Oath Discussion: Questions on Oath's Innovation

[the boogie man]

being able to untap lets control decks untap 2 blue sources, and then gain enough mana to break through easily, not to mention the land that they drop that turn, which will probably produce a brainstorm into something good. not to mention that it comes down after mana drain mana is up, even of they are on the draw, making it a non-back breaking spell that will drain real nice. against workshop decks, they have lands that add three mana to their pool, plus whatever else they play. against combo, they will either win or lose long before orb will become effective. I just don't see how this card helps in any matches.

[jackpot]

I guess your right. it looks like Static Orb will just have to go back to collecting dust. OK here's another idea for Oath for you to shoot down: Bringer of the White dawn. Oath him out. You are still in your upkeep, so then you can use its ability to put a cool artifact into play. Like a Mindslaver. I'm almost certain this works. At worst you have to wait a turn. Which you could always timewalk for anyways. Is not giving your opponent another turn to play bad in any watchups? Funnier still, you could actually cast the bringer with the WBGUR acc in Oath. If you think this is  a bad idea, you need help.

[Moxlotus]

So how is activating mindslaver (if you hit it) the second turn you can Oath better than attacking for a total of 18 damage with Akroma and Spirit?

[jackpot]

Not giving your opponent another turn to play of their own IS winning the game. You continue to play YOUR game and they sit there. If their smart, they'll concede as soon as you get this going. Attacking for 18 is not winning the game, its coming very close. The only thing is that the deck would need a lot of mana production to get the 4 to activate Mindslaver early. I'd run 2 Mindslavers and 1 Bringer of the white dawn. The rest of the deck as usual.

1 akroma
1 Bringer of the White dawn
1 Bosh
4 oath of druids
1 (foreign) gaeas blessing-Krosan reclaimation may be better to insure that the mindslaver get into the graveyard

Mana:24

4 forbidden orchard
2 polluted delta
2 flooded strand
1 tropical island
1 underground sea
2 island
2 snow-covered island
1 strip mine
3 wasteland


1 black lotus
3 on color moxen
1 mox ruby

Lock-down:
2 Mindslaver
draw:18

4 brainstorm
4 Ak
1 merchant scroll
2 intuition
1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
1 demonic tutor
1 vampiric tutor
1 cunning wish
1 Aether spellbomb
1 Pyrexian furnace
counters:11

4 force of will
4 mana drain
3 misdirection

A Bosh in the deck would be a very nice suprise and could be brought back w/ the bringer. It can kill off opposing Akromas and spirits of the night. Not much luck w/ DSC, however. Eh, what difference does it make? Not like they'll be attacking when you control their turn, right? If anything, more useful artifacts should be included to help out in various jams. Not to many! You can't go Hog-wild or it ends up being this weird Welder-Oath hybrid. OK, lets think. A furnace would be nice vs. welder decks. The welder deck's DSC is rather problematic. Aether spellbomb should take care of that. If they get a Lightning Greaves on a Platinum angel this is very bad. Or on a DSC it's even worse. Forcefield anyone? a Bosh could be great vs. other Oath builds. I think you should beat Fish and fast aggro decks anyways with the Fatties. Their sword To plowshares are a problem. Nothing Miss Direction can't handle!

Or how about going for another Oath combo entirely?

Oath out good old Cognivore and put Dragon breath on him from the graveyard and swing for something like, say, 20 damage in one turn? Risky, but possible. That version of the deck should have tons of instants in it. More than 30 if you ask me. I like this a lot more than the silly Auriok salvager combo Oath build. Fatties, right? YES!

[the boogie man]

why not just play auriok salvagers and win a ton easier, and a ton faster.

[Khahan]

I guess your right. it looks like Static Orb will just have to go back to collecting dust. OK here's another idea for Oath for you to shoot down: Bringer of the White dawn. Oath him out. You are still in your upkeep, so then you can use its ability to put a cool artifact into play. Like a Mindslaver. I'm almost certain this works. At worst you have to wait a turn. Which you could always timewalk for anyways. Is not giving your opponent another turn to play bad in any watchups? Funnier still, you could actually cast the bringer with the WBGUR acc in Oath. If you think this is  a bad idea, you need help.

This doesn't work as quickly as you think.  When your turn begins, you untap. Then you enter upkeep. As you do all "At the beginning of upkeep..." triggers will trigger. Before you receive priority they are placed on the stack.

So the oath resolves and bringer of the white dawn comes into play. However, you are passed the 'beginning of upkeep,' so it doesn't trigger until next turn.

So A), you just brought in a creature that will do nothing for you for a turn as opposed to a hasted 6/6 or a 5/1 that can ping or a 4/4 that keeps you from losing if you are in play.

