hi rich this is josh schneier, your round 3 opponent (and the 4th member of the top 4) your recollections of our games are close enough but leave out my slight misplays that cost me the draw instead of the loss. congratulations by the way. we all ended up splitting and unfortunately i had to concede and go home so i did not get my rematch. next time, next time.

as to the question of whether or not your GAT match is good for the oath deck i will say this. i personally do not believe it to be very good. your extremely tight playskill and the fact that i believe it would be fair to call it a close match-up (helped along by some good draws) powered you through the day and pushed you into the winner's circle. however, oath has a critical number of dead cards. like you mentioned, the number of control cards in the oath deck that are efficiently utilized against GAT are 4 FoW and 3 Thoughtseize and 4 Oaths which become must counter cards. Now in hindsight I wish I played some number of EE on my board in addition to the REBs which I brought in so I would be able to stop Oath. This seems like a most excellent strategy. Also, your tyrants seem extremley vulnerable to bounce which for example, is how our game 1 ended. You forced removing one tyrant and my Yawgmoth's Will gave me echoing truth which together with the card advantage it provided gave me more than enough to win the game. However, even without the free ancestral out of the grave I believe the e.truth + one counter for any krosan rec shennanigans would be enough to stop you. I like Oath as a one card wrecking ball but do not believe the strategy is a particularly potent one.  well those are just some of my thoughts and if anyone posts a reply I will be happy to respond.

congratulations again rich, it was great to play against you.

hi all, im the 4th person from the top 4. and just to be clear, i was playing your basic GAT deck with the maindeck goyfs. i actually scooped my top 4 match to my opponent, Stefan (T00l? I have no idea) because I needed to go. Still, it was all good since we split the money and they played for glory.

i too used to run a cunning wish when i used to play TPS.  yet TPS was a totally different animal.  adding a cunning wish to this particular deck seems utterly counter-intuitive.  yes, it seems nice having a back up plan but seriously, i know that high of a storm is not that hard to achieve with this deck but it seems like a ridiculously bad way to win.  the only thing that the cunning wish actually ends up adding is a bit more clunkiness to the deck.  besides most of the time i find myself having mainly black mana left floating because of the fact that this deck plays 7-8 rituals.  imagine having to DT for wish or even wasting a vamp. u would never do such a thing.  you would get the necessary bounce or the bomb that you needed.  what exactly did you cut for the wish? the aforementioned LED?  while LED obviously has terrible synergy with the counters in the deck it gives an explosive power to some draws that is most certainly necessary.  the only time I could ever see myself truly wishing I had wish (pun intended) over LED would be with a totally empty hand on both sides to get a scrying or never. 

the second win condition is definitely something that is totally superfluous.  this deck plays enough bounce that it is totally unnecessary.  any very bad cards can be stopped with FoW or dealt with and/or played around.  by adding a third basic land it would make it easier to get around a 3-sphere.  this is not like the original version of grim long which ran one tendrils and not even a chain of vapor or a wish.  then the bounce or extra win condition.  (i randomly lost to meddling mage in waterbury 3 times in game ones) 

on the issue of time walk it is important to note that time walk plays a very important role in that it allows a combo deck to setup without actually giving an extra turn to an opponent.  also dont forget the fact that time walk + necro is an ungodly combo