Oath and Will

[dskippy0]

I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding why BUG Oath decks are running Will. Sure Oath dumps a ton if not your entire deck in the graveyard. My confusion is that the deck is a heavy counter spell deck.

Most decks are running not only Force and Drain but a full set of another counter spell making it something like 12 counterspells. In general counters in the yard aren't all that great for a Will turn. That leaves the Will player with mostly draw spells to play. Sure draw spells are huge for Will but in an Oath deck you've got just about your whole deck in the yard. What are you drawing?

Other cards in the deck are Oath, a couple critters, mana fast mana, and land. Your critters aren't cast, typically. Is it really worth it to run will to get back an Oath and some extra fast mana?

Tendrills decks are using Will for fast mana and draw but that's a totally different story. They haven't got their deck in the yard and they're drawing for the sake of drawing for the sake of storm. Old decks like Sui-Black Willed back out numerous control cards that are more proactive than counterspell like Hymn and Sinkhole.

What's Will do for Oath?

Thanks,
-mike

p.s. I would appreciate if we could avoid telling me about how broken Yawgy's Will is. We all know this. I'm specifically interested in what it's doing for Oath.

[BigMac]

chances are either your time walk is in the yard so you can cast it and win. Or you draw your timewalk (due to tutors) and win.

There are also builds that use oath to get cabal therapy in the yard with a academy rector in play to get the right enchantment for the combo win. (mostly bargain)

Last reason can be to play all your fast mana, get your deck reshoufled (gaeas blessing) and have a better chance of drawing something good like a counter or a draw spell.

[Thug]

For the counterheavy BUG build:

You still have Duress, Brainstorm + Fetchland, countered or destroyed Oaths, Walk, Ancestral.
I only played the deck in one tournament but (like in almost every deck) Will is always something you don't regret drawing.
You just have to be careful with your Scryings and try to keep Will in mind, since it will win you games further in the game, and you run the Tutors to grab it.

Koen

[PucktheCat]

Sometimes you don't have a resolved and active Oath.  In those situations it is more useful to have good cards in your deck than bad ones.

Leo