Burning Oath

[BreathWeapon]

This deck list is an amalgamation of Oath and Gifts I put together after reviewing Brian Demar's latest creation in the Vintage Open Forum. The basic principle I agreed with was that a Gifts based deck did not need to focus on Gifts in order to resolve it. Instead of using 4 Gifts and Misdirection it's easier to use a higher number of multiple purpose cards that can either draw or tutor into a Gifts, namely Thirst for Knowledge and Merchant Scroll. With this in mind, I had a 55 card skeleton for the deck and an important question to answer, what is the best strategy to supliment Gifts? Brian decided that the best approach was to add in Slaver elements, a couple of Goblin Welders and high CC artifacts. I felt this approach simply compromised the Slaver plan, and instead it would be better to add a more compact and synergistic strategy. Thus, I quickly came to Oath of Druids and Reclamation. Given that Oath of Druids had already been tried before in Gifts to some success via Buehler, having 4 additional Tinkers and another combo engine would make the deck more aggressive and improve its match ups against Fish and Stax.

Burning Oath was born,

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain

4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall

4 Merchant Scroll
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor

1 Tinker
4 Oath of Druids
1 Darksteel Colossus

1 Time Walk

1 Gifts Ungiven

1 Yawgmoth's Will

1 Reclamation
1 Recoup

1 Burning Wish

1 Rebuild

4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Snow Covered Island
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mana Crypt

SB

1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Mind Twist
1 Pyroclasm
1 Shattering Spree
2 Simic Sky Swallower
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Energy Flux
4 Chalice of the Void

So far in limited testing the deck appears to have promise vs the field. Against Combo you lose Chalice of the Void and Merchant Scroll is no Mana Leak or Duress, so you'll have to rely on resolving a Tinker or Oath of Druids quickly instead of playing the control roll until you can SB out your Gifts combo for your Chalices of the Void. What you gain is a more versatile MD with Merchant Scroll and a combo finish, either finding and resolving an Oath of Druids faster than its contemporary or disregarding the combat step for the win. This allows the deck to side step traditional hate for either archetype, and although I don't believe it will replace conventional Oath or Gifts list it is worth considering.

[EnialisLiadon]

I don't think I like TfK here...I really only like TfK in slaver (and maybe ICM Oath) and not at all in Gifts decks or decks with Gifts.  I would personally cut them for Vampiric Tutor, 1-2 more Gifts, more bounce, Misd/Duress, FoF...some combination of those options.

[BreathWeapon]

I don't think I like TfK here...I really only like TfK in slaver (and maybe ICM Oath) and not at all in Gifts decks or decks with Gifts.  I would personally cut them for Vampiric Tutor, 1-2 more Gifts, more bounce, Misd/Duress, FoF...some combination of those options.

I think you're missing the point, it's a deck designed for those people who dislike playing multiple Gifts in favor of a draw engine; if I want to play Gifts and Oath instead of Oath with Gifts I'd look into Buehler's list.

The only reason Gifts runs 2 bounce cards is because its strategy is one dimentional, the only reason I run a bounce card at all is to support Tendrils.

[Dakkon]

tfk should go down to 2 or less, making room for vampiric tutor and 1 more gifts. Also try running chain of vapor main deck, i always want to see it in my hand when I go off because it is borderline broken.

Gifts is more broken than tfk and it gets you the same advantage exept you get better cards, you should try running atleast 2 unless your running control slaver. You also have no fatties do discard to the graveyard so you'll be discarding mana to tfk instead........usually you want mana.

[sa17dk]

Thing is though, you'll have your whole deck in your graveyard, so drawing into Oath would be better than playing the 2nd or 3rd Gifts (unless it's for mana)

[BreathWeapon]

It's hard to say, while I presented the deck as an alternative to Brian Demar's approach to his Slaver build, I think the Gifts/Oath build piloted by Randy Buehler is objectively better because it focuses on resolving threats instead of drawing cards. I imagine if I went to 4 Gifts Ungiven and included Vampric Tutor in the place of Thirst fo Knowledge the deck would be stronger because it wouldn't waste tempo drawing cards and mana discarding moxes. You replace 2 Duress, Fact or Fiction and Regrowth from the Randy Buehler build, which suck, for Merchant Scrolls, which are awesome.

Here's an interesting question for all of you, does any one think that Lotus Petal would be better than Sol Ring simply for the ability to play turn one Oath of Druids and Mana Drain?

