A few weeks ago, in the second part of my Vintage Dredge primer, I wrote about how I rebuilt a Dredge deck from the ground-up for the Philly Open V to try and reposition it for the current Vintage metagame. Despite the considerable amount of time I’ve spent playing Oath of Druids over the past year, I couldn’t manage to do the same thing to my favorite Vintage deck. Funny, the way the mind can easily let go of some assumptions but stubbornly latches onto others.
The last time I played Oath of Druids in a Vintage tournament was back on January 3rd. That tournament capped a three-tournament streak with Oath where my overall record was 11-1-5 in the Swiss rounds, with two finals splits and a top 8. It seemed like Oath was about to conquer Vintage, but life suddenly became much more difficult as Dredge, Noble Fish, and MUD flexed their muscle and made life hard for Oath players.
Since that first tournament of 2010, I’ve played a variety of other Vintage decks, including Noble Fish, Dredge, MUD, and Two Card Monte. Part of the reason for this change was my desire to experience something different, as I’d played Oath in 12 tournaments in 2009, but another reason was the fact that I just couldn’t get Oath to put up results I was comfortable with during testing. This wasn’t so much a function of Oath getting worse, or even a function of people playing more hate for the deck. The problem was metagame-driven and centered on the following changes, all of which were at least partially spurred by new cards entering the format:
1 — Noble Fish experienced a sudden and dramatic surge in the metagame of the mid-Atlantic following strong finishes at several NYSE and Philly Collectable tournaments. While Fish decks are generally fodder for Oath, Noble Fish can be a difficult match-up and actually preys on unprepared Oath players. Noble Fish was strengthened by the printing of Spell Pierce in particular; not only can it use Pierce effectively, but it also largely dodges the card itself as it plays creatures and cheap or alternate-cost spells. As Oath and Tezz players began to bank more on Spell Pierce, they left themselves vulnerable to Noble Fish. Noble Fish players also use Nature’s Claim against Oath and Workshops and sometimes play Thada Adel against Time Vault decks.
2 — Workshop decks began to make up a larger portion of the metagame, including MUD decks with the Worker/Staff combo that could race Oath, as well as more-prepared non-combo MUD and Stax decks wielding a variety of anti-Oath technology (including Ensnaring Bridge, Greater Gargadon, Duplicant, and Eon Hub). Almost all of these decks are now playing Chalice of the Void, which can be problematic for Oath, as well as a full complement of 13 spheres (4 Sphere of Resistance, 4 Thorn of Amethyst, 4 Lodestone Golem, 1 Trinisphere), which puts severe pressure on the manabase I had been running in past events. Lodestone Golem has proven to be a powerful addition to these decks, as expected.
3 — Dredge continues to have success, further strengthened by the printing of Nature’s Claim, which not only makes sideboarding easier, but also gives the deck a powerful set of anti-Oath cards alongside Chain of Vapor; most Dredge players are packing full sets of both of these cards.
One of the failures of my play-testing with Oath was my desire to try and improve the deck through minor tweaks or changes to my existing shell, one which featured a set of Impulse, a set of Thoughtseize / Duress effects, and an Ancient Grudge. These cards were all central to my performance in previous tournaments, and I couldn’t let go of them. I felt they were all necessary to defeat Tezzeret, Vintage’s Boogeyman over the past 18 months; again, this is somewhat odd upon reflection as I had just rebuilt Dredge to focus specifically on decks outside of Tezzeret, but I was unable to do the same thing with Oath. No version I made seemed to get above 50-50 against the other key players in the format.
Thankfully, other players such as Rich Shay, Brad Granberry, and Ben Carp had no such hang-ups and went at the Oath shell with a sledgehammer, in order to reboot it for the new Vintage metagame.
