2nd Place at the N.Y.S.E. Challenge with Oath

[MirariKnight]

Since this is the Stax capital of the world, I decided to play Oath. Tezz just doesn’t cut it for me in that matchup, but I decided to take Oath in a much different direction than we’ve been seeing lately:

Here’s the list:

“Mana Ichorid” (Oath)

1 Tinker
1 Ponder
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Gaea’s Blessing
2 Intuition
2 Pithing Needle
4 Oath of Druids
2 Duress
2 Deep Analysis
2 Platinum Angel
1 Time Walk
4 Force of Will
1 Echoing Truth
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
4 Pact of Negation
4 Mana Drain
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
3 Island
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring

SB
2 Empyrial Archangel
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Darkblast
1 Rebuild
1 Krosan Grip
2 Ancient Grudge
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Pyroclasm

Basically it’s Platinum Oath with Drain and Intuition rather than the usual Impulse/Lim Dul’s Vault build we’ve been seeing lately. I decided I wanted a much more controlling deck, and I felt like it had a good matchup against the entire field I was expecting (Fish, Stax, Tezz, Dredge).

Unfortunately my notes were spotty to non-existent so this is mostly from memory.

Round 1 – Vs. Tony with U/G/B Countertop

Tony is a good friend and I’ve played against his deck a lot. Unfortunately his deck run Sower of Temptation which is one of the cards I least like to play against.
Game 1 – I win the die roll, resolve Tinker turn 2. He has 2 Confidants and a rather large Quirion Dryad. Platinum takes him down to about 8, at which point he Sowers my Platinum. I Oath up the other Platz, mill myself to 3 cards (Gaea’s Blessing in hand) and use it to shuffle in Echoing Truth, Pact of Negation, Pact of Negation. Drew into Truth, and bounced the Sower for the win.
Game 2 – I get down to pretty low life from Confidant and Dryads. I hardcast an Empyrial Archangel off a Drain and a Lotus (the only time I cast Drain all day I believe). He plays Sower of Temptation and grabs my Archangel….neither of us catch that it has shroud. He wins and right after someone tells us about the shroud. I’m pretty upset with myself for not catching that, but game 2 I turn 1 Oath, Orchard, Time Walk and have 2 Angels by Turn 2. He scoops and since we’re friends, he gives me the 2-0 instead of 2-1 for the stupid mistake we made.

2-0

Round 2 – Vs. Roland Chang with Stax

I was pretty happy to be matched up against Stax since I felt I had a favorable matchup, and since I know Roland in an excellent player. Game 1 barely pull out with some combo of Oath and Tinker, sacrificing my Oath to his Smokestack so he can’t use it himself. Game 2 I turn 1 Oath but he has a Seal of Cleansing, which I was not expecting at all. Something involving lots of Stax and a Balance make me lose this one. Game 3 I resolve Oath. He Demonic Tutors. I figured it was Seal of Cleansing, so I Ancient Grudge his Mox Pearl to cut him off white. I guessed wrong and he Duplicanted my Hellkite, but I Ancient Grudge that and swing in with Akroma for the win.

4-1

Round 3 – Vs. Raffaele Forino

Again I’m matched up against another great Stax player. The top table was mostly Stax till round 3. Game 1 I pull off with some Angels although his maindeck Darkblast was a really excellent choice to keep us balanced on creatures. Eventually I break through with a second Orchard and barely pull it out. Game 2 he totally locks me out, does a cool trick by tapping his Gemstone on my EoT so he can tap it and replay it off Crucible on his turn, and drops a turn 3 Sundering Titan hitting my last land. Game 3 I kill with a Hellkite in the early turns. These games were really close and really were a challenge.

6-2

Round 4 and 5 – There are 4 people with 3-0 round records, so the 4 of us draw into top 8.

Top 8 – Vs. Max Brown with Sui Black
Game 1 he gets me down to a negative life with Platinum out, and somehow revealed land off Bob for 4-5 turns. I get him down to 2 with flying beats and his Edict is already in the yard. He reveals Yawg Will to Bob and dies, which I found slightly ironic.
Game 2 – I duress turn 1 and see he has a swamp and a wasteland as his only lands. I Strip Mine his swamp and he’s off black the whole game with a bunch of XBB spells in his hand. I forget what killed him but I imagine it was Akroma.

