Meadbert's Sprint Testing 2010

1. Artu Force Dredge 100.00 18-11 (46-27)
2. Fatestitcher Dredge 86.21 21-12 (52-34)
3. Root Maze Oath 82.25 28-21 (70-53)
4. Brooch Uba Stax 73.76 18-11 (39-32)
5. Solymossy Green Tez 72.88 6-5 (16-10)
6. Midirection Tez 65.26 20-15 (46-44)
7. Martin TPS 65.08 22-20 (50-52)
8. Hermit 60.36 13-9 (28-25)
9. Arcane Denial 55.62 8-7 (21-19)
10. Gans Breakthrough Dredge 42.37 5-7 (14-17)
11. Woods Counter Top 41.10 5-5 (11-12)
12. Parriott Deez Goyfs 40.39 6-9 (16-20)
13. Vault Combo 36.35 5-5 (11-11)
14. Rivard Control 35.77 5-5 (10-12)
15. Berthold Dredge 35.41 1-3 (5-6)
16. Expedition Stax 31.58 2-4 (7-10)
17. Shay Iona Oath 30.14 4-6 (8-12)
18. Matt K Threads Tez 26.30 1-3 (4-6)
19. Arcane Scying 24.38 2-3 (6-6)
20. Zuniga TPS 20.79 3-5 (7-11)
21. Calleja AK Tez 20.56 2-3 (5-7)
22. Dragon 20.08 2-4 (5-9)
23. Messiano Night's Whisper Control 18.80 4-4 (8-10)
24. Chitturi Shop Aggro 17.27 0-3 (2-6)
25. Rapp R/G Beatz 13.97 1-3 (3-7)
26. Xicota Tez 13.74 0-3 (1-6)
27. Kurz BU Fish 13.16 1-3 (2-6)
28. Liebsch Tez 12.23 1-3 (4-6)
29. Joliiffe Chain Dredge 10.08 0-3 (2-6)
30. Landfall 7.21 0-3 (1-6)
31. Wong Noble Fish 4.20 0-3 (0-6)
32. Lim Painter 4.13 0-3 (0-6)

Key
Left number is ranking according to the rating.
The Rating is something sort of like an RPI. It only considers results of games and not rounds. This can lead to an overstatement of Dredge and any other deck that does especially well in game 1 since every round you play game 1, but you frequently do not get to game 3.
The first win-loss record is the round win loss record. The record inside of parenthesis is games.

I eliminate decks as I go based on their records against remaining decks. The final "Champion" usually finishes high but does not always finish first.
In this case Martin TPS lost to Root Maze Oath in the finals. More on this later.

Basically I took 21 decks that had either finished first or second on Morphling.de and then ran 11 of my own.

Note that these lists were picked several months ago so Emrakul and Jace the Mindsculpter had just been printed and were barely showing up at tournaments.
I think the only Jace was in Soly's Tez list. There were no Emrakuls.

I ran 7 decks with a history of doing well which were Arcane Scrying, Arcane Denial, Root Maze Oath, Fatestitcher Dredge, Vault Combo, Null Brooch Uba Stax, and Hermit Druid.
I also ran 4 test decks. These were Expedition Stax, Dragon, Landfall and Misdirection Tez.

The Misdirection Tez list was put in there not to be good as much as to prove just how terrible Tez is. Basically I took old school Meandeck Gifts and then dropped Red since Burning Wish is bad with new rules and Recoup is bad with 1 Gifts and 1 Scroll. I substituted Leviathan for DSC. For 11 new cards I added Vault/Key because it is broken and I knew I was running Tez. I added the restricted bombs Vamp, Ponder and Thirst. I then added 4xTez. For the final two slots I debated adding Bobs, but instead I added Hurkyls (since I was not sure if I should run Hurkyl's or Rebuild so I just ran both) and then I threw in MisD #4 figuring that if the first 3 were decent, the 4th could not be that bad.

So I play decks until they have 3 more round losses than round wins against remaining decks. This means the decks doing well play a lot more.
Any statement made about decks at the bottom is with little confidence since they played so few games. Lim's Painter deck went 0-3 for me which is bad, but he has piloted that list to a first and second place finish out in Manilla in the past few months so clearly it has something going for it. Essentially there is no shame in finishing at the bottom. Even the best decks can get unlucky and go 0-3 or 1-4 or go 2-3 and have the two decks it beat eliminated.

