[Article] Meandeck's Angels: A Primer on Meandeck Oath

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=8343

Mean Deck Oath placed an astounding four players in the Top 8 of the most recent StarCityGames.com Power 9 tournament, and we know that you're all dying to find out how the deck came about, what the strengths and weaknesses are, and how you can either win with it or beat it. Steve has included all this information in his complete primer on the hottest new deck in Type One, so what are you waiting for?

[Kowal]

Good read.

I liked how you explained everything very concisely.  It kept the article well paced and much less boring than, say, the Oath mirror :p

The only thing I can really say that I didn't like about it (besides, you know, losing to it at Richmond) is that the ending feels a little bit TOO concise.  Going over the scoop to Jacob, I think, could have been made fairly dramatic and interesting.

Other than that though, great job.

[Bram]

Very good article. Well above average. Your step-by-step explanation of not only card choices but choices of different routes to take with the deck was quite informative and is a virtual must-read for anyone getting involved in serious vintage deckbuilding.

I expect prices of Oaths to soar to pre-extended-banning levels starting....now!

[Saucemaster]

Great article, Steve.  I'm on the damn team and I *still* enjoyed reading it.  Top-notch work.

[DB]

Oath of Druids triggers at the beginning of each player's upkeep.

There is an important distinction to what you said in the article.  The oath will not trigger at all if there isn't an imbalance.

The check for the number of creatures in play is made at the beginning of upkeep and this ability does not trigger if the condition is not met. The condition is also checked on resolution and the ability does nothing if it is not still true. [D'Angelo 1999/06/01]

[Moxlotus]

Darksteel Colossus (DSC)
Speed:
The speed of the deck is two turns after your first Oath - so three turns after you resolve Oath.

Do you mean 2 turns after your first ACTIVATION of oath-so FOUR turns after you resolve oath?

1-cast oath
2-oath up DSC
3-attack
4-attack

[edit]-Just reread some of the other parts.  It is in the correct context, just a little confusing on the wording.

[Anders Noer]

Very well written article. It is a pleasure to see tech being shared so willingly - uncommon these days.

It seems that Team Meandeck put a lot of testing time into this deck, preparing for the SCG tournament.
This is a case study in how ingenious deckbuilding is achieved. A thourough walkthrough for people wanting to pick up the deck and pre-emptive discussion of card choices (also covering cards that are left out and why they were cut/abandoned).

Nice work lads. Keep the tech coming

[JACO]

Good read.

I liked how you explained everything very concisely.  It kept the article well paced and much less boring than, say, the Oath mirror

I concur. Steve, I think that along with the MeanDeath triumverate of articles, this is your finest work so far. It was informative, concise, and solidly explained MeanDeck's card choices in depth. Keep up the good work!

[Smmenen]

Good read.

I liked how you explained everything very concisely.  It kept the article well paced and much less boring than, say, the Oath mirror :p

The only thing I can really say that I didn't like about it (besides, you know, losing to it at Richmond) is that the ending feels a little bit TOO concise.  Going over the scoop to Jacob, I think, could have been made fairly dramatic and interesting.

Other than that though, great job.

I don't know why everyone is wincing about the Oath mirror.  

It's much much simpler than most control mirrors and not even REMOTELY as boring as 4CC mirrors or Mono Blue mirrors.  Oath mirrors are generally over pretty quickly.  It's basically almost an entirely luck based mirror - very little skill involved (the opposite of the 4cc or Tog mirror) and relies on who drew more Orchards/Wastes.  So I don't see why that is that boring.  Really.

[Smmenen]

Very well written article. It is a pleasure to see tech being shared so willingly - uncommon these days.

It seems that Team Meandeck put a lot of testing time into this deck, preparing for the SCG tournament.
This is a case study in how ingenious deckbuilding is achieved. A thourough walkthrough for people wanting to pick up the deck and pre-emptive discussion of card choices (also covering cards that are left out and why they were cut/abandoned).

Nice work lads. Keep the tech coming

Thanks!  The article probably only showed you a glimpse of the amount of effort we put into it.  The same amount of effort we put into Doomsday and Goth Slaver and other decks that can't be disclosed at the moment.

[dicemanx]

Very nice article.

