[Just a note before the beginning of this thread: this is the thread I had to post for TMD full membership and which I've already written in my TMD Promotion Exam. Due to the time it took for the test to be corrected (I do not mean to blame anyone for the delay
), some parts of this discussion could sometimes look "old". I have however updated it where it was needed, in order to make it as useful as I could]
Since the printing of Forbidden Orchard a lot of us have thought about bringing back some sort of Oath deck. Stephen Menendian has shown that this archetype has indeed some potential. Another tournment here in Milan, Italy, has seen two Oath deck placing second and third among 60 other people (
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20727&highlight=oath).
During the last weeks, Oath decks have been found a lot around, sometimes with good results, sometimes not (some of these times due to bad builts too!). With its ability to be played both as an aggressive and a control deck, and with a win condition costing just 1G, this deck type was really promising even from the beginning. I won't go into many details already well pointed out by Stephen (just look here if you've lost his article:
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20420&start=0), but I will try to explain the good and bad sides of the UBG version I've started developing since the printing of the Orchard; a build that has been fixed test after test with the help and suggestions of other people, both Italian guys a people from TMD. Similar builds have shown around, one example is this one created by Jaco:
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20607First of all: why adding a color? And why black? The UG version has a great stability with its mana base, still it can clearly support a third color. Of course this means weakening the mana base in a metagame where mana base stability is absolutely important. However another color can add something really useful in terms of solutions, tutoring or something else in exchange for just a little worst mana base. The weight of this improvement could have balanced or not the loss, but it was worth trying.
Regarding to the color chosen, what could each color give to this deck?
White: enlighted tutor, sword to plowshares, balance (nothing really worth the weaking of the mana base)
Black: first of all Vampiric and Demonic Tutor, and then Duress. Even cards like Yawgmoth's Will and Skeletal Scrying seemed promising.
Red: a lot of artifact hate, like Rack and Ruin; REBs and even Fire/Ice (really good for a final shot after 18 damages in two turns, when opponent does not hurt himself with fetchlands or FoW), great against welders and not only. Red would have been good, but probably not good enough. However, no more than one color could be added safely, and black was a lot better.
Adding black turns the Oath towards a less control, more combo version. Duress are awesome to quickly protect our spells and to disrupt opponent's hand, but fail in preventing the opponent from casting the topdecked spells. The black tutors speed the deck a lot, and that means casting a fast protected oath is a lot easier. Neverthless, the ability to still control the game in the later game is not lost at all, just a bit weakened.
So, here it is the deck list I am currently using:
// Mana Sources (25)
1 Black Lotus
5 Mox
4 Polluted Delta
3 Island
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
// Main Engine
4 Oath of Druids
1 Gaea's Blessing
// Creatures
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Spirit of the Night
// Drawing & Tutoring
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
3 Deep Analysis
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Intuition
// Protection
4 Duress
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Leak
2 Misdirection
// Others
1 Time Walk
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Rushing River
As we can see, 4 basic lands together with 4 fetchlands still provide a good and stable mana base. The choice of having a swamp instead of the fourth island is based on the common situation in which we would like to cast a first turn duress (maybe followed by a second turn oath) without fearing to see our land destroyed by a wasteland. The lone swamp is also really useful if we are going to put B2B in from the sideboard, letting us cast black spells quite easily, or if we just want a reliable black mana source against a deck whick heavily targets our mana base.
In this deck the chances of casting a second or even first turn, protected, oath are really high: not only after a first turn duress, but also by having the protection of FoW or misdirection, or even with a mana leak if we have played a couple of mox.
The list itself need however some explanations:
- Gaea's Blessing: one is enough. I've seen some lists running two, but I can't see a good reason behind it. Most of the times, the lone blessing is even completely useless, and it's also not synergic with the Deep Analysis. Usually there is no need to reshuffle our creatures back in the deck, but since sometimes this happens, there it is the lone blessing. However, if we end up drawing it, that' nothing terrible: we can put it back later with brainstorm, or just "cicle" it since reshuffling the deck is rarely really needed.
- Intuition: of course the UG version needs more of these, since it lacks good and fast tutors, and since they are really good with the AKs. However, without the AKs and with good black tutors, there is no need for so many intuitions. One should be enough to get sometimes an oath, an orchard, a counter, or just to put in the graveyard a couple of Deep Analysis.
