Hocus Locus is a landfall deck abusing the synergy between Emeria Shepherd and
Omnath, Locus of Rage.
Omnath's landfall ability gives you a 5/5 red and green Elemental creature token every time a land comes into play under your control. The angel's landfall ability lets you return a permanent from your graveyard to your hand. It lets you return it to the battlefield if the land that triggered it is a Plains.
So, with both Omnath and the shepherd in play you have an amazing landfall trigger set that will win you games.
For example;
Get out the Emeria Shepherd, get out a Greenseeker, activate it's ability,
discard Omnath, Locus of Rage. Get a Plains, play it and Put Omnath, Locus of Rage
into play from your graveyard. Then recurse Farhaven Elf for the win with a sac outlet like
Goblin Bombardment or something similar.
So with Emeria Shepherd and Goblin Bombardment and Omnath, Locus of Rage in play. A Farhaven Elf
in your yard and in play.
Put a Plains
into play,
returning the Farhaven Elf
from your yard to play,
and putting an elemental into play.
Sac both the elf and the elemental to
Goblin Bombardment. This lets you do a total of 5 pts of targetable damage to players or creatures. 2 from the enchantment sacrifices and one from the Omnath trigger. You keep recycling the elf and getting plains
from your library and doing 5 pts for each recursion you do until your opponent is dead. The rest of the deck reinforces the game plan or helps ramp you into the winner's circle.
So if you like elementals, landfall or just dig funky combos then this deck is for you! Here is the breakdown of the cards:
The Creatures:
Emeria Shepherd: This is one half of the engine that will destroy your oppponents. Her landfall ability lets you keep returning creatures from your graveyard to play as long as you keep smacking Plains onto the table. Her mana cost is steep but you can get there fairly quick with the ramp in the deck. Once you do get her out, things are not going to go well for your foes.
Farhaven Elf: This is your main sacrifice creature to run your elemental kill engine. Every time it coms into play you get to dig a basic land out of your library and put it into play. With an angel out, your targets should always be Plains. With a Realmwright out with Plains called as the shared type, it does not matter which basics you grab from your library. So once you get the combo out, just keep sacrificing and returning this card to play for an endless supply of elementals and pain for your opponents.
Greenseeker: This card is a little sneaky. On the surface, it looks like just another way to get some basic lands. But in reality you are going to use this card to "seed" your graveyard with creatures you want to reanimate with your Emeria Shepherd. And she triggers the event all by herself. With the angel out. You activate her, discard Omnath, Locus of Rage or another creature you need. Then go get a Plains and put it into play triggering your angel to return your Omnath to the battlefield. Pretty slick.
Omnath, Locus of Rage: This is the killing half of your combo. Omnath's landfall trigger will keep getting you 5/5 Elemental tokens. You can swing this into your foe's face or sacrifice them to Goblin Bombardment and still shoot them in the face. Either way, your creature creation is going to outrun their removal until they just concede. Best of all, Omnath has his own built-in Goblin Bombardment, And with an angel around you can just keep bringing him back to win the game.
Realmwright: This creature is in the deck to insure all of your basic land drops are Plains. Cast this creature, select Plains and every land you put into play enters as a Plains along with whatever else they have printed on them. Great way to keep the landfall triggers of your angels going.
Sakura-Tribe Elder: This card is an alternate to the Farhaven Elf and does not even need a sacrifice outlet since it is built right into the card. So whatever the elf does for the deck so does this card.
Somberwald Sage: Even though your deck is filled with creatures that get you lands, ramping into Omnath, Locus of Rage or an Emeria Shepherd still won't be easy. But this card knocks a giant amount of mana off the cost. With it in play you can cut the casting cost of creatures by 3 colorless mana which is huge.
Sylvan Caryatid: Here is the center of your mana-fixing and ramping in the deck. It gets you any color mana, it protects itself with hexproof and it's body is big enough that your enemy will need something big to kill it.
The Other Spells:
Explosive Vegetation: This is a big boost to your ramp when you cast it. Getting 2 lands into play for 1 card cast is awesome.
Goblin Bombardment: There are many sacrifice outlets out there. But this one is yours. And it is a good one. Sacrifice any creature and you get to deal 1 pt of instant and immediate direct damage with this card. Combining this with Omnath's ability leads to lots of damage all around. It also lets you chain a land-digging creature for shenanigans.
Slab Hammer: Just in case it was not clear, you need to play Plains over and over again to keep your engine of destruction running. This card will let you keep replaying your lands to endlessly keep your game going. Remember, before you sacrifice your elves and elementals, there is nothing wrong with equipping them with this hammer and running over your opponent with them in combat. THEN, sacrifice them for whatever benefit you can use them for.
The Lands:
Except for a set of Evolving Wilds to help thin your deck and fix your mana, the rest are basic lands balanced with your mana costs in the deck.
That is it for the deck!
