Epiphany: Tyrant Oath-Reanimator

[Imsomniac101]

So I'm in exam period of the year. Staying true to form, I the master procrastinator turned to every single source of distraction. By the first two weeks, I'd exhausted all options. I withdrew all my money off the online poker site I'd been playing ( so I couldn't gamble as a form of procrastination). Lost the $45 I won in a freeroll on another site, since I couldn't withdraw without a deposit anyways. Turned to all forums, I think by the end of the two weeks, I'd been refreshing each forum page I visited regularly, like once every 10 min. So I turned to an old standby. The hobby that helped me procrastinate my way through high school. I thought I'd never talk about Magic again once I'd sold my cards. But I'm pretty desparate.

Anyway, I'd been fiddling around with Cerebral Assassin lists. I'd been messing round with adding the Dragon to the Maindeck, experimenting with different reanimate targets, and Living Wish as per advice from BreathWeapon. (Check the same forum for the thread). Then it hit me. Why not Tidespout Tyrant? It's a great utility creature, immune to Welder and has built in defensive/offensive capability. I had previously experimented with Oath in CA, and this seemed so dumbfounding-ly obvious why had noone thought of this before?

Previous Oath lists used to fight over resolving Oath. To protect Oath once it hit play. Why bother? I'll present a cursory list to instigate discussion and so you can get an idea of what I'm raving on about. Obviously this is not even close to fully tuned.

//NAME: Untitled Deck
        3 Bazaar of Baghdad
        2 Necromancy
        3 Animate Dead
        2 Careful Study
        4 Force of Will
        3 Duress
        4 Oath of Druids
        3 Tidespout Tyrant
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Time Walk
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Yawgmoth's Will
        4 Intuition
        1 Merchant Scroll
        1 Ponder
        1 Brainstorm
        2 Chain of Vapor

        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mana Vault

        1 Tolarian Academy
        4 Forbidden Orchard
        2 Glimmervoid
        3 Gemstone Mine
        4 City of Brass

SB:  1 Platinum Angel
SB:  2 Sundering Titan
SB:  1 Tinker
SB:  4 Leyline of the Void
SB:  1 Triskelion
SB:  3 Ancient Grudge
SB:  3 Sacred Ground

Instead of fighting over Oath, or even bothering to protect it, just circumvent it by taking an alternate route. Or if your graveyard is being hated out, Go Oath. Few decks can fight against both. The animate plan has even greater synergy with Intuition, which has already proven it's worth in Oath lists. Now you don't even have to wait till your next upkeep to put Tyrant into play. Counterspells? Who the **** cares!!! This has the advantage of CA which is redundancy. ie just keep ramming animate spells/Oaths till one sticks.

Several things to mess around with:

-  Mana Base to be optimised
-  I feel that Gifts + Recoup should be in this deck somewhere. You can make some insane pile like animate spell+Oath+ theNutz
-  Careful Study needs to be reevaluated I think. It has been extremely useful, but I feel that there might be better options.
-  Leyline? and other meta cards obviously.
-  Other reanimate options? like Reanimate?
-  Show and Tell?
-  Card Advantage?

[EDIT: update for streamlined list]

I think TfK is interesting.... Not playing Intuition is definitely a mistake though. It's such an insane card in this deck, it's not funny.

I've refined my list some more. It's much more streamlined, and definitely much more powerful. I added the storm kill via CunningWish.

//NAME: Untitled Deck

        4 Oath of Druids
        1 Necromancy
        1 Animate Dead
        1 Reanimate

        3 Tidespout Tyrant

        4 Force of Will
        3 Thoughtseize

        3 Bazaar of Baghdad
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Time Walk
        1 Deep Analysis

        1 Yawgmoth's Will

        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Gifts Ungiven
        4 Intuition
        1 Merchant Scroll/Mystical Tutor
        1 Ponder
        1 Brainstorm

        1 Cunning Wish
        1 Chain of Vapor
        1 Recoup

        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mana Vault

        4 Forbidden Orchard
        2 Glimmervoid
        1 Tolarian Academy
        3 Gemstone Mine
        4 City of Brass

SB:  1 Platinum Angel
SB:  2 Sundering Titan
SB:  1 Tinker
SB:  4 Leyline of the Void
SB:  1 Triskelion
SB:  3 Ancient Grudge
SB:  1 Fire // Ice
SB:  1 Brain Freeze
SB:  1 Rebuild

I think that 3 Reanimation spells are optimal, unless you're playing in a counterspell heavy environment, in which you'll need to ram more spells at them.