B) You have to have a 2nd card hit your graveyard in order for your bringer to be effective. If the slaver is not in your yard yet, you've lost another turn waiting

3) If you happen to have hit your blessing, you don't get your slaver.


I have fiddled with BoWD and it just doesn't work. Its a lot of fun and on the ocassion all the right pieces fall into place the deck seems great. But getting all those pieces to fall into place is just tough.

A bringer build NEEDS blue in it to keep your opponent in check while you set up. The meandeck/mana drain version is best equipped to support this style of Oath. However, its a much slower and much less effective version of Meandeck.

This thread is about innovation in Oath. The problem is, Oath has not needed that much innovation. When you get right down to it, its a pretty simple combo-control deck with a beatdown win.

The best innovations we've seen have been tweaks: Going from 2 creatures to 3 (and while I may not have been the first to do it, I certainly was one of the early and more vocal proponents of that one...maybe my one contribution to the t1 community at large, thank you) and changing out the creature base from SPoT/Akroma to Akroma/Hydra/Flavor-of-the-month-Angel.

Its evolved into Chalice Oath. With Pithing Needle we now have Needle Oath which really bears down on control. The addition of engineered explosives to many oath decks has/will help a lot (and this one still has not caught on as much as it should, but explosives should be a standard answer for that dastardly U/W fish match up).

But Meandeck is essentially MUC with a green splash for a win condition. There is really only so much you can do with it. Its simple, its effective. Tweak it, but why get in such an uproar just because its not 'innovative' anymore? With a tweak here and there as we go, it still works.

[jackpot]

One thing that occurred to me about the Auriok salvager combo oath build is that if your opponent has a chalice set at zero, you've got a problem. No Black Lotus tricks. If they've got one set at 1 you have no Pyrite spellbomb win condition. Arcane lab is good against this too. Bringer of the white dawn brings artifacts into play, not having to worry about casting them at all. Just a turn slower as you wait for the "begginning of upkeep" Oh well. I agree that the deck will need more control as you set up. You should't even play with Gaea's blessing. It would be better to play with Krosan reclaimation to make sure you get a large graveyard with a Mindslaver in it. You could always intuition them into the graveyard in a pinch. I think there should also be an answer to artifacts in the main. Besides cunning wish. Probably engineered explosives. Akroma seems out of place in this version of the deck.

 It's a sorry state of affairs when we're talking about "innovation" when we're discussing adding something like 1 Echoing truth to the main deck. These little tweaks are just details. Not innovation. Like combing your hair a little different. Same hair. How about a sideways mohawk? That's innovative. Nobody would have ever realized the auriok salvanger oath deck if they weren't innovative in the true sense of the work. They would be fine with a little tweak here and there and so on. Worried about cutting cunning wish for another tutor etc. These little details are extremly important. I can't argue that. I just don't see it as innovation.   

[LotusHead]

One thing that occurred to me about the Auriok salvager combo oath build is that if your opponent has a chalice set at zero, you've got a problem. No Black Lotus tricks. If they've got one set at 1 you have no Pyrite spellbomb win condition. Arcane lab is good against this too.

Salvager decks often use Engineered Explosives to deal with Chalice via Drain Mana, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt or (personal tech here) Ancient Tomb.

Chalice for 1 does stop Pyrite or any spellbomb, but not Wish for Brain Freeze.

There's innovation in Oath Decks and tons of underground work on Oath Salvager decks.  There's just no unified single build that people run.  They all look different or look like whatever Dan Emmonds is playing.

[M]

There's innovation in Oath Decks and tons of underground work on Oath Salvager decks.  There's just no unified single build that people run

I agree with this. And this is because when you pick up the deck and start innovating, it becomes incredibly techy and interesting almost immediately. There is no end to the possibilities for the creative minded deckbuilder.

Chalice for 0 is the single worst problem for this deck because of its speed and the fact that every deck can play it on turn 1. In theory you can fecth Engineered Explosives to get rid of it but in real play I have always found it to be difficult to do because you also need colorless mana, so a two card combo. You can add Tinker+11/11 to get around the Chalice for 0 problem, but 11/11 is actually much inferior to Salvager kill, it is two full turns slower, unless you can oath up Salvager and win next turn in which case you might as well have played two Salvagers. (In fact, playing two or more creatures slows the decks clock down more than many probably realize. If you do this you should adopt a controllish approach.) Chalice for 2 means you have to either remove it (if you dont have Oath in play) or just hardcast the Salvager. But Chalice for 2 is expensive. Chalice for 1 is the least of your worries because even if you can't cast the spellbomb initially, you can still make mana which is often enough to just go broken and win.