Dragon Oath

[evouga]

The VSL has convinced me to try out Vintage on MTGO, so I dusted off my old Dragon Oath list and made a few updates:

Mana base:

4x Forbidden Orchard
3x Polluted Delta
2x Flooded Strand
2x Underground Sea
2x Tropical Island
1x Island
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Black Lotus
5x Mox
1x Mana Crypt

Combo:

4x Oath of Druids
1x Blightsteel Colossus
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2x Dragon Breath

Search:

1x Ancestral Recall
1x Brainstorm
1x Ponder
1x Thirst for Knowledge
1x Preordain
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
2x Sensei's Divining Top
2x Dig Through Time

Disruption:
2x Thoughtseize
4x Force of Will
1x Misdirection
2x Mental Misstep
1x Swan Song
1x Repeal
2x Nature's Claim
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Toxic Deluge

Misc:
1x Tinker
1x Time Vault
1x Voltaic Key
1x Time Walk


Sideboard:

4x Leyline of the Void
2x Ravenous Trap
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Nature's Claim
2x Pithing Needle
2x Mental Misstep
1x Flusterstorm
1x Steel Sabotage


Do you guys have any advice? In particular,

1. Am I completely nuts for running Bot/Emrakul rather than Griselbrand? On the one hand, getting rid of Dragon Breath frees up two dead slots... on the other hand, winning on the spot has mattered in many of my test games, including when at < 8 life, when facing down an opposing active Jace, etc.

2. Impulse is not that great, but if I replace them with, say, Preordain I become dangerously low on shuffle effects. Is there a better option?

3. Right now the deck is weak against more dedicated control decks: if the deck can't force through an early bomb it has little hope in the late game. Landstill is a nightmare matchup, but fortunately few people play it on MTGO. On the other hand, MTGO appears to be infested with Dack Slaver and UR Delver builds; any advice on improving these matchups?

[Oath Breaker]

Two suggestions, add a 4th Orchard, and you need Misdirection in the mainboard.
Dragon Oath is one of my favourite decks to play with cardboard, but it seems to crumple under the new Oath decks, and most other control decks. I would love to hear how it does in MTGO.
Good luck, Kevin

[evouga]

Two suggestions, add a 4th Orchard, and you need Misdirection in the mainboard.
Dragon Oath is one of my favourite decks to play with cardboard, but it seems to crumple under the new Oath decks, and most other control decks. I would love to hear how it does in MTGO.
Good luck, Kevin

Done, though for some bizarre reason a Misdirection costs more than a Mox Jet online. Crazy.

I've played about 20 matches so far, at least 15 of which featured an opponent with Volcanic Island. I've yet to play the Oath mirror so I don't know how bad the matchup is.

[shrewarmies]

Any particular for the lack of mana crypt.  For most of your spell base it seems better than sol ring in most functions.  Especially when you want to land oath early.

[enderfall]

Maybe you want to replace Spell Pierce with a Swan Song? I still think most Oath players are ignoring this card way too much. Pierce is only able to hit Spheres/Wire from MUD decks, which is nothing to scoff at, but Swan Song is a hard counter, unlike Pierce, which makes it infinitely better after turn 2/3 (or so)

[Greg]

While I haven't played an Oath of Druids deck featuring Dragon Breath in quite some time and am not actively thinking about it anymore, it's worth noting how well Thirst For Knowledge fits into this deck.

Thirst For Knowledge allows you to shuffle Emrakul, The Aeons Torn and Blightsteel Colossus back into your library from your hand. It also helps take a Dragon Breath that unfortunately found its way into your hand and put it in the graveyard where it belongs. Outside of Thirst For Knowledge simply being a good card to begin with, these "bonus" interactions make it an obvious inclusion.

[evouga]

Thanks guys. I agree leaving out TfK was a mistake. I'm also going to test replacing Sol Ring with Mana Crypt -- in the past, I've felt the life loss wasn't worth the extra speed, but now that Mental Misstep and Dack Fayden are everywhere Sol Ring has lost a lot of its luster.

I'll try out Swan Song, but I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical -- giving my opponent a 2/2 speeds up the clock quite a bit, and the fact that the Swan can chump block Emrakul is annoying.

