It's thoroughly retarded, but I'd love to see someone make an Oath deck with Dragon Tyrant and Dragon Breath for a game 1 surprise.  Oath is supposed to win in three turns, not one.  (Ergo.. dump Dragon Breath in the yard looking for Dragon Tyrant.. Tyrant comes into play, Dragon Breath enchants it.. pump it once or twice with your Forbidden Orchards.. blam, 20 damage.  Retarded.)

Also, how good is Gifts Ungiven in Oath?  I realize the point of Oath is to be able to dump a lethal combo with a stupidly low casting cost, but putting cards in your hand is somewhat good I heard.  Perhaps it could help with the Auriok Salvagers version of Oath, in particular, by obtaining/dumping combo pieces.  What do you all think?

I don't know how seriously you guys were considering it, but if you really are thinking about Sonic Burst in the deck, why not just Flame Rift?  Same casting cost, same damage.

There's always Lava Spike/Chain Lightning, too.

How does this deck feel about Ground Seal in the SB?  Is it pretty much overkill with the Root Mazes maindeck?

I was Randy's first round opponent, who disgruntledly conceded game two with a flourish - no red or blue mana sources in play except for a topdecked Island on the last turn I survived, having run an active Library for 4 or 5 turns.  Randy's a good player and would have probably rolled me anyway, but I would have at least liked to have put up a fight.  The mull-to-a-bad-six-card-hand in game one didn't help either.

After the game I broke out my Navia Dratp set and asked him to keep an eye on the game and bend some ears at WotC in case Bandai decides to dump it due to poor sales.  There's a game where zero luck is involved, which was very pertinent after my miserable draws which were rampant at the tournament.  Those of you who haven't played this game yet, DO IT.  It's the best game of 2004 by a country mile.

But congratulations to Randy, who managed to apply his legendary skill to a flawed, broken environment and win first place out of 54.  Does this seem odd?

In regards to the amusing 'pile' at the end of the list - why not fit in a few Diabolic Intents, since there's a glut of creatures in the deck?  Seems like a few Demonic Tutors would be better than just one, and it'd be another way to plink off those pesky Ornithopters.  Intent's gotta be better than Skulltap, at the same casting cost.

Bleh, had a nice reply all typed up and then the forum logged me out.

Think of Rector as a Tinker for enchantments.  There are lots of enchantments that could be fetched toolbox-style to win a game.  Form of the Dragon (ugh), Primal Order, Ancient Runes, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Control Magic, Power Artifact, Animate Dead, Ground Seal, Stasis.  All sorts of potential there, really.  I'm sure there are a dozen more potentially game-winning enchantments that could fight for a spot in the deck, including some potentially devastating combinations.

Kevin

On a side note, for better interoperability with Eon Hub and unintentionally deployed Su-Chi mana, why not Grim Monolith instead of Mana Vault?  It Transmutes a bit better, it can be untapped at any time (very important) and can burn off mana from Su-Chi painlessly at any time.  It's not like the deck is ever not going to have 2 mana to cast an artifact with..

I don't feel like the deck -can- accommodate anything else that takes the place of a colored mana drop, given that it's looking for UU for Transmute Artifact (and probably R for a Welder as well).  Unfortunately, Mishra's Workshop is a necessity, as Su-Chis and Trinispheres generally need to be hardcast at some point; but beyond that, the deck weeps for colored mana.  Astrolabe?  That's some Welder goodness right there. ;P

On a side note, Trinisphere should not be left out of any deck with Mishra's Workshop in it.  The card is a three-turn Time Walk if it resolves before your opponent gets a turn.  If they Force your Trinisphere, it's still good.  You just cost them two cards for one, and you still have your nasty land in play for a turn 2 bomb as well.  A deck that faces a turn 1 Trinisphere is in the rear-view no matter how it resolves the problem (or worse, doesn't).

The deck could theoretically accommodate other lock components; with the 'new' fetchability of Tinkers 2-5, the 'right' tool can be more easily found at the right time.  Opponent low on permanents?  Grab a Smokestack and watch them quiver.

Interestingly, I had suggested Jester's Cap to Atoglord awhile ago as a pre-emptive strike against Oath, but the card has not truly caught on yet.  Having the toolbox opened up a bit with Transmute Artifact is useful, and Cap is cheap enough to be fetched by dumping most any artifact (even a Cathodion, plus it pays for its own activation at that).  

