Might Vampiric Hexmage work in Oath

[meadbert]

So Orchard/Oath is superior to Hexmage/Depths.  Both are 2 card combos.  Orchard Oath costs  while Hexmage/Depths basically costs  in opportunity cost.  Hexmage wins 1 turn faster, but Orchard and Oath are much more useful independantly.  For these reasons I doubt that Hexmage/Depth can be better than Oath.  I wonder if they can work together though?

3 Forbidden Orchard
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Windswept Heath
4 Bayou
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
3 Dark Depths
1 Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
4 Null Rod

2 Vampiric Hexmage
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Grim Discovery
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Vampiric Tutor

4 Oath of Druid
4 Life from the Loam
4 Living Wish
1 Regrowth
4 Sylvan Scrying
1 Krosan Reclamation

So the idea is to Oath up Hexmage.  Then you can ideally Dredge Life from the Loam and pay 2 to get Dark Depths back and you have a 20/20 creature after your first Oath.  Ideally you would want Haste.  Anger is a creature and Dragon Breath only work on high cmc creatures so neither work.

You still settle for winning two turns after you play Oath.  You do get the benefit of having a nice backup plan.  You can just tutor up Hexmage and Dark Depths independently.  Living Wish finds either half of the combo or Orchard or disruption or removal.  Other than Krosan Reclamation there are no dead cards.  Reclamation is there so you can put back 2xGrim Discovery and win after Oathing your library.

The list above is barely tested, but I was wondering if anyone was pursuing this at all?

[John Jones]

Idk, it seems strictly worse than runnng straight oath or straight hexmage (if thats even a deck? lol). The problem I see with this is in running this type of oath, you are then able to be hated out by the same hate dredge faces while not actually adding anything except for a turn win faster (which I don't really think matters). You then also have to dodge wastelands because if you oath up hexmage and then try and sac it and I wasteland you don't have a 20/20 bouncable creature.

Next, you have absoutely no way of protecting anything. If you run into any counterspell you will lose the game. If you run into a leyline of the void you will lose the game. If you run into any bounce you will lose the game. I would at least run 4x duress.

Then you have no draw engine, so if your stuff gets stopped (which I am sure it will) you will then get blown out.

Finally, I fail to see how you don't have dead cards. I would say that 4x sylvan scrying and 4x Grim discovery are dead cards because they don't really do anything for you. Great you have a land... whoop de doo. I think for this deck to work, you should cut the black and add blue for counterspells and a draw engine.

Now I know you said it was barely tested but I would half expect something better from you based on some of your other posts.

[meadbert]

I agree that straight Oath is better.

The only Dredge hate that is a problem is Needle.  Leyline and other graveyard hate are fairly weak since you still have a ton of tutors to put together a combo that does not need the yard.

Wasteland is not much of a problem.  Life from the Loam can get back your own Wasteland or Strip Mine to remove their before going for the comb.
In that manner Wasteland only slows you down a turn.  Also with 4xLiving Wish, 4xSylvan Scrying and th 4 Black Tutors you have plenty of ways to find Waste or Strip.

Bounce is not a problem if you Oathed since you can Oath up the second Hexmage, dredge Loam again and get Merit Lage again.  Bounce only slows a turn.

As far as protection goes you have Grim Discovery which gets back both combo pieces and plenty of tutors to find it.  You can also just Living WIsh or Oath up the next Hexmage.

I would actually rank resiliency to hate as one of this decks strengths.  Pithing Needle is the most worrisome card.

The problem is the lack of disruption.  You have the 9 disruptive cards and then some tutors to find more, but you just do not bring your weapons to bare fast enough.  With Duress/Thoughtseize/MisD/Force Tez can out gun you early.  Late game card advantage is less of an issue because Grim Discovery, Life from the Loam and Oath of Druids all can act as Draw engines.  They may not keep up with Dark Confidant, but it is not so much that you run out of gas as much as they get too much going early.  This deck is fairly light on card disadvantage cards like Force, MisD, Mystical and Crop Rotation.  Instead it only runs Imperial Seal and Vamp so that is sort of inherent card advantage.

Could the Hexmage/Oath shell be kept while moving to more of a blue build with Forces?  Perhaps a 5 color manabase would work so you could reliably get blue, green and double black up.

[potato]

4 scrying seems like a lot to me. Kinda slow, doesn't get oath, etc. Impulse instead perhaps?

[madmanmike25]

So Orchard/Oath is superior to Hexmage/Depths.  Both are 2 card combos.  Orchard Oath costs  while Hexmage/Depths basically costs  in opportunity cost. 

I agree, but you should be careful expressing it because it might make some people realize its true...

You still settle for winning two turns after you play Oath.

So this is a different way to do the same thing?  Although it looks interesting, I'll say it appears less effective because it lacks FoW.

I know you barely tested, but how has Grim Discovery been?  What about running 2 more Hexmages and maybe 2 draw/tutor to find the combo?  Perhaps Crop Rotation might be useful since it can find either the orchard or depths.

This is definetly thinking outside the box, hope it pans out.

[meadbert]

So missing blue sucks.  I am not suggesting it.  Basically my question is could Vampire Hexmage work in Oath at all.  Basically I started with the idea that I had to run a ton of Life from the Loams in order to ensure I have one after the first Oath.
From there Waste and Strip Made sense and tutors for those also made sense.  Then I ended up with a non Blue deck.

A blue version could still be run.

Perhaps something with Force of Wills and even Compulsive Research since that can get rid of a dead Dark Depths.  Also Compulsive Research has synergy with Life from the Loam.  Intuition could possibly be added as well.

Grim Discovery was good in testing, but it is more of a late game bomb so 4 may be way too many. Perhaps 1 or 2 would be better.  In a bluer deck fewer makes sense.  In the deck I posted Sylvan Scrying is frequently used to get Strip Mine in which case Grim Discovery can function as a SInkhole even if you do not have Hexmage yet.

[John Jones]

I hate to be a naysayer but I really think its trying too much without actually gaining anything.