Elephant Oath 2011

[voltron00x]

Great post, Rich.  

I had the good fortune to test against Rich this week, and experienced first-hand how explosive Menendian's new Tyrant Oath deck can be.  I have to admit, I was surprised to some extent - the deck is very powerful.  I would say it is better than I expected.  

Still, there were a few games that I was convinced I was about to lose, only to see Rich "fizzle".  The cards he drew would've given him an advantage still in a different match-up, but my deck was often able to untap and win when Rich's deck failed to give him what he needed.

To piggy-back on Rich's post, Tyrant Oath addresses my two main concerns with Elephant Oath:

1 - Creature consistency and win speed.  Tyrant Oath is often able to immediately win off one Oath trigger.  In that respect, it is perhaps better in this meta than either Elephant or Titan Oath.  Always knowing what creature you're going to hit is a huge plus, as one of the issues of the "3 different creatures" model of Elephant Oath is that at least one creature (usually the Tinker target) will have no effect on the board, and sometimes two creatures will be like that depending on the match-up and creature configuration.  Playing two Tyrants makes this a non-issue.

2 - Resistance to the type of one-for-ones described by Rich, above.  While this deck is close to all-in on Oath, it does have a legitimate ability to win via Brain Freeze without Oath activation, and playing 3 Jaces and 4 Gush gives it a lot of draw power, letting it "hang" in games where Elephant Oath would fall behind.  Preordain also helps keep the goods flowing to establish one of the draw engines.

While I'd rather play Elephant Oath against Workshops, the edge isn't so dramatic that the edge Tyrant Oath gives you against other blue decks should be ignored.  

That being said, this *is* supposed to be the Elephant Oath thread.  Tyrant Oath has its own thread!  

[DubDub]

While most of my arguments above focused on Gush, I tried to make it clear that's not the only draw engine I would consider:

And besides Gush there are a number of other draw-engine options which would in my opinion improve the consistency of your build.

Other unrestricted draw spells that I think merit at least consideration for some maindeck slots:
additional big-Jaces (though that's nearly a triviality given how good Jace is)
See Beyond
Preordain
Impulse

Probably the strongest for Oath aside from Jace is Preordain.

Or here's a slightly off the wall suggestion: Sylvan Library?  Library prevents you from ever drawing a creature, and may be slightly better for filtering in Oath than Top due to the risk of having to use Orchard to pay for Top.  Similarly Library is decent in theory against Shops since its effect occurs each turn without additional mana investment.  If Library gets hit by a Nature's Claim that's one fewer that can be used on Oath, though its an unnecessarily juicy target for a Trygon Predator trigger.

[Rico Suave]

Other unrestricted draw spells that I think merit at least consideration for some maindeck slots:
additional big-Jaces (though that's nearly a triviality given how good Jace is)
See Beyond
Preordain
Impulse

Probably the strongest for Oath aside from Jace is Preordain.

Or here's a slightly off the wall suggestion: Sylvan Library?  Library prevents you from ever drawing a creature, and may be slightly better for filtering in Oath than Top due to the risk of having to use Orchard to pay for Top.  Similarly Library is decent in theory against Shops since its effect occurs each turn without additional mana investment.  If Library gets hit by a Nature's Claim that's one fewer that can be used on Oath, though its an unnecessarily juicy target for a Trygon Predator trigger.

I've given all these a shot, and/or played them in tournament within the past year.

Big Jace is the ideal card.  It does a lot of things Oath wants to do like draw cards, put creatures into the library, answer threats like True Believer or Trygon, provide an alternate win condition in the case of SadSac, or circumvent our opponent's hate cards directed at the Oath.  It just does a lot. 

Preordain is also a very good card.  I would highly recommend it to anyone playing Oath.

Impulse and See Beyond, and other cards like Night's Whisper or Scroll Rack, all suffer from the drawback of costing 2 mana.  When we just want basic card manipulation, there is a world of difference between spending 2 vs. spending 1 (for Preordain).  When we consider that the strength of an Oath deck is really in its ability to produce an early Oath in the first couple turns, and we can only expect to have about 3-5 total mana during that course of time, we really can't afford to be wasteful with our mana.  I feel that Preordain is superior not because of what it provides when we cast it, but because it demands less from us when we want to cast it.

Top is a card that I have enjoyed for a while, even in Oath, though it does suffer a few key drawbacks.  First, it is not blue and Oath decks tend to be hungry for blue cards to support Force.  Second, there is the aforementioned problem where we might be forced to tap our Orchard in order to use the Top itself.  The third problem is that it doesn't really play too well with Jace.  What I mean is that if we have a Jace and a Top, sure we have a Jace, but we don't need the permanent selection and utility of the Top anymore.  It seems better to do something like Preordain into Jace, or Jace and then cast Preordain, whereas Top is basically a total blank once Jace lands. 

Sylvan Library is an interesting card.  Being green, costing 2 for card manipulation, and not having an immediate impact were drawbacks.  They could be worked around if the card was strong enough though.  But the real deal breaker, at least for me, was the life loss.  It's really tough to nuke our life total at 4 life per card when we're giving our opponent spirit tokens.  It doesn't help that Sylvan lends itself to passing the turn a bit, like even if we use Sylvan to find Oath that's at least 2 attack phases for our opponent before we get to trigger the Oath.

