I've been testing my own variant of the deck, and Pithing Needles are sideboarded.

You can't take Chains out for them. Chains slaps stuff around. I've upped my Chains to four in the maindeck, because they're that good. They will help you more than they hurt you in every single matchup (Stax could be the lone acception). Chains will never really hurt you, unless your opponent makes you draw. While Pithing Needle is good, there are a lot of matchups where you'll be settling for a mediocre target.

If you're going to take something out for Needles, it should be Choke. Choke is a major hoser, and can totally screw over some manabases, but keep in mind you are running five Strip effects as well. I've found that Choke is overkill, especially since it's totally dead against combo (granted, Needle isn't so hot against combo either). In my build, I've moved all my Chokes to the board, and in their place I've added Crucibles. Even though Crucible does screw manabases, it also saves yours, and at the same cost as a Choke, I find it far better.

This is probably about 10 years too late, but the original Doom games are pretty sweet.

Get ready for this:

1 x Signed Demonic Tutor (Revised)
1 x Foreign BB Strip Mine (German maybe?)
1 x Asian BB Grafted Skullcap
1 x Foil Asian Magma Sliver (!!!!)
2 x Foil Serum Visions
5 x Misprinted Serendib Efreet
3 x Foil Seat of the Synod
4 x Foil Nantuko Husk (1 is Asian  )
9 x Duress (Saga)

But best of all....

2 x Sheep Token

How about that for a pimped out collection [/sarcasm]

Singer: Bob Marley (not mentioned yet!?!?) or Bradley Nowell (of Sublime)

Best Songs Ever: Nas - "Represent", Immortal Technique - "Dance with the Devil",  Slick Rick "Children's Story", Sublime - "Date Rape"

Best Modern Songs: Immortal Technique - "Peruvian Cocaine", Brother Ali - "Dorian", Talib Kweli - "Eternalists", Non Phixion - "Black Helicopters"

And in a new direction, for anyone who feels like they can answer it...

Best Rappers/MC's: Immortal Technique, Sabac, Ill Bill, Slick Rick, Talib Kweli, KRS-ONE

AIM: jets x fan

Formats: T1

TIme: Just whenever

On Tinker/Collossus, with so many Welders running around, is something like that really a good idea? I can see where you're coming from with an early 11/11 beatstick, but Welders just screw you. And with lots of StP's being run to stop Oath, that also carries over to this. Plus, if you draw Collossus, it's almost always a dead card (unless of course, you can draw a Brainstorm into a Tinker).

And on Wastelands, I'm not so sure. You run 0 Crucibles, MD or SB, and you run a mere three basics. I'm not saying take them out, but is your manabase resiliant enough with them in? Three basics and 0 Crucibles doesn't seem so hot to me.

Cloud of Faeries is really nice with Skullclamp. Play it, untap, Clamp it. It works out to two cards for one mana. I tested with a deck similar to this one a little while ago and I found that Cloud of Faeries is very good.

First of all, I'll post a decklist, because what I've been testing with is quite different than anything else in this thread...

Mana Sources - 23
    1 Tundra
    1 Volcanic Island
    1 Tropical Island
    1 Library of Alexandria
    1 Underground Sea
    3 Polluted Delta
    4 Island
    4 City of Brass
    5 Moxen
    1 Black Lotus
    1 Sol Ring

Creatures - 4
    3 Quirion Dryad
    1 Psychatog

Control - 14
    4 Mana Drain
    4 Force of Will
    3 Cunning Wish
    2 Disrupting Shoal
    1 Swords to Plowshares

Draw/Tutor/Utility/Broken - 19
    4 Accumulated Knowledge
    3 Isochron Scepter
    3 Intuition
    3 Brainstorm
    1 Mystical Tutor
    1 Demonic Tutor
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Time Walk
    1 Yawgmoth's Will
    1 Gush


SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 1 Berserk
SB: 1 Oxidize
SB: 1 Stifle
SB: 1 Hurkyl's Recall
SB: 1 Misdirection
SB: 1 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Vampiric Tutor
SB: 1 Fire/Ice
SB: 1 Skeletal Scrying
SB: 1 Naturalize
SB: 3 Crucible of Worlds

First, I'll start off with the negatives. As you can see, the manabase is highly sensitive to Wastelands + Crucibles. I do manage to run four basic Islands, but I do depend on the Cities to make sure color isn't an issue. So far this has been probably the biggest problem. The solution is the three sideboarded Crucibles, but they leave you very open to Wastes in game one. I might consider running 1-2 CoWs in the MD.

