The Pinnacle/Ideal 10 Proxy Budget Oath Build - No Mana Drains

[Zeylon]

Here is the ideal 10 Proxy Budget Oath Build IMO. The 10 proxies are the 6 Jewelery, Ancestral, Time Walk, LoA, and Imperial Seal. Tell me what you think needs to be changed?

11 Mana Sources
4 Forbidden Orchard
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Library of Alexandria

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Imperial Seal
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker

4 Oath of Druids

1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

4 Duress
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Pithing Needle/Chalice of the Void

4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Serum Visions/Ideas Unbound/Lim Dul's Vault/Mana Leak/Daze - Which cards deserve this slot the most?

The deck is more comboish dedicated to getting the combo pieces in place by turn two consistently. If you already have the combo pieces, the tutors are great for grabbing FoWs or Duresses.

Mystical Tutor is there since it can grab a tutor or a Duress, or best of all a Tinker for Colossus in those cases where you're really far from having your combo in place.

Imperial Seal is for when the card becomes legal. It's essentially identical to Vampiric Tutor, which makes it the 3rd best tutor ever printed and a must play in any Oath build splashing black.

PS: This is my first Oath deck so cut me some slack.
_________________
Edit: Updated with better explanations and a better manabase based on the first two replies I go.

[JamesPr]

This deck pains me, so many card choices seem suboptimal.  It looks like you're attempting some keeperish build of control Oath, but you don't even call it keeper Oath or have the basic duals plus fetches to make it competitve.

I don't even know what tarnished Citadel does and I pretty much read about magic all the time.  That = bad.  Cities of Brass and Gemstone Mine should never be in non salvager combo oath.  They're just fragile, and theres better options that I alluded to earlier such as Fetches with blue duals.  Why do you play Enlightened Tutor?  Are you going to tutor for a mox?  Imperial Seal sucks, don't play it.  Four Impulse is crappy as your main draw engine, it just doesn't do enough as the other stuff out there.

Anyway, I suggest you read about Oath builds in other threads to get a better idea of what the strongest card choices are.

[crazedpenguinman]

-4 serum visions

+4 counterspell

-1 enlightened tutor
-1 mystical tutor

+2 Mana leak

-4 duress

+4 island

-1 Tinker
-1 VT
-1 imperial seal
-1 Balance

+ 2 fetch
+1 Island
+1 Tropical island

- 1 DSC
+ 1 Anceint hydra/spirit of the night depending of the amount of fish/welders oin your metagame.

Do not add in another colour and cut mana sources so that you can run terrible cards in their place.

[Zeylon]

Thanks for the suggestions, I cut a color.

I'm not cutting black b/c...

Black gives me the three best tutors in magic, and this is meant to be a faster more comboish build of Oath, hence why I think even Daze may work.

Black gives me duress which is better than Counterspell, and even Mana Leak in some cases.

You can easily support three colors. 2 Island, 2 Trop. Island, 2 Underground Sea, 3 Polluted Delta, 2 Flooded Strand

Why cut Tinker? Tinker-->Colossus can be Game a lot of the time.

[Bulls on Parade]

How do you think this is the ideal budget build? Why don't you try proxying Lotus, Ancestral, 4 Drains, 4 Moxes, instead of what you're doing now. I'm sure it will be MUCH better.

[Moxlotus]

Do not add in another colour and cut mana sources so that you can run terrible cards in their place.

By terrible do you mean some of the best black cards in Vintage including Duress, Vamp, and Demonic?

[Rancor1]

Duress, Vamp, and Demonic are very powerful cards, and I would be happy to run black in Oath. Your justifications for running a third color are suboptimal.

Vampiric, Mystical, and Enlightened Tutors, and Imperial Seal, do not belong in here. They are card disadvantage in a control deck. It is silly to try to combo out with Oath, when it is really quite easy to hose the deck with cards that are as cheap as Oath itself. If you aggressively tutor for Oath with "put on top" tutors, you could easily deny yourself of Forbidden Orchard, and trying to get out an Oath on turn two without an Orchard is probably a heads up to your opponent not to drop that Goblin Welder too quickly.

Colossus is bad also, and I would rather play with an Akroma, SotN, and Ancient Hydra/similar creature any day. Your cantrips make this deck look like a Gro deck with an Oath kill instead of Quirion Dryad, but Gro decks, when popular, have had tons of other win conditions depending on the time they were popular, including Werebear, Psychatog, and Phyrexian Dreadnaught. You just have a two-card combo.

A good reason to run black is for a couple of Duresses, Demonic, and Skeletal Scrying. Try JACO's list, it is really solid. If I were you, I'd take Bulls on Parade's advice for proxies.

Also, Imperial Seal is a sorcery, and is nowhere on par with Vampiric.

[Smmenen]

Mana Leak is the best hard counterspell in any Oath list.  Even better than Mana Drain, yes.

[crazedpenguinman]

I wasn't saying they were bad cards as such, but there are much better cards to run in Oath without creating a less consistent deck.

[Khahan]

How much playtesting did you do before calling this the 'ideal'?

[the boogie man]

smmemen: would you run mana leak in place of any of these?:4 duress, 4 mana drain, 4 force of will. which would you replace, and why would you?

[Moxlotus]

They are card disadvantage in a control deck.

Oath is not the control deck in many of its matches (talking about this style of Oath deck).  You are the beatdown against all other control decks.  If this Oath decklist tries to play control against Gifts or Slaver it will lose.

[Shade]

smmemen: would you run mana leak in place of any of these?:4 duress, 4 mana drain, 4 force of will. which would you replace, and why would you?

If you're insistant on running black, then Duress/Drain/Force is the best configuration, with Leak being disruption spells 13-16.

[Wikoogle]

I need to build a 5 proxy budget oath deck.

This is pretty much the same build that's top 8ing everywhere not isn't it? (assuming you run the mana leaks in the 4 open slots where a bunch of possible cards were listed including mana leaks)

Why is this in developmental?

And also, how do you recommend making it more budget for a 5 proxy environment?


edit: sorry, i was just searching for good budget oath lists, and realized that this was really close to the one that's winning tourneys. didn't realize this was such an old thread.

anyways, which five power cards should be cut? LoA, Seal, Lotus, and 2 off color moxen??

[UR]

I don't think Oath is an ideal choice if you only get five proxies. But I would keep Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Sapphire and Mox Jet.

Then, I would substiture the other moxen for cheap mana-artifacts so the structure of the deck doesn't change too much. You really want that first turn Oath so even Chrome Mox/Mox Diamond may be options.

I will also suggest playing Muddle the Mixture since it can tutor for Oath and Null Rod while also being able to counter important stuff like Tinker or Ancestral Recall.

[Wikoogle]

Actually, I think Time Walk trumps Black Lotus since it can be tutored up to win immediately before your opponent can respond if you have a resolved oath and just got a creature with it.

I also think that Oath is actually the best deck to play (or second best to fish atleast) if you're doing 5 proxy.

The optimal list of the above build only uses 8-9 proxies (depending on if you think Imperial Seal is optimal).

So basically, you only have to cut 3 cards, all 3 of which are less important for oath than for any other deck since oaths win condition just needs 2 mana total and you only need it once. So both Lotus Petal and even stuff like Elivish Spirit Guide (or stuff like Sol Ring and Mana Crypt) can do a reasonable job replacing those 3 cards.

[Jacob Orlove]

Don't bump threads from back in May. Closed.