Before the second StarCityGames Power 9 tournament, my team was committed to playing Oath. The question was: how to build it? The only limitation on design with Oath is that you need to play with some Oath of Druids, the remaining 56 cards are up for grabs. There were questions of fundamental strategy such as whether to play combo or control, or play for the long game or the short game. There were questions about which draw engines to use: Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge, Thirst for Knowledge, Skeletal Scrying, or something entirely different. There is a nearly limitless variety to what Oath can be designed to accomplish. In the end, we put a mono Blue shell around an explosive draw engine and ended up with Meandeck Oath. The basic idea gained the most support among the team.
The remaining debates centered around two issues. The first was whether the deck needed some sort of maindeck bounce or removal to cards such as Platinum Angel. The second was whether we were underestimating the amount of Oath hate that people would play.
After lots of testing, we all agreed that the Oath deck had a favorable match against Slaver if the Slaver deck did not run Platinum Angel. If they ran Platinum Angel, the matchup became unfavorable. The question of Platinum Angel was not limited to Control Slaver. In the end, we decided that an insufficient number of players would be playing with Platinum Angel for it to matter.
Second, we decided that we should not be overly prepared for Oath hate. We reasoned that since the deck was brand new, most people would be sideboarding for the metagame that existed at GenCon. In addition, we thought that even if people had tested against it, they would be expecting Darksteel Colossus – not Akroma and Spirit of the Night.
We went in with the knowledge that the deck was designed for that tournament alone. That there would simply not be enough Platinum Angels to justify compromising an already ideal list. In consideration of our performance, we all assumed that Oath would be both heavily played and heavily hated at the next StarCityGames tournament in Chicago.
There is something of a failure of imagination when it comes to Oath lists. Dr. Sylvan wrote a revealing article where he found that nearly all the Oath lists were merely variants of the Meandeck mold. The boldest move I’ve seen is one that we considered at the outset and promptly rejected: the addition of Black. There appeared to be little or no thought as to how to beat Platinum Angel and the hate that was present. Simply put, your maindeck must have some solution to Platinum Angel. In this article, I’m going to show you some alternate Oath configurations that we have been testing and report on our conclusions.
In the design stage of Meandeck Oath, we tried Thirst For Knowledge and found it to be pretty good. In a vacuum, a three-mana draw spell that drew you three cards was superior to a five-mana draw spells that drew three cards (Intuition and Accumulated Knowledge (AK)). In the end, we abandoned Thirst for Knowledge for one reason: there simply weren’t enough artifacts to justify it. Chalice of the Void gave you 1-4 beyond your Moxen, but what then? Thirst for Knowledge provides a solid stream of search and card advantage. Accumulated Knowledge and Intuition provides a short burst that you have to leverage into the win in order to win the game. Intuition also has the advantage of being a natural tutor. And that short burst of card advantage made it much easier to play cards like Misdirection.
Teammate Matthieu Durand has been preaching the gospel of Phyrexian Furnace, and I became a convert. One night I was struck with a way to make mono Blue viable again using Thirsts and Furnace. I tested the deck and was shocked at the power of Phyrexian Furnace. It singlehandedly shut down Goblin Welders. I was able to go: Mox, Furnace and against Shay style Control Slaver, I was able to take that single card and ride it into the late game. The problem is that my deck would just lose to Platinum Angel or Tinker. The deck needed a faster win condition. Hence, Oath.
Chalice Oath
Team Meandeck
4 Oath of Druids
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Ancient Hydra/Triskelion
1 Gaea’s Blessing
4 Mana Leak
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Phyrexian Furance
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland
4 Island
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
Sideboard:
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Spawning Pit
3 Arcane Laboratory
2 Back to Basics
1 Naturalize
3 Rack and Ruin
This was what I played at SCG Syracuse. The deck is very solid – I just lost to Brassman’s Gifts Belcher deck (you can read the match here) and Eli Kassis who outplayed me (you can read the match here). I dropped after my second loss. Nonetheless, I felt that I definitely played the correct deck at the tournament.