Here is a quick summary of the test decks:

So Landfall was terrible. The idea was to drop Steppe Lynx on turn 1. Enlighten for Fastbond on turn 2 and then replay Oboro 10 times to swing for 20. Basically I had been noticing that it was tough to assemble a 3 card combo. To "solve" this problem I dropped Force of Will and Null Rod to add more tutors. The result is much faster deck in that it loses much faster. That was just totally ill conceived. I am not sure there is any potential here it all. If I try this again I will move in the aggro control direction with a possible combo finish rather then aiming for a 3 card combo. Three card combos are nice in long games when you draw into them. You cannot just assemble them by turn 2.

The next deck was a Dragon list with Krovikan Horros and Magus of the Bazaars. Originally I left out the black tutors which I was never happy with. I tried dropping Magus and that did not work. I also found that Duress and Thoughtseize were not that amazing. In particular I wanted Xantid Swarms which were so much better against Nature's Claim. I ended up dropping 8xDuress to add 4xXantid, 3xBlack Tutor and either Chain of Vapor or Tyrant.
Then for the sideboard I kept some Animates, but boared out Dragons and brought in Show and Tells, Terastodons and Tyrants.
The result was a list that was fairly fast, had a strong draw engine and had a diverse plan post board. What this list lacked was a Dredge board or game against combo. The two severely hurt it and are why it finished relatively low at 22. I may keep my eye on this list, but it did not strike me as viable right now.

Expedition Stax
This guy has done well for several people at tournaments and did decent here. 16th against a fairly competitive gauntlet deserves some respect, but it was hardly looking like a dominant deck although I will mention that it finished second among Shop decks.
Basically, as amazing as Lodestone Golem is in general, this is not the ideal metagame for it. Possibly the two best win conditions right now are Vault/Key which it does nothing against and Oath which it actually triggers. I am not saying that Golem is bad at all, but if you are trying to fight through Oaths and Vaults then the solution is probably not to throw out creatures that makes spells (EXCEPTING ARTIFACTS) cost more. I still think this is a strong deck in general, but this was a very tough gauntlet for it.

Misdirection Tez
So this list existed to prove how bad Tez is. It goes back to my question about why Bargain and Desire are supposed to be bad in Drain decks, but Tez is supposed to be good. My theory was that Tez is actually bad. My theory was wrong. Tez won the first single elimination tournament and then lost in the finals of the second one. It started out 9-0 which shocked me! From there it hung around until it battled its way into the top 3 which was an eternal stalemate with Root Maze Oath and Martin TPS. Tez was hanging in with TPS, but eventually lost too much to Root Maze Oath. Misdirection, Rebuild and Hurkyl's were pretty weak in that matchup, This has convinced me that Tez is definitely good in Drain decks. (I realize most of the rest of you figured this out over a year ago) There are two huge reasons why. First of all, being blue in this list was huge since the fact that Tez is slow and almost dead early is easily mitigated by the fact that you can pitch it to Force and Misdirection. That is the lesser of the two reasons that Tez is good. The biggest advantage of Tez over Bargain and Desire is the mana cost. So all increases in mana cost are not equal. Going from 0 to 1 matters little. No one says Duress is too slow against combo so you should run Chalice instead, since both are turn 1 plays. 0cc spells can be played in multiples on turn 1, but both spells come on line the same turn. In addition Mana Leak is usually available on turn 1 so that is almost as fast as Duress. Going from 2 to 3 cc so going from Merchant Scroll to Thirst is likely to cost you a turn. There are plenty of opening hands with Mana Crypt or multiple Moxen, but most are not ready to pay 3 mana for a spell on turn 1. Going from 3cc to 4cc also usually requires that you wait for an extra land drop. So in the low numbers you are waiting less than a turn since you can usually afford Chalice, Duress or Mana Leak on turn 1. Around 3 and 4cc you end up costing yourself a turn while you wait to play a land the following turn. Then something happens. You run out of lands! What this means is at some point you may mis your land drop so instead of an extra 1cc of mana cost costing you a turn, it may cost 2 turns or even 3 turns. This is what is likely to happen between 5 and 6cc. 5cc may cause you to wait till turn 3 to let you cast it, but at 6cc you could be missing land drops and end up waiting till turn 5. For this reason the difference in cost between Tez and Bargain/Desire is actually more than a turn usually. This means that you end up finally playing Bargain or Desire the turn after Tez would have already won you the game.
Anyway, I am not advocating this specific deck (although it did do well) but I am declaring the obvious which is that Tez is good in type 1.
It is worth noting that this deck might have benefited from the lack of Rods and also the lack of Dark Confidants in the late rounds.