[sa17dk]

It's hard to say, while I presented the deck as an alternative to Brian Demar's approach to his Slaver build, I think the Gifts/Oath build piloted by Randy Buehler is objectively better because it focuses on resolving threats instead of drawing cards. I imagine if I went to 4 Gifts Ungiven and included Vampric Tutor in the place of Thirst fo Knowledge the deck would be stronger because it wouldn't waste tempo drawing cards and mana discarding moxes. You replace 2 Duress, Fact or Fiction and Regrowth from the Randy Buehler build, which suck, for Merchant Scrolls, which are awesome.

Here's an interesting question for all of you, does any one think that Lotus Petal would be better than Sol Ring simply for the ability to play turn one Oath of Druids and Mana Drain?

I was thinking of replacing the Thirsts too, but after you Oath, exactly what is there to Gifts for?

[BreathWeapon]

It's hard to say, while I presented the deck as an alternative to Brian Demar's approach to his Slaver build, I think the Gifts/Oath build piloted by Randy Buehler is objectively better because it focuses on resolving threats instead of drawing cards. I imagine if I went to 4 Gifts Ungiven and included Vampric Tutor in the place of Thirst fo Knowledge the deck would be stronger because it wouldn't waste tempo drawing cards and mana discarding moxes. You replace 2 Duress, Fact or Fiction and Regrowth from the Randy Buehler build, which suck, for Merchant Scrolls, which are awesome.

Here's an interesting question for all of you, does any one think that Lotus Petal would be better than Sol Ring simply for the ability to play turn one Oath of Druids and Mana Drain?

I was thinking of replacing the Thirsts too, but after you Oath, exactly what is there to Gifts for?

Gifts after an Oath activations seems win more, but considering you have so many cards in your discard after an activation I'd say Yawgmoths's Will, Recoup and mana are good targets, otherwise you'd wants something like Force of Willl, Mana Drain, Merchant Scroll and Brainstorm so you can tighten your grip with DSC on the board. I can say I've honestly never lost a game after I've activated Oath accept against Combo, so the best thing Gifts could possilby do at this point is discard to Force of Will.

[Tha Gunslinga]

I was thinking of replacing the Thirsts too, but after you Oath, exactly what is there to Gifts for?

Recoup, Time Walk, Force of Will, Mana Drain?

[BreathWeapon]

Or Yawgmoth's Will, Time Walk, Recoup, Reclamation. As far as I see it that's the best possible combination to ensure you just go off with Time Walk twice and if for some reason that shouldn't work you get to Oath to draw Yawgmoth's Will off a Time Walk turn, Oath the rest of your graveyard and then go for Tendrils of Agony. At that point Recoup and Reclamation are more or less serving as counter spells against anything other than Combo.

[sa17dk]

So if you could change it, would you add more Gifts? Personally I would leave it at one.

And why not Vampiric Tutor?

[BreathWeapon]

I'm on -4 Thirst for Knowledge, +3 Gifts Ungiven and +1 Vampiric Tutor.

It's a different animal, I appreciate having such a high threat density in comparison to other control decks in this format as well as the ability to simply smash face with Oath against Slaver, Fish and Stax. Instead of taking the time to set up it's better to win now, and that's what having 4 Gifts Ungiven allows you to do. I'd much rather have a higher threat density and diversification of threats in Gifts/Oath than a one dimentional threat backed by conditional disruption (Misdirection).

[arkmagus]

Nice to see a burning oath thread.  I'm having a blast giving this a try myself, though I run no less than 2 gifts ungiven.  Its a breakout card that creates a solid developmental lead or simply outright wins. 

My question is the match-up against ICBM Oath.  How do you think you'd fare game 1? Post-board?  Given ICBM has at least 3 strip effects, what's your gameplan? Consider that ICBM can also bring in extracts post-board.

[BreathWeapon]

I imagine going heads up vs a dedicated Oath list, of any kind, would be an unfavorable match up. They have Strips and Chalices to keep me off my mana sources for Gifts and win the Orchard war. The idea behind building a hybrid is to improve your match up against the field and not against the mirror, so I think this an acceptable out come considering how rare Oath is to begin with and the possibility that this will be the Oath deck to play, that's speculative tho'.