I do like Possessed Portal, but so far I haven't made it 'work' yet (drop a fatty plus Portal or whatever, etc.)

I can't believe I missed Intuition - the card is a wrecking ball.  Thanks ^_^

The only other card I might consider is Animate Dead.  Cerebral Assassin's use of this card was pure genius, and it's quite flexible.  The builds running Thirst for Knowledge can really make good use of this card.

Rather than buggering with fetchlands and duals, why not just lean more heavily on 4x City of Brass and 4x Forbidden Orchard, then some basic islands and whatnot?  This'll make you more resistant to Sundering Titan than 4/5cc has any right to be.

Other than that, I don't like Library of Alexandria, but that's in decks that run 2-3 five color mana producers, not 8.

It's funny, but Keeper used to be the 'broken stuff' deck.  Its current incarnation looks positively balanced, and all the other decks are doing the broken stuff.

Kevin

I gave this deck a brief whirl on Apprentice last night, as I'm looking for a replacement for 4cc in the upcoming Lakewood Mox tourney at Tabletop Games.  I'll either have to stick with 4cc or find a different deck.  This deck is a PILE.

Granted, I wasn't playing it extraordinarily well, but I did run into an alarming number of situations where a single card stopped me in my tracks.  More problematic was the fact that that single card could have been anything from a Trinisphere to a Swords to Plowshares or Seal of Cleansing.  While any decent deck will be horribly crippled by a few hosers, this deck dies to all of them.. except maybe Ground Seal.  Even Coffin Purge shuts down the Myr Servitor engine, which is in and of itself absurdly bad.

Artificer's Intuition is retarded as well.  Mike Long has never shied away from card-disadvantage combos, as evidenced by his heavy reliance on Mirage tutors; the problem is in this deck is that there is very little worth tutoring for, especially with Mystical Tutor.  Unfortunately, the innate parts of the deck pack so little punch in and of themselves that they don't lend themselves to sit as 'extras' in your hand; you will likely need to squeeze every last drop of advantage you possibly can out of your hand, and by the time you manage to force out an Artificer's Intuition, you've got nothing in your hand to use it with.

Trinket Mage would be infinitely better in place of Artificer's Intuition, as you're likely to go for Skullclamp anyway, and a clamped Mage can trade with a Juggertard, and you get 2 cards to make up for the Juggernaut being welded out.  

Mox Chrome and Mox Diamond are horrible in a deck already starved for resources.  The deck needs the mana, but can't throw away its rare colored cards, or lands for that matter.

Fastbond and Crop Rotation are absurd.  For a deck running 3 colors, first off, green is hardly a shoo-in candidate in and of itself.  Fastbond and Crop Rotation are mana-fixers in a deck that shoots itself in the foot mana-wise by running a third color in the first place.  There are a total of 6 green mana producers in the deck, if you count Black Lotus.  The odds of one of these cards coming down and being castable are close to nil, and their impact is regularly less than exemplary.  

The following early cards wreck this deck:

Gorilla Shaman
Trinisphere
Swords to Plowshares
Seal of Cleansing/Disenchant (on anything)
Meltdown
Null Rod
Tangle Wire
Platinum Angel
Goblin Welder
Energy Flux
Back to Basics
Oath of Druids
etc. etc. etc.

The deck has no answers.  None.

Never mind, missed it.  That is so easy to discover that it suggests conspicuousness or little need for perspicacity in the observer.

Why in the name of God, with this deck being as mana-hungry as it is, does it not include Sol Ring?

*scratches head*

Without going too deeply into the mathematics involved, suffice to say that your earlier example of the chances of Trinisphere being dumped 1st turn of (.4 * .4) is disproved by the examples you set forth earlier; to wit, a much greater ability for your average deck packing Trinispheres to play first turn than merely hoping to pair it with a Mishra's Workshop.