[msg67183]

Thanks guys. I agree leaving out TfK was a mistake. I'm also going to test replacing Sol Ring with Mana Crypt -- in the past, I've felt the life loss wasn't worth the extra speed, but now that Mental Misstep and Dack Fayden are everywhere Sol Ring has lost a lot of its luster.

I'll try out Swan Song, but I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical -- giving my opponent a 2/2 speeds up the clock quite a bit, and the fact that the Swan can chump block Emrakul is annoying.

You're playing Oath.... You want them to have a creature, that's why you play Forbidden Orchard. Swan Song allows you to give them a creature without relying on Orchard.

[Samoht]

Thanks guys. I agree leaving out TfK was a mistake. I'm also going to test replacing Sol Ring with Mana Crypt -- in the past, I've felt the life loss wasn't worth the extra speed, but now that Mental Misstep and Dack Fayden are everywhere Sol Ring has lost a lot of its luster.

I'll try out Swan Song, but I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical -- giving my opponent a 2/2 speeds up the clock quite a bit, and the fact that the Swan can chump block Emrakul is annoying.

You're playing Oath.... You want them to have a creature, that's why you play Forbidden Orchard. Swan Song allows you to give them a creature without relying on Orchard.

Swan Song is one of the most situational cards. It's highly overrated. Giving them a creature is your eventual goal, but your control game is not something that you want to provide the creature. If you HAVE to use an Orchard without Oath, the 1/1's clock is manageable. If you have to cast Swan Song without Oath, you can lose the game in short order, especially to a deck with Time Walk/Snapcaster. I'd really only want Swan Song in my deck at all times for the Oath mirror in G1. That is such a small subset of times that I would be hard pressed to play more than 1 copy ever, and that 1 copy would be very hard to justify.

[enderfall]

Thanks guys. I agree leaving out TfK was a mistake. I'm also going to test replacing Sol Ring with Mana Crypt -- in the past, I've felt the life loss wasn't worth the extra speed, but now that Mental Misstep and Dack Fayden are everywhere Sol Ring has lost a lot of its luster.

I'll try out Swan Song, but I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical -- giving my opponent a 2/2 speeds up the clock quite a bit, and the fact that the Swan can chump block Emrakul is annoying.

You're playing Oath.... You want them to have a creature, that's why you play Forbidden Orchard. Swan Song allows you to give them a creature without relying on Orchard.

Swan Song is one of the most situational cards. It's highly overrated. Giving them a creature is your eventual goal, but your control game is not something that you want to provide the creature. If you HAVE to use an Orchard without Oath, the 1/1's clock is manageable. If you have to cast Swan Song without Oath, you can lose the game in short order, especially to a deck with Time Walk/Snapcaster. I'd really only want Swan Song in my deck at all times for the Oath mirror in G1. That is such a small subset of times that I would be hard pressed to play more than 1 copy ever, and that 1 copy would be very hard to justify.

I never advocated adding more than 1 Swan Song. I specifically suggested swapping out the 1 Pierce for it. The fact is Swan Song is a hard counter that can protect your Oath when you are trying to cast it at any point of the game, be it Turn 1 (with some mana acceleration) or turn 15. While claiming that Swan Song is incredibly situational, the card I advocate replacing it with is equally situational.

[H]

Every time I see this thread title, I imagine I'll see a discussion of Worldgorger in Oath, 

2. Impulse is not that great, but if I replace them with, say, Preordain I become dangerously low on shuffle effects. Is there a better option?

3. Right now the deck is weak against more dedicated control decks: if the deck can't force through an early bomb it has little hope in the late game. Landstill is a nightmare matchup, but fortunately few people play it on MTGO. On the other hand, MTGO appears to be infested with Dack Slaver and UR Delver builds; any advice on improving these matchups?

On point 2, Impule isn't a shuffle effect.  It was misprinted to say shuffle, but was quickly errated.  Does it shuffle on MTGO?  I don't know, I've never played Online.  I would run Preordain, -2 Impulse, -1 Top (too mana intensive), +1 TfK (Greg already explained), +2 Preordain.

On point 3, I honestly don't think you can make Landstill a good matchup for Oath.  At least, make it good while not tossing your other matchups out the window.  I think you just have to be ready to be very fast, because once they are at 4 mana, considering how many counters they run, you almost can't possibly win, let alone if they get a Standstill.

