The performance of Oath at Waterbury

[Cross]

See the other “What Happened� thread for the full meta.

Oath 17

Fish 20
FCG 10

Oath was the third most played deck at Waterbury, but it has only 1 representation in a top 16 with 6 decks that rely on creatures to win. In the non-“other� categories there are 30 decks which oath supposedly has an excellent match up with. I know for a fact that there were tons of other aggro decks out of the 60 decks in the “other� category. So what happened?

Not to mention that the match up against stax, the most represented deck, is not too shabby.

Is oath no longer a good deck?
Have decks with fish-like game plans adapted to beat oath?
Do I have a misunderstanding of what “good� match ups are for oath?

I have never thought oath was a great deck, but it seems like oath should have dominated this Waterbury;  instead it’s performance was similar to that of stax.

[Harlequin]

Oath has a NOTORIOUSLY bad match against fish:
Waterfront bouncer, Karakas, Meddling mage, Extract, Rootwater hunter, Swords to Plow, disenchant, stifle ... along with about a 5 or 6 turn clock.
as well as chalice or null rod against your moxen, stifle against your fetches, and wastelands against your duals.

And oaths bad matchup against Gobs and other fast aggro decks (perhapse Affinity or shop aggro).

And oaths marginally bad matchup against Dragon (esp now that oath players are running less and less GY hate)

I think when you sum all that up, Most oath players got knocked out of contention in the X - 1 or X -2 brackets of round 4, and 5.  That area of the meta would have been filled with fish, dragon and stax.

Oath can't run your best the hate cards against fish / aggro decks
- Old man of the sea: because its a creature
- Pyroclasm: because its red and it is anti-synergy

Thats why i have been running Vedalken shackles "The other old man"

[Vegeta2711]

Wait, who was telling these slanderous lies of Oath actually being good ever? Like other than creature decks, what good matches does Oath even have against competent players?

Unless were talking about Maher Oath.

[Juggernaut GO]

If you read the star city vintage forums, Oath is the greatest deck to ever grace type 1 even though it only won a small hanful of tournaments ever

[Moxlotus]

I looked through the decklists and saw many of decklists that were just plain bad.  The sideboards of most of the Oath decks were horrendous.  I see decklists with no Tinker or DSC in the sideboard.  I see decklists with Ancient Hydra or Morphling maindeck.  I see Blazing Arcon in the sideboard and no Triskelion.  I see decklists with 0 Oxidizes in the board.  I see Energy Flux being run in combination with only 2 Island.  

All in all-I see a lot of very unoptimal decklists and sideboards.  Many are 1 or 2 cards maindeck of GWS Oath, but with a sideboard that goes against lots of stuff I've said in this thread.

I do not see 1 Oath deck that I would want to play in a major tournament.  I would not play any Oath deck that I saw without making at least 8-10 cards of changes.

Wait, who was telling these slanderous lies of Oath actually being good ever? Like other than creature decks, what good matches does Oath even have against competent players?

Unless were talking about Maher Oath.

Oh, just Stax and Control Slaver.

Oath is also an attractive choice for newer Type 1 players and players that don't test much.  Essentially, these guys would lose with anything (not trying to be mean mind you-just being blunt).

[jpmeyer]

At the same time though, while it was the 3rd most played deck, it still only made up 9% of the field.  When the metagame is as diverse as this one, just making the t16/t8 is going to make your deck more representative in the t16/t8 than it was in the field in general.

[forests failed you]

Oath is also an attractive choice for newer Type 1 players and players that don't test much.  Essentially, these guys would lose with anything (not trying to be mean mind you-just being blunt).

This is probably the most true thing I've heard in a while.  Some of the most abysmal play I witnessed at Waterbury was at the hands of Oath players who actually had no idea of what or how the cards in their decks worked.  In general, I hate playing against Oath because it is such an inconsistent deck that  sometimes just goes stupid broken on the first turn and there is actually almost nothing you can do about it.