What are your thoughts on the aggro-Workshop and Stax match ups. You mentioned a close match that you lost in Swiss play, and there was the close match played by Jacob in the finals, but it seems that those matches were decided by busted hands. Which deck would you say has the edge pre and post SB? Do you think that Workshop decks packing Crucibles could use up to four Mazes of Ith if they want to improve this match-up, as we are likely to see an explosion of Oath decks in the coming months?

[kirdape3]

Game 1, they have largely irrelevant 4 mana creatures in Juggernaut and either Su-Chi or Synod Centurion tank.  (Complete with 20-pdr technology!)  They'll lay down one of those creatures, then find out that racing an Akroma is rather difficult when you're that threat light.  I doubt that the game is much better than 1 of 3 for the Workshop aggro man game one.

Games 2 and 3 they become rather odd Stax/Drain Slaver hybrids by taking out all the creatures and bringing in Chalices and Platz and Trinispheres (if they're not maindecking those things).  These games are MUCH closer although Energon Flux and Back to Basics are a giant beating against Workshops and they get Chalice which is downright painful.

Overall, the matchup is in Oath's favor, but it's not as lopsided as we'd like.

[Smmenen]

Very nice article.

What are your thoughts on the aggro-Workshop and Stax match ups. You mentioned a close match that you lost in Swiss play, and there was the close match played by Jacob in the finals, but it seems that those matches were decided by busted hands. Which deck would you say has the edge pre and post SB? Do you think that Workshop decks packing Crucibles could use up to four Mazes of Ith if they want to improve this match-up, as we are likely to see an explosion of Oath decks in the coming months?

The only reason any of us lost to a Workshop aggro deck was becuase it was a) jay and b) he had TWO maindeck Seal of Cleansings and c) Jay was running FOUR Smokestacks md (despite having 4 Juggernauts)

This is how I see the matchup:

Aggro-Workshop:
Game one is Extremely favorable for you.  They  have no way to stop Oath.  

Game Two: it comes down to cards like Plat Angel, Duplicant, and the like.  If they can get that shit online with Welder, its very hard for you to win.  

To summarize, 5/3 and Stacker are 50/50 post board but highly favorable pre-board.  

Stax is much more difficult game one, but much easier game two.  Energy Flux + B2B against Stax is GAME BOYS.  Either one is usually enough actually.  That's why we had such good hate.

If it helps THERE WAS ALOT OF Workshop decks played by all the short bus people who were kept out of contention by us.

Over all we played at least 8-10 Workshop aggro matches and probably lost no more than a third of those.

[Saucemaster]

If it helps THERE WAS ALOT OF Workshop decks played by all the short bus people who were kept out of contention by us.

Well, and by each other.  Those round-6 (or was it round-5?) pairings were harsh on the poor 'Bussers.

However, yes, the assessment of the Workshop Aggro match was dead on.  One of the considerations in deciding to play it at SCG2 was its game-one performance against WS Aggro.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

Good read.

I liked how you explained everything very concisely.  It kept the article well paced and much less boring than, say, the Oath mirror :p

The only thing I can really say that I didn't like about it (besides, you know, losing to it at Richmond) is that the ending feels a little bit TOO concise.  Going over the scoop to Jacob, I think, could have been made fairly dramatic and interesting.

Other than that though, great job.

I don't know why everyone is wincing about the Oath mirror.  

It's much much simpler than most control mirrors and not even REMOTELY as boring as 4CC mirrors or Mono Blue mirrors.  Oath mirrors are generally over pretty quickly.  It's basically almost an entirely luck based mirror - very little skill involved (the opposite of the 4cc or Tog mirror) and relies on who drew more Orchards/Wastes.  So I don't see why that is that boring.  Really.

Matches that require more skill aren't as boring.  You just said that the oath mirror requires almost no skill and is nearly exclusively luck based, making it similar to a game of war.  How is that not boring?

Great article, though, Steve.  I thouroughly enjoyed the read and found it very informative.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Great read Steve! This style to discuss the development of a deck is really what an article about a new deck should be. Going into the different strategies and how they're tied to the creature-base used was great to sharpen deckbuilding skills. Sweet

As for this:

It's much much simpler than most control mirrors and not even REMOTELY as boring as 4CC mirrors or Mono Blue mirrors. Oath mirrors are generally over pretty quickly. It's basically almost an entirely luck based mirror - very little skill involved (the opposite of the 4cc or Tog mirror) and relies on who drew more Orchards/Wastes. So I don't see why that is that boring. Really.

