Omniscience Draft

Omniscience Draft
DCI Sanctioned
Paper
Magic Online
Magic Arena
Rules
Type	Limited
Multiplayer

Omniscience Draft is a Magic Arena-specific limited format for Magic: The Gathering.

Description

In this format, featured in Magic: The Gathering Arena events, each player drafts a 40-card deck and begins the game with an Omniscience emblem that has the following abilities:

Omniscience Emblem

You may cast spells from your hand without paying their mana costs.
: Add . Activate this ability only once each turn.

Originally, each player's starting hand size was three, but the most recent variant from 04/02/2024 features hand sizes of seven. Other than that, the usual rules for Booster Draft apply:

• Minimum of 40 cards in the main deck (there is no maximum size for main decks)
• All cards from your Limited pool that are not in your main deck are considered part of your sideboard. Note that without a real need for lands, decks are usually 38-40 spells, so knowing the "real drafting rules" are important.
• A Limited deck may contain as many duplicates of a card as were included with the draft

Due to the odd nature of the draft, the games are played best-of-one, and the drafts are done with bots (i.e. Quick Draft layout; payout and cost follows as the same). The bots do not change their pick orders from normal drafts, making it easier to draft under the new rules.

Variants

• January 2021 featured an event which could be described as "Preconstructed Omniscience" where a player is granted a 150-card deck, and plays out the games with the above gameplay rules.
• Another fast-playing draft variation is Turbo Draft, where all spells cost less to cast, or more accurately both players have an emblem to that effect. The event follows all Quick Draft rules as normal; seven bots, draft a deck of forty, starting hand of seven.