One balance usually solves this problem, but I need something in a SB

Many years ago, this card was played all over the world. Succesfully, of course. I tried to play it last year in an unpowered metagame and though I wasn`t very satisfied by results (3 wins, 2 loss, 1 draw), but deck showed that ir can compete. Now I`m trying to find an optimal build and to see if it is viable in almost powerless metagame.

Here`s a list (in progress)
Creatures:
2 Nether Spirit

Discard stuff:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
1 Mind Twist
4 Pox (it does more, of course)

Artifacts:
3 Chimeric Idol
3 Cursed Scroll
4 The Rack

Removal:
1 Balance
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Vindicate

Tutoring:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Enlightmened Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

Enchantments:
2 Chain of Mephistopheles

Mana source:
4 Dark Ritual

Lands:
4 Bayou
3 Blodstained Mire
1 Strip Mine
9 Swamp
4 Wasteland

Problems:
a) this deck gains card advantage by supplying card disadvantage to opponent in form of discard.
b) it kills slowly
c) it has problems with fast aggro decks (Suicide Black, Sligh, Stompy - as I mentioned above, my metagame is almost powerless)
d) I have not tested yet it against quick combos decks

Any ideas or thoughts on this deck?

Someone has misunterstood me. I have no problem with aggro decks - I have problem to find Oath, put it on table and keep alive against Control decks.

Last time I faced about 50% aggro decks, so accourding to gentlemen`s post, fish should be obvious underdog (but U/R one made top 8)

I`m currently searching for the optimal deck worth investing - so I`m proxing various decks and try to see which one is powerful enough and is closer to my heart (yes, this is important - one can play very powerful deck, but if he or she dislike the deck or don`t believe in it, results may not so good). I used survival in a Dragon deck, but never tried to play pure Survival deck. Actually, I`ve never seen such a deck in action. Decks I also have tried recently: Rector tendrils, Pox control (amazing card), Food chain goblins, Sligh and so on.

Running 3 daze having only 5 islands? Maybe. But I dislike Dimir Cutpurse in this list. He is slow, he has to pass through blockers, has to deal damage. You should have some items to clear way for him or protect him like MUC does . 1 echoing truth looks techy... 4 Null Rod maindeck depends on meta of course.

In my local metagame so far I haven`t faced welder based decks. If there are some - they should be onpowered shopless, so because of this I prefer Iridiscent Angel. In other cases Pristine can be better.


I suppose, power is usually for speeding up your deck. It is very important to various combo decks (including Oath).
There are some decks, which simply cannot run without moxen and Lotus - eg. two land belcher; welder also is significant weaker without them. Also it`s hard to create a perfect storm having no "free" mana in various storm-based decks.

I tried Iridiscent Angel, Pristine Angel and even Kodama of the North Tree (he (or maybe she?) doesn`t fit to other angels - Razia and Akroma). I prefer Iridiscent Angel to other mentioned bodies, `cause she doesn`t need extra use of card like Pristine. Protection from artifacts isn`t matter of great concern. One real artifact threat for creatures is Triskelion, but it can provide only two hits. Also Pristine can block famous 7/10 guy, but if it already landed, your positions is in danger.

What I faced with my decklist is the lack of card advantage - the deck runs out of gas rather early. Lucky, if you have Forbidden Oath (Orchard of Druids). Later on, Impulse + mana on Oath + mana on Mana Leak/FoW + extra blue card can become a problem.

Offtopic: with above mentioned Izzetron I managed to pull second place in a local tournament today. So it doesn`t seem VERY weird that it has defeated Onpowered Oath. But ont he other hand, it is VERY weird.

For reference, here`s my decklist:
Artifacts:
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Diamond
2 Sensei`s Divining Top

Enchantments:
1 Fastbond
4 Oath of Druids

Instants:
4 Brainstorm
1 Crop Rotation
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
2 Lat-Nam`s Legacy (proved to be worth Main Deck)
4 Mana Leak
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Rushing River
1 Vampiric Tutor

Legendary Creatures:
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Razia, Boros Archangel

Sorceries:
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Duress
1 Gaea`s Blessing

Lands:
2 City of Brass
2 Flooded Strand
4 Forbiden Orchard
2 Island
2 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland

The problem is, that Oath hasn`t early pressure. Even after setuping combo (Oath + Orchard) you haven`t win - I play in unpowered metagame, there`s a lot of StP, and Force of Will usually goes for protecting Oath.

As far as fish is concerned, I loved this deck - I played it earlier in ext (when Lord of Atlantis, Manta Riders and co was legal). It wasn`t very powerful deck, but very phun one. My metagame is more aggro, so I`m trying to play Oath as it suppose to smash creature-based strategies. Fish is better against random controls or combo (but I may be wrong here).

I`ve tested onpowered oath against Izzetron (that`s right, a T2 deck - just for phun) and faced one problem - confiscate effects are quit evil. If I delay with combo, Izzetron assembles Tron and start doing broken stuff. Two times I lost to Keiga, one to confiscate itself. It`s very hard to get my stolen creatures back - need to bounce, shuffle to library etc. Anyone has faced something similar? Maybe I should mulligan more aggresively...

I`m struggling to build Oath w/o proxies, so time walk (which has been proved to be very useful in this deck) has to be cut and it has no replacement. Any ideas?

Someone offered Ertais's Meddling - I think that mana leak is superior to this card (simply because of rule X cannot be 0 on Meddling) - for the same mana cost, you have a hard counter and a delayed spell for one turn. The choise is obvious.

