A better creature set for Oath

[gzeiger]

1 Auriok Salvagers

Our team won a Mox Jet this last weekend with an Oath deck designed to have a better matchup against combo by improving the speed of its clock by at least a full turn. We correctly anticipated that following Trinisphere's restriction we would not see many, or in fact any, Spheres, and the format as a whole would encourage more people to play fast combo decks. Control was still present in the form of the standard Meandeck Oath, but mostly we saw TPS and Belcher variants. Because of an anticipated (and actual) lack of Crucible decks, we thought correctly that we could safely return to a more five-color mana base to take advantage of black search cards and disruption.

Auriok Salvagers has the great advantage over Akroma that it (usually) wins the same turn it comes into play. The combo is very straightforward - just pay two mana to return Black Lotus repeatedly until you have enough spare mana to return Pyrite Spellbomb and kill your opponent and any Platinum Angels he may have. The faster kill means that you get to remove some of the slower control elements that would ordinarily be dedicated to defending yourself during the turn(s) you are attacking, and replace those cards with more proactive disruption (Duress) and search that makes Oath itself more likely to resolve.

We agonized a lot over the decision to cut Mana Drain for Duress, but having made the change we've never regretted it. The ability to play your disruption a turn earlier as well as the ability to fully answer a storm spell proved invaluable in testing. The removal of the Intuition/AK engine is also painful, and certainly worsens control matchups, but not by as much as you might think. Instead you get to play the generally superior tutors plus the mandatory Salvagers cards.

The downside is that you have to play some generally rather bad cards to make the combo work. At a minimum:
Lion's Eye Diamond
Pyrite Spellbomb
Krosan Reclamation (over Gaea's Blessing because you sometimes need to put everything in the graveyard, and if you comboed with only two mana you'll need to NOT reshuffle your graveyard after the Oath)

Fortunately with the exception of LED all those cards turn out to actually do something if you draw them. The difficult matchup is Drain Slaver, but Pyrite Spellbomb kills their Welders. Krosan Reclamation reshuffles their Welder targets at instant speed, which Blessing couldn't do effectively. Instead of extra copies of the Spellbomb we opted for a pair of Phyrexian Furnace, which cycles at worst but also owns Welders in the worst way, sometimes cantripping while doing it, and also prevents Accumulated Knowledge from getting out of hand. In rare situations it even steals a pair of Dark Rituals and makes a highly defective Yawgmoth's Will. Its main function, of course, is to be recurred to draw cards when your Oath didn't reveal the Spellbomb. Technically it only draws a card each time you remove something from a graveyard, but since you have infinite mana you can always cast things to fill the graveyard.

The deck:

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Leak
4 Duress

4 Oath of Druids

3 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Regrowth - this is the most questionable inclusion, but it can save a bad Oath that doesn't reveal your combo pieces by retrieving Time Walk or Demonic Tutor

1 Auriok Salvagers
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Krosan Reclamation
2 Phyrexian Furnace

1 Chain of Vapor

5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 City of Brass
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island (to activate Spellbomb to kill a Welder if needed)
1 Tundra (if the Orchard eats a Wasteland you need a source of white mana to get things started)
2 Underground Sea
2 Island

The Chain of Vapor looks random but there are a number of playable cards, including Trinisphere, Sphere of Resistance, and notably Chalice of the Void that will prevent you from winning if they are in play. With the exception of Trinisphere, these are not heavily disruptive so a single Chain is sufficient because it can be retrieved by Krosan Reclamation.

This deck can probably support an additional bad 5-color land, perhaps Undiscovered Paradise, or an additional pair of Volcanic Islands if there's a need for off-color sideboard cards. We didn't feel that much mana-fixing was necessary.