In your posting, you listed three additional single-card methods for a deck packing Trinisphere to dump it first turn -  Black Lotus, Mana Crypt (we are, naturally, taking it as a given that at least one land will be included with any given hand that we play, be it ever so simple as a Wasteland), and Mana Vault.  Furthermore, there are a few multiple-card combinations (or those involving specific lands) that enable a first-turn drop as well, as you also specified - Mox + Sol Ring, Mox + Mox, and others which weren't even discussed, such as Ancient Tomb or Forbidden City + Mox whatever/Ring/Lotus Petal.  Taking the single-card combinations with Trinisphere into account alone, this gives us 7 potential cards, which is ... err.. 73% chance of drawing one of those in any given hand that also contains a Trinisphere.  (someone correct me if I'm wrong)  So these decks will have a 29.2% chance of dumping a Trinisphere with a -single- card every single game, assuming NO MULLIGAN (this of course will increase if the player mulligans poor hands, or worse yet, aggressively mulligans to a Trinisphere).  This is significant.  Furthermore, some mathematician is going to have to derive the odds of dumping the Trinisphere first turn with a multiple-card combination such as those I mentioned above, as that may be significantly beyond my capabilities.  

If the Trinisphere player goes first, the ramifications of a successfully cast Trinisphere is significant - you are essentially forcing your opponent to play 1.5 against your Type 1 deck.  Furthermore, your aggressively-priced fat matches up better against his cheap solutions, and you already have the mana on board to cast it, while your opponent struggles to hit his third land to do anything at all.  All of this also applies if your opponent went first but had anything short of an explosive first turn with loads of acceleration.  Being crippled like this in over 30% of your games means a lot of automatic losses.

I'm not making a judgment on what to do with Trinisphere, but these facts remain worthy of examination.

Kevin

Being the proponent of 'new' ideas once in awhile that don't pan out, I understand how this is going to feel.

This card is absurdly bad.

ABSURDLY bad.

There is nothing to inherently recommend this card over Exalted Angel, or Morphling for that matter.  Exalted Angel got the nod over Morphling for a reason; it's slightly greater vunerability to targeted effects were outweighed by its inherent increase in p/t, the life gain effect proving to be a death knell for aggro that couldn't kill it, and, hell, it's easier to cast.  You can play it straight off Drain mana and flip it later.

4cc desperately needs every point of mana available to it at all times, and cannot afford to return precious lands to its hand in order to play useless 1/1s.  It needs the mana to fight off other threats, like the Sundering Titan that should not have hit the board in the first place.  If Titan hits the board before Meloku does, 4cc has no chance of casting Meloku.  If Titan hits the turn afterward while 4cc is largely tapped out, 4cc's manabase is wrecked anyway.  And furthermore, even if Titan comes down a few turns after Meloku does and the 4cc player can bounce a few of those lands, the 4cc player is STILL crippled, by not being able to legitimately respond to threats in the future.

And even though Titan doesn't trample, Triskelion and Darksteel Colossus each have their own ways to either ignore the tokens or make sure they don't block.  

When Meloku makes a chump blocker, you're giving your opponent a free Time Walk.  You lose, unless you've already won and the situation is so hopeless for your opponent that Angel would have wrapped it up faster.

Might as well play Wood Elemental.

I had a well thought out, eloquent reply to this subject.  Then I hit the back button.

I don't think Oath is going to dominate much longer now that the shock value has worn off.  The deck did well, but it had the advantage of being a relatively strong deck in a completely unprepared field.  That being said, I think a few minor shifts in the meta will cripple Oath badly.

The way people tend to deal with illness is to attempt to treat the symptoms first (e.g. suppress the cough) before attacking the actual illness (emphesyma), and then its root source (smoking).  Once people get it into their heads that the best way to deal with Oath is NOT to wait until the creature hits the table, Oath will weaken.  I'm not advocating that it will drop from the list entirely, and I know that the deck will get stronger over time; the mono-blue w/green builds that are being bandied about right now are, well, monochromatic in their psychology as well, and I know advances will be made.  Still, once Oath's weaknesses are exposed and denounced, it will get kicked down a tier or two.

Kevin

Unfortunately, the best thing non-green Fish can do is bounce.  WTF with green can actually break enchantments, but the best anti-enchantment hedge (Ray of Revelation) is still out of its reach, leaving other fragile solutions such as dropping a Viridian Zealot before they find their Oath.  Siding in 6 Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast and switching up the gameplan to focus on a slower control game while beating with free Spirits is probably the best thing to do, if out of character, as 6 Red Elemental Blast is more efficient than 6 Force of Will/Misdirection and should win a war provided mana doesn't become an issue.  I presume a few Bloodstained Mires and basic Mountains should pay off here.  