However, most good players would refuse to play the deck on the basis that it is so inconsistent, and that you can't always reliably draw Oath and Orchard in the first few turns.  Oath has a weak draw engine and fairly weak countermagic.  (most builds anyways). 

Either way, I witnessed about four different players lose matches that they should have won because they didn't know how their cards worked.  One match in particular involved a player conceeding with the win on the board.  Although, this is often characteristic of Vintage players in general, as the skill level is relatively low;  In general, I would agree that Oath players tend to have the weakest pilots simply because the deck is inconsistent but has a very strong "oops I win " factor to it. 

In fact my teamate Mike Jacob, who was playing our Chalice Oath list, (quite flawlessly I might add) would have made top 8 day two on tiebreakers as long as another Oath player won his match.  Annoyingly enough, this was the player who scooped the game with the win in hand because he didn't understand how Forbidden Orchard worked.  In my opinion that is the most annoying part about Vintage in general;  the power threshold of the cards is so high that terrible players can win games simply because they have powerful cards; even though they don't necessarily know how those cards work or what they do. 

[Harlequin]

On that note, I was playing against a player, who in my eyes looked like he knew what was going on.  At least new the differance btwn activated and triggered abilites.  At any rate, Durring game 1 he played pithing needle and confidantly named forbidden orchard.  I i give him a moment to think it over and when he shows signs that it is his final answer I say "sure... but the creature ability is trigged", and he simply says "oh" and moves on.  I ment to ask him after the match If he new better and was attempting to fool me, but he sided out his needles and I totally forgot by game 3.  It got me wondering, how many "new" oath players would be fooled by an Incorrect - but confidant - play such as that.  Granted that guy could have just been misplaying.  Did anyone at waterbury attempt the needle fake-out?

[Jacob Orlove]

I saw an Oath player attack Akroma into an Ornithopter, and assign 0 trample damage to the blocking player (who was at 2). It was sad.

On day 2, when I played an Oath deck myself because I'd gotten ~3 hours of sleep, I ran into the mirror, and when I tapped my orchard on his EOT, he did nothing. Then, he let me untap, and responded to the Oath trigger by tapping his orchard, letting me tap my orchard again to force the Oath activation through.

He also had no SB cards for the mirror, and didn't even cut any oaths! He topdecked a ridiculous number of Orchards, though, and I lost the match.

So yeah, Oath is powerful and played poorly and people had bad SBs and all of that.

[mr_rogers]

A team mate and myself both played Oath Day one of Waterbury.  The builds we played were GWS style with a few changes for the metagame.  We were both on winning streaks till the last 3 rounds where we got bad matchups or just had bad luck.  So it's not that all the Oath decks were built wrong it seems in my case anyway all the top Oath decks started playing eachother in the final rounds of swiss, knocking eachother out of contention. 

[magus888]

I saw an Oath player attack Akroma into an Ornithopter, and assign 0 trample damage to the blocking player (who was at 2). It was sad.

That was me!
I had 0 hours of sleep and was playing on tilt. Yes, it was sad. I realized it right after it happened. 

[unicoerner]

@ magus: that`s a really silly mistake
I think oath`s matchup against gobbos is that great, someone said it has bad matchup against fast aggro, seldom heard something that dumb.
Oath problem is, that it`s so bad against fish, which is the most played un/semi powered deck.

[Harlequin]

@ unicoerner
It fast aggro is tough for oath, mainly because you have very limited blocking power.  After you drop an Oath, They have 1 free attack no blocks, then you oath swing back for at best 6 dmg.  Now they get an attack where you have only one blocker at best.  If they have 2 pile drivers you will generally loose.  Thats IF you run the 2 vigilance angels.  If you don't now they will get a clean-up swing where you only have 1 or 2 blockers.  Add in some sharpshooter/seigegang/fanatic combo to ensure the final few points... and oath will loose.
Out of all the matches Fish is the worst, and Gobs is the 2nd worse in my book.
Perhapse post side oath gets better against gobs, but that means you have to win 2 in a row with only a slightly improved matchup.