The sideboard we took was
4 Claws of Gix - Oath mirrors
4 Stifle - we respect and fear the Jester's almighty Cap
3 Chains of Mephistopheles - this is hell for TPS if you also have a little countermagic
1 Woodripper - this does terrible things to Workshop decks
3 Pernicious Deed - against Oath the Krosan Reclamation for Chain of Vapor plan is very poor if they have either Ground Seal or Arcane Laboratory, so Deed can clear away these problematic hosers as well as providing an out in the rare case that they have their Oath and Orchard and you don't have Claws

[Matt]

How often do you get Salvagers, but not mill either Lotus or LED?

[Sanity_XIV]

This version of the deck is much weaker to chalice, and preboard you lose to chalice for one, (one reason why I think Echoing Truth or something of the sort might be more useful than Chain, especially because they can chain back your oath/salvagers.)

When I took this deck to a tournament I played with a transformational sideboard into Akroma/Spirit/Blessing to up my chances against the then unrestricted Trinisphere and Chalices(Also allowing me to board chalices), and I think that helped a little bit. It also adds a little more defense against tons of removal (With things like Pristine Angel.)

[crazynlazy]

have you ever considered running Sotn or Akroma in the board for matchups with chalice or some other thing that hoses this deck just as a backup plan to the combo.

[gzeiger]

Getting Salvagers without the kill cards didn't turn out to be a huge issue, but it happens sometimes. That doesn't actually slow down the goldfish kill compared to the Akroma version anyway, but it does complicate things against a deck that can counter Reclamation. Those decks luckily tend to not kill you as fast, though, so you can often wait to draw into a tutor or the other combo piece, especially if you can sit on a Furnace against CS.

Chalice is problematic, but I don't really expect a preboard Chalice to be set to one. It'll either be on zero or two, trying to hit the Drains and Oath they expect, depending what they know. Decks that can't reliably play Chalice for two aren't going to be maindecking it.

The Angel plan in the board makes some sense, and we did consider it, but I don't think there's enough Workshop presence at the moment to really justify it.

[exit music]

I've got a few comments on the deck...

Firstly, I can understand the cutting of counters in the deck; if you aren't worried about Slaver or Tog, the importance of counters definitely goes down (although I'm a little bit unsure that your Slaver/Tog match is any good at all). However, my problem is why did you cut Mana Drain before Mana Leak? I understand that occasionally, you will be able to play Mana Leak first turn, but I think the advantages of Drain are better than being able to Leak first turn some of the time. I would think this to be especially obvious to your deck, given that you already have 8 first-turn disruptors to threats (Duress/FoW).

Also, with Gaea's Blessing, you know you can win with it on the stack, right? Can you further explain why you choose Reclamation over it?

Is 26 mana sources too much? I have been running 23 or 24 and I find that to be plenty. Is this version of Oath more mana intensive than Meandeck Oath (and if it is, you still don't use Drain??).

How do you feel about creature removal? It looks like StP would be an Autoscoop if it resolves. Why not 2 Salvagers? would it slow the deck down too much? Why not 2 Salvagers, 2 AEther Spellbomb, 1 Pyrite, 1 LED, 1 Lotus. You could also cut the Furnaces because I can't see them being too important if your main enemy is combo. If that is your worry, I think Crypt would be a shade better, though the whole MD Graveyard hate seems a little bit unneeded.

A note on your sideboard... Instead of Stifle for Cap, why not add creatures? They seem to fit better with the deck's gameplan. Unless you find yourself bringing in Stifle in a variety of Matches (the only one I can think it being good against is Dragon).

Why Deed over Engineered Explosives?

[JAG]

Stifle is actually somewhat good in almost every matchup.  It "counters" Slaver, it can kill fetchlands, and it kills Storm cards dead.  Not to mention Dragon.

I do, however, agree that it's not a great answer to be sideboarding in.  I don't mind running a few maindeck and boarding up to 3 or 4, but they are much like Force Spike in that you need them for specific problems at specific times.  Running them and showing them main forces your opponent to consider them and correct for them, giving them more impact.  When you're siding them, however, you really need them early to stop Caps or Storm kills and I'm not entirely sure they're worth 4 sideboard slots.  This is also not the kind of deck that can profitably run them maindeck (a pure control rather than combo-control deck is better equipped to run such answers, since the more pure control decks use their disruption to control the game rather than handle the opponent's answers most of the time).

