Hello world I have been wanting to write this report since vintage champs, just now finding time. I piloted this list to a 7W 1D 2L in the main event finishing up at the #25 spot. However as many of you know I play all kinds of interesting variants in vintage and this was another homebrew design that left all of my opponents either stunned/baffled or as Paul Lynch said it best “what the @#$% are you playing Mercer”
I am not going to spend a whole lot of time going through the matches I played over the weekend but more of the card choices I selected and why.
I began the design on this deck since the beginning of July and finally had it optimized for Eternal Weekend. I began looking at the “Main Vintage Pillars” and wanted a deck that has very consistent games against each: The Four Pillars I focused on beating were 1. Workshop Decks 2. Dredge 3. Delver/Mentor 4.Blue Decks
I can honestly say my deck design did very well against each of these over the 2 days of vintage I played.
For Example
Day 1- I played against Workshop which is my best matchup winning 3 out 4 times I played against it
Day 2- I played against Workshop 5 times and winning 4 matches and drawing against it in Round 10
Day 1- I played against Dredge winning 1 out 1 times I played against it
Day 2- I played against Dredge winning 2 out 2 times I played against it
Day 1- I played against Mentor winning 1 out 1 times I played against it
Day 2- I played against Mentor/Delver 1 out 1 times I played against it
Day 1- I played against 2 Blue Decks winning 1 out 2 Games I played
Day 2- I played against 2 Blue Decks Winning 1 out 2 Games I played
So the deck I brewed together at first glance is an Oath of Druids deck….However this deck is actually more of a Prison deck based around the current metagame.
Cheat Codes-Oath by Mercer
Business (33)
• 4 Force of Will
• 1 Hurkyl’s Recall
• 2 Energy Flux
• 2 Propaganda
• 4 Chalice of the Void
• 1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
• 1 Ancestral Recall
• 1 Time Walk
• 3 Dack Fayden
• 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 4 Oath of Druids
• 2 Show and Tell
• 1 Blazing Archon
• 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
• 1 Griselbrand
Mana Sources (27)
• 1 Black Lotus
• 1 Mox Emerald
• 1 Mox Jet
• 1 Mox Ruby
• 1 Mox Sapphire
• 1 Sol Ring
• 4 Forbidden Orchard
• 2 Scalding Tarn
• 2 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Volcanic Island
• 1 Tropical Island
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Island
• 1 Forest
• 1 Strip Mine
• 4 Wasteland
• 3 Ancient Tomb
Sideboard (15)
• 4 Leyline of the Void
• 3 Ravenous Trap
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 2 Abrupt Decay
• 3 Sudden Shock
• 1 Crucible of the Worlds
Ok so lets look at why this deck is well positioned at each of the Main pillars
We will start with the Blue Player’s“ME” bane of the format – Workshop. This deck is very very well versed against the workshop metagame in Game 1: first off if we look at the mana base there are 21 Lands optimizing land drops every turn against the shops player. Additionally, against spheres we have Ancient Tomb which negates sphere effects and we have Wasteland/Stripmine. Fight fire with Fire which is awesome when they are vying for sphere effects on the board. Also I can not tell you how many times I was on the draw against shops on game one and smiled when they go T1 Workshop Sphere of Resistance Go and I wasteland them under their own sphere.
and quickly just continue dropping lands and resolving a Dack, Oath or Energy flux
Against the Workshop we also have some very interesting card choices in our arsenal
MAIN DECK – ENERGY FLUX x 2
card is so sick
We also have 4 fetch, 2 basic lands, 3 Dack Fayden, 2 Jace, 1 hurklys recall, 4 FOW, 5 Strip Effects, 3 Ancient Tombs, 4 Oath and 2 Propaganda. Also if were on the play we have Chalice of the Void at 0
Quite honestly this is a strong lock against our opponent. The other interesting card to Consider in our Arsenal is the Blazing Archon. Since our friendly workshop player is an aggressive deck that must attack you to win and it makes sense to put a creature in there that stops that all together.
Typically it was my experience you win 90% of game 1 against the workshop pilot.
Sideboarding Game 2
-4 Chalice
-1 Tabernacle unless you play against hangerback walker
+2 Ancient Grudge
+2 Abrupt Decay
+1 Crucible World
Pillar 2 Dredge
The cards that are strong against the game 1 in our arsenal
5 Strip Effects, 2 Propaganda, 1 Tabernacle, 2 Show and Tell, 2 Tutors, Blazing Archon and Griselbrand
Essentially the Game 1 will go like this T1 opponent plays a Bazaar pass, depending on your hand if you have a tutor and a show and tell you find Blazing Archon ASAP and you win the game. If you have wasteland effects keep them at bay on the bazaars and find either Tabernacle or Nail in the coffin propaganda
Game 2 or 3 Sideboarding is the same.