Matchups:

Control Slaver - I think this crushes CS just by virtue of being an Oath deck.

Fish - Unsure, depends on the build. I'd imagine it to be slightly favourable.

Workshop - On one hand, you have no basic lands. On the other hand, you're an Oath deck. This'll be interesting to see. I think Stax and WS aggro will measure up differently.

Combo: They're faster. Probably unfavourable.

Thoughts anyone?

Otherwise, go nuts. Should you go on a tear with this deck, you can PM me about where to send half your winnings

[arctic79]

Why Tidespout?  You have nothing in the deck to truely abuses his abilities. There are no REB's, or a Gush. You may as well use the Angels to finish faster and more effectively.  Tidespout is most effective in an Oath deck that plays off his abilities, this deck has very little synergy with him.
What about 7/10?  He'll do more damage than a tidespout for board control.  Although he can be welded but that isn't always a bad thing.

[Duncan]

My first suggestion would be:

-2 Careful Study
+1 Mystical Tutor / Brain Freeze
+1 Brain Freeze

Now you can go for the insta-kill with Tyrant.

[Imsomniac101]

You don't need insta kill abilities. Non-Stax decks have like 2 permanents max per game that you need to bounce before winning. This is an alternative route from Titan. Check out the Cerebral Assassin thread for that route.

I seriously think that Recoup is a must in this deck, and that Gifts inclusion naturally follows.

[Xyre]

If you're going to play Gifts/Recoup/Will, you'd might as well just go straight for the win, rather than screw around with reanimation into a creature that doesn't do you much good.

[Imsomniac101]

If you're going to play Gifts/Recoup/Will, you'd might as well just go straight for the win, rather than screw around with reanimation into a creature that doesn't do you much good.

They're all restricted cards. Gifts only shows up in your hand every now and then. It's sort of like route B if Tyrant doesn't work out. And it's even more powerful with Tyrant in play. Of course, if you get a retarded Gifts hand, you can play it as such.

Honestly, I don't think I should have posted a list. I get stupid questions pertaining to the decklist, when the premise of my post is this: why not add Animate Dead/Necromancy/ Reanimate etc to Tyrant Oath with Bazaar as it gives you such and such benefits see opening post if you didn't read it. I didn't see Menedian's Bazaar Oath list before I posted this, and now that I have, I suppose it would be better to start from there instead of a list that started as a CA/Dragon Hybrid crammed with Tyrants.

[meadbert]

This looks like an interesting list to me.

I would definitely consider adding Deep Analysis, but I will say that I have tried DA with City of Brass and Forbidden Orchard and it can really be suicidal!

Would Wheel of Fortune be good in this?  I know that Dragon decks do not generally run it, but it would help the Yawg plan.

Does a deck that already has 3 Tyrants and so many ways to get one into play really need two Chain of Vapors?

[arkmagus]

I note the OP's mention that he shouldn't have posted this list. I'm glad that he did and started this. This is, in fact, a necessary discussion after 6/20.  I've also been experimenting with reanimation since the restriction of brainstorm often left my hands with unwanted Tyrants and 3 only meant it happened more than I would have liked.

Smennen's list generated a buzz, but after having tried it, I found it could do with a little more "oomph!" I also wanted an out to having Tyrants in hand so I began at our common card, Bazaar.  It can, after all, chuck unwanted Tyrants, DA and x card to the yard.  My problem was what to make of that "lost Tyrant" and lost x card. Here, I harkened to Dragon reanimation and looked at Steve's list at SCG back in March 2008. http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=24506. 

Although this was a Dragon list, the mechanic was instructive.

I noticed that he had 4 Oaths on his board, and the idea struck me that this could be a way to sneak Tyrant back into play. Essentially, Animate Dead did in the GY what Oath did in the library.  It was faster and more resilient as you are no longer dependent on Oath.  For now, I'm going with 3 Animate Dead, 0 Necromancy, 0 Dance of the Dead. This is, after all, still an Oath list, but more resilient.

