AoS Mini Primer

[bebe]

Army of Squirrels Mini Primer

I was sitting around Leon's cardshop in Toronto (Hairy T's) wondering what deck to play on Oct. 13th. We had experimented a bit with SquirrelBomb - a Toronto version of AoS (army of squirrels) but had limited our testing to extended. A number of cards in this version are suboptimal in type 1.
Then came the Duelman report of Oliver Deams deck
which won a major tournament. We began testing the Type 1 version. The results were quite promising.

Let's start with the deck list.

Oliver Daems *1st*
Maindeck:

Mana: 25
4 Forest
6 Island
4 Tropical Island
4 Yavimaya Coast
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

Counters: 12
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Misdirection
2 Cunning Wish

Search: 13
4 Impulse
4 Intuition
1 Sylvan Library
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Library of Alexandria

Utility: 2
1 Regrowth
1 Time Walk

Combo: 8
4 Earthcraft
4 Squirrel Nest

Oliver's deck is beautifully constructed and tweaked. Let's take a close look. This is a combo deck that does not die against mono blue and control. This is a departure
from Academy and Dragon. It plays very straightforward. Search for your combo, keep a counter in hand and combo your opponent out.

Mana:
For mana we need basic lands for the combo. Earthcraft requires a basic land to untap. Ten basic lands seems the optimal number and after Onslaaught the Coasts can be changed for fetch lands. This will further stabilize the manabase.

The artifact mana allows us to 'go off' a turn quicker which can be very important. In fact the deck has on occasion gone off turn two (very rare) and turn three to turn five much more often. This makes it as quick as most combo decks.  

Counters:
Cunning Wish;
included with counters because that is what you often fetch. The deck has ten counters plus the Wishes. It is very nice to have a counter in hand when comboing out your opponent and they also serve to slow down the other deck by countering key spells.

FoW and Misdirections;  
free counters which allows you tap out to place your combo parts on the table.

Mana Drains;
We did make one change here - two Mana leaks replaced two Mana Drains. Too often we lacked an extra blue source when we needed it and two Drains are enough late game.  

Search:
Obviously you are searching for your combo parts. But what if you have them in hand?

Intuition;
used intuitions to fetch combo parts but sometimes to fewtch FoWs or two Cunning Wish and a MisD or three Drains.
They can also be pitched to FoWs and MisDs.

Impulse;
is a very good search card. Digging four cards deep into your library is essential in many games.

Merchant Scroll;
is superior to Mystical Tutor here as all the cards you want are blue instants and putting them directly in your hand is a big plus.

Both Scroll and Impulse work well with the Sylvan as an extra bonus.

Fact or Fiction, LoA and Ancestral;
are too good not to include in the mix. Remember, combo decks rely on excellent search mechanisms.

Combo:

Squirrel Nest 1GG enchantment
Enchanted land has; T; put a 1/1 green token into play

Earthcraft 1G enchantment
Tap an untapped creature you control. Untap a basic land you control.

Not a very complicated combo. Only two pieces are required to make an unlimited number of tokens.


So now... how do we build a sideboard to use the Wishes and what are the decks strengths and weaknesses?
I decided to ask the creators what they thought.

First the sideboard:  

Oliver's SB:
SB:
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Counterspell
1 Hoodwink
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Mana Short
1 Misdirection
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Teferi's Response
1 Timetwister
1 Sylvan Library
1 Tangle
3 Wall of Roots

from Oliver Daems:

Mono-B is my worst matchup.
You can only win if you get really lucky, or your opponent draws no discard. I've beaten one Mono-B in the last tourney by forcing 1st turn Duress and 2nd turn Hymn and then drop Lotus and Earthcraft to wait for Squirrel Nest empty-handed with 2 Basic Lands and Lotus + Earthcraft on the board.


Mono-U:
The main thing here is: Resolve card-drawing spells. Whoever manages to resolve Ancestral, or something like that, usually wins the game. You have an edge though, because you're
combo tends to kill a lot faster than Superman. All in all I consider the matchup a 50:50

Oath:
He can't really use Oath, because you simply create tokens
at the end of his turn, and then attack for the win in your turn.