2-0

Top 4 – Vs. Raffaele Forino with Stax

Rematch of round 3. Game 1 he locks me out and kills with Karn before I can do too much besides Needle on Welder. Game 2 I mull a decent hand with no mana once (looked at the top 3 cards and it would have given me turn 1 Oath, but oh well). My hand of 6 is pretty bad, so I mull to 5. By some ridiculous luck, I draw the best 5 cards possible: Island, Orchard, Oath, FoW, Drain. I win with Hellkite. Game 3 I had Turn 1 Oath (Akroma was in my had but I kept it anyway) and he mulled down to 4, and Hellkite took him out. The 6 games we played were some of the best Magic games I’ve ever played, and I was continually impressed by some of the really smart, out of the box moves he was able to make. I really won these games by pure luck.

2-1

Top 2- Vs. Ryan Fisher with Elves Combo

Game 1 – I win the roll, drop a turn 1 needle on Skullclamp without seeing his hand. Turn 2 all I can do is Duress and I hit the Clamp, which sucked. I forget exactly how I lost but it involved Nettle Sentinels and no Grapeshot.
Game 2 – I keep a hand with turn 1 Demonic for Oath, turn 2 Oath. I figured I would have 3 turns to get it online. I figured wrong and he stormed out turn 2. Looking back I should have tutored for the Pyroclasm or Tinker-Platz instead of Oath, but I thought I had a turn. Funny thing is, the morning before the tournament I debated running Engineered Plague in my board. Decided against it, which apparently was the wrong move. Elves doesn’t like Engineered cards (Plague, Explosives) but it’s pretty solid and a lot faster and more consistent than I had expected it to be. Congrats to Ryan on winning the Ruby, and I took home a Drain (another small bit or irony that I would win Nick’s drain, his least favorite card and my favorite card).


All in all it was a great tournament, really well run and the venue was pretty good. Slightly overcrowded till Top 8, but that is a really minor complaint and it really didn’t matter too much at all. Thanks to Nick and to everyone who showed up to make this happen.

The main thing I learned from this tournament: People really need to start maindecking Pithing Needle. It's crippling against nearly every deck and it's pretty easy to know what to name, even without Duress effects.

[Gekoratel]

Congrats on your finish Oath was a good metagame decision for the field and was proven with 2/5 players making the top 8.  Your list is very different from standard versions how were the Deep Analysis, it seems like the card would be to slow until you've already Oathed ie won the game.  Or do you try to assume the control role and just have the potential to go broken T1 Oath?

Game 1 I pull off with some Angels although his maindeck Darkblast was a really excellent choice to keep us balanced on creatures. Eventually I break through with a second Orchard and barely pull it out.

Regarding this game was Forino dredging Darkblast every turn because without Crucible/Waste recursion I don't see how he could get out of the described game state or if he already had a Welder down he could hope to Dredge into Crucible to stop the Orchards.

Also in your T8 match G2 you Oathed into Platinum Angel and then Empyrial Archangel.  Your opponent was just drawing blanks when you fired off a DT and he asked if you were getting a counter because that would win the game but he was just trying to mind trick you into giving him an extra turn.  Instead you got the obvious and correct choice of Time Walk and killed him.

[MirariKnight]

I made the deck to be much more controlling than Oath usually is. Deep Analysis was golden all day, I can't imagine not playing it. I thought that if I went with a more standard Oath list I would be pretty weak against Tezz (which I never wound up playing). Also I am a Drain player at heart so my intention was to build a Drain deck to beat the field (Stax and the Drain Mirror mainly).

Forino was Dredging darkblast to keep me off Oath and he eventually got Welder down (he could just let me Oath and then Weld out Platz) but I dropped Needle on Welder I believe.

And thanks for the recap of that T8 match, I totally forgot about that. I was looking through the deck and then I saw Time Walk staring me in the face and it seemed so obvious. Totally forgot about that. I didn't even realize so many people were watching these matches.