Next thing in the negatives is a pretty tight sideboard. I'd really like to find some room for Pernicious Deeds or Engineered Explosives (probably Deeds), but pretty much everything has a good purpose to it. Swords, Oxidize, Rack and Ruin, Fire/Ice, and Naturalize make up a very versatile array of hate cards. Stifle and MisD can save you in the early game (Stifle a Fetch or Waste, MisD a Recall). Echoing Truth is the Oath hate, Recall totally screws 5/3 and Stax. Crucibles have already been covered, and Vampiric Tutor & Skeletal Scrying are for a little help (Scrying is a good Drain outlet).

Next I'll focus on my favorite aspect of the deck: Isochron Scepter. This card is a beast. Going Intuition ---> 3 AK's ---> Isochron w/ AK is deadly. You're getting three cards a turn for two mana a turn. It is easy to drain mana from a Drain in. I have only two complaints with this tough. 1) If countered, you will lose your Imprint card. 2) You can lose a very reliable draw engine/control engine to an Oxidize/Rack and Ruin. But despite the two major drawbacks, this card has been doing great. Against Oath, I can imprint a Echoing Truth or StP for consistant threat removal. Against Stax and 5/3, I can imprint Oxidize or Hurkyl's Recall. This card is so versatile. It does everything from draw engine, to threat removal, to countering, to bounce, to tutor. And another plus, it beefs up your Dryad with every use.

Some might question the number of threats I run (4). Yes, it is lower. But many decks that run 6-8 threats don't have nearly as much card advantage or control. The decks simply can't do as much as this deck can do. Others might question me not using Serum Visions and Night's Whisper. I really don't like these two cards. One is a two mana sorcery that nets you one card. The other is a one mana sorcery that nets you nothing. I'd much rather use Intuition/AK (especially here, because of synergy with Scepters. Also, if you've never done it before, Intuition can set up one nasty Yawgmoth's Will).

There also seems to be quite a bit of debate over Disrupting Shoal. I think it's a great card, but it's much better in MonoU or Oath. I choose to run only two, as I can still get the stuff I fear most (Trinispheres, Crucibles, Tangle Wires, Draw7's), but it's not at the point where I have to rely on them for any countering.

Well, that's about it.

Aladdin > This, but Aladdin is horribly slow.

Look at it this way: Unless you get a Drain or Lotus, this won't work until turn five. Let's say you cast it turn two. On turn three it MIGHT do something. But CS will most likely have out a fattie blocker, 5/3 will have stomped you into oblivion, and any other decent artifact deck will have an answer to it.

It won't work.

I used to be in favor of only the Sphere getting the axe.

But now, I'm really not so sure.

If you restrict the Sphere and not Ritual, combo will run rampant, destroying everything in its path. But lets face it - Restricting Ritual will kill off combo, with the lone exception of Dragon. Ritual can't get restricted, or you will take away an entire aspect of the metagame.

But, (this may sound noobish) restricting both will make for non-Workshop Aggro to do great. No Trinispheres to hold them back, no combo to bash their face in. In all honesty, if both Sphere and Ritual are restricted, look for Aggro to start doing better.

Intuition, it's close. The Intuition/AK draw engine honestly isn't THAT great. If you do the math, it's usually 3UU for 3 cards. Definately not so hot. But I do agree that turn one Welder, turn two Intuition is pretty broken. But then again, isn't that what Thirst of Knowledge does? I say it should stay.

Ritual stays.
Sphere stays.
Intuition stays.
Welder stays.

I did some testing with MonoU w/ Shoals. (My list and such is posted there)

I like the Shoal. Stock up on your Libraries, folks. Control is coming back.

Wowzers I use MWS all the time. I actually remember running into quite a few of you, but on with the funniest stories...

I'm playing this guy. I cast Mindslaver. Tell him to tap out his lands, "NO, YOU CAN'T MANABURN." I explain to him that I'm not saying that he's losing life, just that his lands are tapped. "NO, YOU CAN'T." We go back and forth for a while. Finally he just leaves.