Sideboarding:

TnT: Easy one: Misdirections and Sylvan are not optimal here, Wall of Roots is. (Even though Juggernaut can't be blocked by it.)
- note that Oliver created the deck to beat TnT. It is 70-30 in your favor.

Draw Go: It's difficult to take things out of the deck without removing vital parts. Usually you side out 1 Impulse for the 2nd Sylvan Library.

Sligh: You may want to take out Mana Drains, as draining their spells is not really effective, and maybe 1 FoW for 3 Wall of Roots.

Mono-B: Depending on how much disruption in the form of Sinkholes and Hymns I see first game, I may side in 1 Misd for 1 FoW and 1 Timetwister for 1 Impulse.

All in all, the deck beats TnT and other aggro decks pretty easily, but also has a decent chance against Mono-U and other Draw Go derivates, in contrast to most other
Combo-Decks.

A quick note on Dragon.dec:
It may win against TnT, but it loses badly to most of the rest of the metagame. People were ready for the deck with lots of hate in the SB once it showed up.

from teletubby:

To add some things (I went 2nd and 6th with AoS):

Tormod´s Crypt is in the deck for several reasons:
First, it is very good against Dragon.dec. And second it is even better against all sorts of Bazaar-Decks. In the German metagame there are mono black Bazaar Decks
(with Ashen Ghouls, Nether Shadows and with or without Living Death) and even some Bazaar-Control Decks (that use Bazaar-Squee as an engine). Reanimator isn´t played at all.


Against Sligh I sideboard out 2 Cunning Wish (to slow), Sylvan Library (don´t wanna pay life at all) and Regrowth for 3 Wall of Roots and Misdirection (let him burn his own guys).

Teletubbies is 100% correct on the Sligh sideboard.

and another response:

from Dozer:

I am by far no expert on this deck, but I know that the Suicide matchup is the worst for AoS ever. Oliver Daems will tell you more about it, but I know that he feared to play
against Mono-B all the time in the last tournament.

The Crypt (like in all other decks here) is mainly against Bazaar-style decks (for Squee, Horrors and Living Death) and Yawgmoth's Will.

Oath should not be a problem once you have a couple of Squirrels out - you only need one attack.
Altar of Dementia is of course the alternate route to victory.
- note this is an extended version that uses the Altar. It is unnecessary in Type 1 and probably in extended as well.

 
I asked if there was a solution to Sui and got this reply:

From Oliver D.

We haven't changed the deck yet, I guess there's not much to do for the Sui matchup. You just lose to fast disruption in the form of discard and landdestruction, like Academy
just loses to Mono-U.

You would have to add another color to have cards against Discard, but that's just impossible because of needing basics for Earthcraft...


As i said, we decided to make a small change to Oliver's maindeck substituting to mana Leaks for two Mana Drains.

We are now working on improving the sideboard. I hate to think that the deck auto -loses to sui as you are sure to meet up with it eventually. Can thae sideboard be modified without hurting your other matchups too much.

There might be a way to shore it up against Sui:


SB:
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Disrupt
1 Hoodwink
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Misdirection
1 Brainstorm
1 Teferi's Response
1 Timetwister
1 Sylvan Library
1 Tangle
3 Wall of Roots

I tested this sideboard today and it certainly helps against Sui. I never used the Mana Short and replacing it with Disrupt is fine. The lone Brainstorm can be Wished for game one or Scrolled for game two.
You can side in Disrupt, Misd, Brainstorm, Sylvan and Twister for the match up. I would remove two Drains, two Wishes and one Impulse. We found that finding the combo a littyle earlier and more reliably a bonus so the extra Sylvan is important.  Still the match is in Sui's favor but not quite so heavily now.

Just as a further note on gameplaying:

Some might think Mana Drain is far better than Mana Leak.
We have found two sufficient and the Leaks quite useful. However, try both. I understand the mana can be used for Intuitions but the deck has few mana sinks. For now we will keep the two Leaks.