Pointing to Mr_Roggers (not nessisarily dirrected "at" him)
But those 3-1  3-2 in rounds 4 and 5 is where you are definatly going to face your toughest matches.  Most fish / gobs decks would also be 3-1 and 3-2 and ingeneral X-1 or X-2 going into rounds 4 5 6 and 7.  I think this is why oath did so poorly, once it hit that X-1 or X-2  bracet(s) it just faced bad matchup after bad matchup.

[mr_rogers]

How is Oath losing to Fish?  I can say I've never lost a match to Fish with Oath yet.  Oath should really like to play Fish as it is a creature deck that won't swarm attack you in one turn.  The only way you should lose to Fish is if you run no way to deal with med mage, which unfortunately I see too many Oath builds not run even one md bounce spell.

[Harlequin]

Fish is like 20% cards that bone oath decks (even higher with UW fish).  Even worse than that post side. Ill quote what I said before:

Waterfront bouncer, Karakas, Meddling mage, Extract, Rootwater hunter, Swords to Plow, disenchant, stifle ... along with about a 5 or 6 turn clock.
as well as chalice or null rod and Kataki against your moxen, stifle against your fetches, and wastelands against your duals.

To that list I'll aslo add stormscape apprentice... forgot that guy in the first run
And again you don't really have any sort of reliable answer to them unless you run Red.  getting an oath to resolve against them never = victory esp when they can continue to delay your oathing ability (stifle/bounce/enchantment destruction) or remove your creatures all together (thiefs, extract, swords to plow) even the most counterspell oriented deck cannot fight threat after threat over the 3 turns it requires to do 18 dmg. 
First turn oath of druids is your only prayer agaist fish.

[Khahan]

As a long time Oath player, I unfortunately have to agree with the general sentiments of this thread...except for Harlequins insistence that Oath has a bad match up against dragon and goblins.   In tournaments, I am 5-0 and 4-0 respectively against dragon and goblins.   

Against dragon, the dragon player doesn't matter and the dragon deck doesn't matter. What matters is the oath player.  If the oath player has a decent sideboard and plays smart, he can deal with whatever the dragon player puts out there long enough to get the Oath. The dragon player can play nearly perfectly, but the Oath player plays it right, he'll be able to stop the dragon.

Against goblins...I'd say gobbos are the underdog with the occasional 'oops I win factor' from amazing hands. Other than that, its the oath players match to lose.  I've had a few matches against goblins that were decided 2-1 where the win came only because they were able to get such a fast start against a 'a-hem' slow start from me. They overwhelmed the control that I did have. But while they managed to win a game, they still lost the match.

I will agree that fish rapes oath and Stax is a tough match up, but not unwinable.


Unfortunately, I also have to agree that Oath is very, very inconsistent. Its my first real serious T1 deck and I've enjoyed playing it. But I've become (scuse the pun) very 'disenchanted' with it recently.  I have too many stories where, despite brainstorms, intuitions and sensei's divining tops (which I've been using since richmond in april/may of '05 thank you) out the wazoo, I'm late game before I find t he orchard or oath. When I finally do go off, my opponent  has 2-3 StPS in hand and its game over.

There has been a lot of innovation in Oath, taking into a tendrils kill, a beatdown deck, a control deck, a combo deck, combo-control etc. But what Oath NEEDS is to be a taken in the direction of a consistent deck. If it can be made consistent to go off in the first 3 turns and still be able to retain a solid amount of control, it will be the force that so many players seem to think it is.

