Creatureless Oath

[serenechaos]

Hi there, TMD! I don't know how many of you frequent the Raleigh-Durham area, but I'm serenechaos, head of Team Troll and a long time Vintage lover. I play at Atomic Empire whenever I can (Hey, Wiley! And any other AE'rs I don't recognize. That monkey is pretty distinctive.) and I play almost exclusively for fun, no matter what type of event it is. Winning is cool, but I like making my opponents smile, making new friends, and coming home with amazing stories.

This is a semi-competitive pet deck of mine, which I have played at 2 or 3 Eternal Weekends, and stopped playing only to sling my Singleton Battle of Wits deck for a day. It performs decently, though I'm  pretty awful player (scatterbrained, turns out Lodestone Golem does NOT make Lotus cost 1). I'm rehashing it a bit today with a good friend of mine who plays much more competitively (Blue Bell, BoM, etc). This is the current list:

4 Oath of Druids
2 Memory's Journey
1 Past in Flames
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Time Walk

4 Burning Wish
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Regrowth

1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Deep Analysis

4 Thoughtseize
2 Swan Song
2 Menal Misstep
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Beast Within

4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Opal
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Gemstone Mine
3 City of Brass
1 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island

Sideboard
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Griselbrand
1 Dragon's Breath
1 Eternal Witness
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Pyroclasm
1 Shattering Spree
1 Grim Tutor
2 Beast Within

And the changes we are looking at mostly revolve around adding Gifts+Recoup, since it fits in pretty well with the general gameplan already. Our basic changelog looks something like

-1 Mox Opal
-1 Memory's Journey
-1 Past in Flames
-2 Cabal Ritual

+3 Gifts Ungiven
+1 Recoup
+1 X (Keep PiF?)

Changes that I am also interested in are

+1 Vault
+1 Key
+Tinker to main?
+1 Storm Engine to main (AN, Necro)
+2-4 Abrupt Decay to side

Keeping PiF maindeck might be interesting, as a backup engine to YawgWill or something. Since most of the Storm lines revolve around resolving a YawgWin, siding it would essentially up the cost of every combo turn by 1R but give me 3 more copies. Probably not the best plan, but an interesting idea to toy with maybe.

Going down to 1 Journey feels slightly dangerous to me, but Gifts might just be that good for the deck, and Recoup offers a lot of flexibility.

For those who don't see it right away, the super-all-in plan is Turn 1-2 Oath, next turn mill deck, upkeep Journey in YawgWill, draw YawgWill. Deep Analysis allows for a 2-mana win, which is hard otherwise. You shuffle in Lotus/LED/Mox, draw one of them, flashback Deep Anal, draw the other 2. Tap out for PiF-->Rits-->Will. This line was added in specifically to counter the problem of needing either 4 mana or an extra turn; if you can cast Oath, you can combo out. Other, more convoluted lines might also be possible, such as double Journey, but I haven't solved that puzzle just yet. Recoup might also make similar lines work.

Theoretically, the deck can also just play out as a Storm deck. Cast some rocks and Rits, tutor, stuff, Tendrils. There used to be a maindeck AN that facilitated this plan, as well as a sideboard Necro that was dropped because all the sutff that blows up Oath blows up Necro, and the point of trans-boarding is to blank their hate and keep them guessing. If you expect lots of Storm hate, bring in dudez. If you expect lots of yard or Oath hate, bring in Storm. If the Oath-Storm plan is still strong, but you need just a little more resiliency in case they have extra hate, bring in Grisel and/or Witness. On the subject of Witness, she may, may sneak into the maindeck now that she both Storms out from Oath and makes very pretty Gifts piles.

Obviously, the deck is weak to yard hate and especially Cage. You can storm out over it, especially G2, but it does hamper both of your easy mode wins. Not being a typical Big Blue Oath deck means you are much less protected in general, and with a very dangerous plan. When it works, it has the advantages of flexibility and adaptability (I've won games with Journey-->3x Burning Wish before), raw power, and very strong and sudden trans-boarding that can completely wreck unprepared opponents. This was the first deck where I learned the "shuffle board in, bring out 15" strategy, and it has served me very well.

Any thoughts are appreciated! I hope you find the deck as fun and interesting as I do, and I hope to be here for a long time meeting people and learning more and more about Vintage =)

[WhiteLotus]

There used to be a maindeck AN that facilitated this plan, as well as a sideboard Necro that was dropped because all the sutff that blows up Oath blows up Necro, and the point of trans-boarding is to blank their hate and keep them guessing.

Just wanted to point out, Enchantment removal is pretty much irrelevant to necropotence usually.