Naturalize will certainly replace a card in the side once it becomes legal to play. It has great utility nand can be wished for. I'm sure it will be appearing in a number of sideboards.

from teletubbies
You don´t need Altar of Dementia. If you´re facing Moat you have to wait for Cunning Wish. Then you can go for Naturalize (it´s now in the board) or Stroke of Genius. Because if you have 10.000 squirrels you can use them to untap your basic lands to generate 10.000 mana to stroke the opponent to death.

After much debate and testing we decided that an Oath sideboard does not justify removing the Walls which are too useful in a number of other match ups.
  
We will be working on this deck for the next few months and will be playing the deck at the next two tournaments. That should help decide what we want in the side.

I hope others will explore the arch type now, as I feel its a viable and competitive addition to the Type 1 scene.

here is a link to an AoS tournament report from teletubbies:
- Benjamin Rott
http://www.morphling.de/artikel/reports/benny25082002.html

I would like to thank oliver and Teletubbies and the  rest of the crew in Germany for explaining the mechanics of this deck and making this primer possible.\n\n

[Matt The Great]

Quote You would have to add another color to have cards against Discard, but that's just impossible because of needing basics for Earthcraft...

Compost? ...Dodecapod?\n\n

[dicemanX]

Nice mini-primer bebe. It's good to finally see some discussion about this often ignored combo-deck. I had previously thought that Trix was generally superior (similar counter base, also two cards to win, ability to go mono-U or add Black for Tutors/Duress, and a big advantage of having the ability to gain 20 life vs aggro before going off), but AoS definitely has it's own advantages.

To me, the transformational Oath SB is the way to go, as this deck is generally slower than other combo decks, and might lose to aggro more frequently as a result. Matt's suggestion of Compost has merit against Suicide, but since you run no creature removal Composts might be useless if they are not drawn and played very early to contend with the first two to three turns of disruption. You also only have 3 Mox/Lotus for a first turn Compost play.

However, I'm puzzled as to why you don't just go with the standard 4 Oath, 1 Morphling, 1 Weaver, 1 Feeder (or perhaps Morp #2), and the two Gaea's Blessings. Are the CotHs really necessary? Are they there to transform into aggro-control vs other control, or do you plan on bringing them in vs aggro? If they are there for aggro, perhaps Powder Keg deserves consideration instead. I understand that Oathing Calls into the graveyard is good fun (the reason behind using Reclamations instead of Blessings as far as I can tell), but perhaps that's a little bit of an overkill.

Against the control match-up, perhaps you can consider B2B (although by the looks of it B2B would not be strong in our Toronto metagame), or even something as crazy as Accumulated Knowledges in the side to go along with the extra Sylvan. Since you play with Intuitions, AKs might make some sense here, although I'm unsure as to what to take out for them. Another possibility is to transform into aggro control by keeping the Calls (along with your Oath engine) and put Ophidians in, but perhaps they are not as strong without full power.

Just throwing out some ideas...

[bebe]

KrOathan proved so successfull as as a transformational sideboard for decks in Germany that I really want to give it a try. It also allows me to keep my combo pieces as an added bonus. It is used in OSE builds in Germany with only the Morphs and Coths to face down Sligh and Sui. Of course, it's nice to have black tutors and Yawg's Will in the deck as well. Reading their reports and e-mailing a few of the users convinced me it was worth trying. In one test session it was very strong. I'm sure a conventional Oath sideboard would work too.
Compost does not cut it. It simply is not enough. Dodecapods won't win the game for you eitheer, cute as they are.
The combo comes out quite fast, BTW, unless disrupted. That was never an issue. Aggro is not a difficult matchup as you will outrace their damage. so Kegs are not as good  as they might seem in this deck. Its Sui's disruption that hurts.
Mono U and control are pretty good matchups as is. The key is resolving the first Ancestral before they do. It's been a pretty even match up in testing and I have the advantage of surprise game 1.  
i'm surprised no one believes the Mana Leaks should not be added for Drains. There is a general feeling that they do not belong in type 1 over Drains.  
As you correctly surmised, a lot has do with the decks you expect to face. I would not even consider changing the sideboard if a Sui deck had not won the last tournament. Too much blue being played here usually brings out the Sui decks in response. I'm afraid there might be two or three mono B next tournament. Non-the-less, I'm determined to test out the deck in a real tournament and I will post my results.
Thanx for the compliment.