I'm playing with FCG. I cast Wooded Foothills. Use it to search for a Taiga, "NO, FOOTHILLS CAN ONLY FIND A FOREST OR MOUNTAIN." I explain that Taiga counts as a Forest and Mountain. "IT SAYS EITHER A MOUNTAIN OR FOREST, NOT BOTH." <System> Player Lost.

The last on is just pure idiocy. I'm play the Sligh Noob. Everytime I cast a spell that will go to my graveyard, he takes control of it, and then sacrifices it. Then, I go crazy with some incredible play, I think it was like Yawgmoth's Will, Lotus, Tutor, Walk, Recall. So he then goes on a random n00b rampage of like taking control of my cards and drawing his deck. He then procedes to type random letters and leave.

Oh and I hate morons that say "No netdecks." I was playing with my utterly horrible OathLong a while back, owned this guy that said that, and he said, "I can take a deck from the internet and make it good too."

And of course, read my sig.

My attempt at the deck[/url]

Here's some simple questions that have been bothering me lately, just need to clear some things up.

1) If I play a Basking Rootwalla via Madness, if a Trinisphere was is play, would I pay 0 or 3?
2) If my opponent has a Standstill out, can I cast a Basking Rootwalla via Madness without breaking Standstill?
3) Can a Madness spell be countered by a regular counterspell like Force of Will? If so, how would a Madness spell interact with Mana Drain?

Because of my location, I can't really test that much. The group I usually play with in person only plays Limited and T2, with the exceptions of a few who proxy wacky combo decks, which make for a pretty unrealistic metagame.

But, I really do test quite a bit on MWS with varied decks. I've probably played a lot of you on MWSplay.net. That's how I do most of my testing, usually about an hour or so a day.

Well first of all, your basic count is fine, but if you try to run five Strip effects, you'll be at a big tempo loss. You'll be using turns to take out opponent's lands, and opponent's will be using turns to take out your lands. If you really think that Crucible will not completely dominate you in that situation, you've got another thing coming.

Your manabase seems awfully unstable to me. You seem to have the numbers right, but you can't expect to run four colors plus five Strip effects and not get owned by Crucibles. The manabase already seems quite viable to Crucibles. That was a driving force behind MeanOath - resist Crucibles and Wastes. The deck did that, and it had success.

Your deck seems to be well built, but with such an unstable manabase, some matchups will totally screw you over.

The problem with this (and Dragon in general) is that it has been hated out. Almost every single deck in the format has some way of dealing with Dragon either maindeck or sideboard. If it's not Ground Seal, it's Tormod's Crypt. If it's not the Crypt, it's Coffin Purge. And some decks have additional cards that screw the deck like Swords to Plowshares and Stifle. I really think it's impossible to make a successful Dragon deck without at least Duress. Duress and Unmask is probably the best way to go. With your current decklist, you might win game one, but game two and three will be alot tougher. You might have to rely on pure luck to win, and that's never something good to do.

Over the summer I remember testing quite a bit with an 7/10 variant, in which I ran one Shattering Pulse, and one Rack and Ruin. Both cards proved their worth against Stax, other Artifact Aggro, and decks that ran Null Rod. I'd definately run some form of Artifact removal MD if I had the room for it.

Definately find a spot for your Hatchlings. Not only are they useful in virtually every matchup, but also specifically against Oath, if you must, you can always just sacrifice it, and wait for an answer to Oath.

[quote="Thissa]
4 StP, 4 Force of Will. That's how I plan to do it. Read what Serenity does, read what Energy Flux and Null Rod do. And test it pls. This deck does not roll over a die to workshop.[/quote]

I never said anything about post-board matchups. I specifically commented about the bad game one matchup against some Welder decks, Control Slaver in particular. How do you rely on sneaking past a Null Rod or StP against a deck that runs two more counterspells than you do?

The game two matchup is no heaven either. Energy Flux isn't THAT hard to work around if you're Control Slaver (save up cheap artifacts in hand while a Slaver is in the grave, cast the artifact, float mana, and pitch out the Mox for a Slaver).

In all honest, I can't see this working. Red/Blue have been the primary Fish colors for a reason. You get Artifact hate, Fire/Ice, Mox Monkey, and Lavamancer. Now without those colors, what do you do against Welders?.......

.......nothing. You simply don't have the resources available to stop Welder based decks. You can't rely on counters, and a Welder can hit faster than a Meddling Mage. So if you don't get a Null Rod game one against Welder decks, you might as well pick up your cards, start sideboarding, and get ready for game two.