As mentioned before, that luck-factor is what makes Oath-mirrors so boring. They'll take a ton of time just to determine who is luckier.
On the other hand I love to play 4cc mirrors (maybe because I usually win them ), as usually the player who misplays first looses. The only annoying thing is the time they take.
As for MonoU mirrors, it's so long ago that I last played that matchup, I'm not sure if I liked it. I think I actually did like playing that mirror, but I'm not sure of it. It was definitly more fun than playing anything B2B-effected against it, though.

[walkingdude]

First off, just want to say I really liked the article.

In reaction to the article and the decks general success a lot of people have been mentioning various sideboard hate cards against oath, like blasting station or more realistically claws of gix. It seems to me that people are overlooking the obvious main deck solution to oath.

Forbidden Orchard

Theoretically I can imagine main decking this in tog. It gives me 5 colors of mana and when I am ready to win its not like a few spirit tokens are going to get in the way of my berserk tog. Likewise in keeper angel can fly over the tokens and the life gain could offset the token damage.

If oath moves to a back burner there may be no need for it, but the fact is a few 1/1s really just are not a big deal and most powerful archetypes could work around them if needed. This means that if oath is really prevalent the big decks can just start packing orchards of their own in the main deck. It’s a 5 color mana source so although it increases vulnerability to wasteland its not a terrible burden to fit. This seems like a factor that will naturally keep oath in check.

[bebe]

I've thought about main decking Orchards. It will work in a few decks but the logical replacement in many decks are your fetchlands or basics. If you are running Brainstorm you now lose one of the best draw engines around. If you run basics you open yourself up to B2B and Crucible by removing the Islands. There is no transparent solution. We will all have to sacrifice valuable slots in our side or main to deal with Oath. Unfortunately most answers are not that synergistic with the rest of your deck.

[walkingdude]

Finding the precise right cards to cut would be the product of lots of testing, but my intuition would be to prune back the numbers of duals in a deck so you still had the option to fetch a dual but that sometimes when you drew them they would be orchards.
For example in tog -1 flooded strand -2 volcanic island -1 underground sea +4 orchards. Which would leave you with multiple undergrounds to fetch and 1 volcanic to grab if you needed red right then. Also it increases your total number of red sources and black sources and only costs you 1 basic land getting slot so it doesn’t leave you too vulnerable. Also, if this matters in your metagame it boasts your resistance to titan.

[majestyk1136]

This is nuts.  You're planning on MAINDECKING Orchard to shore up your matchup against 1 DECK in the metagame?  Let's think about what this does to the rest of your matchups:

4cC:  This deck lives and dies by 1/1 walking Dorks.  This deck will chew you up and spit you out if you activate that Orchard more than a couple of times.

Decks with 5 Strips:  You improve the quality of their strips by encouraging them to not strip your Orchard, thereby forcing you to use it for mana almost every turn and deliver to them a cheap win condition if they can just hold off your Tog.  As a Titan player I don't care that I can't nail a land like Orchard or City of Brass with the Titan, as 5 strips can deal with that problem anyways.   Togs are alot less scary when all the tog player controls is 1-2 Forbidden Orchards and a Trinisphere or Crucible happens to be in Play.

Oath:  They have 4 Orchards too.  So the whole thing boils down to who gets lucky enough to draw their second Orchard first or who gets their Waste first.  Do you want to throw the concept of Playskill and good deck design out the window in favor of getting lucky?

Find another answer... Try something like Engineered Plague in the Board or Night of Souls' Betrayal.  Try some enchantment hate.  Try something other than taking a decent deck and making it bad against almost every other deck in the format.

[Thug]

You could also just play fast-combo which doesn't even need Orchard to beat Oath, but gets even better with Orchards.

I think the metagame has almost shifted to a three-axis metagame.

Combo beats Control
Control beats Workshop
Workshop beats Combo

Their are some deck trying to shore up their matchups and slightly moving out of this model (Control-Slaver for example, it is pretty good against Workshops, but even weaker versus Combo). Broken hands also do not fit into this concept, but overall I thinks it's a pretty good description of the metagame

---

More on topic:

Deep Analysis is soo amazing in Oath, and with 4 Intuitions I think it deserves at least a spot in the sideboard.
And despite what people say, they are never dead, they are even pretty good against Stax, believe me

Koen

[bebe]

@majestyk1136
I said I thought about it and discarded it as a bad solution. I agree with your assesment wholeheartedly.