[dicemanX]

Quote i'm surprised no one believes the Mana Leaks should not be added for Drains. There is a general feeling that they do not belong in type 1 over Drains.  

I think that Leaks are much more effective if you run full power, to have a first turn counter without relying on pitch spells. The problem is that, unless you go off quickly, you will be playing the long game vs control, and every turn that passes makes Leaks weaker. I suppose that it really comes down to how crucial it is for you to have a counter up on the first turn (if you happen to draw one of your three Moxes/Lotus), and how frequently you find yourself without a second blue mana early. You have 15 U producing mana sources - is this not enough? How are you finding it in testing?

Quote The key is resolving the first Ancestral before they do. It's been a pretty even match up in testing and I have the advantage of surprise game 1.

I agree that the match up is more about resolving your card advantage spells early, hence my suggestion of considering AKs.

[drg`]

Hi,
I propose this sideboard.

// Sideboard
   4 Oath of Druids            // The Combo
   2 Krosan Reclamation     // The Combo
   1 Sylvan Library            // VS Blue
   1 Hoodwink / Capsize     // VS Worship / Moat
   3 Back to Basics           // Keeper / TnT / Misc
   1 Mana Short               // Mono Blue / Keeper?
   1 Timetwister              // Suicide
   1 Misdirection              // Keeper / Blue / Suicide / Etc
   1 Stroke of Genius        // Mono Blue / Keeper / Misc

Sideboard explanations:
Sideboard Swaps
Verses Suicide
In: 4 Oath of Druids, 2 Krosan Reclamation, 1 Timetwister, 1 Misdirection
Out: 2 Cunning Wish (to slow), 1 Force of Will, 1 Mana Drain, 1 Fact or Fiction (again to slow), 1 Sylvan Library (to slow)

Verses TNT:
In: 4 Oath of Druids, 2 Krosan Reclamations,
Out: 2 Cunning Wish (they realy don't fetch anything in this matchup post bord), 2 Misdirection, 1 Sylvan Library, 1 Impulse.  
Back to basics could get sideboarded in here but I don't think you need them with the oath combo.

Verses Mono Blue
In: 1 Sylvan Library, 1 Stroke
Out: 1 Merchant Scroll, 1 Time Walk

Verses Keeper
In: 1 Sylvan, 3 Back to Basics
Out: 1 Merchant Scroll, 1 Time Walk, 1 Intuition, 1 Impulse

Verses Sligh
In: 4 Oath, 2 Reclamations, 1 Misdirection
Out: 1 Sylvan, 2 Cunning Wish, 1 Fact or Fiction, 1 Regrowth, 2 Intuition

Verses RG Zoo
In: 4 Oath, 2 Reclamations, 1 Misdirection
Out: 1 Sylvan, 2 Cunning Wish, 1 Fact or Fiction, 1 Regrowth, 2 Intuition

Hope this helps.
Mike

[Matt The Great]

Compost and Dodecapod aren't exactly game-breakers against Suicide, but the question is: are they better than just praying you don't get paired with black, or praying they don't draw their disruption?

[pernicious dude]

Moat is why you want Altar of Dementia.
Lets you kill while you're going off,
even with permanent weenie sweepers on the table.
No attack needed.

[Fishhead]

I'm not sure I follow the combo here; since you have no Power Artifact/Yawg Will/Stroke to win instantly.  Is the plan to Oath up a sided Morphling or to try something like:

1) Turn 1: Upkeep: Krosan up Earthcraft & Nest.
2) Draw. Play whichever one you draw.  Say Go.
3) Turn 2: Draw the other one; play and go infinite.  Say Go.
4) Turn 3: Krosan up something so you have a card to draw.
5) Attack for infinity.  

