[Deck] 5c Oath - "Choke Oath"

[Harlequin]

Choked up Oath
"Is Hellkite gunna hafta choke a B*$%# ??"

4 Orchard
4 Gemstone Mine
3 COB
2 Wasteland
1 Stripmine
2 Bazaar
2 Riftstone Portal

6 Mox, Lotus
3 Mox Diamond

4 Oath
1 Krosan Rec
2 Hellkite Overlord
1 Seize the Day

6 Duress/Sieze
3 Choke
3 Scroll Rack
2 Life from the Loam
3 DT, Vamp, Yawg
3 Recall, Timewalk, Timetwister
1 Brainstorm
1 Balance
1 Enligtened Tutor
1 Crop Rotation
1 *Recovery: Regrowth, Recoup, Krosan #2
1 *Removal: Engineered, Etruth, StP, Maze of Ith
1 *Wildcard: Animate Dead, Fastbond, Entomb, Imperial Seal, extra (loam, scroll rack, wasteland, removal, etc...)

Sideboard: TBD

This is an oath shell that I've always wanted to try.  One that says "well I'm oath... so I'm already 4 lands into a 5c manabase - lets go for it!"  A few things happen when you do this. 
- Choke is a must have. 
- Therefore, the deck will be blue-lite
- Which means Force is likely not supported, but on the plus side we can run up to 8 duresses.
- without blue, we need some sort of 'draw' engine
- Scroll Rack (or bazaar) + Loam

A few other things were added to the deck:
Dragons + Sieze the Day.  With this double-dragon-StD configureation, you have a 1 in 3 chance of just oathing yourself right into 16 damage (with 3 mana) which converts into 2 extra damage.  In this 5 color base, is abundant so the extra double-firebreath damage is simply a matter of how many lands you have in play.

OMG Balance.  Balance is AMAZING in oath.  90% of the time in oath its really just your 2 mana Wrath of God.  You also run alot of cards that reduce your hand rather rapidly (mox diamond, and Bazaar) so it can also be an early mindtwist against control or combo. Even if you are casting it post-oath, you can usually use an Orchard to ensure that they have at least 1 dude.

So why play this deck over traditional builds of oath:
- Its "faster" than Angel/Dragon oath.  I wouldn't say its much faster but with more moxen, more tutors, and a 1/3 chance of winning after the first oath its an average of 1/2 turn faster I would guess. 
- It has a fairly solid Anti-Drain Mid to Late game.  Usually Drain decks will crush Oath in the mid and late game.  This deck has a fighting chance if it can get some of the non-oath plans online namely: Choke or Loam.
- It has a better aggro and control aggro game... arguable.  It depends on the deck, but the extra tutors will help ensure you find oath ASAP and you have balance as a plan-B against groundling decks.

The main Shortfall of this deck is against Combo, and spesifcally ANT.  The deck isn't designed to support Chalice or Null Rod so right there you are at a disadvantage over your typical oath deck.  A possible solution would be to run 3 maindeck orim's chants over some of the 'fun' stuff.  The deck doens't really have many ways to deal with a topdeck rip.

My final thoughts on this deck is that its probably not consistant enough to be a real condender in a large metagame/tournement.  However it certainly has some really powerful cards that could exploit a metagame weakness in the right place.

[BigBarn]

I just can't see Life from the Loam in a decklist without expecting Raven's Crime anymore - have you tried it at all?  It'll help the combo matchup a bit, that's for sure.

[Relwarbeht]

Additionally, Fastbond is conspicuously absent, a card that seems very good with LftL.  It seems like you could almost combine this list with the suggestion of Raven's Crime and Intuition, a card that is particuarly powerful in a build like yours with so many 3 ofs, Regrowth ect. If you do go that route, which I think would be potent, you could almost replace the Scroll racks, which are only good with LftL and bad with Bazaar.  Although I have to admit it seems like it would be cool to LFTL 3 lands, put them back, and then dredge them the next turn, but other than that it seems like you would have a hard time getting those lands off the top of your deck, particularly without fastbond, which would be an issue with your significantly high mana count: 27.

In summary, the suggestions are:
+1 fastbond
+2-3 Intuition
+1 Raven's Crime
+1 Cycling Land (Tree of Tales maybe although doesn't really matter)
-3 Scroll Rack
-Some land
-Timetwister

[Harlequin]

As a general comment, a few thing that people have to remeber:
- Don't lose sight of the oath part of this oath deck.  Goal #1 is to find and resolve oath of druids.  Intution is particularly bad for finding and resolving oath (however it is good for getting say Loam, Strip, Crime).  The Loam and choke are there as a fairly powerful plan-b.  Its a reall good plan-b (so good infact other decks use it as plan-A). 
- The deck has to race its own life total.  I played the deck with fastbond a few times, and every time I could play it - I would have won without it.  Fastbond has disynergy with Mox Diamond. 

@ Raven's Crime.  Again Don't lose sight of the primary win.  The deck doesn't have alot of life or mana to throw around each turn.  Its actually fairly tight.  But I guess it could be in that wild card slot.

@ Scroll Rack.  The deck really can't function without scroll rack.  You have a single brainstorm to deal with creatures in your hand.  That probably wouldn't work.  The other side-perk of scroll rack is you can't lose to decking while its in play, so long as you have 1 card in hand.  You just need to rack for 1 durring your upkeep - the ability will resolve as much as possible so you fail to "put a card into your hand" and then put the 1 card on top of your deck - then draw for turn.

@ 27??  Its 27 if you count Bazaar and Riftstone Portal which.  Its 23 if you don't. Its 20 if you don't count Waste/Strip. There's alot of situational mana, and a typical amount of stable mana. With this deck, you want to have an average of 3 lands or mox in your openening hand, I think 27 is the right number to hit that.

[meadbert]

Root Maze is awesome in Oath in general so perhaps that would be hot.  It combos with Choke to basically lock out Drain decks.

I have a similar deck to this only it has the Turboland win and Null Rods rather than Chokes.  I actually found Raven's Crime to be a huge improvement for situations where I wanted to go the lock route.

Basically it happened fairly frequently to me that I would have a soft lock with Multiple Rods out and Strip recursion and then my opponent found Academy and did something terrible like drop it, tap it for  , Scroll for Rebuild, Rebuild and then win easily.  You will have similar trouble since Academy is not impacted by Choke.

Raven's Crime is helpful in that you empty your opponent's hand each turn so to win they need to something unrealistic like get Deep Analysis in the yard, rip Academy, drop Academy and DA into bounce + Yawg.  At worst Crime trades 1 for 1 and it is just sick with Loam so I would definitely encourage you to test if you have no already.

Root Maze is a huge, huge hoser.  Just dropping it on turn 1 messes with every non creature deck out there.  If your opponent is running heavy Aggro then you should already be okay.  Also, if you wanted to Run Tyrants instead of Overloard, Root Maze is sweet since you can bounce their board and their mana comes into play tapped.  They would have to do something silly like pitch Two Spirit Guides and Manamorphose in able to win.

Another card that is good is Argivian Find.  It gets back a countered Oath or Choke and even functions as a Dark Ritual if you have Lotus in the yard.  This could really be helpful if you just Oathed up Overloard since you can Find out Lotus and you now have enough mana to pump Overloard and attack twice in one turn!