Amusingly, Spirit tokens are free Curiosity targets effectively without summoning sickness.  The mana difference between casting a creature + sticking Curiosity on it and not casting a creature and sticking Curiosity on it is huge.

Should Zealot see play?  His ability to handle problem artifacts and enchantments is reassuring, if not extraordinarily efficient.

I feel like Crucible is a less valuable play against Oath than against other decks.  Given Oath's absurdly low mana requirements in order to go lethal, your opponent is always within a heartbeat away from forcing an Oath through no matter what his mana situation is.

The problem with people's approach to solving the Oath challenge is that generally are trying to figure out how to deal with the fatness once it comes down.  To wit, things like Maze of Ith and Control Magic are like trying to apply a tourniquet to an axe wound.  They'll help, but why not try to get out of the way of the axe in the first place?

Oh, and Fish will never resolve a Jester's Cap.  Ever.

I believe some discussion was made earlier in the topic card drawing, with someone even stating to the effect of considering weaker card drawers like Night's Whisper and Infernal Contract (and Skeletal Scrying.. good in 4cc, but X spells have got to be terrible for TPS)

I'm not terribly intimate with the TPS mechanisms, but I feel it's important to mention since I haven't seen anyone else bring it up, and Jesus Christ, I can't find the primer on it.  Given the branch of thinking to attempt to format these decks into a U/B direction, how does Gush fit into the scheme?  Having two islands in play should be more common.  Gush can also generate mana in tight situations, amusingly enough, which is a nice minor bonus.  Admittedly it is rather clunky and doesn't draw many cards, but it's not entirely bad, and casting for free = some good.

Certainly someone, somewhere, must have already considered this, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere myself.  It's GOTTA be better than Skeletal Scrying, anyway.

I'll have to back up a bit with my beliefs.  I had based the assumption that basic land was dwindling in T1 on some faulty data and some skewed tournament reports.  Upon closer inspection, in one of the Dulmen tournaments, there were 6 decks utilizing basic land for a total of 27 basic lands in top 8.  In Waterbury, there were 6 decks utilizing 31 basic lands in the top 8 (although it bears worth mentioning that spots 9-16 only accounted for 11 more total).  I guess basic lands -are- indeed a part of Type 1, probably more so than they have been in the multi-thousand dollar decks at all.

Now my opinion of Price of Progress remains unchanged, in that even the decks that utilize basic land are still going to suffer from it.  Even 2 non-basic lands in play will make Price of Progress hit harder than a Lightning Bolt.  And that's to say nothing of the decks that -don't- use basic land at all (with the exception of Belcher..)

Covetous is right on the money though, I'm wrong.  More decks use basic land nowadays, even if the decks that use basic land these days don't use as many as the mono-color monoliths of the past would.

How retarded of me.  When you mentioned Burninator the first thing I thought of was that janky Bruce Lee deck in Vintage forum.  I looked up Burninator on the forum and found this:

--In response I PoP him for TWELVE. He says OK and is about to draw when I say still in response PoP for another twelve. He mumbles something and curses PoP.--

BLAM.  That's the kind of nuclear fission I'm talking about.  Ridiculous damage.

I'm the type of player who would put Price of Progress in a 4cc sideboard as a Wish target, in the event that I rip a Cunning Wish and it lets me win NOW.  Based on board situations, it's certainly conceivable.

Kevin

Hm, these days I wish I hadn't sold Keeper at Gencon 2003.  I'm rebuilding it in the image of 4cc and it's going to cost three times as much.  Ugh.

Anyhoo, I'm having to play catch-up with the T1 scene.  It's been an interesting evolution over the last year, and one of the things that really stuck out at me was the wane of basic land usage.  These days, it seems as if the only decks you're going to run into that have much in the way of basic land are Fish and mono-blue.  A year ago, you'd see the last gasps of suicide black, the little kid wandering into the T1 tournament with a Stompy deck (tech with Skyshroud Elite!) and the mutually-assured-destruction mentality of Ankh Sligh, all complete with basic lands of their respective colors.

Crucible of Worlds has contributed to this.  I underestimated this card and the impact it would have on T1, and it's now a major force.  A lot of decks are using and abusing this card, and personally, I think it's great.  I'm happy that Wizards is still printing cards with impacts that span the range of competitive play, including the most competitive format of all.  