Phyrexian Furnace
Phyrexian Furnace is a powerful hoser in the current environment. Almost every card utilizes the graveyard:
Slaver: Goblin Welder + Slaver
Use the Furnace to make Goblin Welder a Mons’s Goblin Raider. Remove their whole yard and keep them from doing anything damaging.
Gifts Belcher: Gifts Ungiven and Goblin Welder
This deck uses Gifts to combo out with Yawgmoth’s Will. Use Furnace to make Gifts ineffective and make Yawgmoth’s Will a non-threat.
Dragon Combo: Dragon + Animate Dead
Remove Squees from their graveyard to stop their draw engine and remove the Dragons to prevent them from comboing.
Salvagers:
Remove the Lion’s Eye Diamond, Black Lotus, and other artifacts to keep them from recurring anything.
Psychatog:
You can use Furnace to weaken the size of the Tog, disrupt the Intuition/AK engine, and make their Yawgmoth’s Will weak.
Workshop Decks:
You can use Furnace to stop Crucible/Wasteland recursion and turn off Welders.
Meandeath:
It’s a Yawgmoth’s Will combo deck. Tap your Furnace.
Against Crucible of Worlds, your opponent may think that if they Waste/Strip you on their mainphase, they can return the Wasteland into play without passing priority. This is wrong. As soon as they go to activate the Strip/Waste, the effect goes on the stack and the card goes to the graveyard. People confuse this because they often build a physical stack on the board. This is wrong and don’t let them do this.
The toughest decision is figuring out when to actually activate the other Furnace ability. This requires a bit of judgment, but you will usually get it right. If your opponent is playing Will or going to win with Salvagers, it’s pretty obvious you are going to need to nail the good cards. The only real danger in using Furnace is that you may inadvertently give your opponent more Wish options by removing some solid maindeck card of the appropriate type. Just recognize that as the danger.
Obviously this card is viable because it cycles. Two Furnaces in play is really fun because it’s like a windshield wiper wiping away graveyards. You’ll need to get that into play as quickly as possible. It only takes the bottom card at first. The opponent will have to either remove Furnace or try and overwhelm it. That’s why the second ability is so powerful. Generally, it is not too difficult to try and play around Furnace. That’s the point. Most strategies will simply have to wait to overwhelm it. This buys you time to build a more commanding board position and game state.
Chalice of the Void
No card slows games down as much as Chalice. In the explosive format like Vintage, a turn 1 Chalice for 0 practically guarantees a) a slow game and b) a game that makes your Oath combo more potent.
In addition, this card is particularly potent because of its impact on the metagame. Chalice for zero is very potent against three decks: Welder decks, Combo decks, and Workshop decks.
Against any Welder deck, playing this on turn 1 is going to shut them out of almost all of their Welder targets having a similar effect to Furnace. It will make Tinker a possibly dead draw (with nothing to sacrifice). It will also prevent your opponent from simply exploding with brokenness. In my match against Andy Probosco at Starcitygames Syracuse, I went turn 1 Chalice for zero. Andy’s turn looked like this:
Draw. Discard.
His entire hand was zero-mana accelerants and spells. This is not that unusual that someone will keep a hand with broken acceleration. My mistake that game was not to Force of Will protect my Chalice for one that came a few turns later. As a result of it he was able to get a Goblin Welder into play and then Mana Vault which enabled the Tinker that killed me. Chalice for 1 will keep a Welder deck from playing Welder, and if that is too late, from using it by preventing them from resolving an artifact one would likely Weld out.
Against a Workshop deck, you pretty much guarantee that there will be no turn 1 Smokestack. The best they can do is Mishra’s Workshop, and a three casting cost threat. Against practically any powered and therefore explosive Vintage deck, Chalice of the Void for zero on turn one is a strong play. You can imprison the Prison deck in this way. The most threatening thing that Workshop decks can do is drop lots of artifact accelerants and then dropping big artifacts. Chalice will keep an aggro deck from having turn one Juggernaut and a Prison deck from playing turn one Smokestack ensuring that your Mana Drain will be waiting when they do.