While I do agree that Fire/Ice is the best available creature kill card, I'm not sure exactly how much better it is than StP. From a literal standpoint, Fire/Ice is clearly the more versatile card, but if you're looking at metagames, StP does so much more in the format, considering the current uprise of Oath.

And yes it's also true that Fire/Ice is better against Welder and Fish, but Fish has been dying off lately, and is no longer a major concern in my mind. So now if you're looking for just against Welder (and Welder decks), the only way that Fire/Ice is going to do more than StP is in the case of two early Welders. If there's only one, it's easily picked up by StP, and that's not to mention StP's ability against the fatties of Welder decks.

But lastly, you must look at the mana cost of the two cards, and how thinking that not playing Red may be a bad choice just because of the Fire/Ice issue (I definately think there's more to not playing Red than just Fire/Ice). While paying 1R for an instant is definately respectable, paying a single W is definately more clear of an advantage than anything that StP has over Fire/Ice. By cutting Red, he simplifies his manabase a whole bunch, and now allows himself much more versatility.

As for other issues of the deck, Red is not a color you can cut. You are losing:

Rack and Ruin, Fire/Ice, Flametongue Kavu, REB, and Gorilla Shaman.

Of the above cards, I think loing Gorilla Shaman is going to hurt more than anything. The Mox Monkey is still one of the best (if not THE best) anti-Moxen card out there. A re-usable, 1 mana to eat a Mox creature is definately a big help to this deck. And that isn't to mention the fact that Skullclamp is now seeing more play than it ever has before (it still isn't being unbelievably good), and using three mana to take out one of the better engines in the format is quite a bargain.

Simple math proves that Skullclamp doesn't belong - the deck's draw engine (Goblin Ringleader) draws you four cards, if your deck is properly stacked. Skullclamp requires 1 mana to activate each time. You would need to activate it twice to equal the number of cards drawn with Ringleader, thus costing three colorless + two X/1 creatures, excluding the X/1 creature's casting cost. And that's also to set aside the fact that Ringleader can be eaten by your Food Chain for 5R, enough to cast any creature in the deck.

Oh yeah, and you shouldn't be running Goblin Matron anyway.

Oolong Tea

The Decklist

Combo: (11)
4 x Oath of Druids
2 x Darksteel Colossus
4 x Death Wish
1 x Burning Wish

Broken: (10)
1 x Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1 x Necropotence
1 x Time Walk
1 x Memory Jar
1 x Timetwister
1 x Ancestral Recall
1 x Wheel of Fortune
1 x Time Spiral
1 x Fastbond
1 x Mind’s Desire

Draw & Tutor: (6)
1 x Tinker
1 x Demonic Tutor
1 x Demonic Consultation
1 x Mystical Tutor
2 x Brainstorm

Kill: (1)
1 x Tendrils of Agony

Manabase: (32)
4 x City of Brass
4 x Gemstone Mine
4 x Forbidden Orchard
4 x Dark Ritual
1 x Library of Alexandria
1 x Tolarian Academy
7 x SoLoMoxen
1 x Chrome Mox
1 x Mox Diamond
1 x Grim Monolith
1 x Mana Crypt
1 x Mana Vault
1 x Lotus Petal
1 x Lion’s Eye Diamond

Sideboard: (15)
1 x Yawgmoth’s Will
1 x Balance
1 x Tendrils of Agony
2 x Darksteel Colossus
4 x City of Solitude
4 x Oxidize
2 x Tormod’s Crypt

The Concepts

The deck is inspired by one card – Forbidden Orchard. If you don’t know what it does, you don’t deserve to know. Hopefully cast a Oath of Druids turn one, find a Darksteel Colossus turn two, and mill most of your deck into your graveyard. From there, cast a Death Wish (or even better, Burning Wish) for a Will, and go ahead and flashback most of your library that’s in your graveyard.

Seems crazy? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. After tweaking the decklist a bit, I came up with the one above, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. In my first goldfishes:

2 turn one kills
3 turn two kills
4 turn three kills
1 turn four or after kill

Definitely not bad. Not only does it combo out on those turns, but because of my goldfishing, I didn’t take into account for the quick Darksteel Colossus.