Noble Fish
For some reason or another, not many Noble Fish decks had won tournaments in the month leading up to when I chose my gauntlet. The result was that out of 32 decks there was only 1 Noble Fish list. There was a BU Fish list and a Deez Goyfs list. Last time I tested Noble Fish it was really good, but this time the token Noble Fish list was eliminated quickly, but since it only played 3 rounds it could easily have just gotten unlucky. This had an impact on the rest of the tournament though since Null Rods were extremely scarce. There were only 4 Null Rod decks to begin with and all finished in the bottom 9 meaning most of the tournament was played without any Null Rods at all. I have been finding that Null Rod is fairly terrible recently, but Noble Fish was the exception and Rods never seemed this bad. Clearly actual tournament results suggest Rod is alive and well.

Shops
Shops really struggled. The list that did the best was Null Brooch Uba Stax. Here is the list:
4 Barbarian Ring
3 Mountain
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Bazaar Of Baghdad
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
4 Serum Powder
1 Sol Ring
3 Null Brooch
4 Smokestack
3 Uba Mask
4 Crucible Of Worlds
4 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Trinisphere
4 Chalice Of The Void
4 Goblin Welder
sideboard
1 Null Brooch
4 Powder Keg
4 Sphere Of Resistance
2 Thorn Of Amethyst
4 Leyline Of The Void

Basically Shops are in a tough spot right now. Almost all of the most common win conditions have low casting costs. I covered Oath and Vault/Key already. From there you also have Dredge bringing out win conditions for free and Goyf which only costs 2 and dodges Thorn. This makes life difficult for shop decks.
This list uses Ensnaring Bridge to fight a lot of the aggro including Dredge and Null Brooch to fight stuff like Oath, Tinker and Vault/Key.
This list play 0 2cc spells so Chalice for two in game 1 is strong.
Also Null Brooch + Uba Mask is mostly a lock (although not with Jace out.) While this list did well in this gautlet, future gauntlets will have a ton of Jace and I am not sure how this list will fare against Jace. Basically Uba Mask has the potential to turn Jace into an Ancestral Recall every turn which is extremely dangerous.
On the other hand 4cc permanents are less threatening than Oaths or opposing Welders.

The Ensnaring Bridges were randomly amazing against several Dredge decks. Four of the six Dredge decks ran some combination of Iona, Zealot and Sphinx. The result was they had no Dread Return target to answer Ensnaring Bridge and Uba Stax was able to capitalize on that and steal many game 1s. Even against decks with answers it can be tough to answer in practice. Basically Uba Stax might open with Bridge on the play. Then Waste Bazaar on turn 2 and then drop Null Brooch. Brooch cannot be Therapied at this point, so to win Dredge must setup a double Dread Return since the first will be countered by Brooch and it must do this slow Dredging without access to Bazaar. This is all just game 1. Post board things are much better for Uba Stax since it Powder mulligans to Leyline. The result is Uba Stax had a very strong Dredge matchup.
Uba Stax is slightly weak against many of the other matchups. It has been metaed to be decent against Oath, but that is still unfavorable. TPS is unfavorable and Tez is maybe about even. In general the Uba Stax list is not a great or powerful list. It was basically a metaed hate deck.