Against Combo, Chalice of the Void is obviously a strong hoser. It is practically game if resolved for one against TPS, Meandeath or Doomsday.
The one deck I was not expecting that showed up was lots of Salvagers combo. Chalice is clearly strong against Salvagers decks who have to remove it before they can combo with Lion’s Eye Diamond or Black Lotus.
Just be careful about playing Chalice of the Void for one without good reason because it will cut you off of your Brainstorms which you may need to return cards like Gaea’s Blessing or Akroma into your deck to Oath up. There are three distinct circumstances where I consider it the correct play:
1) Against TPS or comparable combo deck
2) Late game against decks with Swords to Plowshares (before you Oath). I won’t Oath against 3cC until I’ve Chaliced for one unless I have more countermagic than they have cards or unless I’m almost certain they don’t have two Swords to Plow shares
3) Against Welder decks if they have gotten moxen onto the table but no Welders yet. A Chalice for zero is almost always asymmetrical since if you are on the play, you will already have a chance to drop your acceleration before playing Chalice.
Remember though, these artifacts are never dead. If you have too many multiples, Thirst For Knowledge will dispose of them properly.
Chalice and Furnace are my two strongest proactive threats. They are the primary reason to actually play this deck. Together, they are two threats the metagame is vulnerable to but not prepare to deal with. They are cheap and difficult to stop, much like Oath.
Thirst for Knowledge
The one thing that I want to truly impress upon you is that this is a control deck. This is not Meandeck Oath. This deck does not just try to get the combo into play ASAP.
This is a control deck and one where timing is everything. The primary criticism I heard about this deck in development was that it just didn’t draw any cards. I was afraid that I would have drawing problems at SCG Syracuse. In my first match, I held back on my draw because I wanted to be able to get my combo parts in place. It was the wrong decision. By waiting until the right time I got overwhelmed with draw spells instead of doing what Thirst does best: a nice, smooth, steady stream of draw. I had to discard something like two drains and a Force of Will because I had so many cards in hand.
Not once did I have insufficient draw. It is true that this deck doesn’t have the auto “Intuition up Oath and play it” move. But as long as your stream of draw continues, you have no danger of not finding it on time.
Ancient Hydra/Triskelion
Frankly, Oath needs a way to kill Platinum Angel. It’s nearly that simple. The fact that it kills Welders and annoying other dudes is just the bonus. Ancient Hydra and Triskelion both have merits which are so nuanced that it is difficult to decide which is superior.
Ancient Hydra is harder to remove once it hits, but it is ineffective at attacking. The Hydra is much more mana intensive to use, but much easier to cast. It also is easier to use to kill Platinum Angel. Triskelion can kill Platinum Angel, but it requires some Oath tricks to get it to work. The Triskelion has better synergy with Thirst For Knowledge. Overall, I prefer Triskelion because it is harder to kill with cards like Swords to Plowshares.
Mana Leak
I tried a variation of this deck that I’m going to talk about in a moment – but when I tested the variation, I suddenly realized why I needed Mana Leak. Mana Leak is the card that assures you resolve Oath and that it sticks. With Mox, Mox, Land, Land – Mana Leak backs up your Oath efficiently.
So, how the hell do I play this thing?
Here is the problem with *just* playing Oath.
Casting Oath is not the trick. Finding Oath isn’t even the trick. The trick is to get into a position where you can not only resolve it, but protect it for the one turn necessary to activate it. Take this hand:
Polluted Delta,
Forbidden Orchard,
Off-Color Mox
Oath of Druids
Brainstorm
Mana Drain
Phyrexian Furnace
Going turn 1 Orchard, Mox, Oath is not the right play. You only have four Oaths. Losing an Oath here to Force of Will is going to put your whole game plan behind many, many turns if not cost you the game. In addition, you are going to be at the mercy of your own Spirit Tokens and the necessity of using the Orchard to recover your game position.
