Tournament was held at Game Universe in Milwaukee, and only 21 people showed up because GWS decided against coming for some reason. First place was a decent condition Unlimited Mox Jet with store credit through 4th place. Metagame was (according to notes):
5 Fish
4 Oath
3 Gifts
3 Slaver
3 Storm Combo (IT, GrimLong, other thing)
2 Stax
1 Something
All fully powered and highly competitive with ICBM in full representation.
T8 was (though it will probably go up later)
Dan Carp (ICBM Oath)
Rafe Colton (Other storm combo)
Mike Solymossy (Slaver)
Ryan Spindler (IT)
Lloyd (name) (Meandeck Gifts)
Owen Turtenwald (UW Fish)
Tommy Kolowith (Slaver)
Chris Nighbor (I think Slaver, not sure)
Dan defeated Mike
Tommy defeated Rafe
Chris defeated Ryan
Owen defeated Lloyd
Dan defeated Owen
Tommy defeated Chris
Dan and Tommy split, Tommy won the title in Rock/Paper/Scissors
I played ICBM Oath, a deck I originally built back last year as an alternative to GWS Oath. The deck sacrificed some measure of speed and tempo in exchange for a devastating control package and the ability to utterly annihilate storm combo, a generally unfavorable matchup for GWS Oath. Though my first couple appearances with it at SCG ended 17th and 18th places, my brother T8ed at SCG: Chicago and won several local tournaments. I recently picked the deck up again and split a Sapphire at the College of Dupre last week with the deck. For this week I played a nearly identical list except I moved the Pithing Needles to the maindeck to swap for the Null Rods in anticipation of a heavier Fish and Oath hate in general metagame. I was, for once, fairly correct, not that that matters.
ICBM Oath: Midwest redux
1 Black Lotus
4 Chalice Of The Void
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
2 Pithing Needle
4 Oath Of Druids
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
1 Crop Rotation
4 Force Of Will
4 Mana Drain
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Rushing River
3 Thirst For Knowledge
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Akroma, Angel Of Wrath
1 Razia, Boros Archangel
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Duress
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Time Walk
2 Island
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Flooded Strand
1 Strip Mine
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Wasteland
Sideboard:
2 Null Rod
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Pristine Angel
2 Energy Flux
1 Tinker
2 Massacre
1 Balance
1 Darkblast
2 Spawning Pit (ignore these, they're just placeholders that actually suck)
1 Duress
1 Oxidize
Round 1: Jay with Control Slaver
Game 1: He gets the Welder and I Needle it. Oath comes down imminently which beats Slaver hard.
Game 2: He manages to get me to 11 with tokens and such, but inevitably I win. Nothing special about this at all. Slaver just doesn't beat Oath.
1-0, 2-0
Round 2: Owen with UW Fish (AKA Oath hate.dec)
I've faced him before and know his deck fairly well. I have never seen more Oath hate in my life.
Game 1: I get lucky and get the drop on him with Oath into Akroma (bounced) and Razia which takes him to zero.
Game 2: I get Oath to stick but he Swords my Angel and Disenchants the Oath. Beatdown commences, etc.
Game 3: This one takes awhile since I keep Oath around but start running out of creatures and deck. It basically comes down to this: I have 2 cards left in deck and Pristine Angel on the board. He has Waterfront Bouncer, an empty hand, and 5 life. Since he has no choice but to attempt to bounce it in response to each attack, I have the kill locked up since I will protect it with Brainstorm for the first swing and Thirst for Knowledge with Mana Drain to prevent decking for the second. I will win with zero cards in hand and deck. However first I have to untap it for the turn. I tap Orchard and a Mox to cast my second Oath. With no creatures left in library (all players know this) and an Oath already on the board, Blessing gone, and no possible purpose in the game of Magic except to untap Pristine. I go through the motions and apparently screw something up between casting, untapping, and passing although I say quite clearly 'wait' in the same breath and action to make sure. The guy judging (at a 21 person unsanctioned Vintage) says that I do not get to untap. I argue that A) my intent is utterly obvious since that is the only reason to cast Oath and B ) I said 'wait' in the same stream with the other statement and thus was not in fact passing anything. We had precedent for this, since a nearly identical situation arose at SCG Richmond with my brother playing Oath, and the head judge (at REL 3 and an experienced Vintage judge) stated that it was allowable on basis of intent and that as part of a single stream of thought allowed for him to rewind ever-so-slightly. After explaining all this to the current judge, he disallowed it anyways. Pristine Angel proceeded to be bounced and I of course lost. This angers me.
