Looking for input -Which deck should I build-

[John Cox]

This is more of a "what is viable on a budget scenario" question. I have about $1000 to spend on power and I'm looking at playing either oath or doomsday.  I like both decks and have the cards to play them in a proxy environment. I'd just like to make something for sanctioned play. I currently would play U/R/g delver in a sanctioned event. I even already have an ancestral.

The main issue is that Doomsday is very lotus-centric. However loti are going for just south of $3000 right now. Oath is more mox reliant and I have a mana crypt. I could probably get a pearl and an emerald with the $1000 and use 2 chrome mox, or a sol ring and a mana vault as the 4-5 mana artifacts.

I've worked out some doomsday piles that use mana crypt over lotus and they're really just 1 mana pricier than lotus piles.

Gush
top------------
ancestral
mana crypt
maniac
lotus petal
probe
bottom-------

pass the turn pile

Top----------
probe
ancestral
crypt
maniac
gush
bottom----

I know this isn't optimal, I have a proxied deck for that, and I have another deck I would use in a competitive sanctioned event.
Thanks in advance,

[serracollector]

Cant you just replace lotus with dark ritual in most of those piles? I would just buy the blue and black mox or the blue mox and time walk. Or time vault maybe if you want to go that route in a deck.

[hashswag]

I wouldn't try building Doomsday without the standard power suite for the deck. Its just setting yourself up for facepalms when you realise you could win with a certain piece of power.

With the ability to buy a couple of pieces of power, I'd look into something like Landstill or Delver.

[evouga]

If you already have Ancestrall, Mox Sapphire and Time Walk would give you a perfectly reasonable budgetish Delver build.

[Will]

I think that playing a suboptimal version of Doomsday is a death wish. I understand the allure of Doomsday; it is a cool and exciting deck, but why not just play that at nonsanctioned events?

If you have Ancestral Recall, you could definitely put together a budget list of Merfolk or Delver that would be reasonably competitive despite the loss of Lotus/Moxen/Time Walk in a sanctioned environment.

Oath is probably not a good choice unless you're fully powered. Not being able to play turn 1 Oath consistently hurts the deck immensely and makes it a lot less powerful. If your choice is between playing Oath or Doomsday with Recall as your only power, I'd go with Oath, but my first and second choice would be Delver/Merfolk.

I don't know how much of the Delver deck you have already, but I would suggest getting Time Walk next as it's extremely powerful in that deck.

[Protoaddict]

I echo what everyone here said. Merfolk and Delver both have at least reasonable track records in the format. I think Merfolk is a bit less hurt by not having power than delver since the deck is fairly formulaic in its structure and does not have too many hands where it wants to accelerate into. If you run Aether Vial that can also compensate for the lack of lotus since in the long run a vial can easily provide more mana than a lotus. Alternately you could consider running mox/lotus hate in the form of CoTV and Null Rod which makes it so you do not get stranded with dead cards.

No one has really tried merfolk in the new KTK meta. Certainly Treasure Cruise is a potential candidate for a card this deck would want to play (probably with fetches.)

[TheWhiteDragon]

I'd try oath.  Run a null rod version with 4x duress, 4x seize and you are fine playing oath on turn 2.  It has to be a controllish build without counterspells.

[John Cox]

I have a Delver list built, I'm looking to expand my options. Toronto is a weird place, there hasn't been a vintage tournament in at least 6 years and the scene is very anti proxy (even in casual games). If there ever was a vintage tournament here (doubtful) I would play delver. But I'd like to get something else sleeved up for fun.

[JarofFortune]

I'd go with Delver. Unlike merfolk, the deck doesn't actually need Time walk to be good, and that saves you a ton of money.

[Killane]

I have a Delver list built, I'm looking to expand my options. Toronto is a weird place, there hasn't been a vintage tournament in at least 6 years and the scene is very anti proxy (even in casual games). If there ever was a vintage tournament here (doubtful) I would play delver. But I'd like to get something else sleeved up for fun.

I've found the same just down the road here in Hamilton. The last vintage tournament I played in was about 5 years ago at Comic Connection, and while proxies were permitted, you got serious flak if you used anything except CE cards. As a result, no one had any fun playing against my TPS deck because they (for the most part) were not running "real" decks. The scene totally disappeared after that.

I miss Vintage. EDH is a decent substitute if you have a cutthroat group, but I miss my moxen and Lotus and tendrils for 20. I want to get into MTGO for Vintage, but I don't have that kind of money any more.