You only need to get Oath and activate it soon enough not to die. No sooner.
The Thirst engine gets you into a nice, steady continuous draw where you never have a really weak position. You may not have a domineering, mono Blue control – but you have proactive threats and a quick combo with sufficient countermagic.
Because the deck has so many proactive cards like Chalice and Furnace, it is not perfectly suited to playing the Control role. The addition of Red is necessary to ensure that you will have enough components to actually play Control.
This deck isn’t the fastest control-combo deck. And it isn’t the most controlish either. What it has is this: the best possible mix of metagamed proactive threats. Its mana base is rock solid. And its win condition is only a few turns. It suits a control player who likes proactive threats like me. Instead of playing Back to Basics, you are dropping Chalices and Furnace. Instead of dropping Morphling, you just win with Oath.
That is not to say that you can’t just go for the win. If your opponent’s deck is bad, then do it. But you probably should settle in and try and stop them from winning and then combo out.
Sideboarding
Arcane Lab
The addition of this card in the post-Trinisphere environment should be too obvious for words given how powerful it is against combo. The only two real questions at this point are a) how many to include b) what do you sideboard out and a subsequent third question: c) should this be brought into control matchups such as the Oath mirror. These questions remain unresolved.
Any light that can be shed on them would be greatly appreciated. At the moment I’m leaning toward four.
Red Elemental Blast
The addition of this card is too critical at this juncture given the increasing prevalence of blue based combo and the importance of tempo in getting orchard advantage in the Oath mirror. A card like Red Elemental Blast protects Oath, counters Intuitions and AKs, and is an amazing control mirror tool. The only question is what to sideboard out and how many to have in the board.
Rack and Ruin
This is much better than Energy Flux. My only real concern is the extent to which I will be hampered by my own mana because I only have 1 Volcanic Island and 4 Orchards plus the Mox to cast it. I don’t think it will be a problem. Three should be plenty to deal with pests such as Chalice of the Void set on two.
Back to Basics
Now we get into the dicey questions. Should this card be included? The matchups where it shines most are:
* Bazaar decks: Dragon and Cerebral Assassin
* Workshop decks: 7/10 and Stax in particular
* DeathLong combo and other stupid mana based decks.
I have precious little for the Bazaar matchups besides my maindeck Furnaces and Chalices. I have Labs and Rack and ruins for Combo and Workshops but I think Back to basics is probably necessary. It may have potential properties in the Oath mirror that I will discuss in a moment.
Problems with Chalice Oath
I think the two most effective criticisms of Chalice Oath are this: First, it is somewhat underpowered in the mono blue vein. It has a slow game plan with a draw engine that isn’t very explosive. It seems underpowered also because you are using lots of efficient but not game breaking artifacts like Chalice and Furnace whose primary purpose is simply to buy time rather than outright win games. Second, and this is the problem that concerns me the most, it does not easily suit itself to playing the Control role. It doesn’t have enough counterspells to ensure that it can protect a turn one Oath very easily. It also has too many non-draw, non-countermagic cards to just glide into the control role based upon topdecks and counterwars. It requires precision and careful play to really out-control your opponent with Chalice Oath – and it is an effective metagame deck if you do so.
I tested a variant of the deck at a local tournament to see if I could address either problem – particularly the first one.
Goth Oath
Team Meandeck
4 Oath of Druids
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Triskelion
1 Gaea’s Blessing
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Brainstorm
3 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Phyrexian Furance
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland
4 Island
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
One measure of strength is synergy. Someone once said that Vintage is just a series of miniature combos.
For example, in Tog, you have:
* Brainstorm + Fetchland
* Intuition + AK
* Intution + Deep Anal
* Mana Drain + Intuition
* Brainstorm + Intuition
* Psychatog + Cunning Wish (makes it a Regrowth)
* Psychatog + Berserk
And so on.