[Harlequin]

Your matchest against gobs and dragon totally depend on your sideboard.  Generally I would say that of all decks oath runs the least answers to dragon.  If your packin tormod's crypts and bebs and possibly groundseal.  You mostlikely will take dragon out to pasture.  The fact that dragon runs alot of duress effects and basically wins with 2 mana + bazaar makes it a faster, more reliable deck than your standard combo oriented oath.  Also a good 5c dragon player will have orchards of his own main deck.  This means even if you resolve oath you might still be playing the creature race. 

Goblins is known for being played by less experianced players. It is most ppls first vintage deck.  So beating gobs in a tourny enviorment (esp in the first few rounds) is not that great standard of testing.  I did notice that alot of ppl were running blazing archon on the side.  I think if your running archon would dramtically increase your odds of beating goblins esp if you play a combo oriented oath.  If your playing a more control oath, the fact that it takes 2 turns to resolve your oath, then 2 turns after that to oath up the win (assumeing the goblin player has fetched two times) thats 1 turn set up and 3 turns of beats to the face.  If the have 2 piledrivers your basically not going to win.  Also you have no good answer to first turn lackey if your on the draw, first turn oath is basically your only play.  If your going with a black/multicolor oath with the 4 duresses, thats 4 dead cards in your deck against goblins.
 I'm sure if you asked the non-foodchain gobs player who made top 16 last waterbury how his game against oath is, im sure he would say better than 50/50.  And if you looked at his vrs oath record I think it would support his claim. 
Clearly I'm not saying that any given match is unbeatable.  But if I had to pick the matches that I have tested to be less than 50/50 i would say UW fish, Gobs, UB fish(depending on the build), and dragon (at least for my deck/SB).
Also unless your winning major power, then the combined average of all your matchups cant be more than 50-55% in your favor.  So saying that a deck has more than a 50/50 chance against the majority of all decks out there is a gross overestimation of your deck.
 My friend Jer (who won day 2 with WU fish) and I tested oath vrs fish like at least 25 to 30 times sided in one day.  at the end of it we determined that WU fish had roughly 60/40 advantage against oath.  This is actually about the BIGGEST discrepancy a teir 1 type 1 deck will alow to be competative.  so when I say I have a bad match against gobs I would rate it in the 55/45 range.  Does that mean i think its impossible to go 5-0 against gobs - definately not (esp against newer players).  Do i think its an auto-scoop when you see first turn lackey? definately not.  Im just saying that it is not realistic to think "oh my deck has about a 60+/40- avarage chance to beat any deck in the meta." I think most decks are within 2 or 3 % points of 50/50 when you average out all matchups in the meta... otherwise one deck would be vastly superior to all others and would win every major tourny. 

[mr_rogers]

@Harlequin: What is your Oath build? Also I'm not making up numbers against Fish, I really don't have much of a problem beating it with Oath.  As for your list no one runs Waterfront bouncer, Karakas, or extract.  I can say I've never had to play against those in a tournament yet. 

 When Oath decks have trouble versus creature based decks, unless they run spawning pit or goblin bombardment, then I think you've built your deck wrong.  Goblins and ocasionaly Fish(U/W) are difficult match ups for my Oath build, but the only matchups I really consider hard are the mirror and Gifts. If you run GWS Oath you can easily modify it to fit you meta.  If duress sucks try chalice in its place or if you see lots of FCG you can run pyroclasm md, though personally all you really need is to have a md bounce and hit the warchief when they go off.     

[Harlequin]

@Harlequin: What is your Oath build? Also I'm not making up numbers against Fish, I really don't have much of a problem beating it with Oath.  As for your list no one runs Waterfront bouncer, Karakas, or extract.  I can say I've never had to play against those in a tournament yet.      

