[Deck] Stax Oath

[netherspirit]

Hey guys, I've been working on this for a while and if it goes off it completely decimates the opponent, problem is I'm having a few issues with the reliability. I've got a couple of tutors to get what I need, but if I can't pull an Oath of Druids quickly enough I might as well just pick up my cards and leave. The idea behind the deck was to mix stax and oath, but it's become more of an oath deck with stax elements now.

Creatures: (3)
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Silent Arbiter
1 Sundering Titan

Spells: (15)
2 Gaea's Blessing
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Crop Rotation
4 Mana Drain
4 Mana Leak
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

Enchantments: (5)
1 Fastbond
4 Oath of Druids

Artifacts: (19)
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
4 Crucible of Worlds
1 Trinisphere
4 Tangle Wire
4 Chalice of the Void

Lands: (18)
4 Forbidden Orchard
3 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Bayou
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
1 City of Brass

Sideboard: (15)
4 Null Rod
4 Stifle
3 Cursed Totem
4 Pithing Needle


Right, card explanations.
Silent Arbiter: In my opinion this card is overlooked for too often, especially in Oath or against Goblins, this card allows you to stop incoming creature attacks, and once you drop a colossus as well they're taking at least 10 damage per turn and will never be able to get rid of their creatures via blocking.
Fastbond: Crucible + Stripmine + Fastbond = Owned, hehe, I'll admit it's not the most amazing way to lock down their lands, but it's still great fun.
Crop Rotation: Great if you're having mana issues, otherwise this will often fetch Strip Mine, especially once Crucible and Fastbond are down.
Tangle Wire: In my opinion the only board gummer better than this is Trinisphere, this allows you to lock them out for at least 1 turn, often giving you enough time to set up the kill.
Cursed Totem: Creature abilities can hurt, LOADS.
Stifle: Kicks storm in the balls.

 I haven't explained the obvious card choices such as Drain, Leak, 3Sphere etc, but if you'd like any explanations that I haven't mentioned, just ask.
 The deck can usually hold out against storm decks such as Grim Long pretty easily, Goblins are no trouble once Oath hits, control isn't too bad if I can out counter them, which is sometimes easier said than done.
 Originally I'd been toying with the idea of adding Balance or The Abyss, I'm still not sure though, and even then I wouldn't know what to cut for them.

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks guys!

[Moxlotus]

You already found your reason why the deck is doing poor.  You can't find your Oath consistently.  Basically you cut draw spells/Impulses and replaced them with Crucible and Tanglewire.  They don't help you find your oath or give you mana, so they better disrupt your opponent.  The only problem is the disrupt your opponent less than other options like Duress and FORCE OF WILL.

I also question the Bayou, the lack of Basic island, and the ZERO fetchlands.

When modifying a deck, you must ask why you are modifying it.  How are you making it better?  Are you making it any worse?  I cannot see what benefits tanglewire, cruciible, and 3 sphere bring to the deck that would make them better than FORCE OF WILL, Duress, and TFK/Impulse.

[UR]

How is Tangle Wire good in this deck? If you have a good opening (Orchard, Mox, Oath) it will be a dead card in your hand (or nearly so). Not tech.

[netherspirit]

Tangle Wire is only good if you pull it turn 1 or 2, which happens quite often.

[Methuselahn]

ICBM Oath is the closest comparison here as it is very stax like.  It accomplishes everything your deck wants to and more.  You are going probably going to have to compare the two and explain why yours is better, which looks to be difficult, imo.

[netherspirit]

I'll admit I don't study deck archtypes in detail, so ICBM oath means nothing to me, I only study the basics of each deck type.

[Nixons_Evil_Twin]

In all honesty, I like the concept. However, I see several problems in execution:
Tangle Wire is essentially your main disruption, particularly for forcing the Oath through. That is inadequate, not to mension unsynergistic with Orchard. Your countermagic will not be very useful for getting Oath to stick: by the time you have (1)(G)(U)(U) open, I expect that a control opponent would have a counter ready, as well as Force backup.
I have trouble imagining you "out counter" control opponents, with only four in the deck and no Force.
Additionally, you have very few ways to search out Oath.
Lastly, about the mana base... Any 5 color Stax player is likely to tell you that City of Brass is far better than Gemstone Mine. Beyond that, in the current meta, even with the recent dip in Stax, Wasteland is a threat that you need to consider, and counter with fetch into basics, as you don't really want to rely on Crucible to keep lands on the board.
Overall I might begin by suggesting
-3 Mine
-4 Wire
-1 Crucible
-1 Bayou
-1 Trop
-1 Sea
-4 Mana Drain

+2 Island
+4 FOW
+8 fetch
+1 City

Good luck, and let me know how it ends up! 