[Sean Ryan]

Congrats on thinking outside the box and finishing well.

I too have been thinking Oath in a Drain shell could be a great choice for the current metagame that is more balanced between Stax/Fish/Tezz.  However, I question whether Platz is the right Oath target.  It's just so vulnerable to so much thats prevalent right now, not to mention how slow the kill is.  I definitly don't want my Oath target to be Weldable.  Pact of Negation with Platz is sweet, but is it essential?  How was it for you in the tournament? 

Have you tried Oath/Tezz hybrids?                

[oneofchaos]

Ironically I had been putting together a platinum oath list about 6 cards different than yours.  I wondered, since you played intuition and strip mine, why not include a random life from the loam?  It will allow a strip lock and also negate land destruction from stax.  I also dropped from four pact down to three, and eventually settled on just two.  It really is only good if you are assured an oath activation the following turn, or once you are in total control.

[MirariKnight]

Ironically I had been putting together a platinum oath list about 6 cards different than yours.  I wondered, since you played intuition and strip mine, why not include a random life from the loam?  It will allow a strip lock and also negate land destruction from stax.  I also dropped from four pact down to three, and eventually settled on just two.  It really is only good if you are assured an oath activation the following turn, or once you are in total control.

I really wanted to play Loam and I wasn't sure if I could support it with one Trop, but I think I probably can. I do agree that 4 Pact is probably too much. 2 seems like the right number.

As for the choice of Platinum, if I were to do this again I would probably maindeck Akroma/Hellkite and SB Archangels and 1 Tinker/Platz. It is really good, especially in the Tezz matchup, but as you can see I never saw anyone cast Time Vault or Drain or anything like that all day (all the Vault decks seemed to settle near the middle/low tables because of the prevalence of Stax). I'd also like to point of that Ancient Grudge is probably the best card ever against Stax.

As far as running Tezz in the deck myself, I really wanted to do that but didn't know what to cut.
I will probably go -2 pact, -1 Thirst, +1 Tezz, +1 Vault, +1 Life from the Loam (don't even need key) if I was going to stick with Platinum Oath.

Out of curiosity oneofchaos what were the 6 different choices, aside from LftL?

[oneofchaos]

-2 duress/-2 deep anal/-2 pact/-2 pith/-1 lotus petal/-1 sol ring

+1 time vault/+1 imperial seal/+1 voltaic key/+4 AK/+1 scroll rack/+1 loam/+1 trop

Sorry it was more than 6...I think your playing 62 cards??

I liked the key-vault in the deck.  Because your already playing tinker, why not just have an instant win combo.  If you play seal you can grab oath/orchard w/e, or you can set up the key-vault combo.  I really really really really liked Loam.  It won me so many games, it just is not funny. 

[MirariKnight]

I'm not playing 62, there are only 2 Duress not 4. I just copied the list from the other thread without reading it over. Oops.
How has AK worked out for you? I tried it and I really hate that draw engine. Deep Analysis take up 2 less slots and draws more cards for me the AK did. I wish it were an instant but oh well.

Why go with Key over Tezz? To me it would seem like I would want Tezz/Vault before Key/Vault because Tezz adds an alternate win condition if Oath doesn't work, and he also has pretty good synergy with the rest of the deck. I guess he does get attacked by Orchard tokens but I would try him over Key if I were to go that route.

[oneofchaos]

I'm not playing 62, there are only 2 Duress not 4. I just copied the list from the other thread without reading it over. Oops.
How has AK worked out for you? I tried it and I really hate that draw engine. Deep Analysis take up 2 less slots and draws more cards for me the AK did. I wish it were an instant but oh well.

Why go with Key over Tezz? To me it would seem like I would want Tezz/Vault before Key/Vault because Tezz adds an alternate win condition if Oath doesn't work, and he also has pretty good synergy with the rest of the deck. I guess he does get attacked by Orchard tokens but I would try him over Key if I were to go that route.

I just played key because it was the first thing to come to my mind.  I am not even sure if time vault belongs in this version of oath, but try it and let me know what you think.