- Deep Analysis: in a deck which tries to win fast Accumulated Knowledge could not be the best choice. But more than this we just have to be careful against other Oath decks. As it happened with Hulk in the past, the mirror is really risky and partially open to simple luck when we are playing AK. If we both use AKs, we will usually stick them in our hand waiting for the other to start casting them. But if we do not draw them, and we end up milling them after an Oath activation instead, then our opponent is going to cast them and draw a huge amount of cards. The solution is running an different draw engine. The possibilities here are mainly two: Skeletal Scrying and/or Deep Analysis. Making some math, we can see that (apart from huge Scryings) when we have just 4-6 mana available, skeletals make us draw just a card more, in exchange for a lot more life loss. This however still makes Skeletal better. Deep is pitchable with FoW and Misdirection (not a huge boon, but still good), but it is sorcery, and that's a huge disadvantage. However, Deep Analysys has a great synergy in an Oath deck: flashback. With just one blessing it is quite common to oath out a deep while looking for a creature and not be forced to shuffle the graveyard back in. We can then draw a couple of free cards with just 1U and 3 life. This usually gives enough card support to hold those couples of turns we need in order to win. Skeletal Scrying, instead, must of course be drawn to be played. This means that usually we are going to cast deeps most of the times we activate oath, while we could not be able to draw and play skeletal sometimes. Another little point in favor of Deep: if we are Mindslaved just a couple of times (let's say the opponent has not yet been able to estabilish an hard lock with the Mind Slaver), we could be forced to activate oath and scry away the blessing from the graveyard, and the turn after we could be forced to oath away all the deck, losing when required to draw. It is only a very specific problem, but still need to be considered. For these reasons, but particularly for the flashback ability which I've found awesome, I think that the Deeps are a better choice. With them most of the times activating oath means also been able to draw 2-4 bonus cards. However, particularly the players who prefer to always be in control, could prefer Skeletal, since it can easily be played at the end of opponent's turn. I feel that's another good choice anyway, and I'm open to discussion, but Deep has proved to be more useful in general according to my tests.
- Mana Leak: this has been an hard choice: I've taken Mana Drain out. In the way the deck is built, the extra mana provided by the Drain is rarely useful, and almost everytime leads to mana burn. I've tried adding more intuitions and other mana-hungry spells like Skeletal and even Mind Twist to make good use of the Drains, but often that made the deck just slower when I was not going to drain anything; I ended up WAITING for a drain most of the time. Even if the Drains make even possible to cast from hand the SotN sometimes, I've found that Mana Leaks can be more useful here: they are active first turn counters with a mox in play; they help casting the Oath soon if supported with a couple of mox; they are even easily cast through the mana provided by wastelands and off-color moxes letting us use the other lands for different spells; in the mid game they are still good thanks to the wastelands which cripple the opponent's mana base. Those who prefer to add more mana-hungry spells could of course opt to put the Drains back in, but with the current list Mana Leaks are better, at least IMHO.
- Rushing River & Pernicious Deed: a couple of removals are needed. Rushing is usually better against bloodmoon (despite the good mana base we would however be forced to look for mox emerald or lotus to cast oath, and if the opponent does not play creatures we still need a working Orchard), but it is useless against a card like Aura Fracture. At the same time Pernicious is terrible if we need to remove a platinum angel, but it can take care or pretty anything else and it also removes a lot of problems in one shot. Since without sideboarding the biggest threat is indeed a chalice for 2, having at least a couple of cards to deal with it is necessary.
- Creatures: Akroma+SotN was of course the best choice available. However in a metagame where there are few welders around having Darksteel Colossus could be a good idea, since it lets avoid quite easily a CotV for two just casting Tinker for Colossus.
- Wastelands: the first versions I have tried ran almost no strip effects. However in a metagame full of workshops, Bazaars and other orchards wastelands were too much important. Wastelnds also cripple his mana base, making harder for the opponent to find an answer when big creatures are beating him, and even help destroying one of his lands after his second turn to prevent him from using a mana drain. Using so much wastelands in a deck with three colors seemed too much risky at first, but after some tweaks of the mana base, it revealed to be quite good instead, particularly if we don't need 2 blue mana for mana drain anymore. However, mana drain can be easily supported anyway, but that would probably lead us to use the orchards quite often, with the risk of being attacked multiple times by a swarm of 1/1 in case the battle to cast the oath goes on a little too much.
Sideboard. I won't list a complete sideboard, since this depends on the deck you're going to face, however I'll address some good cards I've tested:
Engineered Explosives: they are excellent to destroy a chalice of the void, and many other sorts of problems. Pernicious is generally better even if it costs one more mana in the end, but using also one EE let us survive even a double chalice for 2 and for 3.
