what is oath -3 oath?

[kibbe]

i have always had a special place for oath decks. one because its just extremely powerful and secondly it won me a black lotus (long time ago but even then it was a horrible list, i was just playing against a meta that a place like this I'm sure would classify as "jank", and i would include myself in said jank), so i have been reading the elephant oath discussion with some interest. it has got me thinking though. can oath be in a deck without being the primary focus? what would a deck like that look like, and would it even work?

i decided that if oath can be used as a transformal sb concept why not transform the concept of what oath can be. maybe it doesn't have to be the focus of the deck. lets treat it like another restricted bomb and only run 1 oath. ???? but to what end? what would one oath accomplish? the best answer i could think of is that 1 oath acts like tinker #2. if you look at it that way then it kind of makes some sense. if i run only 1 robot and no other creatures then activated oath = tinker/bot.

with this in mind i needed to find a shell to put into. i figured since tinker is what i was turning oath into why not run it in a shell where tinker is awfully good on its own. so this is my take on a vault/key deck with a lone oath stuffed into it. **note: at this stage its more theoretical of course but i do plan on testing this deck especially as now i am finding my way back into the magic scene in my area and can find people to bounce ideas/decks off**

i don't have a lot of experience playing restricted blue.dec so this is based on what i see most lists running, at least as a starting point anyway. i would be interested to see if anyone thinks this idea has some merit and if it does what they might change to make it better

one of the thoughts i had in starting this idea is that blue decks seem to struggle against shop deck, with oath being the exception. well why not steal some oath goodness into a blue deck? should give you a much better answer to sphere.dec in the main and all sorts of funky options in the sb

t-vo (tinker-vault-oath)

2 islands
1 snow island
1 tolarian acc
2 city of brass
3 un sea
1 tropical
1 volcanic
1 bayou
3 delta
2 misty rf

1 black lotus
5 moxen
1 petal
1 crypt
1 sol ring
1 mox opal
1 mana vault

1 jace MS
1 tezz
1 tinker
1 inky lev(or sphinx)
1 oath

4 force of will
2 mana drain
3 spell pierce

1 time vault
1 volt key

1 time twister
1 demonic t
1 regrowth
1 vamp t
1 merchant scroll
1 timewalk
1 a. recall
1 yag will
1 ancient grudge
2 thoughtsieze
1 natures claim
1 dia edict
1 mystical t
1 cunning wish
1 brainstorm

there are some cool tricks this deck can do. if you have half the vault/key in you hand and either regrowth or yagwill then an activated oath will give you a very good chance to find the other piece without actually having to pay for the search (ie bring it from the yard after activation).

the best feature of this deck (i think anyway) is that it gets you all of oath's goodness without any of oaths shortcomings. no orchards is huge and can be done as it isn't the primary direction of the deck anyway. no uncastable fatties (well no more so than any tinker/bot target anyway) that are dead for too long. no need for scroll rack and other weak draw cards to fiddle with the oath plan(although a single sylvan library might be nice period). but you always have the oath in the deck lurking waiting for a moment to be broken and that's always fun.

anyway, thought? 

[Delha]

anyway, thought?

I think there are several problems with this idea, even ignoring cases where your opponent has no creatures to trigger Oath. Here are a few off the top of my head.

1. You can't Oath up Vault or Key when you're holding the other piece (or have Oath+DT instead of Tinker+DT).

2. Oath is slow. If you're staring down a lethal swing, Tinker->Sphinx quite possibly saves you. Oath does not. If you're on the offensive, you're giving the opponent an extra turn to find answers or just blow you out.

3. The bot is typically considered the weakest of Oath's available fatties. It does not affect board state immediately, as does Iona or Don. It is slower (and generally more vulnerable to hate) than Emrakul. This exacerbates problem 2 above.

4. Oath is vulnerable to much of the same hate that is ridiculously ubiquitous. So long as Vault and Shops continue to be a presence, that hate is unlikely to disappear.

Edit: I hadn't been on the boards for a couple days, and didn't realize how much the other Oath thread blew up. Lots of people who are more qualified than I am talk about this stuff in more detail over there. I guess this still works as a short and sweet listing though.