Welcome back to the third installment of your daily dosage of deck. Today we are going to feature an old 250 combo in a neat, tight, sixty-card deck. The goal of the deck is simple, and I think that many of our readers might like it. It is a bit rare-heavy, but that can easily be changed. Let’s take a look.
Enchantment Beats
4 Oath of Druids
4 Replenish
1 Eternal Witness
2 Krosan Reclamation
1 Recoup
4 Pandemonium
4 Saproling Burst
3 Fires of Yavimaya
4 Opalescence
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Sterling Grove
4 Sylvan Library
1 Abundance
2 Scroll Rack
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 City of Brass
4 Mox Diamond
4 Chrome Mox
4 Gemstone Mine
2 Karplusan Forest
2 Brushlands
1 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
The goal of the deck is simple enough. By using the Oath of Druids, you want to dump a bunch of your graveyard into your library until Eternal Witness arrives. When the Witness comes to play, you return a nice Replenish. Casting Replenish should usually end the game on that turn with a nice, beefy graveyard.
You have, essentially, two separate winning conditions. Pandemonium + Saproling Burst can deal 21 points of damage – which should be enough to knock out most players. Fires of Yavimaya + Opalescence gives you a bunch of quick beaters to swing for game. If you lack either the Fires or the Burst, Opalescence and Pandemonium plus several other enchantments can often serve as a game winning condition.
If your Oath only puts a card or two in the yard for the Eternal Witness, you can always Oath again on the following turn. Note that your library will be exhausted, and you will need to flashback Krosan Reclamation during your upkeep in order to survive, lest you draw a card when you can’t and die.
The beauty of this deck lies is its ability to kill multiple people on the same turn. If you dump half your deck into your graveyard, you might have a pair of Pandemoniums and Saproling Bursts, which can deal 21 damage to four different people. If you have just one Opalescence, you can Pandemonium damage off all the returning enchantments. Lastly, if you return just one Fires, you can then swing at whoever is left.
A single copy of Recoup is included in case your first Replenish is countered.
You may need to use Forbidden Orchard to give your opponent a creature you can Oath off of. Ideally, this deck can go off on turn 3. The plan is to go Land, Mox – Oath, (or play Tutor effect), Turn 2 – Oath up Witness, return Replenish, turn 3 – play your third land and go off. Actually, with a pair of Moxen, you can go off on turn 2, but that’s not likely at all. You have plenty of time to use a tutor, try to find a critical piece of the combo or to Oath twice if necessary in order to go off on turn 3, and you may find it happening with some regularity.
In case you want to change the deck up, one idea is to use some Blue cards and add Force of Will to the deck. Quick Blue draw, like Brainstorm, enchantments like, um, Oath of Scholars or whatnot might be effective. If you go heavy Blue, and add dual lands, you could play even more free counter spells, like Foil or Misdirection.
If you want to cheapen your deck, the best place to go is the mana base. There are many other mana options that do not require the eight moxen. Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, and more can help to accelerate your manabase. If you don’t want to go that route, you can shore up your manabase by removing the moxen and using regular lands. Going off on the fourth turn is still impressive.
Another way to cheapen the deck is to remove one of the combos. Frankly, Opalescence, Saproling Burst and Fires simply aren’t that expensive, but if you want to find an area to modify, that’s where you can look. Forbidden Orchard can be replaced with other lands and you can add something like Verdant Touch if you find it necessary. Honestly, most multiplayer environments have multiple creatures in play by the time you want to Oath, so you may find the ability superfluous.
Other areas that can be dialed back include the searching. Sylvan Library/Abundance/Scroll Rack, although not very expensive on their own, can add up to a pretty penny when combined with all of the other rares. You can easily find uncommon or common variants that will suffice. One area you may find interesting is Oath of Scholars, as old tech card frequently used with Replenish decks. Most other possibilities also use Blue, so in order to build your deck on the cheap, you may need to add Blue.
One quick note: Although this deck is designed with multiplayer in mind, it is for the charged multiplayer table, where most or all of the players are good, have decent to excellent card collections, and do not mind the occasional combo deck. If you imagine multiplayer as a spectrum, this deck is designed for the higher powered end.
Until Later,
Abe Sargent