Dredge
So there were 5 Dredge decks which is a lot for 32 decks. My first thought was that I should have included Leylines in Fatestitcher Dredge since it would face the mirror a lot. Instead this was totally wrong. Dredge should certainly not be maindecking Leylines right now and it probably should not pack them in the board either. The problem is that since the printing of the likes of Fatestitcher and Bloodghast, Dredge is tight for space. It used to be that Dredge had some amazing cards, but basically the last 10 or so cards you through in did not do much. You might have a few bad dredgers that you hoped to never have to actually dredge or that you might fead to a Sutured Ghoul. Now Dredge is as tight as Tez. Every card counts towards either fighting hate or winning a turn faster. So, is it worth Dredge sacrificing 4 cards which might be useful from the yard (like Fatestitcher or Ichorid) for 4 cards that are only useful in the opening hand like Leyline just to fight Dredge? If the answer were yes, then every Tez deck should pack a token Planar Void in the main. Basically Dredge decks are less likely to face Dredge than other decks since you cannot be paired with yourself. To run 4 Leylines you are sacrificing perhaps a Fatestitcher and an Ichorid that you would have Dredged into to have maybe a 35% chance of having a Leyline which is not stellar against a great many decks. Compare that to Tez making room for just one Planar Void which can be tutored up more frequently than 35% of the time. So, either Tez should be maindecking Planar Void or Dredge should not be maindecking Leyline. I submit based on my testing that it is the latter (although I did not test Planar Void in the main for Tez.)

The Dredge decks that spent their space on Leyline were not sufficiently prepared for hate post board or were too slow and lost games preboard.
Meanwhile the Dredge deck that was doing the best was Artu's Force Dredge list. I want to talk about this list because I think it is really good.
What Artu did, was find space for both Force of Will and Unmask in the main deck. This is huge. Those cards are excellent at handling fast combo which is one Dredge's threats in game 1. Then, because those cards are amazing post board to handle Needle, Jailer and Planar Void, it let Artu function with what is effectively a 22 card sideboard. Here is his list:
4 City Of Brass
3 Gemstone Mine
4 Bazaar Of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Bridge From Below
4 Ichorid
4 Stinkweed Imp
2 Golgari Thug
2 Dread Return
4 Unmask
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Fatestitcher
4 Narcomoeba
3 Breakthrough
4 Force Of Will
1 Woodfall Primus
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Iona,Shield Of Emeria
sideboard
3 Pithing Needle
1 Sphinx Of The Steel Wind
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Darkblast
2 Chain Of Vapor
2 Emerald Charm
2 Wispmare

Rather than going hard for the turn 2 win like I chose to, Artu goes for slower more controlling turn 3 Dread Return and possibly a turn 4 win. Iona and Primus are solid control. Crucially (for this gauntlet) Primus can remove Ensnaring Bridge or other hate.
The Ichorids and Breakthroughs are strong for playing out from under Wasteland. The Fatestitchers are actually sometimes more important post board than preboard.
Basically Fatestitcher allows you to EOT remove Leyline/Planar Void and then get 3 Bazaar activations by next turn which should get you to your Dread Return.
I really wanted an extra dredger and I would be tempted to add a Thug, but I have no idea what to remove. Basically the first two cards would be either Breakthrough or Fatestitcher, but they are blue and drop the Force count dangerously low. For that reason I am not sure I can improve on the main deck at all.
The sideboard could be better. Given that there are 7 answers to everything but Leyline and Wasteland in the main, it inexcusable to include only six cards that answer Leyline. The Leyline removal count should have been at least 8 and could have been 10. I did not find Needle to be helpful insofar as I am not sure that I ever boarded it in. I do not believe in opening with Needle naming Wasteland on the play. Also, I am not sure Sphinx is worth the slot.

This deck did have the best record over all so I give props to Artu.

It occurred to me that if you wanted to run Force and Unmask in the main it seems the Sharrum engine has great synergy since Sharuum is both blue and black. In practice this does not work with only 3 Sharuums. Basically you are likely to powder mulligan 1 away which means if you pitch a second to Force or Unmask then you are stuck with only 1 left and that means no infinite tokens for you. I might try again with 4 Sharuums, but that is a lot of space.

Drains:
Outside of Misdirection Tez, the top Drain decks were Soly's Green Tez deck, Arcane Denial, Vault Combo and Rivard Control. Of these, if I had to take one to a tournanet tomorrow it would probably be Ugo Rivard's Control deck. Basically he played something similar to what it seems like he has been playing for years. He ran Mana Leaks and a maindeck Blood Moon and Platz as a win condition. He had Dark Confidant as a draw engine (which is risky in this meta game.)
Then post board he had more Blood Moons. Platz is solid against Dredge which I really liked. Blood Moon randomly hoses so many decks and is solid for turning off Orchard against Oath. When playing with this deck I always felt like I drew what I needed.