[netherspirit]

Wow, thanks for the help . So far the changes I have made are:

-1 Bayou
-1 Mine (I've found that 3 is too many, but 2 is usually pretty good)
-1 Tropical
-1 Sea
-1 Fastbond
-1 Titan
+1 City
+3 Fetch
+1 Enlightened Tutor
+1 Balance

I got rid of Fastbond because in all honesty it does NOTHING most games, Sundering Titan because it hasn't done much yet, so I'm trying without it for now, but if it doesn't work I will re-add it. I included Enlightened Tutor because it seems most suited to the deck than the other tutors, I rely mainly on artifacts and enchantments, so this seems the right one for the job. Balance is just great, it can almost act like a stax piece, but more importantly it can help me control the board and make sure I don't fall too far behind on mana development. I decided to keep Tangle Wire because it has ALWAYS proved useful, especially beings the local meta game is full of aggro, I can usually hold off a few creatures at the least with it. It's very good early game, and late game it will at the very least hold off creatures as I said.

I have trouble imagining you "out counter" control opponents, with only four in the deck and no Force.

I have 8 counters  .

[zeus-online]

Just realised..you dont run force of will? What is the reason for that?

/Zeus

[netherspirit]

Not got much to pitch to it, it's usually a dead card.

[Nixons_Evil_Twin]

Sorry I misread the counter number. Glad I was able to help.

[netherspirit]

Right, I'm gonna give this some testing against various decks over the next 3 or 4 days, and hopefully from there I'll have a better idea of the deck, I removed 1 fetch land and replaced it with an extra city, it kinda seems pointless having more fetches than lands that can be fetched... :lol: I'm thinking of reincluding Fastbond to get the Strip Mine/Crucible interaction again, but I need more tutors for it, which would you guys recommend?

[frolll]

Why don't you run non-weldable Oath creatures? I think that opposing Welders can do pretty much damage to your deck, seeing the fact that Oath load your graveyard with artifacts while putting into play an artifact creature. If i'm playing CS or Uba Stax and have an active Welder, would you prefer not to Oath just to avoid the loss of your creature? Also, non-haste creatures haven't look really fine to me since you lose 1 turn in kill. But enough about that, as I have no clues about for what metagame this deck is made...

2 Blessings hurt me, too. 1 is really enough, although without Brainstorm I could understand the reasonning behind your logic of playing 2 Blessings... but this card is kinda dead in most situations, isn't it?

I find the Mana Drain + Tangle Wire interaction anti-synergestical. Sure you can cast Wire off mana from Drain, but after that you're locked as the opponent is of playing any more Drain... And Wire is good in stax because of its appearances on turn 1 or 2 via Workshop mana... And since you run 0 shop, it's seems a bit illogical to me.

Fastbond should be fit in if you cut 1 or 2 Crucible to put Fastbond in. Multiple Crucible of Worlds does absolutely nothing...

I was tinkering with the idea of a true stax transformal sideboard, with something like 4 shop, 2-3 welder, and 4 Smokestack + the Null rods that are actually there... And as you are running a rainbow manabase, things like In the Eye of Chaos or Choke or Chains of Mephistopheles or Pyrostatic Pillar or whatever else could go in, too.


But don't get me wrong, I really love the idea and I think that this kind of hybrid deck can take by surprise a metagame that is unprepared. Good job on designing an original deck. I'd love to see this deck or at least this deck concept played in a large tournament, too.

[netherspirit]

  I run Arbiter because it allows me to control the way my opponent attacks and blocks, so they can't get any advantage out of Oath, as for DSC, he's big and brutal (as I mentioned, I've taken out Titan, it didn't do much). I'm not sure whether or not Welder would be a problem, he can't kill DSC, but getting rid of Arbiter may be problematic.
   Tangle Wire, as I have mentioned before, ALWAYS seems to help this deck, I don't really see how Smokestack would be any better, and Sphere of Resistance would slow me down too much.
 As for replacing a Crucible with Fastbond I definitely agree. But I still need to be able to get a Crucible in the first place, so I don't really want to go to less than 3.
   I'll definitely look into ITEOC, and Chains, Choke is a possibility but it would hurt the Sea and Tropical, which I want to avoid because the other lands I have to produce blue have drawbacks which I'd rather avoid.
 Thanks for the help frolll, very helpful, and extremely encouraging.