Now, the second problem was what to do with the card disadvantage.  I experimented with adding anything from AK to Tfk.  After some tests, I've settled on Tfk.  By itself, it's a card advantage engine, but it also has the added advantage of being Bazaar 5-7.  So my engine looks something like this:

4x Bazaar
4x DA
3x Tfk

Like 3x Scroll, 4x Gush/bond, 4x BS/Ponder before it, it doesn't care about playing the control role as much as it focuses on finding the win. Incidentally, this combination was only made possible with the recent restrictions as it is strictly less efficient than Gush/bond, Scroll, BS/Ponder.  A note too on Tfk, it doesn't need Mana Drain as it can work well enough using just artifact mana.  Tfk was also chosen over Read the Runes as the former is simply more efficient: 3 cards for 3 mana, possible net of 2. In this way, I view Tfk as a bridge between Bazaar and DA and the "missing link" for the "engine" to really kick into high gear.

With that in mind, here's my working list:

Creature
3 Tidespout Tyrant

Core
4 Oath of Druids
3 Animate Dead

Combo
1 Brain Freeze
1 Flash of Insight
1 Krosan Reclamation
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Engine
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Deep Analysis
3 Thirst for Knowledge

Control
4 Force of Will
3 Thoughtseize
1 Echoing Truth/Chain of Vapor

Utility/Tutors
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
------------------------
37

Acceleration
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
------------------------
7

Lands
4 Forbidden Orchard
3 Flooded Strands
2 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Island
------------------------
16

(x sideboard)

Note 1:  No BS, Ponder, Merchant Scroll.  Not needed.  They just get in the way of finding your combo/engine. Even Ponder, which I really wanted to include, operates too isolatedly. I want my Tyrants and DA in the yard. Ponder doesn't do that. Tfk creates card advantage AND dumps Tyrant/DA for ready re-use. Thus, it took a backseat priority which, eventually, warranted a cut.

Note 2: 23 mana producers.  Without Bazaar, I wouldn't go below 24.

Note 3: Why not eschew Oath altogether and go full reanimator? Simply put, Oath is the most efficient creature tutor AND it puts that creature into play.  Animate Dead's strength is that it synergizes perfectly with the Bazaar/Tfk "engine".

This is a work in progress and by no means a final list.  However, I've seen that the addition of Tfk really speeds up the draw, enhances card advantage and puts Tyrant and DA in the yard for immediate use. Finally, Animate Dead fully functions here as Oaths 5-7.

[Imsomniac101]

I think TfK is interesting.... Not playing Intuition is definitely a mistake though. It's such an insane card in this deck, it's not funny.

I've refined my list some more. It's much more streamlined, and definitely much more powerful. I added the storm kill via CunningWish.

//NAME: Untitled Deck
        3 Bazaar of Baghdad
        1 Necromancy
        1 Animate Dead
        1 Reanimate
        1 Deep Analysis
        4 Force of Will
        3 Thoughtseize
        4 Oath of Druids
        3 Tidespout Tyrant
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Time Walk
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Recoup
        1 Yawgmoth's Will
        1 Gifts Ungiven
        4 Intuition
        1 Cunning Wish
        1 Merchant Scroll
        1 Ponder
        1 Brainstorm
        1 Chain of Vapor
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mana Vault
        4 Forbidden Orchard
        2 Glimmervoid
        1 Tolarian Academy
        3 Gemstone Mine
        4 City of Brass
SB:  1 Platinum Angel
SB:  2 Sundering Titan
SB:  1 Tinker
SB:  4 Leyline of the Void
SB:  1 Triskelion
SB:  3 Ancient Grudge
SB:  1 Fire // Ice
SB:  1 Brain Freeze
SB:  1 Rebuild

I think that 3 Reanimation spells are optimal, unless you're playing in a counterspell heavy environment, in which you'll need to ram more spells at them.

[arkmagus]

I see that the differences in our list has to do with the strategy.  Your list really abuses Intuition to get the cards you want and go broken. Mine is about managing Bazaar and then going for the win.  Your engine is really Intuition so I guess that's -1 Bazaar, -3 DA.

It also seems this will primarily  be a beatdown deck, after establishing control with Tyrants. Apples to oranges I suppose. 

[BreathWeapon]

Seems interesting, pre-boarding Cerebral Assassin's Oath of Druids and cutting its Goblin Welders, more or less. If you're not focusing on Tidespout Tyrant, Platinum Angel has better synergy with Thirst for Knowledge and lets you Tinker as well. Opposing Goblin Welders can be removed with Darkblast or Chalice@1.

Oath/Reanimator just seems like a sweet premise tho'.