Soly's Green Tez is an interesting list and might have been the only list to run Jace. That it did well might speak well of Jace, but it was a unique list:
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
4 Island
1 Forest
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Time Vault
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Voltaic Key
2 Lorescale Coatl
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Thoughtseize
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Tezzeret The Seeker
1 Jace,The Mind Sculpter
4 Mystic Remora
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
4 Force Of Will
1 Misdirection
1 Thirst For Knowledge
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Mana Drain
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
3 Spell Pierce
2 Nature's Claim
sideboard
2 Pithing Needle
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Yixlid Jailer
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Infest
1 Darkblast
2 Old Man Of The Sea
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Trapmaker's Snare
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Nature's Claim

I cannot explain what makes this list good, but it basically kept doing well. I do wonder if we will see more of Jace with Remora. Basically one way to handle Remora is to wait till it goes away rather than playing into it, but doing gives Jace time to come on line so you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Play into Remora letting your opponent draw cards or wait for Jace letting your opponent draw cards. Both have synery with Coatl which almost acts as Tinkers two and three. This list was extremely effective early, consistently making it deep into single elimination tournaments.
The one glaring weakness was Dredge. Basically there are 7 solid anti dredge cards in the board, but something like 15 cards that are not great against Dredge in the main. This list ended up only losing to decks that finished in the top 8, but dominated the decks in the bottom half. Unfortunately it was removed from the tournament fairly early (while still ranked second) because the decks it beat kept getting eliminated, but the decks it lost to hung around.

The Arcane Denial decks did not do so well this time. Skeletal Scrying continues to suffer from Spell Pierce. The Bob list struggles against Oath and can be slightly slow. It also lacks the quick Tinker plan. Finishing at 9th and 19th is not bad, but I do not consider these great decks right now.

Rituals:
In the past I have been testing ANT and Grim Long. This time only TPS lists made the gauntlet since only they had finished first or second at a recent tournament. Although it looks like Martin TPS did much better than Zuniga's TPS list this is not quite the case. Both started off fairly weakly. At the time Zuniga TPS was eliminated Martin TPS was barely hanging in there, but Martin TPS kept doing better and better as the gauntlet went on. The strong Dredge plan helped and Martin TPS did well against many of the top decks.

Towards the end there were 7 final decks. Martin TPS was at least solid against all but Hermit which is a disaster for TPS. Basically turn 2.5 combo immune to Duress with 15 free counters = problematic for TPS. So TPS was nearly eliminated on the grounds that it sucked wind severely to Hermit. Luckily for TPS, despite Hermit's awesome TPS matchup Hermit was suffering even more. Hermit's Dredge matchup is a disaster. Although game 1 it has a decent chance, post board it actually gets worse since Hermit has no Dredge board and Dredge's Leyline and Jailer hate happens to hit Hermit and Oath so either boarding plan leads to a likely loss.
From there Hermit pretty much auto lost to a resolved Ensnaring Bridge from Stax and Root Maze Oath was a disaster since Hermit Triggers Tyrant hitting play to bounce Hermit and post board Root Maze Oath has Wastes to win the token war if Hermit boarded to Oath. The only other decent match up Hermit had was against Misdirection Tez. Anyway, Hermit went first. Without Hermit around the Dredge decks were hit hard. When building the sideboard for Misdirection Tez I basically took an old Meandeck Gifts board with 4 Needles and 4 Leylines. I then pulled the Burning Wish targets and added more Dredge hate in the form of at least 1 Tormod's Crypt and at least one Jailer. The result was a hateful board for Dredge. Root Maze Oath had a zillion Tutors for 4 Planar Voids to go with Wastes, a Vault/Key combo and Oath. Uba Stax was a disaster for reasons already mentioned (although these are the two Dredge lists with maindeck Bridge removal)
Finally TPS is tough for Dredge, so although the Dredge lists might have been the most powerful and best overall, they were left with nothing but bad matchups.
They were eliminated next and this caused Uba Stax to be eliminated since it was basically hanging around on the back of its Dredge matchup.
From there Root Maze Oath, Misdirection Tez and Martin TPS fought to a virtual standstill for about a week of testing, till finally Tez was eliminated when it lost to Oath 1 too many times. Oath was then able to edge out TPS. Although Oath edged out TPS, I am not convinced that would happen consistently. TPS is well suited for beating Oath, but Root Maze was a annoyance particularly pre-board. Post board there is a second question. So I played as though I know all 3ofs and 4ofs in my opposing lists. So Oath did not know if TPS had Extirpate but knew that was a chance. This go around I had Oath leave some vulnerability to Extirpate on Oath and I did not board in Vault/Key. Instead I kept the Root Mazes which were too good. Had TPS had Extirpate in the board that would have easily swung this in TPS's favor. It just so happened that this TPS list did not have them.

