When I play Vintage, like most Magic players, I have a natural affinity for certain cards and/or decks that I would like to play with. One of the things that make Vintage so great is that you can play pretty much any card and/or deck you want to and have at least some success with it. Vintage is the ultimate Timmy, Johnny, and Spike format.

Channeling Our Inner Timmy, Johnny, and Spike

Mark Rosewater previously wrote what is widely considered one of his best articles about how Magic R&D has created three psychographic profiles (Timmy, Johnny, and Spike) to classify Magic player’s psychological preferences when it comes to card and/or deck selection. If you are not familiar with these psychographic profiles, I suggest reading his article, which is a nice brief read here.

If you read the article, you know that the general breakdown of these personalities is as follows:

Timmy- Likes to play with big powerful creatures and cast big powerful spells.

Johnny- Likes to play combo and/or rogue decks; looks to use unique and unusual cards while doing so.

Spike- Likes to win tournaments. They will play with the deck or cards that give them the best chance of winning.

The stereotype is that if you’re not at all a Spike, you’re going to experience some very paltry results with your Timmy and/or Johnny cards. The beautiful thing about Vintage is that the cards generally associated with the Timmy and Johnny profiles are not only very playable but can be tournament-winning cards. There is so much brewing and deck design space in Vintage that I feel it may sometimes intimidate people away, but it should in reality encourage people.

We don’t have to look much further than Visna Harris’s 3 Decks, 1 Box list to see just how much deck design space we have in Vintage.

3 Decks, 1 Box

Visna Harris

Test deck on 12-25-2011

Vintage

Creatures (7)

Lands (13)

Spells (40)

Sideboard

We can also look at Jonathan Medina Bomberman list with Consecrated Sphinx and Reanimate which recently Top 8ed a Meandeck Open.

Bomberman

Ben Wienburg

2nd Place at Miscellaneous on 01-22-2012

Vintage

Creatures (9)

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (15)

Spells (34)

Sideboard

This illustrates a very important fact about Vintage, being that if you are new to the format, don’t be afraid to necessarily play with a card that isn’t currently played. Jon’s unique perspective of dealing a lot with Standard most likely led him to having that perspective to test and ultimately play Consecrated Sphinx in Vintage, which propelled Ben Wienburg to Top 8. New players to the format can bring a new and unique perspective to Vintage and find a lot of uncharted innovation left in Vintage to play with their old or new favorites from other formats.

There are a lot of options for all of Magic’s Timmys, Johnnys, and Spikes right now in Vintage, but there is one deck in particular that pretty much sums up the truly distinct deckbuilding options you have, as well as encompassing all of R&D’s player profiles. This leads me into Vintage’s (maybe Magic’s) ultimate Timmy, Johnny, AND Spike deck…

Playing Oath of Druids

Oath of Druids is essentially a one-card combo based on its namesake. The deck’s primary goal revolves around resolving an Oath of Druids and then ensuring the trigger resolves for the pilot. The deck uses Forbidden Orchard to ensure its opponent has more creatures to trigger and resolve Oath of Druids, which then allows the pilot to “randomly” mill into a fatty.

How it works:

I said trigger and resolve because Oath of Druids does trigger for EACH player and EACH upkeep; it only resolves when the conditions are met however, which in this case means only if that player controls fewer creatures than target opponent. To help ensure it triggers for you and not your opponent, the deck includes Forbidden Orchard, which not only helps fix the deck’s mana but also gives your opponent a 1/1 Spirit token. This allows your opponent to control more creatures than you, which in turn allows you to start Oathing.

One mistake I see a lot of new Oath pilots make is that they attempt to give their opponent a creature with Forbidden Orchard during or in response to the Oath of Druids trigger, which you can attempt to do, but it won’t work out how you want it to. Abilities that trigger at the beginning of the upkeep do so before any player gets priority in that turn. When Oath triggers, you’ll be unable to choose a legal target for it, so the trigger will be not resolve. By the time you have priority to activate your Orchard, Oath has already triggered and found no legal targets, which mean nothing happens. The most ideal time to activate an Orchard is at the end of your opponent’s turn.

Now that we know what Oath of Druids is and how we should and shouldn’t attempt to trigger it, let’s breakdown the core of the deck.

The Basic Core of an Oath of Druids Deck

The Combo:

4 Oath of Druids

Pretty self-explanatory, the deck’s namesake and engine for its primary win conditions.

The Enabler:

4x Forbidden Orchard

Originally I wanted to cover a mana base example here, but as you will see when we go through today’s decklists, mana bases can be unique depending on what version and cards you chose to play.

The Assistants:

0-3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Brainstorm

I wanted to single these cards out because I feel they provide a critical role in Oath decks compared to the other decks in the format that play them. Jace and Brainstorm, outside of obviously being amazing in Vintage, help Oath decks return any drawn fatties back to the deck. Having a Jace in play also protects you from having your opponent stick a Jace. Against some versions of Oath, staring down an opposing Jace is pretty backbreaking, which is why you will see below that Oath runs a lesser used counterspell to help combat it. An interesting thing to note is that there is actually an Oath deck you will see later in this article which doesn’t actually mind drawing a fatty, but for the most part, Jace and Brainstorm both fill a critical need in nearly all Oath of Druids decks.