The deck looks nice although it seems like it's very much all in and easy to hate on, which is not something you want with combo decks (see the success of decks like Undercity informer combo). I'm also not sure you gain much of going this route instead of playing Burning Oath, your deck isn't faster but looses a lot of resilience imo. Ritual decks should be constructed in a way that they are able to abuse Ywill, but should recognize that it's the strategy that people are going to hate on the most, so you need to be able to win without ywill or oath of druids with stuff like mind's desire, necro, bargain and draw7s.

Not having creatures in your oath deck is also going to hurt your hardest game one matchups like Shops and Thalia decks. I don't understand why you have burning wish if it's to keep ywill in the main deck. Memory's journey seems just worse than griselbrands. The low threat density means your deck is going to have trouble against blue decks as well.

Once again why are you not just playing Burning Oath it's a very fun deck and it's pretty competitive with Wasteland and decays on the low count.

[vaughnbros]

Glad to see someone new trying to get into vintage!

The deck certainly seems like it would be a lot better off by cutting the red.  The mana base will improve significantly, and without burning wish you actually get your sideboard back.  And Necropotence and Gifts seem like much better options to increase your threat density.  

I'm not sure what is going on with this in the sideboard:
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Griselbrand
1 Dragon's Breath
1 Eternal Witness
1 Tinker
If you are bad against cage this is the opposite of what you want to be doing.  Laboratory maniac would be an on-color option to replace all of that jazz and again gives you more sideboard space.

You are definitely going to need that sideboard space to beat graveyard/oath hate and shops.

Best of luck to you.

Once again why are you not just playing Burning Oath it's a very fun deck and it's pretty competitive with Wasteland and decays on the low count.

Burning oath is incredibly inconsistent since its running draw 7's and oath targets that are dead in your hand.  This deck is marginally better in this regard and is an area that can be improved on significantly.

[WhiteLotus]

Once again why are you not just playing Burning Oath it's a very fun deck and it's pretty competitive with Wasteland and decays on the low count.

Burning oath is incredibly inconsistent since its running draw 7's and oath targets that are dead in your hand.  This deck is marginally better in this regard and is an area that can be improved on significantly.

Because the typical burning oath decks don't run enough manipulation usually (only one ponder and one bs when they should be running top and a number of preordains), the deck can have pretty inconsistent draws (but most fast combo decks are extremely susceptible to variance usually). The oath targets aren't dead since rituals make Griselbrand castable somewhat and the deck has consistent access to show and tell through burning wish. I don't understand how draw 7s make a deck inconsistent aside from the fact that they are influenced by variance but if that is the case ancestral recall is inconsistent too. He is already playing more dead cards like past in flames and memory's journey instead of Griselbrands anyway.
Burning oath is slightly more inconsistent than straight up Long, but built properly and with good mulliganning it's far from being incredibly inconsistent as you say it is. I didn't know inconsistent decks goldfished on turn two more than half of the time.

[vaughnbros]

I didn't know inconsistent decks goldfished on turn two more than half of the time.

Rogue hermit?  Or whatever he called it did this did this...

Goldfishing consistency is also tremendously different than in game consistency.  Draw 7's are giving my opponent 7 new cards as well, adding even more variance to the equation.  You compared draw 7's to ancestral, 14 random cards vs. 3 random cards are not even close to the amount of variance created.  When looking at these two cards you also have to talk about expected value.  Ancestral has an extremely high positive expected value, so variance is rarely ever going to deviate it to negative.  Whereas draw 7's expected value is much closer to 0, so with its high variance it can easily return a negative value.

but most fast combo decks are extremely susceptible to variance usually

Correct most combo decks live on variance.  I was pointing out one regard where this combo deck is better, and that is a lower variance.  If the rest of the problems of the list are fixed this list can have major benefits over other combo decks.

Lets try to stick with talking about this particular deck from now on though.  This is the guys first attempt at a competitive vintage brew give him some slack.

[serenechaos]

Thanks for the input, guys! I suppose I should clarify a few things; first, this is not my first Vintage deck or even my first competitive one. In the past few years, I've played MUD and Hermit Druid (MUD list being fairly typical and the Druid being somewhat my own brew), and built Dredge, Battle of Wits (I can share that monstrosity if anyone is interested), and helped my girlfriend build a D7 Belcher list that she Top 8'd with.

The variance discussion is a complicated one with a lot of variables. D7's reduce variance in the sense that resolving more than one generally makes a line of play extremely predictable, you see enough cards that each game you do this in you can expect to make very similar lines. It adds variance in that it adds a lot of new unknown variables (opp's random 7 and your random 7).