I like the plan of bringing in a traditional Oath creature set for matchups where your opponent is likely to bring in numerous answers to your combo kill (Ground Seal and Jester's Cap are HUGE problems).  The problem is that the creature set doesn't solve the cap problem unless you leave in the combo kill as well as the aggro kill.  

-JM

[Mixing Mike]

I would still run Blessing over Krosan Reclamation because it's stronger because it doesn't cost any mana and can't be countered (making you deck yourself). Think of it this way....

You need 2WW to return both Lotus and Pyrite to your hand before the Blessing trigger resolves after you've Oathed-out a Salvagers. I found that often, you actually have the mana to do so. Now, assuming you have Oathed, chances are high you have an Orchard in play. You can tap Orchard and your other mana source to return Lotus (why choose the spellbomb/furnace?) Then the Blessing trigger will resolve. This is turn 1 compared to Meandeck Oath, when they swing for 6.

Now the next time you Oath, you'll hit a Spellbomb and no creatures. Return the spelbomb/furnace, and then proceed to win as usual. Meandeck Oath will probably Oath up the second creature, and swing for 12. Adding this to what you swung for last time, that's a total of 18. Chances are they're dead because of Fetchlands and Force of Will damage, but it's possible they might not be dead quite yet.

So by running Blessing you keep yourself from ever getting decked to an opponents counterspell, and AT WORST you combo off as fast as Meandeck Oath would kill, sometimes a turn faster. I don't see how Krosan Reclamation is better unless you're playing against a deck with Bazaars, in which case your kill is faster then their tempo losing draw engine.

[VonDouche]

I agree with Mike on this one.  Blessing still appears to be the superior spell in the deck.  Supposing that you do overturn blessing, that only puts its ability on the stack.  Supposing that you have two available mana (and I'm guessing you most likely will since you played an Oath), you can just put the salvagers' ability on the stack on top of the blessing.  This gives you one piece guaranteed, and if you have the mana to do it, you can get both and still have your deck to work with.

I'm not a rules expert or anything, so if I misunderstand the way that blessing interacts with the stack I appologize.

[MarkPharaoh]

Wouldn't a maindeck Engineered Explosives be very good in this deck as an answer to Chalice?  it won't kill one at zero, but you just bounce it anyways, and can blow up Chalices set at 1 or 2 to finish out your combo.

[Englishman_in_NH]

I may be wrong, but can't you kill the chalice with Engineered Explosives by using colorless mana to give it an alternative casting cost to zero and get it past chalice. Then blow it up with zero charge counters to take out the chalice.
Either way explosives seems a good choice. I run one in my non Oath Salvagers deck and it is useful against Ground Seal and other graveyard hate that tries to kill the combo.

[MarkPharaoh]

You are, that didn't even think about that when I last posted.  My mistake.

[Tristal]

Yes, but keep in mind you actually have to tap something for colorless mana.  There isn't a single mana source in this deck that does that.

[Khahan]

Unless I'm missing something, you don't need colorless mana to play engineered explosives with 0 counters on it. Its a CC of X, meaning you can play it for 0. It will come in w/ 0 counters on it and t hen you can blow up all of the chalices.

[49 Cents]

Unless I'm missing something, you don't need colorless mana to play engineered explosives with 0 counters on it. Its a CC of X, meaning you can play it for 0. It will come in w/ 0 counters on it and t hen you can blow up all of the chalices.

Yeah Sure, but you can't if there is a chalice for 0, and that was the issue.

[A Black Lotus Buddy]

I think that OathSalvagers should use lots of 5-color mana sources and Pernicious Deeds (especially for Chicago, where there will probably be Titans and Chalices).  Pernicious Deed just seems much more flexible than Engineered Explosives and opening up the other colors seems like a good idea, too.