I suppose if you get a good Oath you can pursue both plans at the same time; but generally either of these options looks a bit slow.  Am I missing an idea here?

Quote Moat is why you want Altar of Dementia.

Or if you are planning on Oathing everything away, you can just include Wonder.  

[bebe]

No, that was the general idea. It is just a stall tactic that allows us to get a Morph and Call token into play and combo pieces on top of my library before Sui won the game. It worked in testing to an extent but we finally gave up on it and reverted to changing a few sideboard cards instead. As i mentioned before the Oath sideboard is better for decks that sport Black as Negators and Duress can also be brought in and Power/Grim is a great combo ( although it relies on three cards instead of two ).

As Oliver noted it is the one bad match up the deck has. Sui has its own bad match ups as do most decks.

Hoodwink is the side for Moat, BTW, and it works if played right. It can also save a combo piece.

notice what we changed
- counterspell + disrupt (one less mana and a cantrip)
- mana short + brainstorm (return combo piece to top of deck)

I have until the 13th to decide and so far I'm quite pleased with the deck's performance. I am hoping to construct a sideboard that works against all my match ups and really like the Walls.\n\n

[teletubby]

Some thoughts on Oliver´s and my deck:

Mana Drain is far better than Mana Leak. First -and allready mentioned- you don´t have the Moxen to counter first turn. And second you could well need the mana to play Intuition or use it for the colorless mana in the combo parts.

You don´t need Altar of Dementia. If you´re facing Moat you have to wait for Cunning Wish. Then you can go for Naturalize (it´s now in the board) or Stroke of Genius. Because if you have 10.000 squirrels you can use them to untap your basic lands to generate 10.000 mana to stroke the opponent to death.

The KrOathan-Board is good in full powered decks, were you can Krosan up Yawgmoth´s Will and then play all moxen and the PowerGrim-Combo to win instantly. I don´t think it will work in AoS.
And forget about Wonder when you use Oath, because it hits play and not the graveyard... \n\n

[bebe]

It is nice to hear from you Teletubbies. I know you have a lot of experience with the deck and will make appropriate changes to the primer on the sideboard section to reflect your views.

Yes, naturalize is a 'natural' fit in the side. We were waiting for it to be legal. As I mentioned we found that KrOathan did not work as well as we hoped. Your assessment is very close to our findings.

Moat has not been too difficult a problem. With counters, stroke and hoodwink, we have had no problems.

We have liked the two Mana Leaks and have have found them useful. I rather expected a reply on them earlier and felt more than a few people would disagree over this. I just do not feel the deck has enough mana sinks to warrant the inclusion of more than two. After more testing I might come over to your way of thinking.

[Fishhead]

Quote And forget about Wonder when you use Oath, because it hits play and not the graveyard...

Lol, my bad.  As a TnT player, I dont even consider Wonder a creature anymore; just a card in my graveyard.

Quote Mono-B is my worst matchup.
You can only win if you get really lucky, or your opponent draws no discard.

Its interesting; isnt Gro supposed to have a decent matchup against Mono-B?  Some of that is the 4 Mis-Ds; probably some more of that is the ability to Gush into large amounts of cards in hand.  The baseline of AoS doesnt seem that much different than Gro; I wonder why its so much worse in practice.  Could 2 SB'd Mis-Ds change the matchup significantly?

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

yeah, it looks somewhat like grow, but it plays like Draw Go with a faster kill and I wonder what might be Draw Gos nightmare-matchup - besides TnT, that is.

Very Nice primer, bebe! The Oath-Board-idea is potentially really good (the classical one, I mean. I don't see Krosan without fast mana).

[bebe]

It looks better than it plays. We tested the deck and finally decided to give it a tryout at a good tournament. I have revised my thinking entirely about how the deck plays.
1. Sui was a relatively easy match up. Mono B is not the threat I thought it was.
2. i finalluy got to play TnT. Despite two quick Juggies the combo was quicker. Unless a very fast Survival Druid/Lyricist hits the table (never happened), i see why the deck was built this way.
# Aggro decks cannot be combo decks no matter what type you play.
3. Despite the Germans claiming a 50/50 win rate against Keeper and mono blue, my results were very different. Its closer to 70/30 in control's favor. They always have morre counters than you. Meddling Mages ripped me a new asshole two games straight against a U/W control deck.