I also do not like Claws of Gix. Again, against what other deck would I bring it in for? We have been testing Maze of Ith as it is useful against a number of decks and maindecking Naturalizes which generally will find some use if even only to remove a Mox, Crucible or other annoying enchantment or artifact. The solution must fit the deck as spots are too valuable to waste and any sideboard card needs to be useful against more than just one deck.

[majestyk1136]

I know that you said that you had discarded the idea, but it seems that some people have latched onto this idea as some sort of panacea to solving the Oath Matchup.

I still believe that clever play gives you a chance in the first game against Oath without having to dilute your maindeck and that you can own them after boarding if you're unfortunate enough to have them pull Orchard, Mox Oath with FoW backup on Turn 1.  They can't draw that hand all the time, I mean come on! That hand is a 5-card combo for crying out loud.  Maybe the time really has arrived for Skullclamp, but as a sideboard option against Oath instead of some of the more Janky options.

[wizmentor]

This is nuts.  You're planning on MAINDECKING Orchard to shore up your matchup against 1 DECK in the metagame?  Let's think about what this does to the rest of your matchups:

4cC:  This deck lives and dies by 1/1 walking Dorks.  This deck will chew you up and spit you out if you activate that Orchard more than a couple of times.

Decks with 5 Strips:  You improve the quality of their strips by encouraging them to not strip your Orchard, thereby forcing you to use it for mana almost every turn and deliver to them a cheap win condition if they can just hold off your Tog.  As a Titan player I don't care that I can't nail a land like Orchard or City of Brass with the Titan, as 5 strips can deal with that problem anyways.   Togs are alot less scary when all the tog player controls is 1-2 Forbidden Orchards and a Trinisphere or Crucible happens to be in Play.

Oath:  They have 4 Orchards too.  So the whole thing boils down to who gets lucky enough to draw their second Orchard first or who gets their Waste first.  Do you want to throw the concept of Playskill and good deck design out the window in favor of getting lucky?

Find another answer... Try something like Engineered Plague in the Board or Night of Souls' Betrayal.  Try some enchantment hate.  Try something other than taking a decent deck and making it bad against almost every other deck in the format.

High Market doesn't have most of these problems:


High Market
Card type: Land
Oracle text: T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T, Sacrifice a creature: You gain 1 life.

It's a possible answer to oath.  It's a land, so it's not counterable, and doesn't fall prey to
"EOT give you a dork" nastiness (that skullclamp, for example is vulnerable to).
It doesn't hand your opponent extra kill mechanisms. Can replace mana sources in a deck, instead of a spell.
Of course, having extra nonbasics that generate only colorless mana isn't the best,
but in an oath-heavy environment (if such a place were to ever exist), I could see
High Market as a meta-game card.

Of course, Steve seemed pretty perturbed by maindeck seal of cleansings,
so that's a possibility as well.

[Ric_Flair]

Steve the primer was excellent and the deck is quite impressive.  I am glad to see Meandeck make a comeback after getting their collective clocks cleaned in the last SCG event.

[Smmenen]

Well to be fair, of the six of us at the last event, one DID make top 8 .  

And Meandeck did quite well at Gencon too

Thanks though.  Have you tested the deck?

[Malhavoc]

Really good article Smmenen! I've really appreciated the deckbuilding part, which convinced me to use the beaut and the beast instead of the darksteel+nishoba I was running (however, I've found that against aggro decks which do not deal at least 2 damages to themselver nishoba is strictly better than SOTN). On a sidenot, maybe the tournment report was a bit lacking, but that's not really a problem.