Card Choices

Colossus – I choose to run two Darksteel Colossuses because in testing, if I opened up my hand with the lone Colossus, I would’ve wasted five card slots on that game, and I would have to rely only on the Combo aspect of the deck.

Fastbond- In a lot of games, I’m going to have a lot of land in the graveyard, via Oath, so flashing back those lands can be the deciding factor of a game. Not only that, but it also can make for an addition 1-2 mana in the opening stages of a game.

Time Spiral – I don’t care, I love this card. I played with it back in Urza’s Block, and it’s just a blast. You get out an Academy and cast the Spiral, then you’ve just increased your chance of winning by about 75%.

Mox Diamond and Chrome Mox – This is one of the biggest drawback of the deck – no ESG. To compensate for the loss, I’m forced to run these two. In testing, they’ve been working just fine.

The Matchups (General)

The matchups are the sole reason for this deck’s priority over some of the other Combo decks:

Prison: Possibly the best reason to play this deck. If they drop a Trinisphere early, go with the Oath route. If they don’t have an early Prison piece, go with the Combo route. If they drop a Chalice for one, go into Turbo-Moxen mode and find yourself an Oath. Chalice for 0 should be easy to work around, even if you’re trying to Combo out.

Control: The matchups here will vary quite a bit. 4C Control is a reasonably good matchup because both ways to win aren’t terribly hard, considering you could win either of the ways. SmmenenBlue gets a bit tougher, considering you’ve got to watch out for Chalices and more Control.

Aggro: Simply the easiest matchup you’ll face. Either win plan is extremely easy and undisrupted. Not too much more can be said about this.

Aggro-Control: If you’re able to get an Oath past, the game’s easy. GAT will be afraid to drop a Dryad and Fish will have already dropped something. And if you’re lucky, Comboing out isn’t terribly hard either. Null Rod is probably the biggest obstacle faced by Aggro-Control, but in a lot of decks it isn’t even run.

Combo: Basically it comes down to who has the better hand, better skill, and better luck. Since this deck doesn’t run any disruption, you’re already at a disadvantage against TPS and other decks that run Duress or FoW. But the main question is who can Combo out faster.

Sideboard

Yawgmoth’s Will and Tendrils are the two given cards. Wishing for a Will is the whole purpose of the deck. Balance is another Wish target I use mainly as a last-ditch effort in any situations where I’m down big. City of Solitude is my Control hoser, seeing as though I can’t run Xantid Swarm without messing up the Oath engine. The other two Colossus’s will usually go in against Aggro, in which case I’ll just focus on the Oath portion of the deck. Tormod’s Crypt is my simple graveyard hate, and Oxidize is my Artifact hate. For the most part, the board is fairly simple.


Well that’s the crazy combo deck of Oolong Tea. If anyone would like specific testing results from certain matchups, just give me a shout and I’ll see what I can do.

Note on the deck's name: I originally called it Oath Long, but I just thought Oolong sounded stupider.

EDIT: Spelling.

PSA grading really does improve the value of the cards if you receive a high grade. Example:

A 1986 Topps Jerry Rice Rookie normally sells for about $60-$100.

PSA 10's have sold for over $5,000. But a 10 does have a high advantage over a 9 or a 9.5. A 10 means it's perfect in every aspect of the card. Honestly I find it almost impossible to have a card get that grade. You've got to take the card from an already perfectly Mint pack, put it straight into the package using white gloves, and cross your fingers.

4CC can easily hardcast an Exalted Angel, especially following a decent sized Mana Drain. The white mana isn't an issue at all, and the one up bump from Morphing it isn't too big of a deal either.

I won't say anything about the card until I see what kind of Spirit/Arcane stuff there is out there.

I find that Mind Twist is definately is worthy of a spot in the deck.

Not only is the the most broken mana outlet for your Drains, but in the late game, or with a Black Lotus, it can give your opponent nightmares. Even a Twist for three on your third turn can do quite a bit.

The only problem I find is in the matchups of Madness, Dragon, and sometimes Welder-based decks. You could accidentally dump the wrong card into an opponent's graveyard, or make them discard a Rootwalla, Squee, or Arrogant Wurm.

I think they should cut to T16, and give prizes to T8. Cutting to T16 would give a more diverse range of decks and a more competitive way to potentially get into the finals. It would keep players at the tournament for a lot longer than normal.