Conclusion:
In a heavy control environment, you do not want to play this deck.
As a sidenote, its fun to go off but i would not rely on a top four finish at a tournament where the decks are well played and well built.

[Magimaster]

Sorry if this might be off topic..

but when I tried to read the primer, I got this pop-up window that said something along the lines of

"entering restricted directory of www.morphling.de"

it then prompted me for a username and a password.

Sorry, just found that kind of odd.

PM'ing a moderator works well for this kind of thing, especially in the Extreme Vintage Forum. Since you brought it up, it is an avatar that isn't accessable that prompts that window.

I'll kill it.

-Zherbus

[dicemanX]

@bebe

Maybe AoS is taking the wrong approach in trying to combat control with its own counterspell base - as someone pointed out, that kind of strategy never works as you will practically always get outcountered. What about trying up to 4 copies of Defense Grid and City of Solitude instead, along with full power? Also, with the power of the fetch-lands, maybe it would be a good idea to add another color for more active dirsuption and tutoring power (such as B), or W which can offer Replenish and protection/search via Sterling Grove. Having Replenish allows you to go with the KrosanOath combo post SB vs any type of aggro as well.

[bebe]

Well, i would be curious to see what suggestions you could make to alter the mana base and main deck deck to support replenish and a KrOathan sideboard. I also thought white could be good... for enlightened tutor (not groves), balance, and replenish but felt the german version deserved a good try out. Mages are still a pain in the butt though and there were two declks sporting them.
BTW, mages are never useless - I heard Morphling, Will, Squirel Nest and a few other cards named. It was stronger than I imagined in type 1 and at worst is a good bear.

[dicemanX]

I'm still thinking about a sample decklist, which is why I didn't post one yet. If I DO take out the counters, then maybe blue altogether is not worth it if the card draw engine can be replaced by something else - I'm starting to look at G/W Enchantress for ideas. Maybe take the current Enchantress build and make it pure combo - I'm working on it.

The Oath post SB would involve the following three plans:

1) If you have 2 mana + Replenish and land in hand, you can put Lotus back in your library and Replenish during main phase. You would also need Concordant Crossroads in your graveyard, unless you plan on using the second Reclamation to buy you the next turn to win by attacking with the squirrels. Notice that this would bring back your Groves, so the combo is fully protected against enchantment removal, and against things like Caltrops or Engineered Plague (provided you run Seals of Cleansing).

2) If you have 5 mana plus a mana source in hand, you can reclaim 2 Replenishes back.

3) If you have no Replenish and don't have 6 mana, you could Reclaim Lotus and Replenish. This is slow, but might be enough to win.
 
All in all, you would need 4 Oath, 2 Reclamation, and a Concordant Crossroads in the SB.

[specialk]

@bebe what did you side aganist me? Maybe finding good side cards aganist mono U and sui will help find room in the side

[bebe]

There were not a lot of cards for the mono blue match up. A Sylvan came in, a Response, and a counter I think. Remember, we were led to believe by the Germans that it was a 50/50 match up. I had tested with Leon and it looked to be true. But apparantly you were using more counters than i expected and that Strip trick was nasty.  

Sui was easy. I just added a MisD and a Brainstorm.\n\n

[specialk]

my counter base was 4 Fow, 3 MisD, 4 counter, 4 manadrain.  What did you side out? I find what was sided out as important as what you side in

[Renato]

There is any chance to AoS after the restriction of Earthcraft?
It is a dead archetype now?

[bebe]

It's dead

[MoreFling]

Ballad of Kurt Cobain anyone?

"you're dead!"

[dandan]

Kudos for making a deck that dominated Type 1 so much that the DCI had to restrict its killer card.

DCI   AoS