[Brapp]

Might as well chuck in Worldgorger Dragon and Eternal Witness/Shivan Hellkite for the combo finish

[kicks_422]

Have you ever though of running Worldgorgers instead? You can also fit in Cabal Therapies so that once the Dragon is Oath'd up, you can get it to the yard.

[bronxie]

intuition has no place in this deck.

[Imsomniac101]

Seems interesting, pre-boarding Cerebral Assassin's Oath of Druids and cutting its Goblin Welders, more or less. If you're not focusing on Tidespout Tyrant, Platinum Angel has better synergy with Thirst for Knowledge and lets you Tinker as well. Opposing Goblin Welders can be removed with Darkblast or Chalice@1.

Oath/Reanimator just seems like a sweet premise tho'.

Hmmm. Cheers. That was the origin of the idea. I'm looking for more Intuition piles, so i may look into some of the dredge cards.

Might as well chuck in Worldgorger Dragon and Eternal Witness/Shivan Hellkite for the combo finish

Have you ever though of running Worldgorgers instead? You can also fit in Cabal Therapies so that once the Dragon is Oath'd up, you can get it to the yard.

No..... That's a terrible idea...... Oathing up Dragon is just horrible, and this is not a Dragon deck.

intuition has no place in this deck.

Are you insane!!! Intuition is the best card in the deck. You obviously haven't played Oath before.


I'm seriously disappointed at the quality of the responses.....ugh.

[Everrid1234]

I think this list has a great potential. I always like double or triple ways to win so that hateing the deck is not easy. To abuse the tyrant you should find bounce and 2 moxen, bounce a mox, then bounce his board and/or go for the freeze-kill. Or just find the 2nd Mox. I think this is your plan.
The only fear i have is that some spells of the deck depend too much on other cards (Deep Analysis needs the Bazaar to be honest) or are a bit tpoo expensive to guarantee that the turn after Gifts leads you to victory (drawing into analysis or Intuition). Maybe add a Dark Ritual and a Mystical tutor and cut the Analysis and one Intuition.

The problem is: What do you do in your post-Gifts turn? Lets say you have no Tyrant in play (since him alone will let you win so you wouldnt need the Gifts-->storm-kill). So you have some mana on the table (lets say 6) and Lotus, Will and some draw in the grave. Recoup on hand. Does this really rock so well? I think you will often have mana problems. Without the Tyrant you won't kill with Gifts-Will often.

So tell us your strategy what you play to do after Gifts is played. My ideas would be:
-Chain the board, play Cunning, play Freeze --> storm-count is too low, too much mana investment
-play a Rebuild main (you should fear Stax decks) and maybe squeeze in Tendrils to have a win path with a lower storm count but this doesnt seem to be too effective

[TheRock]

Wow.  It has been a long time.  Living so close to Blue Bell, why did I ever stop playing this format?

I have three questions about this deck - although one of them doesn't apply to just this list.

1.  I have been seeing this in most Oath builds consistently all over the place (although not in all of course):

• 1 Ponder
• 0 Portent

Why is Portent seeing absolutely no play?  Maybe the correct question to ask is this: why is Ponder the only one seeing play?  I can imagine that some lists are really tight and all, but it just begs the question of what the deck's role is and whether one or two slots falls under the "Danger of Cool Things" category or not.

2.  Insomniac - Do you worry about Goblins just resolving their Squad and then putting you in an awfully tight spot?  I've been playing  many Thoughtseizes in my deck for a long time (even though I've switched configurations countless times), but without BEB, do you have enough answers to deal with their onslaught?  Do you consider it a threat at this point?

EDIT:  Fire/Ice counts, so that makes some of that second argument moot.

[Imsomniac101]

Before I answer any questions, I think a new manabase is in order.

        4 Forbidden Orchard
        1 Flooded Strand
        2 Polluted Delta
        1 Island
        1 Tropical Island
        3 Underground Sea
        1 Glimmervoid
        1 Tolarian Academy

Pretty much replace City of Brass, Gemstone Mines and all but one Glimmervoid for a normal manabase. It plays so much better as you don't have to worry about your life total/lands crumbling etc. It pretty much makes no difference to your ability to cast a spell of certain colours consistently. I'm thinking of cutting the leftover Glimmervoid as well. Maybe another basic would be good.

The other change I've made is
- 1 Cunning Wish
+1 Brainfreeze

Moving it to the maindeck is so much more efficient.

Now onto the replies.