Meandeck Oath was not built to be a pile of synergy. Meandeck Oath was built to be brutal, fast and heavy countermagic all at the same time.
Here are the synergies of Goth Oath:
* Oath and Orchard
* Intuition and AK
* Brainstorm + Fetch
* Oath + AK
* Chalice/Furnace + Thirst
* Brainstorm + Intuition
* Intuition + Oath
* Intuition + Orchards
* Mana Drain + Intuition
* Mana Drain + Thirst
* Blessing + Intuition/AK engine as resusable
As you can see, the whole deck is composed of miniature combos. Even Trike has synergy with Thirst!
Goth Oath looks very good on paper – it has all the proactive metagame bombs and plenty of draw. But it lacks one very critical quality: it can’t effectively play the control role – it has no way to ensure that Oath will resolve and stick. Mana Leak is a necessity. Furnace and Chalice are strong in their own right – but they cannot ensure that Oath will resolve. Oath must resolve before a certain time or else you will be taking lots of Orchard damage as well.
Other configurations were developed by teammates. Here is one that my teammate Steve O'Connell came up with:
Zherbus Oath
Team Meandeck
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Skeletal Scrying
4 Oath of Druids
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Ancient Hydra
3 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Gaea’s Blessing
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Polluted Delta
2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
2 Island
Sideboard
2 Ground Seal
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Oxidize
2 Wasteland
1 Platinum Angel
1 Pristine Angel
1 Woodripper
1 Pernicious Deed
The rest of my team played this list at SCG Syracuse and aside from the fact that none of us who played Oath made Top 8 (although our lone Stax player won the tournament), I think this deck suffered from a simple problem as well: Duress doesn’t help get and keep the Oath in play better than Mana Leak. Duress is more disruptive, but also taxes the mana base in undesirable ways.
There are other possible Oath configurations that may prove viable. One of the strongest may be finding a way to make Salvagers smoothly interact with Oath. [Perhaps like Thomas Lee did here. – Knut, who also thinks you should sample the rest of the P9 Chicago Coverage]
If you were going to play the old Meandeck Oath list tuned to deal with the current threats, it should probably look like this:
Meandeck Oath 2K5
The Combo:
4 Oath of Druids
1 Gaea’s Blessing
1 Spirit of the Night
1 Akroma
Countermagic:
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Mana Leak
2 Misdirection
Search/Draw:
4 Brainstorm
2 Cunning Wish (can even be Fire / Ice)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
5 Islands
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Polluted Delta
1 Strip mine
1 Tropical Island
2 Wasteland
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
Tentative Sideboard:
3 Arcane Laboratory
3 Ground Seal
3 Spawning Pit
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Dominate/ Mystical Tutor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Pristine Angel
I have simply cut 2 Impulses for 2 Cunning Wish – but it may be that instead of that change, the deck just needs a Trike or a Hydra maindeck. I am not sure. I personally like this configuration for this deck simply because it is the fastest means of victory, but it is not the only. Jacob Orlove prefers Pristine Angel and Akroma. I think the two Cunning Wishes are probably strong enough to deal with Welders and Platinum Angel. But if they are not, then Hydra or Triskelion may be needed. One final alternative is to cut the two Cunning Wishes for two Fire/Ice and add a Volcanic Island to the maindeck. With Fire/Ice you can kill Welders, murder Orchard tokens, and you can even use the Fire/Ices to kill Platinum Angel with Blessing recursion to recycle them.
There is no limit on what an Oath deck can look like. It should be designed with a few basic requirements in mind. First, design Oath for your metagame. The Chalice Oath list reflects the current metagame. Second, make sure that Oath can play the control role in a Control mirror. If you can’t play the control role, then you will have trouble winning in control mirrors. If you can meet those two criteria, then the rest of necessities for winning are just minor adjustments. There are many, many ways to design Oath. Think about how to meet those two criteria and I’m confident you will be winning with Oath.