[evouga]

(Decklist updated to the current version.)

I've started keeping track of my game record in the MTGO 2-man queues.

Merfolk: 2-0
BUG: 1-2
Dack Slaver: 5-2
Gristelbrand Oath: 4-1
Grixis Control: 6-3
Misc. Blue Control: 2-0
Dark Times: 0-2
Dredge: 0-2
Affinity Control: 2-0
Pyromancer Gush: 7-4
RUG Delver: 2-0

I'm still rusty enough that I'm making shocking blunders on a regular basis, so it's not clear if the bad showing vs. Dredge and Dark Times were mulligan/sideboarding errors, bad luck, pilot ineptitude, or weakness of the list vs. these archetypes.

What is very interesting is how blue-infested the MTGO meta is right now -- almost nobody is playing shops or dredge (at least not in the 2-man queues). The deck doesn't seem to have as terrible a matchup against midrange control or the mirror as I expected, particularly post-board.

I'm pretty happy with the list as it currently stands -- if I knew I were going to play a meta with NO shops decks (?!) I would definitely swap out Nature's Claim for more Abrupt Decays, which I like more and more the more I play them. I'm also contemplating cutting another Jace (blasphemy I know) -- he's mana intensive, bombos with Orchard, and really shines only against creature-light heavy control decks where he stands little chance of resolving in the first place. (On the other hand I definitely don't agree with cutting a Top -- it's easier to land than Jace and wins games that go long and grindy.)

[Thiim]

I think that you're just unlucky vs. Dredge or make some really bad calls, I don't know since i haven't played against you

But you have a favorable MU against dredge. Especially when looking at your sideboard in G2 & G3.

Dragon Oath is faster and have more hate.

Nice statistic against Big Blue though

[evouga]

I've cut both Jaces for two Dig Through Times. I'm happy with the switch, as Jace was just so antisynergistic a large portion of the time.

Latest MTGO queue stats:



Aggro

Merfolk: 4-1
Humans: 3-2
Infect: 2-1
Affinity: 2-0
White Trash: 2-0

Big Blue

BUG: 3-7
Dack Slaver: 6-6
Gristelbrand Oath: 6-1
Grixis Control: 18-10
Pyromancer/"Delver": 34-40
Misc. Blue Control: 15-14

Combo

Dark Times: 0-2
Dredge: 4-4
Doomsday: 3-5
TPS: 5-6
Elves: 1-0

Shops

Kuldotha Shops: 1-4
Terra Nova: 4-1
Misc Shops: 3-3

Creative

Affinity Control: 2-0
Cloudpost Oath: 0-2
UW Underworld Dreams: 4-0
Eggs: 2-0
Pyromancer Ascension Combo: 2-0
WRB Control: 3-2
???: 2-0



Again, it's interesting how underrepresented Shops is in the online meta. And yes, the Dragon Oath deck has a bad matchup against the current most popular deck in the format, sadly.

[serracollector]

I think if you ran either Echoing Truth or even Echoing Decay over repeal it could immensly help you delver matchup as well as dredge. Engineered Explosives is also great versus these two decks which seem to be your weakness. And although it may seen jank Circle of Flame is rather good right now versus all these delver decks. Remember Echoing Truth and Engineered Explosives can also nail several Cages unlike Abrupt Decay which can only hit one cage. With Love Boat allowing Delver to draw five cards every turn its not uncommon for them to get two or more Cages in play to hold your Oaths at bay. Hope that helps good luck.

[evouga]

I'm not sure Echoing Truth would be useful all that often in the Delver matchup, though. If I were able to force through a 1C spell, I could just play Oath instead and win the game. The common failure mode against Delver isn't losing a race against early Pyromancer tokens -- it's running out of gas due to Delver's superior suite of countermagic and card selection spells, then losing to a single explosive Pyromancer + tons of spells + Time Walk turn.

Abrupt Decay is amazing because it is uncounterable. It pulls an incredible amount of weight, from punishing opponent who think they can turtle behind a Grafdigger's Cage and 7 counterspells, to disrupting Vault+Key, to shrugging off Chalice@anything.

Something like Volcanic Fallout would be very useful, if it had a reasonable casting cost.