However, I would like to discuss about some problems with the deck if you don't mind. As it is now, a blood moon would not destroy your mana base, but will make you unable to cast oath apart from using the right mox or the lotus. And against creatureless decks, it will prevent you from giving them creatures you had not found the orchard yet. Even cards like platinum angel (as you've already pointed out), meddling mage, a chalice of the void for two, a scepter with fire/ice, or even sideboarded hate cards like claw of gix can be a automatic loss. Of course you've taken some sideboard cards for these problems (like the control magic for platinum), but I think the best option would be to have something main deck, don't you think? I've tested it adding 3 cunning wish (three to make a better use of the 4 intuitions). Of corse something had to go, and I've opted for some of the last cards you added:

-2 mana leak
-1 impulse

+3 cunning wish

And adding in the sideboards some cards like:
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Misdirection
2 Rushing River
1 Stifle
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Discombobulate (just to try, probably counterspell is better)

Of course a lot can be modified in the sideboard, but I think that the must-have are the 2 rushing rivers, since they can resolve all of the above problems. Cunning wish is also a blue instant card good to use foW, misdi or just to untap a pristine angel, and even if we don't need a silver bullet, we can alway opt for card advantage like FoF.

Of course with these modifications we loose a bit of tutoring and pure protection (impulse and mana leak), but I really think that's a cheap price to gain the ability to face any trouble maindeck.

What are your thoughts about this?

P.S.
Another card which we must fear is cranial extraction, since hardcasting those creatures isn't easy at all, but that's another problem.

[Necropotenza]

IMO adding Cunning wish to the deck to shore up the decks weaknesses is not the way to go. Its use makes you bastardize the sideboard, loosing awesome SB cards like Energy flux or Pristine angel. Engineered explosives or some kind of bounce might be acceptable.

[Malhavoc]

IMO adding Cunning wish to the deck to shore up the decks weaknesses is not the way to go. Its use makes you bastardize the sideboard, loosing awesome SB cards like Energy flux or Pristine angel. Engineered explosives or some kind of bounce might be acceptable.

Well, I just think that we NEED something main deck. We can't accept to just lose from a chalice for two just because we did not have an active FoW!  

However the way to avoid that is open to discussion. I like cunning since it has the option to be used not only for getting silver bullets, but also for good bombs like FoF. However I feel that also some kind of bounce or removal maindeck could do the trick. Probably rushing river being the best choice.

[Grollub]

Firstly I’d like to say congratulations (and celebrations) to Smmenen and the other Meandeckers on a job well done.

Let’s just get right to it.

One thing that struck me concerning the U/G Oath list was the absolute lack of removal both in the main deck and in sideboard (baring Control Magic). This "flaw", or choice of design, looks to me as it could easily be this deck’s Achilles Heel as the opponent could simply out-fat/out-speed you and ignore Oath of Druids - which paradoxically enough seemed to be this deck's plan, ignoring of the opponent and thusly rendering this deck a sluggish mono-blue BBS with high casting cost finishers. Bad.

There's a myriad of decks that could be able to ignore Oath’s game plan and its scrawny creatures:

Goblins.dec: Blazingly fast, Akroma might block and attack but Sharpshooters or a horde of green men accompanied by one or two 10+/2 Piledrivers can make mincemeat of the life total, faster than the Angel/Spirits. The ability to go, “Oops, I win� with Sharpshooters/Goblin Grenade kind of scare me.

Angry Hermit: Again, like Goblins, amazing speed. All this deck cares for is to resolve Hermit Druid and activate him - due to no removal this is easily done if he resolves (Duress and Cabal Therapies help fighting the counter wall), if he gets countered chances of resolving a Buried Alive and getting the win that way increases. 26+/26+ Ghouls trample over puny 5 to 6 toughness pro-blackers.

Affinity: Still smoking from the last PT, some part of me doesn’t want it to happen, but some part of me thinks it could. Due to Fish slowly disappearing in the meta game, and thereby lowering the amount of Null Rods, could Affinity rear it's ugly head here? The deck is fast enough to out speed Oath (and most decks baring blistering fast combination decks), and their creatures can easily out-fat Angel/Spirit and any other for that matter. The latest Extended builds of Affinity were incredible resistant against hate, I wonder if the T1 versions can be too.


So really, my question is, in the upcoming tournaments wouldn't it be a liability to run the stable U/G version instead of opting for, perhaps, U/G/W for swords? (Or did the lately Ravager smashing just scared me too much).
Is it really worth having the more stable mana base and more consistency in terms of more 3/4-offs (the correct name in this context is dodging me - sorry), over being able to handle decks that can run you over, faster than you can run them over. Or am I looking at this with completely wrong glasses? (still in my control oath mindset?)

/Grrrollub