[Deck] Unpowered Oath

[atwa2002]

Mana:
7x Island
4x Polluted Delta
4x Forbidden Orchard
2x Underground Sea
1x Tropical Island
1x Forest
1x Strip Mine
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mox Diamond

Combo:
4x Oath of Druids
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Spirit of the Night
1x Akroma, angel of wrath

Draw/Search:
4x Accumulated Knowledge
4x Brainstorm
2x Night's Wisper
2x Cunning Wish
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor

Disruption:
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell
4x Mana Leak
2x Duress
1x Misdirection

Sideboard:
3x Naturalize
3x Energy Flux
3x Hydroblast
2x Coffin Purge
1x Platinum Angel
1x Pristine Angel
1x Misdirection
1x Berserk

Where I live, no one has power (including me), so there is no problem for me, playing any deck without power.
Because of this, I splashed black for some extra disruption and some aditional search cards.

During testing, I haven't found any problems. Stax isn't a problem for me (a populair deck around here), nor are any other workshop-based decks.

I would like some comments on this build, I'm not playing a lot of tournaments, so I'm sure there most be something that can be improved.

Sidebord is made especialy for my meta, Naturalize is a no-brainer, Coffin Purge and Energy Flux are for welder-based decks, Hydroblast is for (chain-)Goblins, the extra Misdirection is a good card for combo.

Please, share your thoughts.

[Malhavoc]

I would rise Duress to 4, maybe lowering mana leak to two. I'm not too sure about the AK when you run no intuition (which is a right choice since you don't have power). For the same reason (having no power) I would reconsider cunning, which is quite slow. What about using rushing river and explosives instead? The sideboad can be improved too. With all those basic lands why not run back to basics? Of course if in your meta there are few non-basic lands, this won't be useful. Another good card is energy flux (or woodripper) if you have many games against artifact prison decks. Also consider running some wastelands maindeck, really useful against workshops, bazaars and mirror matches (and mazes of ith too).

[atwa2002]

Maybe raising the amount of Duress could be a good idea, I'm defenatly going try give it a try.

AK is a very good card in this deck, because the oath will probably put at least a few of them in the graveyard, If the blessing goes to the grave also, I can respont to it by casting one, giving me a lot of cards and getting them shuffled back in my library afterwards.

Intuition is very hard te get here, but because of the lack of power, I can use a wish because the deck won't win before turn 3. (and berserking a spirit or a akroma is a very cool thing to do), If my deck would rely on them, I would play 4 of them, but it doesn't so I think playing 2 of them is the correct number, they always come in handy.

I forgot to add a strip mine to the decklist, I'll edit the list

[Bastian]

I love Oath of Druids, it's my favourite card EVAR'!!!

Unfortunetely it has been banned in just about every format except for type 1...

Fortunetely it's a deck that can be VERY easily played on a budget since the lack of power only slows it down a little.

Here's what I changed in the deck:

5 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea  
1 Forest
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond

4 Oath of Druids
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Spirit of the Night
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
3 Impulse
2 Cunning Wish  
1 Lim Dul’s Vault
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

4 Duress
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Mana Leak
1 Misdirection

Sideboard:
3 Naturalize
3 Energy Flux
3 Hydroblast
2 Coffin Purge
1 Iridescent Angel
1 Platinum Angel
1 Pristine Angel
1 Misdirection

More Tropicals - you want to be drawing green mana consistently. I took out the lonely strip. With no added wastelands a lonely strip seems a bit useles. (forgive my type 1 scrubbiness if I'm making one of those "arcane denial" type mistakes).

Night's Whisper OUT; Impulses IN - Impulses are blue, so they can be pitched to Force of Will and Misdirection. Impulses dig deeper and this deck is mostly about getting a combo in play, protecting it. Card advantage is nice but Impulse ends up being better than Night's Whisper not to mention it has better sinergy with Pristine Angel than Night's Whisper since it's an instant, not a sorcery.

Mystical tutor OUT; LD Vault IN - What are you using Mystical tutors for? Getting more card drawing? Duress? Counters? Since you're not packing any more major card drawers or searchers such as, say... Ancestral or Fact or Fiction or game swinging spells like Balance the mystical seems out of place. I replaced with LD Vault because you can get either an Orchard or Oath with it. Intuition's out not only because of your difficulty in getting them but also because you're not running as much acceleration as a fully powered deck would be.

Chrome Mox comes in instead of Petal. It might be an otherwise bad choice, but it stays longer and it's actually better than the Petal (at least in a control deck) and you have plenty of Impulses, Brainstorm, etc to imprint on them.

The deck seems fine to me by now... if such I might end up testing a couple of Intuitions instead of a LD Vault and an Impulse (for comboing with AK) I'll see that later on...

Berserk's out... Akroma and Spirit are large enough and you'll end up losing after a hit. If you could kill the opponent after berserking a creature once it would have been a fine pick, otherwise you're just killing yourself a creature to NOT deal fatal damage to the opponent.