Here were some of the changes they made, many of which blend together aspects of the different styles advocated by myself and Vroman at the end of 2009:
• Playing three creatures is a necessary evil. One of those creatures should be Iona, due to her strength in every match-up except workshops. Another should be a Tinker target to provide an alternate win condition; which one specifically is either a personal preference or a metagame call, depending on how you choose to view things. The third creature should be Terastodon, because it is so powerful in every single match-up. Terastodon was dismissed by most Vintage players prior to release, but in actual play it has proven to be both powerful and versatile. In fact, many people refer to this style of Oath as Terastodon Oath, and sideboarding a second copy of the namesake creature is also relatively common.
• Compared to the version I used to play, Terastodon Oath players are including more mana sources and more fast mana, as well as more basic lands. The mana base tends to skew toward something similar to Vroman’s and typically has 25 or 26 mana sources (more than many Tezzeret lists play).
• Alternate win conditions are a must, due to decks using Sadistic Sacrament as well as hate for Oath itself. Because Time Vault / Key and Tinker are hated against already (due to eighteen months of Tezzeret dominating Vintage), those cards aren’t enough. Tezzeret is an obvious option, while another is Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but both of these rely on Time Vault to some degree (although not entirely). Show and Tell in the main or sideboard was the key innovation, letting the deck win games without using Time Vault or Oath of Druids. Some players support this further by playing Bribery, which is excellent in the mirror and can steal Tinker targets from Tezzeret.
• With a higher threat density and less reliance on Oath of Druids, Impulse is no longer necessary as the deck isn’t racing to assemble Orchard + Oath. Interestingly, in my testing I found that I was often using Impulse to find either a mana source or a Force of Will, because I needed a hard counter. Ultimately it therefore made sense to just replace Impulse with a build that has more mana and more hard counters. With this style of Oath deck, Thoughtseize and/or Duress are also less necessary as we’re no longer trying to resolve an Oath as quickly as possible. Many people are playing full sets of Spell Pierce, where the deck had previously used Thoughtseize and Duress. I’ve taken to a split of Pierce and Spell Snare, as Spell Snare is better against Fish decks.
• Recent printings have provided additional methods of handling the creature-in-hand issue that is part of the drawback of playing with Oath of Druids in a Vintage with Restricted Brainstorm. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is my personal preference and seems to be gaining traction, but See Beyond is definitely another option and probably better than Impulse or Lat-Nam’s Legacy in Oath decks. Older “rediscovered” options include the previously noted Show and Tell, as well as Timetwister, which can be very good in metagames low on combo and high on Fish, Workshops, and Dredge.
This is the version that Rich Shay used to win a tournament in February:
Creatures (3)
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (18)
Spells (38)
- 2 Sensei's Divining Top
- 1 Brainstorm
- 1 Vampiric Tutor
- 1 Mystical Tutor
- 4 Oath of Druids
- 1 Yawgmoth's Will
- 4 Force of Will
- 1 Sol Ring
- 1 Regrowth
- 1 Demonic Tutor
- 1 Time Walk
- 1 Ancestral Recall
- 1 Mana Crypt
- 1 Time Vault
- 1 Gifts Ungiven
- 1 Merchant Scroll
- 1 Thirst for Knowledge
- 1 Lat-Nam's Legacy
- 1 Tinker
- 1 Voltaic Key
- 1 Black Lotus
- 1 Mox Emerald
- 1 Mox Jet
- 1 Mox Pearl
- 1 Mox Ruby
- 1 Mox Sapphire
- 1 Ponder
- 4 Spell Pierce
Sideboard
This deck has created significant discussion on The Mana Drain over the past 60 days, and with versions of it continuing to do well at multiple tournaments (in geographically dispersed locations), I realized it was time for me to jump on the bandwagon and reboot my Oath deck to something closer to this model.
Having said that, there were a number of changes I knew I wanted to make.