I forgot to mention, that p9 is very rare in my environment - so far noticed 2 loti, 1 recall, and about 10 moxen (total), so almost everybody is playing with unpowered decks

Can you PM decklist of such UG Oath to me? Thank you

I play in zero proxy tournaments, what are your thoughts about changing p9 (p8 in this case) to some budget cards?

I`m an old MTG player, but I`m quite a new to vintage. I choose to play Oath, so  I have made analysis of various decklists.

My suggestions (I like GWS Oath, suggestions are for the decklist that Gekoratel posted):
As long as you play in 5 proxy tournament and there are power nine (time twister is not used in oath, so power eight):
made a proxy of 1 lotus and 3 moxen (emerald, jet and sapphire), instead of two remaining moxen put chrome mox/mox diamond/ lotus petal
instead of ancestral recall and time walk and mystical tutor (somehow I dislike this card in Oath), put one proxy of these (in my opinion, ancestral recall) and two lat-nam legacy or lim-dul's vault.

Stupid me. Just thought what cheap mana acceleration we have and made a possible include. Edited decklist: look above.

I suggest you to try such decklist:

Artifacts
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Diamond
2 Sensei's Divining Top

Enchantments
1 Fastbond
4 Oath Of Druids

Instants
4 Brainstorm
1 Crop Rotation
4 Force Of Will
4 Impulse
2 Lat-Nam`s Legacy
4 Mana Leak
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Rushing River
1 Vampiric Tutor

Legendary Creatures
1 Akroma, Angel Of Wrath
1 Razia, Boros Archangel

Sorceries
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Duress
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Life from a Loam (not sure...)

Basic Lands
2 Island

Lands
2 City Of Brass
2 Flooded Strand
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland

A card to consider : Lim-Dul's Vault

edited.

OK. thanks very much, I will try to begin testing oath - if this not works, I`ll be looking for other solutions. Maybe someone can PM me a list of power Oath (I`ll try to make it cheaper), or maybe unpowered Oath (I looked through thread "Unpowered Oath", but I saw Pernious Deed main deck, so....) and give some tips. Personally it`s hard to decide which colors to chose (green and blue are obvious):
White adds StP, enlightened tutor and maybe Balance....
Red offers, ughm.......?
Black - vampiric tutor, demonic tutor, demonic consultation (If I remember correctly card`s name), that UB impulse with life loss (forgot the name)

I`d appreciate a PM containing some detailed info. Thanks

Thanks a lot for help. It was a pleasant surprise to find a very friendly and willing to help community You`re super.

Yea, Oath is good even in a budget version (there`s a thread nearby "unpowered oath"), but I want to ask one question: does and Oath have a back-up plan? I mean, alternative victory? Maze of Ith or random StP can be very unpleasant. Earlier I saw builds with academy rectors (techy ones), maybe someone could provide me more information?

As far as UR Fish is concerned, I like this deck. I was playing for some time with U-fish in Ext (merfolk version). It was very funny to play and it was quit strong deck, although it lacked late-game-power. I managed to pull it on the 3rd place in a FNM. In a vintage I`m more aknowledge with older version (mono U Fish, played online for some time), bus  I consider U/R Fish to be a viable deck. It loses to ordinary goblins, that`s true. But FCG is more comdo deck then aggro (but it can easily be swithed...). I suppose we`ve got the same situation with suicide black and other beats (even stompy)

UW landstill is a very slow deck, but it has its game against combo based decks (TPS, Oath), but also I feel (maybe I`m wrong) this deck would lose to beatdown decks.

More over, we`ve got some viables strange-control decks and super-fast combos, I see all the decks mentioned above also stands against them.

Hello,
I`m glad to found this forum, so I`d like to get a piece of advice. Don`t get me wrong: I`ve been playing MTG since year 2000, but it`s 95% Standart or Extended. I read articles about vintage, I know main archetypes, but I have very little experience in VIntage, so now I want to gain more of it. My local metagame consists of horde of goblins/food chain goblins, some oaths, some stormy decks (TPS and so on), various random beats (suicide black, madness, stompy), U/R Fish, BWU Junk, Landstill (No Stax or Slaver. At least didn`t see). The proxies are not allowed, and P9 is a very rare thing (1 or 2 loti, 1 ancestral recall and so on). I`ve been thinking about budget competetive deck to start playing vintage. Last time I tried to play WB control-discard, it was fun deck to play, but rather inconsistant one (record was 4-3 afair).

So these are decks, I consider (keep in mind, FoW is budget item, mihsra`s workshop not)

Dragon - even a VERY budget version can kill on turn one (swamp, ritual, ritual, buried alive, animate dead), but without moxen and bazaar of baghdad deck loses tempo, which is essential to a combo deck. It is very good against random beats, but struggles against heavy control decks or faster combo.

Oath - a viable choice in such environment, can stand against various decks.

Tog - control heavy deck, but I don`t think it`s good without support of alexandria library, a recall, time walk and some other things. Personally, I hate dr. Teeth since it was Standart-legal, but I`m thinking about this deck.

Rector Tendrils - a budget version is also strong, but it`s easy to disrupt and is less consistant compared to a dragon, but can be more verastile, filled with hand disruption and tutoring with academy rector (I loved Sexy Rector when it was ext legal)

Food chain goblins - I have this deck since it was Ext legal, but:
a) It is the most popular deck, so it is the most outhated deck
b) I don`t want to play the most popular deck

Any suggestions would be very wellcome. Thanks