+4 Leyline and +3 Rav Trap
-1 Hurkly’s Recall,- 2 Energy Flux, -3 Force of will, -1 Emrakul,
You want to keep Chalice of the Void in play to resolve at 1 to keep natures claim in check.
Also depending on your hand If I was on the play against Dredge if I lost game 1 I played very aggressively in game 2 to resolve the Blazing Archon as late as T2 every game and it served me very well.
Delver/Mentor/Pyromancer UWR or BUR
This deck is very threating against them. As this and many blue decks run cheap cards: such as mental misstep, delver, thoughtseize, brainstorm, preordain, recall, cabal therapy, lightning bolt, swords to plowshares, REB/Pyroblast etc. etc. etc. and that is why Mental Misstep is so broken. I just assumed I would make my mental misstep a permanent with chalice of the void@1=more broken. This card is in my opinion the very reason why this deck can handle blue decks so well.
Think about the few cards I mentioned above and look at the metagame for a moment. If I resolve chalice against my opponent normally at 1 it will cut off almost 60% or more of their deck. Sure I don’t stop everything at chalice at 1 but it shuts down their draw tempo to a crawl and virtually creates an enormous amount of dead draws for my opponent.
Also you will naturally draw more threats now as their hand is filled with useless cards and you use dack fayden as your draw engine. Also if you want to cheat you draw 2 cards and drop Emerakul in the graveyard to get all your juicy wastlands and lock pieces back
Ok we have their hands locked up. Lets wasteland some mana sources for shiggles and force our threats through. Major threats at this point are the oath of druids/SNT and/or propraganda/planeswalkers.
As a prison deck we have almost made all of our cards Misstep proof except 3/ sol ring, recall, vamp so this deck encourages us to play chalice at 1 and most of our cards are enchantments/planeswalkers so it turns off opponents flusterstorms. The deck also encourages our chalice at 0 to shut down early moxes or drop an early energy flux against a blue deck to keep their mana sources thoroughly shut off. All the while we are making land drops and wastlanding them in the middle to incremental values.
Against Delver U/W or UWR or something of that variant if you resolve the Chalice at 1 on T1, T2 you will win the game 1 over 90% of the time in my testing. Additionally Keeping Chalice in and Energy Flux in these matches are very good against the lists with White. I spent most of my time fighting the white sources in these matchups to keep containment priest off the board and graffdiggers cage at bay.
Against this match up my sideboarding was
+2 Ancient Grudge
+3 Sudden Shock
+1 Abrupt Decay
-1 Hurkyls Recall, - 1 Jace, -1 Dack,- 1 Force of will, -1 Forest, - 1 Ancient Tomb
Against control blue decks you want to continue down the prison road by attacking there mana base just like shops does with concentration on stealing artifacts with dack, chalice, flux and waste effects.
Against the mirror I had no testing but stuck with my plan against control blue decks which provided a strong assortment of fun for my round 9 opponent which was land destruction and resolving Jace the mind sculptor.
Sideboarding against the mirror I put in crucible worlds and sudden shocks and 1 abrupt decay. The best creature to resolve against Oath is Blazing Archon as they are stuck locked from attacking. I boarded in sudden shock on the off chance that we had an oath on board and it felt like the best thing against the orchard match up other than the wastelands by just killing a token at the end of turn to use oath on the following turn and it helps kill opposing Jaces. Basically this is a game of attrition typically won by who resolves Jace or has the most orchards.
My deck influences was actually Shops and “The Answer” Shops by controlling my opponents permanents and the barrage of land destruction. “The Answer” having blue control deck with chalice’s. I played the “the answer” a while back to a T8 finish and wrote my tourney responses about it…I really liked the design of the list however I just felt like it was lacking on dealing with resolved permanents and it was very slow at getting threats down to “just win the game”.
Final thoughts on the list. You are always going to playing against cage except against dredge, so just sideboard knowing that and Blazing Archon was an absolute beating. Tabernacle is fun in an Oath deck because you can tie up there mana and give them a spirit token that they can not sacrifice first to trigger oath also using propaganda and Orchard together was like cheating as you kind of get your 5 color mana freely.
Hope you all like my article and give the deck a try.
This is a Game 1 Against a Workshop Player...for Validation for my Blue Brethren ~Matt Mercer