The Protection:

4 Force of Will
0-4 Thoughtseize/Duress
0-3 Spell Pierce

This isn’t necessarily all of Oath’s options for protection, but I wanted to briefly showcase what type of protection Oath tends to use. What I mean by this is that Oath decks generally want to use more aggressive cards. Thoughtseize/Duress and Spell Pierce are a lot more aggressive than sitting back and playing Mana Drain, Flusterstorm, and Mindbreak Trap. Oath decks want to be able to resolve an Oath of Druids as fast as possible while being able to ensure its resolution. Spell Pierce and Thoughtseize/Duress fit very naturally into the deck’s curve. It allows you to turn-one Thoughtseize/Duress to make sure you can resolve an Oath, while Spell Pierce allows you to have a versatile counterspell when you are trying to resolve a turn two or three Oath of Druids. It is true that Flusterstorm provides the same function, arguably better, but one of the key advantages Spell Pierce provides over Flusterstorm in an Oath deck is Jace protection. Flusterstorm can’t counter a Jace, the Mind Sculptor while Spell Pierce can.

The Fatties:

Tidespout Tyrant
Iona, Shield of Emeria
Blightsteel Colossus
Blazing Archon
Terastodon
Emrakul, the Aeon’s Torn
Inkwell Leviathan
Rune-Scarred Demon

It certainly isn’t an all-encompassing list, but it includes the variants we will go over today. Each fatty brings its own unique set of pros and cons as well as its own game play style to Oath. One thing you will notice with all of them is that they each have a function, a specific purpose for its inclusion. We will go over that and more as we get into each version.

The Break in Case of an Emergency:

1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault

Instead of going over the near same list of restricted cards again, I just wanted to briefly go over some of the critical cards in an Oath of Druids deck. Outside of the obvious tutors, Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, etc., these three cards provide Oath an extra route to victory. Not all versions of Oath run Time Vault–Voltaic Key, but they all run Yawgmoth’s Will. That card is a complete blowout after a resolved Oath trigger; it allows you to play whatever was just milled by Oath—ALL of it. This is one of the reasons some Oath decks welcome the inclusion of Time Vault–Voltaic Key; you can just “win” the game if they are in the graveyard and can tutor up a Yawgmoth’s Will. Yawgmoth’s Will is an amazing card in pretty much any Vintage deck, but you can see how it’s naturally insane in an Oath of Druids deck.

Taking an Oath

Unlike my last article about Ritual decks, I don’t necessarily believe that there are different versions of Oath which are specifically geared for X metagame. Oath decks are naturally stronger in any creature and/or Workshop filled metagame. Being able to trigger and resolve an Oath of Druids without needing Forbidden Orchard is what makes Oath generally a tough matchup for these decks. If they don’t play any creatures, they aren’t applying pressure, which allows for an Oath deck to just sit back and wait for a Forbidden Orchard and then proceed to smashing face phase. Which is why I said early I feel this deck is the perfect Timmy, Johnny, and Spike deck in Vintage; there are just so many ways you can configure an Oath deck and still have the same results.

As you will see by the end of this article, Timmy (Fatties), Johnny (Oath of Druids), and Spike (Results, Results, Results) are all represented when it comes to Oath of Druids decks in Vintage.

Elephant Oath

TMD Open 15- 10-08-11
Top 4: Brian Carey

Elephant Oath

Brian Carey

Miscellaneous on 01-22-2012

Vintage

Creatures (3)

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (17)

Spells (38)

Sideboard

Blue Bell Game Day 16- 06-18-11
7th) Brian Carey playing Oath

Elephant Oath

Brian Carey

7th Place at Miscellaneous on 06-19-2011

Vintage

Creatures (3)

Planeswalkers (3)

Lands (17)

Spells (37)

Sideboard

We begin with Elephant Oath, one of the more traditional style Oath of Druid decks. The original version of this deck was created by Rich Shay and his teammates on RnD. You can find his original list and tournament report here.

Brian Carey’s reboot of the deck still contains the same fatties except for the obvious Darksteel Colossus to Blightsteel Colossus change. Game play for this Oath deck is a lot more control based than the other versions we will go over today. This version of the deck essentially is a control deck with Oath of Druids in it, whereas you will see other versions are more like a combo deck with Oath of Druids as its enabler. Because of this, I feel a lot of the deck’s permission/control slots, outside of the obvious restricted list stuff (fast artifact mana and tutors), are very customizable based on what you feel is prevalent in your metagame.

The deck’s other fatties, Terastodon and Iona, look to impact and shape the game as soon as they hit play. One of the great things about Terastodon is that when he blows up your opponent’s permanents, your opponent is getting more creatures. This allows you to continually trigger and resolve Oath for yourself. You can also look to use Terastodon’s ability to give yourself an Elephant army as well, blowing up your own Oath of Druids in the process to ensure your opponent can’t trigger and resolve an Oath. This also makes Brian’s use of Beast Within an excellent choice; not only can he essentially instant speed Vindicate something, the drawback of giving his opponent a 3/3 Elephant isn’t necessarily a drawback if he has an Oath of Druids out.

Tyrant Gush Oath

Team Serious Open – Sandusky, Ohio – September 3, 2011
Mike “The Salad” Solymossy

Tyrant Gush Oath

Mike "The Salad" Solymossy

Miscellaneous on 06-19-2011

Vintage

Creatures (2)

2 Tidespout Tyrant

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor