Oath of Druids - the forgotten combo control deck?

[jshields]

More likely than not there is already a posting somewhere on this on Oath of Druids and its probably in the type 1.5/casual/newbie area.  However, with heavy amounts of Hulk, Gro-a-tog, Dragon, Trinistax, EBA, and Fish in my area, I almost feel like its time for me to look back on my old oath of druids deck.  I am not sure if this is still viable, but before going back to my standard second banana every time in t1 r/u landstill deck or my 5th place out of 24 Gro-a-tog deck, I really feel that something needs to be done in particular in balancing out the matches that I have trouble with - Dragon and Hulk Smash.  My answer at this point is Oath of Druids and I hope that someone can provide me with some guidance in either trying this out before going back to my old landstill habits


The Answer 1.0
4 Polluted Delta
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

The answer????
4 Oath of Druids

Creatures:
2 Cognivore

Control Ideas:
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
3 Stifle - misdirection is not good here
4 Duress
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Damping Matrix


Drawing and Search Engine:
4 Brainstorm
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Cunning Wish
2 Moment's Peace



The rest of this is really something I am unsure of, but I am planning the sideboard at this point

[Bob The Builder]

Lose Duress, get some instants instead. ( 4 Accumulated knowledge combined with 1 intuition or adding a 3rd Cognivore isn't such a bad idea)

Aslo get your Sideboard up here (what Am I to wish for if I don't know your sideboard)

If you're going to play this deck, people might have a hard time against it, but know your deck by heart!

Playing the deck should bring you more answers...

[Shadow Ninja]

The third Cognivore is a bad idea; you'd end up Oathing up a small Cognivore far too often.

You should probably throw Time Walk into your build.  Sure, it's not an instant, but it's still good.

[Chill79]

I would put 1 Darksteel Colossus instead of 3th cognivore...but it's my opinion  :lol:

[Shadow Ninja]

Now that I think about it, you may as well cut the Cognivores and just run one or two Darksteel Colossus.  They're far more resilient and don't die to random Dragon hate (Cognivore, meet Tormod's Crypt AND DIE A BLOODY PAINFUL DEATH).

[Kowal]

I played this deck for a while.

Your mana curve is meant to be pretty solid on two.  As a result, you can't reasonably support hardcasting the phat if it shows up without brainstorm, or if your opponent doesn't trigger oath until the game is over.

I play in Hadley, control capital of the world, so I found myself utilizing the blessing recursion trick to win games far more often than actually triggering the oath.  But, I was running Morphling, and I would again, just because there were at least three games where were he an Akroma, a Colossus, or a Cognivore, I would have lost.

[Shadow Ninja]

Untargetability is pretty good, but Indestructibility isn't too bad, either, and as a control deck, the StPs that may come along should meet up with your counters.

That, and he's a 2 turn clock.  That's not so bad, either.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Have you been able to beat anything with this build?

In my experience Oath has been really bad against some of the decks you listed:
Hulk - they don't play Tog until they can time walk and just win
Dragon - around here everyone is MD Caller of the Claw
Prison - They don't need welders to clear your board
Landstill/Fish - man lands don't activate your oath

What Oath has been good against is:
neo-Stompy - While they still have a heavy disruption base, Oath only costs 1G

GAT - While the old version could out-broken you, the new version must go the beat-down route.

TnT - As long as you keep bloodmoon off the table you should be fine.  Woodripper is a house.

Mask - Even they're manabase allows you to get your engine going.

Mean Slaver - I haven't tested this, but they need to cast creatures to win.

WW - the scourge of the new metagame.  this is white weenie's only bad matchup.

[Kowal]

The only real reason to play this deck is that you can use the recursion to throw the same must-counter at people until they're out of cards, and then you just control the whole game, bbs style.  I'll look for my report.  On my way to 3rd place, I overcame Hulk, Keeper, and others, so whatever you draw from that could be helpful.

[Krizzyn]

@Kowal
What recursion are you referring to in his build?  I dont see a blessing for him, so he's not going to be able to recur anything.  He looks like he's basically praying for his opponent to put out a creature so he can tear thru his deck and have a big fat cognivore.  Of course, this would be happening on his turn and then he would have to be able to protect it for a turn.
@jshields
I dont see how this is good vs dragon as they're never going to trigger your oath until they have either 1 billion bears or you have no deck (and you have no blessing).  I suppose the large counter base and stifles are a good thing but you have to be able to kill them too.

[Kowal]

That's precisely the problem.  His build is extremely sub-par.

[jpmeyer]

The Slaver at PTNO beats Oath because they would just make the other person deck themself with Oath and never attack with their Cognivores.

[Tristal]

I really have to wonder why you'd think of turning to Oath in your metagame.  The only deck in your entire list that your Oath list is passable against is EBA, and even then if they know what you're playing, your Oath will either
1) Never hit the board (Meddling Mage.  Dur!)
2) Not be effective (Fine, so they named wrong.  Swords still crushes your deck.)

Might I suggest going for a different approach - perhaps more "old-school" (I can't believe I'm saying that) Oath with Crater Hellion (Kills all the Caller tokens), Spike Weaver (Still something for Tog to fear) and Akroma (Wins fights with everything).

Of course, given your metagame, I'd rather play Slaver.

[mogote]

I would run Darksteel Colossus as well + add Mystical Tutor and of course Tinker as an alternative for Oath.
Put at least a castable creature in the sideboard. Yawgmoth's Will should probably fit in the SB for an Oathless build post-boarding as well.

[xaos]

i know this deck doesn't run white, but I must say that Funeral Pyre is awesome tech against those decks that choose to not play creatures, and it also stops a bunch of other broken shit from happening too...  sorry its a little off topic, but this is the only oath thread ive seen in ages.

[jpmeyer]

Is there going to be a reason to keep this thread open?  I ask this pretty much because Oath can't beat decks that can disrupt the flow of turns (meaning Tog, Slaver, and Keeper,) can't beat decks with manlands (Fish and Landstill,) and can't beat Dragon.

[xzero]

Manlands are good in Oath because you need an alternative beatdown path if they don't have creatures.

[Kowal]

Thank you captain obvious.

Jaypee, I'd say if they want to discuss Oath further, they aren't hurting anyone as long as they keep it to one thread.

[Hero]

Verdant Touch turns a land into a permanent 2/2 creature, I found that it helps against people who don't play creatures to activate your Oath.

Also, perhaps some of the Dragon's ______ enchantments are worth looking into.  Dragon's Breath, Shadow, Wings, and Teeth will make your creature near unstoppable.  Right now I'm testing a deck with an Akroma, Darksteel C., and a Serra Avatar.  Akroma is very consistent and resilient to a lot of creature removal, but some of the enchantments won't affect her.  D.C. is effective and a two turn clock, pretty much nothing short of returning him to your hand or StP will stop it.  Serra Avatar is just funny because as long as you didn't take too much damage it's game.  

Just some thoughts.

[Bob The Builder]

After playing your deck for a while, I must agree with anyone who advises you not to play oath.

It just doesn't win you enough games.

@Tristal
Indeed it plays better with  Akroma or Crater instead of Cognivore.

Sorry if my initial post was below the avarage advice-givving here, but I'm still looking for a good T1 build myself, since I have no power and want to come up with something of 'my own'.

(I tend to like keeper and Vengeur)

[cssamerican]

If you want to play Oath in anything other than a scrub metagame I would suggest running Cunning Wish and Funeral Pyre in the sideboard. Not only can the Funeral Pyre activate the Oath engine it can also remove Dragons, Squees, and Mindslavers.

For creatures I would just go with 2 Weavers for infinite fog and Morphling. This is the most resilient setup since you can avoid Sword to Plowshares and Duplicant game 1, and you can hardcast all of your threats. Then I would probably have Woodripper and Akroma in the sideboard. Woodripper is great against artifact decks, and Akroma is the bomb versus most decks including Tog.

[jCoKn]

I think I like Hero's creature base, simply because of their resilience to more things. If I had a choice, I'd run 1 Darksteel Colossus, 1 Platinum Angel, 1 Akroma, 1 Phantom Nishoba. Angel is iffy, but if it can manage to stay alive, you win! Oh and I've tried this deck on apprentice with Lightning Greaves (2) MD and they work wonders w/ all your beasts.

[Squirrelman]

My build runs cunning wish SB with one funeral pyre for the game one. It can turn into some kind of UGWphidian after sideboarding. My creatures are the classical Morphlin, Weaver, Feeder trio. Somewhere on this site I saw an interesting build of Oath. It was called Oathstill. It used the Oath engine+lot of manlands and standstills. That could be the way to go, but I haven't played vintage very long so what am I to say?

My own build has worked pretty well against control decks. Just counter, suffle your counters into your library, draw them, counter and so on. Until your opponent decks himself.

[bedafile]

Here's a decklist I'm working on its for a 5 proxy tournament so some power cards are missing. The both Akroma and Darksteel Colossus can be hardcasted and have in my playtesting. Also this build uses a few flashback cards to optimize Oath

4 Oath of Druids
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Leak
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Brainstorm
4 Deep Analysis/AK (Haven't decided yet)
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Sylvan Library

1 Akoma
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Creater Hellion

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yagmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

3 Polluted Delta
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet

SB:
4 River Boa
4 Back to Basics
4 Null Rod
3 ??????

If Oath won't work River Boa goes in and it ussually does the job. I don't have the deck on me right now so I think that's what's in it is but you get the gist of it. Use Cabal Therapy's flashback if your opponent has something really nasty in thier hands. As far as Deel Analysis vs/ AK I still have to do more playtesting. Also the first version I built used Penavus to combo with the Therapys in the graveyard but I think the Colossus is a better threat. Comments anyone?
Thanks

[xzero]

If you have Cabal Therapy in your graveyard, and a fatty in play, why on earth would you want to get rid of your fatty?  Force your opponent to deal with said fatty.