[DubDub]

At the risk of tipping this thread over into a full-on love fest for big Jace, ahve to totally agree with this:

Big Jace is the ideal card.

Preordain is also a very good card.  I would highly recommend it to anyone playing Oath.

Impulse and See Beyond, and other cards like Night's Whisper or Scroll Rack, all suffer from the drawback of costing 2 mana.  When we just want basic card manipulation, there is a world of difference between spending 2 vs. spending 1 (for Preordain).  When we consider that the strength of an Oath deck is really in its ability to produce an early Oath in the first couple turns, and we can only expect to have about 3-5 total mana during that course of time, we really can't afford to be wasteful with our mana.  I feel that Preordain is superior not because of what it provides when we cast it, but because it demands less from us when we want to cast it.

I feel like another reason why one versus two mana is so important at this stage is that Spell Pierce exists.  If you look at the old James King Hellkite Oath list, he plays 4x Negate and 4x Impulse.  Both are blue instants costing , so he's almost guaranteed to be able to use all of his mana each turn, and there's no opportunity cost to leaving mana open for your opponent's turn.
With the advent of Spell Pierce (and its adoption both by Oath and the blue decks one faces) the deck can and does operate more often without a first turn Mox, or with three total mana instead of four.  I think Preordain fits better now with Spell Pierce because instead of having to set aside two mana for your opponent's turn one can instead cast Preordain at sorcery speed without losing the option of countering an opponent's play.

Edit: also, King's list played 4x Chalice, which it could rather safely set at .  I wonder if this isn't an option in today's meta, since Chalice at is an even better play now that Nature's Claim is the standard disenchant.

[Mr. Type 4]

The biggest problem with Sylvan Library is that you dont get any cards/manipulation the turn you play it, so you have to wait until the next turn during which time your opponent can remove it will all the Oath-hater cards they brought in from the Sideboard.  in many ways it's too much like a bad Oath, we pay the same amount of mana and have to wait until next turn for the effect, but the effect doesn't just win the game like Oath does.  i really dont see the life loss as a drawback for this one, because it's optional and if being able to draw extra cards didnt matter we'd just be talking about Mirri's Guile. 

It also competes heavily with Top which for the same 2 mana allows me to look at my top 3 NOW and even draw one of them.  Top also doesn't really get Nature's Claimed because that's usually pretty pointless.

[Smmenen]

Great post, Rich.  

I had the good fortune to test against Rich this week, and experienced first-hand how explosive Menendian's new Tyrant Oath deck can be.  I have to admit, I was surprised to some extent - the deck is very powerful.  I would say it is better than I expected.  

Thanks, that's the best possible advertisement for my Gush book, Matt.    The list Paul played was supplied by the follow-up newsletter written in December.   There is however a key maindeck difference.  He cut the Ponder for Nature's Claim, and I wonder if that was one of the 'situational' cards you were referring to.   I would have run the Ponder in that slot.   The reason is that although Nature's Claim can make a big difference, particularly if Chalice 2 is at issue, I feel that this particular scenario is covered by sideboarding in Claims.

My sideboard is also slightly different, although we stole the Extirpate out of Rich Shay's 2008 playbook.   

[healo]

Matt,

your list works as great as it looks. I'm going to attend several tournaments in 2011 (Europe) and my deck of choice is Oath of Druids.

I'd say that current trends are playing more into hands of Oath pilots than not. People are aware of the power of Jace/Gush and MUD is such a beast right now its not even funny. While Nature's Claim is still as cheap and effective as it ever was, it seems to be not enough anymore. It requires stable green source and it puts you into reactive position. How nice would it be to have spell pierce that also counters Lodestone golem? Well, Steel Sabotage makes it even into many deck's mainboard today.

I'd concider several changes:
I'm definitely running basic forest. As for Strip/Library/Academy I think this is a matter of preference as sometimes those will win you game as well as lose.

-1 Jace, +1 Regrowth - Not only because of Gifts and the basic forest. Today, I prefer casting cheap spell than not casting any spell at all more then ever. This deck already runs large amount of huge bombs and between only 2 Drains I find it difficult to cast it. Also, it really is 5th Oath/2nd Recall often.

-1 Sphinx, +1 BSC - This probably needs no explanation. Although still this is a metagame call.

As for sideboard:
As I said, I find Nature's Claim not enough. I want here something bigger with larger impact on the game. I still have 4th Pierce here for MUD/Storm and 1 Claim/Rebuild to have some outs for chalice.

I'm concidering something like Balance/Pernicious Deed. Its also very possible that I will just run Steel Sabotage and see how it goes from there. I don't like this approach, but vs MUD I might concider going for risky bigger spell winning me game than playing smaller spells only to extend my misery for once.

Also, I'm still not sold on Emrakul/BSC + Dragon Breath all-in plan. Tyrant Oath is getting popular again, but I think the success of those two decks is indirectly driven by amount of hate cards for Oath.. This post is getting large enough and since we are discussing Elephant Oath and we are in 2011 I feel its ok to revive this thread.