Ground Seal: good against welders, dragon, and also protects our blessing against a coffin purge
Arcane Laboratory: against TPS and other combo decks, this is a great card they have to deal with in some ways, particularly if you opponent's deck is storm-based. TPS has been found to be one of our most difficult matchups, and my suggestion is to keep a lot of these in your sideboard if you meta includes a lot ot TPS.
Iridescent Angel: Pristine Angel can be risky if we run Deep Analysis instead of Skeletal; duress is a sorcery too. Without so many instants, untapping Pristine to protect her is something we can't do in a reliable way. Apart from when we face duplicant, Iridescent is almost equally good (it is just unable to attack and block the same turn). But run Pristine if you are going to face duplicants, or maybe just use more groud seals, since the duplicant is probably brought into play by a welder.
Energy Flux: an awesome weapon against artifact players, however a single CotV can be mantained pretty well, so it is not enough on his own; we need something else, being it B2B or some mass removal like EE.
B2B: very useful against many decks. We are able to play despite this, so it is a very viable option.
Woodripper: if we are oathing against a MUD or something similar, oathing this out and maybe even cycling it again and again thanks to the blessing just means victory. Oathing out even Akroma could not be enough instead if we are under tangle and smokestack. In rare cases it is even possible to cast if from hand, particularly if you decide to run drains.
Platinum Angel: a good card against some decks, particularly the mirror match, but it risks to be "the quite good card we never side in".
Keiga, the Tide Star: this is a tech I had tried a lot for the mirror match. If we are the ones who oath, then we're going to win anyway since this guy flys over the spirits; it will simply takes one or two turns more at worst.
If we are instead both oathing, this makes us win everytime unless our opponent is playing a couple of pristine angels. If instead he plays Akroma and SotN and attacks with Akroma or SotN or even both, we are gonna block and get the control of one of the two (getting Akroma would mean victory). If instead he takes time, we are gonna oath the other Keiga, and since it is legendary they will both die, giving us control of both Akroma and SotN. Note that with Keiga even a Platinum Angel is not a problem. If we choose to play with 2 Keigas, probably having Platinum Angel in the side is not even necessary. Keiga has also the big advantage of being not nearly impossible to be cast from hand, unlike other creatures, and so it is a good answer even when our opponent is the only one oathing.
These above were the consideration I had, regarding Keiga, before most of Oath decks decided to play cards like morphling and pristine from the sideboard for the mirror match. I had decided to keep the lines about keiga since I find it a good tech anyway (and an unexpected one, and useful against pristine), but in the end they way Oath decks are usually played now post-sideboard in the mirror match makes it not a good choice. They choice in the mirror then goes to Platinum, Pristine, Iridescent or even Morphling. The last one, despite being unable to evade a defending color-protected angel, has the great advantage of being able to be cast from hand. This means that we can run a trasformational sideboard, taking out Akroma, SotN and all Oaths in exchange for some Morphlings and other hate cards.
Conclusions: so, in the end, is this a good deck? Looking at the tests I've made and at the success similar builds have had, I would say yes, definitely. The other important question is: is this better or worst than the UG Oath? It depends. The UBG build is generally faster and has better matchups against MUD and many combo, and if played aggressively has good changes against UB Oath too, particularly thanks to the 4 Duress: an awesome card that can easily take care of what could otherwise become a first turn trinisphere or an Oath of Druids which is gonna kill us since maybe our opponent has drawn more Orchards than us (since we look at his hand, we can see and decide whether or not it is a good move to discard Oath rather than another card).
On the other hand, the UBG version is able to play a better early game in exchange of some more weakness in the late game, due to the lack of AKs and the decision to run Leaks. The UG version is in fact more able to control the opponent in the late game, then casting Oath to win. However, as for the monoU control deck, the first turns can be quite risky, particularly if we are without FoW. That's why against a UG Oath this deck needs to rush for a fast win, being stronger in the early game, but not able to stand with the draw engine of the UB build.
As a final note, if we ever decide to use Drains, we could even try to use a couple of Cunning Wish instead of Rushing and Pernicious. This is however a route I've tried but which didn't satisfied me too much: it ends up diluting the sideboard too much, when instead we could be able to pack big threats in the sideboards like B2B and Ground Seal. Since we are also trying to be as fast as possible, running Wish is just another way to slow the deck down. Cunning wish could be a good option in the UG version (but still the weakened sideboard makes me wonder if it is really worth it), but I would suggest to avoid Cunning in a UBG build.
