I feel like pointing out that Meditate is pretty terrible if you're getting aggressive with goyfs and lorscale coatls.

Well, at least he doesn't die to shivan meteor.

Yeah, exaggeration on my part.  My point still stands.

Sphinx is already the nuts when it comes to aggro and racing, however.  Yes, he dies to swords but that's it.  He just wins the race, period.  Battlesphere just makes some chumps.  I'm not saying Battlesphere's bad, but if we're talking about how good it is against aggro, Robot Akroma doesn't lose races.

+2: Counter target spell, they lose 2 life.

What can't new Jace do?

I was mostly responding to the tandem of Jace and Seal together, I didn't really consider opposing Jaces.  Jace on the other side is pretty scary for us, as he nullifies up to 3 of our lines of play.  Basically, everything that isn't Terastodon or Time Vault gets shut down.  No Oathing Iona, no Tinker target unless it's Inkwell, and no Show and Tell unless you have Terastodon.

If you're activating Jace multiple turns in a row, there's really no need to have another tutor; you're probably going to win anyway.  However, if you only have one of those cards, it's probably much better to have Jace.  I.e., Jace is the real powerhouse and the Imperial Seal is just the icing on the cake (win-more).  Imperial Seal is a fine card, but you still have to justify it over some better cards.

Like, tap and sacrifice it?

The problem is that it seems to suffer from the same issue as Slaver: Null Rod.  It doesn't seem good in the matchups where you'd want to be casting Tinker.

This makes more sense; the way you said it in your previous post was just a bit confusing to me.  I've never played with Drains, but I'm willing to believe testing results over theory.  I'm going to give some Drains a shot and see what I think. 

Unrelated question:  Has the Waste/Loam plan for the mirror become obsolete thanks to Time Vault and Tinker being included in more lists?  It seems much less reliable to sit on Wasteland and Loam now that they can just bypass the Oath route completely.

Point 2 seems to be a contradiction of point 1.  If Tezz is less of a concern (especially in the later rounds where you will be facing stiffer competition), why are you working on improving that matchup, potentially at the cost of others (like fish and shops)?  Also, I'm confused what spells Drain is actually intended to counter except in the mirror.  You said that you'd prefer Spell Snare against fish, Tezz is less of a presence, and I don't see it being too useful against spheres.

Jace does seem pretty good if he sticks.  However, I had a bit of a realization today:  the original reason Rich played so many mana sources is that so many of the decks in this format attack your mana (Stifle/Waste from fish, 9 Sphere, etc.).  If you're adding mana sources in order to make sure you have mana when you get Wasted, isn't it a bit counter-intuitive to be adding spells like Drain, Jace, and Tezzeret?  Against mana denial, they're probably going to end up being a liability stuck in your hand (and if you have your mana against MUD, it really doesn't matter what you're casting; tutor up an Oath or something).  And it's already been said by Matt and others that this version of Oath plays a bad Tezz game, i.e. is bad against other Tezz decks because it's basically just an inferior version of the mirror at that point.  So, what are the Drains and 4-5 mana spells helping?  They're bad against decks that tax your resources (mana), and weak against decks that don't because those decks are either comboing out way faster than you're casting them or Draining them.

I haven't gotten the chance to test/play with this list as long as some of you guys have, but what happened to Duress/Thoughtseize?  I'm almost always happy to have it, and I miss it when it gets cut.  Doesn't it at least do the same thing as REB, as in eating a counter or Tezz?  If so, Thoughtseize seems a lot better because it doesn't require the red splash.

I'd agree that oath is a solid first deck.  I'm much more of a legacy player, but I saw some area vintage tournaments coming up and decided to give it a try.  I found I could already 20-proxy both Vroman's and Matt's (is that the King James version?) lists without even having the format-specific cards like orchards (playing with real fetches, duals, forces, and tutors but proxied orchards... priceless).  Oath has been a ton of fun to play, it's powerful, and it's nice because of the free "oops, I win" scenarios like AmbivalentDuck mentioned.  It's already gotten me a top 8, even.  Maybe the fetch/dual manabase is a bit too spendy for the player with no cards, but it's a pretty good gateway for Legacy players because most of them have the blue fetches and duals.

I've notcied a problem with most gateway decks in any format is that they tend to be either glass cannons or decks that are cheap but not really viable (i.e. Legacy affinity), but the choices listed here seem much better poised to actually win an event.  Cheap glass cannons like Belcher and mindless aggro (not fish or goblins) might be able to break a new player into the top 8, but gives him very little chance to win forcing him to either stick with a suboptimal deck or go out and find a new deck again.

My (Matt) list is missing Yawg Will.

These events have been a lot of fun, so hopefully I can return for more.  I'm also interested to hear how the bolt worked out, as I only got to see it drawn in the mirror.