piece. Because your creatures with everything counters count as Elves, you can use the Symbiote to bounce an everything-countered creature back to your hand to untap a mana dork (like Magus of the Candelabra), while simultaneously saving your threat from targeted removal.
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Rishkar, Peema Renegade: Since Omo distributes physical counters onto your targets, Rishkar turns every single land or creature holding an everything counter into an active mana dork that taps for green mana.
Premium Upgrades (The Vesuvan Relics)
If you are ready to invest extra resources at the forge to unlock competitive, high-powered land configurations and unstoppable tribal engines, look out for these premier assets:
The Secret Tron Cheat Code
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Crop Rotation: While the deck has Sylvan Scrying, Crop Rotation operates at instant speed. You can cast it in response to an opponent’s action to grab Thespian’s Stage or Vesuva to instantly clone your Dark Depths (already included in the precon) and create a 20/20 Marit Lage token out of nowhere.
Elite Tribal Dominance
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The First Sliver or Sliver Overlord: Because your creatures with everything counters count as Slivers, adding select high-tier Sliver lords into a Simic shell allows you to grant your entire modified board lethal keywords like Cascade, Shroud, or repeatable search utility.
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Reaper King: A hilarious and devastating premium inclusion. Since your everything-countered creatures count as Scarecrows, every time you cast or drop a creature holding an everything counter, Reaper King triggers to destroy any target permanent on the board.
PreconForge Verdict: Is it worth it?
The official Tricky Terrain precon is a beautifully complex canvas, giving you premium pieces like Apex Devastator and the entire Tron/Locus mana base straight out of the box. By centering your strategy completely on the cloning flexibility of Omo, Queen of Vesuva and adding the specific Gate and tribal packages that Wizards left out, you turn an ordinary plot of land into an unstoppable mechanical apocalypse.
Stoke the fires of the forge, paint the board with everything counters, and let us know in the comments below how much mana you managed to generate with a single land tap!
Are you keeping your Tricky Terrain deck strictly focused on accelerating into massive threats via your Locus land configurations, or are you introducing strange tribal lords to turn Omo into a multi-species powerhouse? Let’s keep the strategy discussion moving forward!
