Fattie Oath

[Suicideking]

Dragon's breath is better than i thought just because its feasible to hardcast it, so drawing copies of it isn't as bad as you'd think.  Still, there's a frustrating and nontrivial chance of not hitting Dragon's breath even when you roll through a lot of cards.  It actually happens a lot, and because of that I'm pretty sure DB isn't worth it.  I'd rather just have a mana drain. 

Ive tried dragon's breath a bunch of times and its really shitty.  Its super important with Oath to limit the number of bad dead cards you can draw.  If you have 2 DBs in your deck you'll draw them both in the worst situations.  Its a card thats awesome when it works right, but generally wont.  

[meadbert]

Ive tried dragon's breath a bunch of times and its really shitty.  Its super important with Oath to limit the number of bad dead cards you can draw.  If you have 2 DBs in your deck you'll draw them both in the worst situations.  Its a card thats awesome when it works right, but generally wont.  

So historically Oath runs 3 "dead" draws.  This is either in the form of 3 creatures as we have seen recently or 2 creatures + Gaea's Blessing/Krosan Rec.

If instead we run 2 Dragon Breath, 1 Creature and 1 Krosan Rec then we are running 1 extra dead spot and we get a better than 2/3 chance of killing on first Oath activation.
Krosan Rec might need other suboptimal slots if you want an alternate win like Tendrils.

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

Traditionally, oath has more ways to deal with dudes in hand.

Currently oath is running about 2 or less completely dead draws, depending on elephant or tyrant. And even at that point the deck really wants the 2-3 jaces.

I've tried dragons breathe, top8'd with it, and it was bad. if you're looking for an imidiate kil,l look more at tyrant.

[median]

Now, thinking on it, I would use Terastodon over emrakul in this deck. You can wreck your opponents board or make blockers and still be virtually guaranteed a hasted BSC the next turn with the don. Emrakul, just kind of sits there without a dragon breath.

[Adan]

5)  Regarding Emrakul/BSC lists:  A huge advantage of Terastodon is that it removes Ensnaring Bridge.  Without Terastodon I would prefer running just 1 BSC and then maybe Krosan Rec  and Yawg to deal with Ensnaring Bridge.

What about Vault-Key and/or Jace and/or maindeck Claim? I guess that won't be the problem.

[mmcgeach]

I just ran a list like this at a local tournament.  I used 2 DB and BSC + Emrakul. I have some thoughts and a question for more experienced players.

I'm not an experienced tornament player, but I never lost after activating oath.  Some of the matchups I got were pretty favorable, tho, so maybe that's not a representative sample.  Speaking of which, Oath is *really* good against random/rogue decks.

Having the one-turn kill with oath is vital, even as a bluff or possibility.  The problem with other oath builds is that control decks don't have to respect your oath.  They just hope you don't oath into Iona, or don't have the mana/gas to win with tyrant, which is somewhat frequent.  The Oath Bluff seems like it was more important than I realized.  People were REALLY afraid of BSC.  Like maybe I had BSC in hand and my oponent would be playing around oathing into BSC by leaving enough blockers to survive with 9 poison counters, then they get blown out by Emrakul.

Also, if you have one Fattie in hand, then the odds of hasting the other one goes up to 2/3.  I did frequently have dead cards in hand, but I could shuffle them back with Jace, Brainstorm, or discard->shuffle with a Balance that I ran.  One time I cast the DB on an Oathed up BSC.

There seems to be few answers for both BSC and Emrakul.  Duplicant, Sower, and Jace are about all that come to mind, and those don't work well against hasted BSC/Emrakul.  I had people tinker out BSC against me to gaurd against my BSC.  But with active Oath that's not really effective.

Anyway, a fun deck and pretty efffective.

A question:

Game 2 against a gush/storm/vault-key/BSC player.  I muligan into: Oath, Orchard, Crypt, Ancestral, Force, Tinker. My oponent thoughtseizes me on the play.  Should I force it?

[xouman]

I won't force it. In T1 you want to play oath, but having T1 tinker with force backup is nice. Besides, if opponent takes ancestral you have little trouble as you can play T1 oath  and T2 tinker if oath is countered. Maybe opponent can take mana crypt, but you can draw a land in in your turn or find one with ancestral for T2. But you still have oath+fow active.

[mmcgeach]

So I still like the combo-ishness of this build.  But there really are several cards you don't want to draw and would rather suffle back into your library.  But really you can just discard them, and that's just as good.  I've been using these to discard or put back

2 Jace
1 Brainstorm
+ 1 (other card)

(not counting 2 thoughtseizes, which i haven't yet wanted to target at myself.  And Ancestral which lets you discard on turn 1.)

For the other discard/put back effect, I've been considering:

- thirst for knowledge
- frantic search
- balance
- careful study
- timetwister

I think balance was my favorite, but I decided running white just for balance isn't worth it.  Thirst frequently seems to slow or too little too late.  Tapping out to discard some junk is just not that strong of a play.  I then tested frantic search hoping it wouldn't feel as slow, but it feels like it isn't doing enough.  Careful study feels like it conflicts with the Preordain slot.  Twister is a ton of fun, but dangerous against a lot of decks; and the stuff you want isn't gauranteed to end up in the yard or the library anyway. 

Anyone have suggestions / opinions?

[Troy_Costisick]

Run Show and Tell, Tinker, and Channel in the deck.

[mmcgeach]

lol.  While Channel->Emrakul is hilarious, I'm looking for more of a card that does something on its own, but as a side effect lets me discard.  I think the Show-n-Tell (and possibly channel, if you're serious?) plan works better in Oath with more creatures.  I remember people arguing for 4-creature builds really liked it.  I guess you're arguing that these are better builds of Oath than the "Golden Gun" type?

Anyway.  Balance is frequently awesome at doing something + letting you discard your DB or Fattie.  It's not real great against blue tho.  And white sideboard options seem worse than red ones (serenity vs. ancient grudge; orim's chant vs. REB).  I guess I"m lookin at Timetwister as the card that does the most on its own while also helping get DBs and Creatures out of your hand.  :/

[brokenbacon]

@mmcgeach: Don't worry about discarding fatties. Literally, just win. Timetwister is meh, it uses mana which you could just use for Preordain --> Oath or Thoughtseize --> Oath or something. Point being, it is very rare that you draw a fatty, and it is negligible when you just win the next turn anyway.
Balance is not so good because it takes a control role, which you don't need. This deck plays agressively, not slowly.
Troy is right, you don't need to run anything to discard fatties - you just need to run more gas.