1-1, 3-2
Round 3: Lloyd with Meandeck Gifts
Game 1: I keep a steady hand while he mulls to 5. I get the first turn Oath without an Orchard and have a solid control hand. My next seven draws include both Angels, Blessing, both Needles (utterly useless) and several land. It takes slightly over half an hour for him to find an answer to my Chalices, but I draw but a single Brainstorm and he bounces the Angel I find, eventually comboing me out.
Game 2: Again he mulls to 5, but this time I thrash him. I Duress to see he is holding a virtual god hand of Academy, Will, Fetchland, Lotus Petal, and something else, but without Lotus Petal he is stuck in draw-go for a couple turns and I easily reduce him to zero.
Game 3: We look to be fine for time despite the lengthy first game, but soon stall out. His hand keeps getting better, but he is forced to use his first Gifts to find mana and can't assemble a steady kill. He gets me to 7 with the tokens on turn 2 of turns and casts a juicy Yawg Will. I extend my hand but it is just to check his yard rather than the concession he thought. Sure enough he has no tutors and thus is forced to play a bunch of draw spells digging for his Tendrils. He finds plenty of gas but can't dig it up without running out of mana. I Waste his land on turn 3 and he can't do much more than swing for 2 and draw the following turn.
1-1-1, 4-3-1
Round 4: Brian with UR Fish (featuring a lot less Oath hate than UW luckily!)
Game 1: Not too exciting, he mulls and gets trampled.
Game 2: Grim Lavamancer, Factory, Standstill, etc are great cards, just not against Oath of Druids and fat Angels. Again, not so exciting.
2-1-1, 6-3-1
Round 5: Gregg with Slaver (with a good deal of hate including the intriguing yet painful Blood Moon)
Game 1: We both play fairly average hands to their fairly average conclusion: Oath simply trumped the shit out of Slaver. Bounce spells buy but single turns and I play plenty of Brainstorms and Thirsts to come back.
Game 2: We both mull, but he is forced to keep a hand of 3 Duals/Fetches, Crucible, Fact or Fiction, and Blood Moon. It takes me a couple turns to get everything together but he has little defense against it after I Duress the Moon. The highlight was definitely when I used Null Rod to neutralize the otherwise Indestructible Darksteel Citadel.
3-1-1, 8-3-1
Since the guy who beat me and the guy I drew against are both in the T8 my breakers are top of the 10 pointers and I enter as third seed.
Quarterfinals: Soly with Control Slaver featuring moderate Oath hate including maindeck Duplicant
Game 1: My start is solid and I get the Oath online by turn 2, but he manages to tutor up Tinker to Duplicate Razia. This wouldn't be a problem except I'd inevitably topdecked Akroma after getting Razia. It's a quick clock and I have useless counters in my hand rather than Brainstorms or Rushing River.
Game 2: I lock him under Null Rod and Chalice for 0 and utterly eviscerate his otherwise incredible hand (Lotus, Will, etc). Oath gets out and ends things.
Game 3: I keep a basically hilarious (in a good and bad way) hand of Oath, 2x Force, Ancestral, blue card, Strip Mine, something else. Like a champ I rip the blue mana on the second draw and go nuts. He gets the Welder but I shut down Thirst before I shut down Welder. Oath puts him on a fast clock and his last turn is hardcasting Slaver at 1 life, tapping out. I have Oxidize anyways. He looks at his next card, sees his Ensnaring Bridge (with Drain backup) and promptly tears the 7th edition Bridge to pieces. I still would most likely have won but I can understand the frustration. He was rather upset but as I pointed out, he might have won if he'd gotten one more turn, but this is T1. There's no such thing as a free turn.
4-1-1, 10-4-1
Semifinals: Owen with UW Fish, again.
When I say this deck has Oath hate, I really mean it. I don't mean your run-of-the-mill hate, I mean holy balls it's half the bloody deck Oath hate. For reference, post-board, he had (in multiple copies of each): Disenchant, Annul, Swords to Plowshares, Stormscape Apprentice, Gilded Drake, Waterfront Bouncer, and Meddling Mage. It was probably horrible horrible overkill, but by God it was a freaking nightmare.