I definitely wanted to play Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I’d been testing with one, and found that there were so many games where I wanted it that I moved to testing with two and never looked back. The card is phenomenal in Oath. Against opponents playing Sphinx of the Steel Wind or Darksteel Colossus, a resolved Jace not only provides a steady stream of card advantage (and one guaranteed to be full of gas, with no chance of life loss a la Dark Confidant) as well as a way to put creatures back into your library, but it also blanks an opposing Tinker. Jace is another example in a long line of cards that players, even great ones, underestimated upon release. Typically in Vintage we expect our four-mana cards to win us the game. What no one appreciated at the time is that in Vintage, with this deck, almost every time you resolve Jace, you will win.
I also didn’t want to play a full set of Spell Pierce, nor did I want to play Top, Regrowth, or Lat-Nam’s Legacy. I wanted to rid the deck of some of the slower set-up style cards and replace them with action; one of the reasons the Workshop and Fish match-ups became worse was that Oath was spending too much time setting up: filtering, digging, manipulating, and so on. No more. This build is much simpler: action, tutors, counters. I also wanted hard counters to prevent my opponents, especially MUD and Fish, from eating a Thoughtseize and then just drawing something they needed off the top. I wanted a hard counter: Mana Drain. Drain would also support some of the other cards I wanted, such as the two Jace, Tezzeret, and Timetwister.
I reset the counterspell suite to look like this:
4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
2 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
That would give me more counters than any popular deck in the format. Spell Snare excels in a metagame full of Fish, where four Spell Pierce are a liability. Mana Drain shines in this deck; despite being somewhat marginalized in many Tezzeret decks, Mana Drain itself is a good as ever. I feel that Oath is actually better equipped to use it at the moment.
I was sure that I wanted to include red mana to some degree, including one Volcanic Island. Ultimately I only played two Red Elemental Blast on 4/24, but I’m likely to play cards like Firespout, Fire/Ice, or Rack and Ruin depending on how the metagame changes. Red Elemental Blast is solid in so many match-ups, including against Noble Fish (where it can help you resolve Oath, or destroy or counter Meddling Mage or Trygon Predator), Tezzeret, and the mirror match. I also found 26 mana to be too many, I found that Academy wasn’t very good without Top, and I wanted more fetchlands to protect against Wasteland and abuse Jace, so I cut the Strip and Academy and replaced with fetchlands.
The final deck I ended up with looked like this:
Creatures (3)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (17)
Spells (37)
- 1 Brainstorm
- 3 Mana Drain
- 1 Vampiric Tutor
- 1 Mystical Tutor
- 4 Oath of Druids
- 1 Yawgmoth's Will
- 4 Force of Will
- 1 Sol Ring
- 1 Demonic Tutor
- 1 Hurkyl's Recall
- 1 Time Walk
- 1 Ancestral Recall
- 1 Mana Crypt
- 1 Timetwister
- 1 Time Vault
- 1 Gifts Ungiven
- 1 Merchant Scroll
- 1 Tinker
- 1 Voltaic Key
- 1 Black Lotus
- 1 Mox Emerald
- 1 Mox Jet
- 1 Mox Pearl
- 1 Mox Ruby
- 1 Mox Sapphire
- 2 Spell Snare
- 2 Spell Pierce
Although the list isn’t quite perfect yet, it is very good. Despite being ill and punting several games throughout the day, it was good enough to get me a finals split at the April 24th Blue Bell.
I tested a number of games against Noble Fish and found that I was able to win without Show and Tell, but that card is still very good; I just think it is a metagame call more than an auto-include. I also believed that I could use counterspell superiority to win the mirror and Tezz match-ups and deemphasized those decks when constructing my sideboard. The sideboard is a little light on Workshop hate but has flexible options again Noble Fish (Massacre and REB) and storm decks (Mindbreak Trap).
I’ve found Mindbreak Trap to be a fantastic card out of the sideboard. When Storm players don’t expect it, it can be devastating against them. When they do expect it, it is still fantastic; just like Ravenous Trap against Dredge players, it gets into their minds and tricks them into making suboptimal plays. It is also fantastic at winning counter wars in the mirror and against Tezzeret. This build runs 11 maindeck counters and sideboards 4 more, an incredibly high number in today’s Vintage.