If you just meant the Thirst version, I'd say the match up isn't all that terrible because Scrolls give you either disruption or gas and their Chalices are dead against you because they just give you Thirst fodder. As far as Extract goes I'm not certain I've ever seen the card in Oath SB's, but it looks like a dangerous weapon against Gifts, Slaver and Tendrils and considering I have 4 Merchant Scroll it looks like it would be worth experimenting with.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

As far as Extract goes I'm not certain I've ever seen the card in Oath SB's, but it looks like a dangerous weapon against Gifts, Slaver and Tendrils and considering I have 4 Merchant Scroll it looks like it would be worth experimenting with.

If you are implying that you would fetch extract with scroll, maybe you didn't notice that it's a sorcery.

As for the deck, I think that it has some potential.  The ability for the deck to drop an oath and 'just win' by beating face is really good, because usually control decks have to invest a great deal of set-up and resources to do something like that (either Will or Tinker).  Oath, costing 1G, must be really good against decks like stax and fish as you said, since they disrupt you by denying you resources (and of course they also run creatures).  Scrolls are also awesome.  You really only need one Gifts, and you have plenty of ways to find it.  As you said, the mirror and combo matchups are probably the only ones that really suffer because of the changes, while you gain a variety of tools to exploit against the rest of the field.

[arkmagus]

As for the deck, I think that it has some potential. The ability for the deck to drop an oath and 'just win' by beating face is really good, because usually control decks have to invest a great deal of set-up and resources to do something like that (either Will or Tinker). Oath, costing 1G, must be really good against decks like stax and fish as you said, since they disrupt you by denying you resources (and of course they also run creatures). Scrolls are also awesome. You really only need one Gifts, and you have plenty of ways to find it. As you said, the mirror and combo matchups are probably the only ones that really suffer because of the changes, while you gain a variety of tools to exploit against the rest of the field.

I quoted this fully because while I agree with some of the premises, I differ on its conclusion.  In my playtesting, the deck has superb synergy. But after deck synergy come your next two tests of deckbuilding:  Strategy superiority and the gauntlet. 

As far as strategy superiority goes, you just traded a control strategy (Gifts) for a more comboish-aggro one that would compensate for some weaknesses, particularly, against decks like stax and fish.  Though, if you include SS as a fish variant, I would be strongly disinclined as the results show SS edging out almost any deck with an oath monicker.  Now it is stronger vs stax, but gifts was never that lopsided a matchup to begin with.  The other up side is the ability to just beat down in classic oath fashion, which the hybrid now gets.  Which leads to the  strategy superiority question:  What does the hybrid do (or at least aim to do) that the progenitor cannot, or does worse at?  I posited this question because the two progenitors - oath and gifts - are focused strategies; and the risk of diluting (a.k.a hybridizing) focused strategies is that it may seek to answer a problem that doesn't exist or one that may be dealt with post-board, or worse, lose the edge of both.

Going to the litmus test of strategy superiority:  The gauntlet.  For reference, I cite below the results of the top 8 in the recently concluded SCG Power 9 tournament (source SCG):


StarCity P9/Charlotte/2006-07-09

1.  Sullivan Solution
2.  Oath of Druids (ICBM version)
3.  Pitch Long
4.  Sullivan Solution
5.  Friggorid
6.  Gifts
7.  Burning Slaver
8.  Aggro Stax


Contrary to what was mentioned, oath is not on the decline and it will be part of the gauntlet for the foreseeable future.  I think there is already a concensus that a head-to-head against a dedicated oath deck is not a favorable one for the hybrid. 

Next is Sullivan Solution, elegant and fun....and on the rise.  I would not take the results of Charlotte as preordained in the least, but the relationship of SS and anything related to oath is one of anti-strategy. Disruption and point removal is a bane to most things oath, and oath has to up the ante post-board to achieve parity.  But, isn't this the point of hybridizing, to shore up the weaknesses?  Not when it loses some cards that should make this happen.  Gifts, yes, but copies of it.  A lone gifts could only do so much to alter the tide already set by the anti-strategy.

Against Gifts, the hybrid will do best with an explosive start (ala oath), but would generally be fighting at an increasing disadvantage the longer the game goes.  For this reason, when I tested this match-up, I included duresses. And then some more. 

Against slaver and stax, the hybrid might prove better than both as oath itself is strong in these situations.

Generally however, the longer I tested and the more tweaks I made to improve on the strategy superiority, the more the hybrid resembled its progenitor, one way or the other.  While some match-ups were indeed improved, others were diluted to the point where it must be asked:  Will the hybrid do better than either of the progenitor in the gauntlet?

My testing showed that it is unlikely.