Game 1: Nothing fancy. I mull to 6 and fizzle against Meddling Mage and Voidmage Prodigy.
Game 2: Here is where the fun starts. For reference, against all that obscene hate, I get to add the Massacres, Balance, Darkblast, and the extra creatures. I may never know why but he keeps a no land hand with Lotus, Force plus blue card, and a bunch of hate. I get the pressure on and his lonely Lotus doesn't help him. He has precious little mana to do anything relevant and I use a careful Wasteland to keep it that way. I end up winning by hardcasting Pristine Angel off Lotus and beating for 5 turns with multispell backup.
Game 3: Ahh the fun starts. We both play a lot of draw go but I take advantage of the fact that pretty much all his hate is reactive and otherwise it's just a bunch of useless 1/1s. I Massacre to keep things even (this card is basically the doom of UW Fish. The deck just crumples against it) and get Oath going though I draw Blessing. Razia and Darksteel Colossus absorb 3 Swords (1 countered) to leave his hand pretty bare, and Akroma takes it all with counter backup and a precariously small library. Pristine was also in hand with the mana to hardcast it.
5-1-1, 12-5-1
Finals: Tommy with Slaver
I draw with the teammate and end up with the Jet after settling an eighty dollar debt that he owed me from splitting another Mox almost a year ago. This makes 4 win/splits in less than 2 months for me with 2 each for AngryPheldaGifts and now ICBM Oath. Overall the deck was extremely powerful despite some of the worst draws I've seen in a long time. I drew so many Angels that I was hardly kidding about adding in Lat Nam's Legacy by the end of the tournament. The mulligans were heavy too, but I think that is more a reflection of the deck's power than anything else. I threw back hands a lot of people would keep in a second because I knew the deck would give me better and it did.
As for the list itself, the Pithing Needles were very solid, though Null Rod would probably have been just as good or a bit better. It was a good metagame call. The only card I was actually dissatisfied with was Mystical Tutor which may surprise some people. I honestly think the card has no place in Oath. Realistically, you lack the two best targets, Tinker and YawgWill, getting Recall is hardly optimal in a deck not based on card advantage, and Time Walk is solid but often a win-more case. Overall the card is just mediocre and a waste of space. I boarded it out in nearly every game and was happy to see it go.
Props:Oath for being easily the most underrated deck in the format right now. People who think it's too easy to hate or doesn't take skill to pilot are dead wrong. Running this deck for the last two weeks was harder than Gifts, Gilded Claw, Slaver, Draw-7, or virtually anything else I've ever played. And trust me, I've played almost everything.
My teammates for once again being 3 of the top 4 and 2 of the top 2. We, uh, rock?
Brainstorm for being the reason Oath is good. I wasn't kidding when I said that if someone let me cut Ancestral for a 5th Brainstorm I'd be heavily tempted.
Simic Sky Swallower. Even Owen basically admitted that the card destroys him. It is infinitely better than Pristine Angel and will make Oath that much harder to hate. The card is exactly what the doctor ordered for this deck, especially with Mana Drain to hardcast it out. Thank you Wizards.
Pristine Angel for being adequate if uninspiring. Slow and clumsy, it still gets the job done.
Food, because it all rocked my empty stomach.
Moxen for letting me win them week after week. I've got 3 now from this winning spree and may actually own the lion's share of a set of power by GenCon to supplement what I can borrow.
Control Slaver. Say whatever you want, but the deck seriously just doesn't beat Oath. It's ridiculous how many bad hands and horrible draws still win because Slaver just flails like a beached whale until I finally Angel it out of its misery. I like having a virtual bye matchup.
Myself for not screwing up my decklist this week and not going into the T8 with a gameloss!
Slops:That one ruling in round 2. Even if I screwed up the timing a bit, blatantly obvious intent should count for a lot at such a low level event in a vague situation. I hate losing to stupid things like that even if I should have been more careful.
Myself for screwing that one up. I am just as much to blame and I hate that I make so many more mistakes with Oath than with other things. Just goes to show you how difficult the deck is to play.
The prize structure for sucking. I can understand with the low turnout, but at least throw the top 8 a couple packs. We actually had to split up the second place store credit prize just so 3rd and 4th got
anything.