On the Oath deck: it's not as all-in as it looks. The cool-factor Oath bit built in is completely all-or-nothing, but the deck itself can easily win without Oath and I generally side them out G2 against non-MUD/aggro decks. The main advantage of this risky strategy over standard Burning Oath is perfect goldfishing post-Oath. There's no chance of whiffing in the top 14, life total is next to irrelevant, there's no creature they can answer to halt your engine. You simply WILL win undisrupted (and sometimes disrupted with the correct Journey piles).

Re: Sideboard: The sb is carefully constructed to maximize both Wish flexibility and transformational boarding. Emrakul and BSC come in against MUD. Emrakul and Griselbrand come in against Thalia. Witness comes in 1) When I need to keep the OathStorm plan but need resiliency, 2) When I need a value creature, or 3) When I feel like abusing Gifts piles will be especially strong, or any combination of these three. Tinker/Jar and occasionally Grim Tutor come in when I need to Storm out without relying on my yard as much.

Red is quite necessary and hasn't really been a hindrance with an almost completely gold manabase. Even without Wish, red gives me PiF, Recoup, and EtW as an alt Tendrils v. Leyline or corner cases. Wish/No Wish seems to come down to a matter of preference. The Wishboard has been useful, and it adds Storm and flexibility mid-combo, but maindeck Tendrils +1-2 free slots also has its advantages (cheaper combo turns, significantly more board space, easier time Storming without Gifts/Oath). For now I feel like sticking with Wish to fetch wincons is better for me personally, but I may change it at some point.

Re: Dead cards: PiF is absolutely never dead, and many games have been won where it simply pulled a YawgWin imitation with LED/Deep Anal fueling an early Storm turn. Journey is much trickier, but has plenty of applications. A Journey in hand can essentially "counter" an opposing Will or Bomberman combo, protect your cards from DRS and similar, and simply restock brokens that you intend to redraw or tutor. It's certainly dead more often than most cards, but it is far from useless.

[John Cox]

I tried something like this a while ago. I would add two Hurkyl's main, then against MUD you can shuffle in Hurkyl's, Hurkyls, Yawgmoth's Will. That guarantees a Hurkyl's and a Will back to back, with a possible "time walk" Hurkyl's if you draw an extra. The benefit of doing it this way is that you won't deck yourself and still win for just   .

[serenechaos]

I'm not sure I fully understand your example. Could you please explain

1) How it wins for 1U
2) Why the second Hurkyl's is there
3) What you mean by "Guaranteed Hurkyl's and Will back to back"?

I seem to be missing something important.

[xouman]

I'm not really familiar, but it seems fragile. However, containment priest is dead here, so if it replaces cage in the oath hate, this version can be something.

I played against creatureless oath nearly 17 years ago, soon after exodus came out. That deck featured gaea's blessing to keep moving the deck, and won with manlands.

Some years ago I exiled all creatures to an oath list and still lost to krosan reclamation to y.will and tendrils with the exact mana to win (he told me that a simple daze would crumble his last chance).

There would be a plan B to graveyard? If the plan B is "cheat big creatures with oath", it would suffer similar hate.

[serenechaos]

Yes, Plan B is to side in Tinker/Jar and potentially Grim Tutor, and one of Ad Nauseam/Bargain/Necro (none of which are in my current board, but are probably going back there soon). Just count to 9 turn 1 or 2 with tutors and mana.

[John Cox]

I'm not sure I fully understand your example. Could you please explain

1) How it wins for 1U
2) Why the second Hurkyl's is there
3) What you mean by "Guaranteed Hurkyl's and Will back to back"?

I seem to be missing something important.

The way it works is pretty neat. You flashback Memorys Journey putting Hurykl's, Hurkyl's and Yawgmoth's will in the deck post oath. Your first draw will either draw a Will or a Hurkyl's. If you draw a Hurkyl's, then your going to cast it on their next end step. Next turn if you draw a will your going to win that turn. Otherwise you've drawn second Hurkyl's and you can bounce everything again effectively "Time Walking" into your Will.  If your first draw was a Will then your going to have to have to take damage for a turn until you draw a Hurkyl's. In that case you'll bounce on their upkeep or end step, depending what makes the most sense. Keeping in mind you have one Hurkyl's left in the deck.
The reason this is better than one Hurkyls is that if you drew Will first and had only one Hurkyl's in the deck you would have to cast Hurkyl's and Will on your turn. While you can do that with this configuration you can cast Hurkyl's on their end step with this configuration, letting you win for a lot less mana.

[serenechaos]

Ah, I see now. I suppose that's a pretty solid plan, though I feel like it's dangerous giving them a turn. Hurkyl's will cost more than 2, and if they land more spheres than you can pay for with current mana on board, you just lose.

Theoretically, a Rebuild could be Recall #2 and allow for slightly more flexibility in niche situations where you EOT Recall, draw Rebuild and cycle it.