so basically oath checks twice (once at beginning of upkeep, once at resolution), and if neither player has more creatures at either time, nothing happens?

thanks again Yare

Another question re: triggered abilities.

Oath of Druids
Oracle text: At the beginning of each player's upkeep, if that player controls fewer creatures than any of his or her opponents, the player may reveal cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reveals a creature card. The player puts that card into play and all other cards revealed this way into his or her graveyard.

At the start of my turn, we both have 2 creatures in play. I also have an orchard in play. At the beginning of my upkeep, I place oath's triggered ability on the stack (triggered abilities go on stack without anyone's choosing, right?). I then respond by tapping orchard and giving him a token. Then I resolve oath's trigger, and since upon resolution I have 1 less creature now, I put something from my library into play. Is this legit, or have I misunderstood triggered abilities again?

Cool, thanks for the comprehensive answer clearing up the fact that it's a triggered ability that includes an optional effect, rather than the optional effect being an activated ability. Really appreciate your help.

Sorry to whoever I was playing, I guess that I really should learn the rules

On the bright side, things will be better next time I play Ichorid myself

I'm playing ichorid on MWS, T1 he plays bazaar and puts ichorid, stinkweed imp, and something irrelevant into his graveyard. At the start of his next upkeep, he announces he places ichorid ability on stack, and responds by activating bazaar and dredging the lone stinkweed imp in his yard. I point out that if he's placing the ichorid's activated ability, he must pay all costs associated with the use of said ability upon announcement, in which case imp would be RFGd and thus he would not be able to dredge it in response to ichorid recursion ability. He insisted that he's 100% sure, and that I should 'lern the rulz'. Am I wrong here? As far as I know, things that include sacrificing something as part of the cost of ability mean that whatever is sacrificed is sacrificed immediately, and not upon resolution of the ability (eg. you can't tap black lotus for mana and in response bounce it etc.), I woul'dve thought that ichorid's activated ability would function no differently.

Thanks for your help.

That's funny, I thought there were other non-bad decks in vintage that used bazaar/workshop/ritual without force. But seriously, if you believe that any deck without force is bad, then what is the purpose of posting in threads relating to non-FoW decks, other than to "bash" them? Oh, and speaking of bashing, this:


sounds pretty childish and isn't really persuasive w.r.t. your points.

Now I didn't make this deck, but I get the feeling it built for the current tezz-dominated meta. In this MU, running FoW over confidant not very effective imo. They have more counters and more draw, so you're less likely to win your counterwars, and less able to refuel afterwards, which is playing right into their hands. Likewise, trying to race tezz for tinker-->DSC is a losing proposition as they have more draw to find tinker, and more counters+duress to ensure it resolves, compared to you. I think you should just stick to being a "compitent" tezz player.


As for the sphere effects, I haven't played stax too much, but if they're packing 9spheres, I've found that their clock/lock is slow enough to develop to allow me to EOT hurkyl's in time and win the turn after. And as has been mentioned before, bob is very strong here, doing damage to mitigate the difficulty in generating enough storm against spheres, and ensuring you hit your land drops. chain (1CC), hurkyl's (2CC) and rebuild (3CC) are all maindeck, which really helps vs. stax and also to dodge chalice.

Be careful to avoid flaming. I'm not going to give you a warning because you're new here and both your posts are great, but comments like the "childish" one I've struck above can fan the flames and help lead a thread to flaming out (as has happened here).  So please be careful in the future.  -Eastman

Hi all; first post on TMD - great forums! Lurked for a bit but felt I had to post something about this deck, because I think it's really quite awesome.


This post made me laugh.