Here is what I played for Root Maze Oath:
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 City Of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Walk
1 Ponder
4 Force Of Will
4 Intuition
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Chain Of Vapor
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Oath Of Druids
4 Root Maze
1 Balance
4 Argivian Find
4 Enlightened Tutor
sideboard
1 Wasteland
1 Time Vault
3 Voltaic Key
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Planar Void
1 Progenitus
1 Sacred Ground

I would not change up the main deck at all. In the sideboard I might ditch Pyrostatic Pillar. Basically I used to use Pillar for Storm, but it is actually a liability against TPS. Martin TPS packed Leviathan which meant it could go straight for Tinker. Then you have to wait to Oath into Progenitus (if you even have Oath.) Meanwhile you might have lost life to your own Pillar and Leviathan is beating away. The result is that many a turn 1 Pillar turned into game losses. At the same time Root Maze was a bomb almost every time it hit. TPS brought in Repeals, but Root Maze is easily replayed and helps Tyrant lock quickly.
Anyway, Pyrostatic Pillar is amazing against ANT and very good against Grim Long but neither are seeing much play now. Against TPS it is not particularly strong so Pillar seems terrible and could be something else although I am not sure what. Perhaps Red Blast to handle the likes of Trygon Predator or Jace.

It seems to me that Tyrant with Root Maze/Enlightened Tutor/Argivian Find is still the best Oath package.

Elephants are good, but you are still vulnerable to Vamp for Lotus/Yawg into YAwg or even a Vault/Key.
Iona is solid, but also does nothing for Vault Key.

I have also tested Emrakul. Basically I took the above list. I then dropped the Tyrants for Emrakul + 2xDragon Breath. I then swapped out the Root Mazes for Vault + 3xKey. One problem is this leaves one win condition. This could be mitigated with a Faerie Conclave. The second problem is Dragon's Breath in hand. If Dragon's Breath could target Emrakul then this list would have been great since Breath in hand simply leads to haste for Emrakul. Instead Breath in hand does nothing and you can no longer Intuition for 2xBreath in response to Oath. Also, while swinging for 15 and making your opponent sacrifice his board seems great if you pull it off, it still leads to all the same wins the Elephants and Iona are open to. Emrakul just does not work.

What does work is Tyrant and Root Maze. Enlightened Tutor and Argivian Find are strong for not only finding and protecting Oath. They also allow you to transform into a Vault Combo list at your convenience and they are amazing with Oath out since you can get Root Maze or Mox Emerald to play a lot of spells. To keep an opponent from winning the following turn you basically just need to bounce a Key if they have it. Past that you want to go after colored sources to dodge Chain of Vapor or Nature's Claim on Root Maze. Tyrant is also solid in the mirror where it can bounce Iona. In my experience Oathing up Tyrant is less likely to lose than Iona, Terastodon or Emrakul. Along with being better when Oathed, Tyrant is also better in hand. If you Oath up Tyrant #1 with Tyrant #2 in hand and you have 2 Moxen or 1 Mox with Enlightened Tutor or Argivian Find then you are likely to be able to generate infinite mana with Moxen and cast the second Tyrant and bounce your opponent's whole board. Before you resolve Oath, Tyrant can conveniently be pitched to Force which is something that cannot be done with these other Oath targets.

The main knock against Tyrant is its weakness against Leviathan which is a problem. This list does have Balance to handle Leviathan and post board there is Progenitus. Despite the Leviathan issue, Root Maze Oath still came out on top against Tez and TPS which both packed it so while Leviathan is a strike against Tyrants, I still believe they are best.