I think this list has a great potential. I always like double or triple ways to win so that hateing the deck is not easy. To abuse the tyrant you should find bounce and 2 moxen, bounce a mox, then bounce his board and/or go for the freeze-kill. Or just find the 2nd Mox. I think this is your plan.

Correct.

The only fear i have is that some spells of the deck depend too much on other cards (Deep Analysis needs the Bazaar to be honest) or are a bit tpoo expensive to guarantee that the turn after Gifts leads you to victory (drawing into analysis or Intuition). Maybe add a Dark Ritual and a Mystical tutor and cut the Analysis and one Intuition.

Yeah, Deep Analysis was just a trial card. I took it up on someone's suggestion, but my honest opinion is that heavy card drawing is a waste of time. Those card swaps were the exact same ones I was thinking of too, however in testing, Ritual was a bit of a dead card at times. Ritual does make Tendrils an option though.

The problem is: What do you do in your post-Gifts turn? Lets say you have no Tyrant in play (since him alone will let you win so you wouldnt need the Gifts-->storm-kill). So you have some mana on the table (lets say 6) and Lotus, Will and some draw in the grave. Recoup on hand. Does this really rock so well? I think you will often have mana problems. Without the Tyrant you won't kill with Gifts-Will often.

What's important is the lead up to the turn you Gifts. If you're holding Gifts, with no Tyrant in play, you want to stock your grave/hand with accelerants. Setups like Intuition --> Crypt, Vault, Mox/Ritual ( if you play it), the turns before the Gifts are often overlooked.

So tell us your strategy what you play to do after Gifts is played. My ideas would be:
-Chain the board, play Cunning, play Freeze --> storm-count is too low, too much mana investment
-play a Rebuild main (you should fear Stax decks) and maybe squeeze in Tendrils to have a win path with a lower storm count but this doesn't seem to be too effective

Both are certainly viable. However, the goal of the design was to add more ways to put Tyrant into play. I was seriously considering Show and Tell, which has been used successfully in Oath before. I was also thinking of Burning Wish + Grapeshot in the SB before I swapped manabases.

Wow.  It has been a long time.  Living so close to Blue Bell, why did I ever stop playing this format?

I have three questions about this deck - although one of them doesn't apply to just this list.

1.  I have been seeing this in most Oath builds consistently all over the place (although not in all of course):

• 1 Ponder
• 0 Portent

Why is Portent seeing absolutely no play?  Maybe the correct question to ask is this: why is Ponder the only one seeing play?  I can imagine that some lists are really tight and all, but it just begs the question of what the deck's role is and whether one or two slots falls under the "Danger of Cool Things" category or not.

Portent is too weak. You WANT to see the card now, rather than later.

2.  Insomniac - Do you worry about Goblins just resolving their Squad and then putting you in an awfully tight spot?  I've been playing  many Thoughtseizes in my deck for a long time (even though I've switched configurations countless times), but without BEB, do you have enough answers to deal with their onslaught?  Do you consider it a threat at this point?

With CS as topdeck, Goblins isn't terribly relevant at the moment, so I haven't done much testing. I think Oath is more than capable of racing Goblins. Earwig squad does concern me, and I'm not sure if Force + thoughtseize is enough. You can always look to tweak the sideboard if this turns out to be a bad matchup.

Thanks for the awesome replies guys.

[Isaac85]

I'm curious why arkmagus go with bazaar instead of something else. I do realize this is a type of re animator deck but once I think oath and the tffk's are a good back up plan to play reanimate. I don't think bazaar is very useful in this deck mid to late game. If you get it by mid game chances are your out of cards anyways. Late game the same thing either you have them in a bind and are ready to win or your loosing already and trying to make some sort of comeback. I do agree though in an opening hand its a great sculptor but I would much rather have a chalice or a duress or something I know what will protect my hand.

[arkmagus]

@Isaac85:  This is a bit O.T. but I did change my engine to 4TFK+2Read the Runes (I changed Runes later to +2 Compulsive Research, which I think is better).  However, that is a different discussion entirely.  Like you observed, and as I experienced first-hand, Bazaar is not the best engine for this.  In Insomniac101's build, the engine is Intuition, in mine it is 4TFK+2 Compulsive Research.   

I do not want to update my thread barring new developments and I do not wish to hijack this thread, so I'll just post the relevant links for easy reference:

Tyrant Oath 2.0 TMD thread: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=36135.0

My tournament result (5th place) posted just this week at morphling.de: http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=857

Note that I did play Mox Pearl so the list is 60 cards, not 59 as reported.