In fact, the only thing about this deck I don’t like is the Dredge hate. I thought it would be fine, and I think against some versions of Dredge, it might be. Jailer seems relatively well-positioned at the moment as Dredge players are cheating on their Jailer hate. Unfortunately, I played against Dredge twice on 4/24 and lost to it both times; once, I literally lost to my own deck, while the other time I lost to a slightly updated version that jettisoned the maindeck Leylines.
Going forward, I’m probably going to test something like this if I stay on 7 hate cards:
2 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Pithing Needle
1 Yixlid Jailer
Or, this if I can go up to 8 cards:
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Ravenous Trap
So, what makes this deck so good?
Against a large chunk of the current Vintage field, the main thing you can leverage is that your deck is just… well, just better. The power level of your cards is considerably higher than many of your opponents, and the sideboard gives you a lot of flexibility. This is a deck that does a lot of the same things as Tezzeret, but has a much higher “oops, I win!” factor than Tezzeret in exchange for a higher variance rate due to having three creatures you don’t want to draw instead of just one.
A quick note on See Beyond: the card does seem very good, but it also appears out of place in the version of Oath as I’ve listed, above. This is very much a control deck that doesn’t want to tap out to manipulate its grip. See Beyond is in the same category as Impulse and Sensei’s Divining Top, although it happens to be particularly well-suited to Oath decks; an Oath deck that was looking to power out Oath quickly, and used Duress and/or Thoughtseize, is a better home for See Beyond. While I can easily see this card having success in Vintage (both in Oath and potentially elsewhere), I don’t know if it is really needed in this style of Oath.
I’m not going to do a tournament report, as I didn’t feel well all day, didn’t take many notes, played poorly, and mostly just drew hot hands. Still, one match is pretty indicative of the broken things this deck can do.
In round three, I played against Ryan Glackin, who was again playing Noble Fish; not an impossible match-up but often a difficult one. I shuffled up and drew this hand:
Oath of Druids, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Yawgmoth’s Will, Black Lotus, Mox Ruby, Mox Jet
On the play, I led out with Mox Ruby, then Mox Jet, then Black Lotus. I used Lotus to add GGG to my mana pool, and then played Oath of Druids, which Ryan countered with Force of Will. I then tapped the Jet and Ruby and used the G in my pool to play Yawgmoth’s Will. I replayed Black Lotus and broke it for BBB, then played Demonic Tutor, fetching Forbidden Orchard. I played Orchard and tapped for Green, and replayed Oath of Druids, and then passed the turn.
On his turn, Ryan played a Mox and a Goyf, and passed.
I used Oath on my upkeep and hit Sphinx of the Steel Wind. Still during upkeep, I played Vampiric Tutor (still had all these!) for Time Walk. I drew the Walk and cast it, then untapped and Oathed into Iona naming White and locking up the game.
For the second game, Ryan led off with a Misty Rainforest and passed the turn. I played Mox Sapphire and a fetch and passed back. Ryan then played a Mox and another land a tried to resolve a Trygon Predator, which I countered with Mana Drain after breaking my fetch for an Underground Sea. I untapped and drew Black Lotus. In my hand were another land, Demonic Tutor, Yawgmoth’s Will, Tinker, and Oath of Druids.
I won this game also, and felt a little filthy about it. Sorry Glackin!
I hope that you’ll take more away from this article than just a new Oath deck list, although trust me, the force is strong with this one. Bring it to your next tournament and go Kratos on some people.
More importantly, try and remember that in any given Magic deck, there are surprisingly few cards that you should consider sacred when doing an honest review of your 75. Even when you know a deck well, you have to stay disconnected from personal attachments and emotions when trying to build the best deck you can.
Sometimes, in order to move forward, you have to let go…
Matt Elias
[email protected]
Voltron00x on SCG, TMD, and The Source