[atwa2002]

Thanx, those are the comments I was hoping for

[atwa2002]

After testing a lot of comments posted here, I ended up with the following deck:

Combo:
4x Oath of Druids
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Akroma, angel of wrath
1x Spirit of the Night

Draw:
4x Accumulated Knowledge
4x Brainstorm
2x Impulse

Search:
2x Cunning Wish
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Crop Rotation
1x Lim-Dul's Vault

Disrupt:
4x Counterspell
4x Force of Will
4x Duress
2x Daze
1x Miscalculation

Mana:
6x Island
4x Forbidden Orchard
4x Polluted Delta
2x Underground Sea
2x Forest
1x Tropical Island
1x Mox Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
1x Lotus Petal

Sideboard:
3x Energy Flux
3x Hydroblast
2x Coffin Purge
2x Naturalize
1x Pristine Angel
1x Platinum Angel
1x Misdirection
1x Stifle
1x Berserk

I have made the following changes:

-Changed the sideboard, it is better now for a lot matchups (and I am not going to replace Berserk, it is my most expencive card and it was a present from my wife)
-During testing, miscalulation proved to be better than mana leak
-Added daze (I had never looked at it before, but is it as a very good card)
-Replaced night's wisper for impulse, it works a lot better, I can use it for force of will, chrome mox and it digges deeper than wisper.
-Added Lim-Dul's Vault (can dig though your whole deck to find the card you need)
-Removed the lone strip mine
-Added chrome mox

Any other comment is welkom.

[WilD]

Ok, I know I am going to sound like a n00b here, but can someone explain what some of the card choeces here are for? I mean, wouldn't having 2 Akroma's be better than 1, because if the Oath goes and finds the second one, they go to the graveyard and you can use Krosan (Not Gaea's) Blessing to get them back into your library? I mean, I may look like an idiot because I'm missing something here, so can someone kindly explain this to me or point me to somewhere which will?

Thanks

[Bastian]

The fact is that Spirit of the Night comes the turn after Akroma and the turn it comes into play you're going to deal 12 damage (Akroma and Spirit) to your opponent and with a couple of Akromas that just wouldn't be possible at all.

By oathing up and having more than one creature in play you're going to kill your opponent much faster.

Turn 1 - Mox, Orchard, Oath
Turn 2 - Oath up Akroma, attack for 6
Turn 3 - Oath up Spirit, attack for 12 with both (18 damage total)
Turn 4 - Attack with both, GG

W/ 2 Akromas:
Turn 1 - Mox, Orchard, Oath
Turn 2 - Oath up Akroma, attack for 6
Turn 3 - Attack for 6 (12 total)
Turn 4 - Attack for 6 (18 total)
Turn 5 - Attack for 6, GG

The extra turn you gain because you're attacking with Spirit can be vital. Remember that in Vintage a single turn is more than enough to turn a losing situation into a winning one. Many broken things can happen along a single turn and that's why you're interested in beating your opponent as fast as you can, at least game one. I'm sure reading Stephen Menendian's explanation on the deck choices will explain this better than I can do it.

[WilD]

Ok, thanks I read the card choices, but a couple of things were still unclear.

[JugOn]

in my opinion the best option is UG Oath, because you only include a few black cards, and if you play 2 colors, you can add lands as 2 wastelands and 2 treetop village/mishras factory and a single Crucible of worlds. With this, you will have more possibilities in the long-game, don't forget that you won't win all the matchs on the 4 turn. Also this configuration allows you to add back to basics if your meta change to a non-basic lands meta (in this case the treetops maybe go out).

Sorry my English

[sierra_gandalf]

you won't use crucible of worlds in a deck that's always recycling its graveyard with the blessing... i run no treetop village in my deck:

4 Polluted Delta
4 Forbidden Orchard
6 Island
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Tropical Island

4 Oath of druids
1 Akroma
1 SOTN
1 Gaea's Blessing

1 Sol Ring
2 Intuition
4 FoW
4 Counterspell (no money ^^)
4 AK
4 Brainstorm
2 Impulse
3 Cunning Wish
4 Mana Leak (A great card)
2 Misdirection

SB:

3 Naturalize
3 Ground Seal
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Platinum Angel
1 Pristine Angel
1 Fact or Fiction
2 BEB
1 Echoing Truth

I play UG version cause my meta is full of wastelands and B2B, and i want to run it in my SB, someone can help me??

[atwa2002]

My meta doens't have a lot of wastes, so it is pretty safe to play the 3-colour version.

[TheAlpha]

1x Mox Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
1x Lotus Petal

I've been testing these and I wasn't sure if these should be included. How good do you think the moxes and the single petal are? I had really good starts (1st turn oath or mana drain etc.) but sometimes they really sucked. What's your opinion?

-Alpha

[atwa2002]

Well, as I said, I don't own any power and in the Netherlands are no proxies allowed, so I must improvise a little.

Because of the lack of drains, I added black for duress and the tutors. this decision makes this deck more control, but that doesn't really matter.

On the other hand, to be able to play the combo, you just need some acceleration. Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal are the best accelerators available for a powerless player. Elvish Spirit Guide would also be a good card, but it suckes in a oath deck.

Maybe Sol Ring could be good, but I need to test that before I can something about it (but I think it wouldn't work because this deck needs coloured mana).

Does anybody have some ideas about this? Please let me know.