...but seriously, what soly says in his previous post is the exact reason why this deck is good - it doesn't run out of gas, and can play the drawn-out card advantage game quite comfortably vs. tezzeret. To say that"'if bob had been a grim tutor that would have equated in an AUTOWIN" is missing the point as far as why this deck is good. In the current meta dominated by drain decks, GWSx is easily the best storm-based deck owing to its ability grind out wins and stay in the game, which trumps the fact that it goldfishes the slowest (compared to TPS/ANT) and lacks FoW/Pact protection. To me, grim tutor is quite terrible, as it costs 3 mana to get you one card, so unless you're fetching yawgwill (which means you had 6 mana available at least), it's going to be a negative mana play that won't = win unless you already have a good hand with excellent resources already. I get the feeling that you've been either goldfishing too much or playing against a poor control player. With GWSx, 3 mana allows me to wheel or twister for 7 fresh cards and the extra resources to push through for the W without relying on yawgwill (although with 7 new cards I'm likely to draw it or a tutor, as well as extra mana and duress effects), instead of fetching me a single card. (I've interpreted your grim tutor=autowin statement as meaning grim tutor-->resolved yawgwill-->win; sorry if I've totally misunderstood what you meant).

To illustrate, I just played a game against oath. On the play, my hand was petal, sea, mox jet, wheel, dark ritual, cabal ritual and something else. I played land and passed the turn. He dropped orchard and mox and played demonic tutor. I was already regretting keeping that hand when i drew top, and played it off a ritual hoping to see a duress, instead seeing lotus, and played that then wheeled after dropping my hand (wheel>duress lol). drew into lotus, twister, duresses, and mana, played them, twistered for another 7 cards. The sad part of this story is that despite 2 draw7s and 12+ storm, i didn't see any tutors or tendrils, so I had to be content with cleaning up my floating mana by playing two confidants and a duress (which got forced) and won a turn or two later (off a rebuild and tendrils courtesy of my confidants) despite his resolving oath on his next turn. Point is, for 3 mana, I can be doing so much crazier shit than grim tutor. A resolved confidant is such a beating, as allows you, the combo player, to sit back and let the other guy be the aggressor as he struggles to answer confidant or quickly win himself, as each turn bob is unanswered is -1 storm and +1 card for me. This puts them on the back foot, and has forced them to tinker for DSC immediately when they would rather've gone for the guaranteed win via vault-key, which usually then buys me enough time to win via tendrils.

A question for soly/duncan - Bob is totally the superstar of this deck imo, and I find that in games where he gets countered, I tend to struggle and end up being losing via being buried in card advantage unless i topdeck some bombs asap. So lets say its turn 1/2 and I have 2 mana available and I have a confidant and draw duress. Do you think iit worth duressing this turn to ensure bob resolves next turn, or play bob into a possible counter and duress them next turn and take one of their bombs to hopefully regain parity? And does this change depending on whether they are drain mana up?

As for the mini-tendrils plan - it's not the greatest thing you can do vs tezz, but its a beating against other storm decks, which are probably the worst matchup for GWSx. TPS/ANT revolve around one big (usually involving yawgwill) turn that generates 10+ storm for the win), but a mini-tendrils for ~10 a turn before they go off really screws up their game plan, as they then need 15+ storm to win, which is hard to achieve, so you end up buying more time for another mini-tendrils that is usually lethal, especially if accompanied by an attack or two from bob. That you can fairly safely consult for this mini-tendrils can be quite important, and is the reason why don't run EtW MD, since the mini-tendrils plan is almost always better.

I've tested with tinker-->jar/DSC and it's been underwhelming. GWSx is focused on the storm win which is its strength, and wasting cards on the DSC wincon is a storm deck trying to what tezz does better, and is not really playing to its strengths. Tinker-->jar is effectively another 3 mana draw7, but like soly mentioned, there are games when jar is in hand and you can't get rid of it, which just isn't good enough if you have to hardcast it (likewise bargain), since nothing costs more than 3 mana other than tendrils/desire/IGG. Speaking of IGG, this is the one card I not sure about because its quite expensive (4CC), seems a bit of a weak for its cost, and isn't good against blue. I tend to SB it out a lot, although that's probably cos there's too much tezz floating around. I like it as a card to SB in though if I'm not playing drains.

This is really an excellent deck in the current meta; I'm definitely going to take it to a tourney soon and let it loose lol.