Clearly you havent faced good fish players in tournaments.  The guy who swept day two waterbury runs 3 extract on the side and sided them in almost every game (read his report on the tournement report forum ... oddly enough his report is on my acctount so it will be under the name Harlequin).  The guy who took 2nd (hatcher) runs karakas on the main.  And waterfront bouncer is makeing a splash in UB fish ... at least the builds I've faced.
I run a deck that is very far removed from GWS oath.  You can take a good look at my list in the thread about mono-blue oath on this board.  My deck has a fantastic game against any other control deck, but is slightly too slow for the decks i've listed.  I highly doubt you've tested "your" GWS oath deck against good fish decks, otherwise you would understand how powerful thier entire deck is against yours.  I'm also not sure what "numbers" your refering too... but i know in about 30 sided games against my Blue white buddy i won about 10 to 12 of them.  So its no shut out.  Its not like you shouldn't try and beat those decks ...   I'm mearly pointing out the fact that no deck can have a beter than 50% chance of beating all other decks.

[jpmeyer]

Digging through the various Fish lists in the SCG deck database, most of the successful ones run about 8 cards maindeck that are problems for Oath.  While "You aren't playing against hateful Fish decks" might be a true statement here, "You aren't playing against good Fish decks" doesn't hold up using those lists as the samples.

[Harlequin]

You only play one game unsided, and one or two games sided.
The sideboard matters alot.
I'm also curious how are you counting "problems" for oath.  Are you counting stifle? disenchant? meddling mage? or only bouce / removal.
Also i'll challange you to find a deck that runs MORE than 8 MD diruption cards against oath...
Id be surprised if you found a non-fish list that had 5.

[Null Rob]

Counterspells ARE disruption in case you forgot.  If you can't get an Oath to resolve by turn 3 or 4 against a deck packing 4 Fow, 4 Drain, you don't stand too much of a chance.  Plus most decks like Gifts, Slaver, Confidant Combo, TPS, etc. have 1-2 maindeck bounce spells.  So that's 4 more decks right there that have 10+ disruption cards against Oath.

[jpmeyer]

You only play one game unsided, and one or two games sided.
The sideboard matters alot.
I'm also curious how are you counting "problems" for oath.  Are you counting stifle? disenchant? meddling mage? or only bouce / removal.
Also i'll challange you to find a deck that runs MORE than 8 MD diruption cards against oath...
Id be surprised if you found a non-fish list that had 5.

Meddling Mage, Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant, and Seal of Cleansing.  I don't seem to remember any copies of Rootwater Thief or any bounce spells, but I would've included those if I saw them.  I don't seem to recall any Stifles but even if there were, I wouldn't include it.

Also, like Null Rob pointed out, "disruption cards against Oath" is hard to define.  Does Stax have 1 card that counts in Duplicant, or does it have 9 that count when you include Chalice of the Void and Smokestack?  Similarly, does Gifts have zero or ten?  It appears to be a meaningless argument since Fish is really the only creature-based deck among the frequently-played decks in Type 1 and thus the only deck that gets shut down by Akroma or Razia.

[Moxlotus]

From my experience the U/W fish matchup is about 45/55 overall depending on the deck.  Not that good, but not my feared matchup either.  This is using 4 Mages, 3-4 Stormscape Apprentice, and I think 3 StP (I don't remember the exact deck we had).  They can bring in more stuff from the board like a few disenchant and another StP or a few Bouncers, but I also have 2 Trikes that can be Tinkered/Oathed into play and laugh at all the problem creatures.

[Harlequin]

[Meddling Mage, Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant, and Seal of Cleansing.  I don't seem to remember any copies of Rootwater Thief or any bounce spells, but I would've included those if I saw them.  I don't seem to recall any Stifles but even if there were, I wouldn't include it.

Also, like Null Rob pointed out, "disruption cards against Oath" is hard to define.  Does Stax have 1 card that counts in Duplicant, or does it have 9 that count when you include Chalice of the Void and Smokestack?  Similarly, does Gifts have zero or ten?  It appears to be a meaningless argument since Fish is really the only creature-based deck among the frequently-played decks in Type 1 and thus the only deck that gets shut down by Akroma or Razia.