With all that in mind, non-basic land usage is at an all-time high.  Tournament reports are coming in one after another with more Goblin Welders and Mishra's Workshops in the top 8 than basic lands.  Wastelands and Strip Mine are gold with a Crucible in play.  Fetchlands allow for massive deck thinning and reshuffle effects while building a powerful (and frequently non-basic) mana base.  Crucible is good right now.

However, I don't think it will last.  Part of Crucible's efficiency is that people haven't started building against it yet.  When the top strategy to deal with Crucible is to pack your own, by countering its offensive effects with your defensive effects and vice versa, the results betray the card's relative newness in that people have not started to adapt to aggressively play against Crucible and the decks that abuse it

I'm not advocating an approach specifically against Crucible, as it has not become the Skullclamp of Vintage, where everyone's packing 4.  Rather, the best measure in my views would be to play counter-measure against the second component in the Crucible strategy-the lands, with an approach that will bear fruit whether Crucible is in play or not.  As the stripping of Zuran Orb from Keeper and the prevalence of Exalted Angel in 4cc shows, accomplishing multiple ends at once is the way to get it done.  By dealing with non-basic lands, you deal with Crucible, in such a fashion as to make use of the Crucible in the first place is to invite trouble.

Two punishers resonate well with this idea, and the first isn't really even a punisher of non-basic lands.  Ankh of Mishra was a catch-all to forward the mana denial theme of Ankh Sligh back in 2003, which consisted of Gorilla Shaman and Wasteland/Strip Mine to put the squeeze on mana producers, with Ankh to back up the direct damage and creature attacks by punishing recovery attempts.  It had the unexpected side effect of severely hosing fetchlands, against a red deck which was already dipping dangerously deep into its opponent's life total.  Fetchlands were too good not to use in a hedge against Ankh, of course, smoothing out Keeper's manabase in ways previously reserved for that temperamental City of Brass, so the two decks remained fundamentally opposed.  The artifact builds had a much easier time of it, having much more flexibility with fewer lands and much lower colored mana requirements.  Ankh of Mishra is going to severely
terrorize anyone with a Crucible in play, by punishing its source of advantage.  Assum-
ing the outcome of the game is still in doubt, the Ankh will prevent 'redundant' free land drops from the graveyard, punish necessary land drops (ergo land drops to regain lost time and make broken plays), and all but eliminate fetch land usage (and if they are used, they pay a very heavy price.)  It also has the effect of discouraging strip effects, since the tradeoff is mutual, and generally decks playing -with- Ankh of Mishra are unconcerned about their own life totals, making an even trade uneven.

The other punisher hits strictly non-basic lands, but it's horribly powerful.  I can't for the life of me understand why this card doesn't get used more often, given its low casting cost and ability to be snuck through a wall of defense.  People tend to think in terms of maintaining their original game plan and preventing the opponent from executing their game plan instead of just winning.  Price of Progress.

(more to follow..)

---

edit: add:

JPMeyer linked me to Korean porn so I had to retype this message.

Price of Progress isn't subtle.  It's less akin to the 'tap a land during their upkeep, draw an extra card' tempo of the blue side of Fire/Ice than it is to the 'I BERSERK MY TOG HOW'S THAT FOR TEMPO??!!!11!1!' aggression that ran all over T1 until Gush got restricted.  It can be a lot of damage very quickly.  It's 6-8 or more damage for a few mana, which can quickly finish a game.

There were a bunch of other salient points that I had but I forgot all about them after looking up JPMeyer's porn, so I forgot all about them.  Anyway.
Anyway, I'm going to be giving it a try and seeing what kind of damage I can squeeze out of these things.  I have a feeling that there's some interesting choices that will be worth playing.

This is a good point to bring up and is worth mentioning.  Tournament organizers would do well to start looking to alternatives for power cards as prizes.  Store credit, cash, booster boxes, Warhammer armies, whatever, or non-power cards like Bazaars, Mana Drains, black-bordered Birds, etc., stuff that skims the cost back to the value that power was last year, when I sold Keeper.. ;(

Personally, I'd love to start a regular cash T1 league up here in Washington.  $20+ tournaments, $5+ headsup matches, etc.  I think money's a great incentive for positive skill and tech development. Besides, it has the side effect of making these fools feel like re0l big-time gamb00lers, and that's entertaining in and of itself.

ruken