You can't count apples from one deck an oranges from another.  If your couning meddling mage, swords, disenchant, seal, and bounce then gifts has 0.  If your counting counterspells then gifts has 8 to 10 ... but that means that fish has at least 4 to 6 more on top of the 8 cards you found.  I would indead count chalice, its basically the same as meddling mage (but worse because it gets your drains too).  So that gives most versions of stax 5. 
It's hard for me to believe that oath players don't have more respect for the deck that runs the most threatening cards to your deck, hands down.  The real drawback to Oath of druids is that it doesnt do anything when you play it, the fish player gets to untap all his/her perminants draw a card, then decide how to best bone your oath plan.

[Bean]

I played Oath in the tournament, and I have to say, I did not have that much of a problem with U/W Fish. However, I'm not saying that it is a cake walk either. As mentioned before, they have a lot of MD hate against you and even more SB. The decks I faced had Disenchants (no Seals), Swords, Rootwater Thief,  and Meddling Mage MD, plus Extract and Echoing Truth SB. One thing that I packed in my sideboard that owned Fish all day was 2 copies of Iridescent Angel (4/4 Flying, Pro Colors, for those who don't remember Odyssey block).  After I side those in, all I have to do is force through an Oath and make it stick; that's usually game over.  Most Fish decks have no answer to that, unless they're playing Maze of Ith (not a common occurrence), which I have Wastelands for.

[WildWillieWonderboy]

Oath is at once very powerful and terribly fragile. It's win condition involves having a specific enchantment, your opponent having creatures, and you swinging with creatures. That's a lot of criteria to fulfill. Of course it's fairly easy game 1 because orchard and oath with some counterspells takes care of it. Post board there are a slew of tactics that can be used against you because each of those criteria has a raft of cards that take care of it. You have to play very tight control to make sure Oath resolves and sticks long enough as well as making sure that your guy doesn't get removed. The match very quickly centers entirely upon the Oath deck.

[sundering jerk]

The truth is Oath isn't good enough. gifts is faster and can out control it, fish just has to put down a bouncer or a meddling mage, gorger just wins faster, and fatties are just to easy to deal with. It's a fun noob deck in the sense that it's just to easy to play, and theirfor easy to predict. I pray when I go to tourneys that I face this deck.

[Moxlotus]

The truth is Oath isn't good enough. gifts is faster and can out control it, fish just has to put down a bouncer or a meddling mage, gorger just wins faster, and fatties are just to easy to deal with. It's a fun noob deck in the sense that it's just to easy to play, and theirfor easy to predict. I pray when I go to tourneys that I face this deck.

Obviously if you feel this way you don't understand the deck or have faced a good player with a proper build.  Gifts is about the same goldfish as Oath and Oath shouldn't be trying to out control anything--so it doesn't matter if a deck outcontrols it.  Oath should be built as an aggr-control deck--you don't see people say fish is bad because a deck can outcontrol it.  Oath also has a ridiculous amount of disruption.  You also neglect the amazing Stax matchup and the even-good CS match.  If an Oath deck isn't 50/50 against fish it isn't built properly.  Or I guess its just a noob deck that has top 8 at GenCon and the past 2 SCG tournaments.

[EnialisLiadon]

The truth is Oath isn't good enough. gifts is faster and can out control it, fish just has to put down a bouncer or a meddling mage, gorger just wins faster, and fatties are just to easy to deal with. It's a fun noob deck in the sense that it's just to easy to play, and theirfor easy to predict. I pray when I go to tourneys that I face this deck.

I disagree...the oath shell leaves a lot of room for tinkering--allowing any competent player with any decent metagaming skills to shore up bad matches.  That and the fact that oath has good match-ups against the top three decks at the moment with Stax, Slaver and sometimes Gifts.

That and the fact that oath just can't be stopped sometimes--mox, orchard go with Force backup...happens more often than one would think with not much to be done about it.