Don't Worry About the Vase: Testing Oath of Druids

The entire time I was testing Extended for Chicago, Oath of Druids was one of my top decks. For a few hours, it was even my backup deck. For me, the story begins with my decision to go to Grand Prix: Vienna. Why did I decide to spend an insane amount of money to play in a Grand Prix, where it turned out I didn't even have three byes? I remember having a good reason at the time, and thought that it was even a money making proposition in the long run. I'd won a Pro Tour Qualifier with Recur/Survival, which I liked a lot, and was about to get Avalanche Riders and Radiant's Dragoons from Legacy. No one respected it, but the deck really didn't have any bad matchups against the normal decks. High Tide was going to become a problem again due to Frantic Search, but I didn't see it as a problem.

Then, they ban my deck with no notice. Errata came back on the free creatures, taking away one of the main strengths of the deck. In the meantime, Tide and Jar decks would got to run rampant. That was downright unfair. What was so urgent about standard that they couldn't give us notice? So I didn't have a deck. I went on mIRC, and my (then) teammates told me to play Oath of Druids. They gave me a decent main deck and a horrible sideboard, and I started adding tech to the deck, and re-designed the sideboard. The ability to use Enlightened Tutor seemed really good, and I was thinking of all the cards you might want in the right situation, up to, and including, Lotus Petal... one of which I almost played maindeck. The deck was strikingly similar to the version Maher was to play in Kansas City. Instead of two Oath in the sideboard, I had two of my Enlightened Tutors there, because I figured game two I'd have the card I really wanted to go get in the deck, while game one it was probably still in my sideboard. I hadn't thought of only starting two Oaths on the theory that it was so good that Tutoring for it would be good enough. The other good reason to play the deck was that it could main deck three Arcane Laboratories to beat Jar and High Tide.

Anyway, I got crushed, and what happened was pretty funny. It's round three, because they changed the bye system without telling us, and I had to play. I'm playing against someone who didn't have any byes. I get a decent draw, but it slowly dawns on me what he's playing... Tinker, not for Jar, but for Colossus! One or both kinds. With Goblin Welders. I get Oath on the table, and my creatures get run over. Normally, Archangel is big enough. Guess not this time. That was the second difference, we had a worse creature base in Vienna. It should have been a Morphling, no question. The third problem came against a Necropotence deck. This is traditionally a bad matchup, and he made it worse by playing the (then standard) red mana. I had been told that beating Necro was simple: "Just play Circle of Protection: Black and they can't kill you." That couldn't have been more wrong. Not only was Mishra's Factory beating me senseless, he just played Boil with Pyroblast backup to kill all but one of my lands. Even black sources would have worked fine. So I didn't make second day. When I went to Kansas City, I just played TurboLand. I considered Oath of Druids for Worlds, but it didn't feel right to me with decks like High Tide and cards like Hymn to Torach out there.

But in the new Extended, of course, it had to be considered one of the prime contenders right from the start. When we heard about the changes to the format, the two decks we considered to the most promising before we started testing were Rec/Sur and Oath. Rec/Sur never really lived up to its promise, but Oath did. I started with a basic knowledge of how Oath decks functioned, and set out to rebuild the deck. As with any deck I build, the Oath deck had to fit my standards. The most important of these standards was a simple one. Oath of Druids, together with the creatures you get with it, had to comprise all of the anti-creature cards in the deck.

Why was that so important? Obviously it wasn't important to Maher, who played Swords to Plowshares in his main deck, and I was using the same infrastructure. It was a matter of principle. If you get a creature a turn without paying for it, shouldn't that be enough? Do I really have to play purely anti-creature cards beyond the Oath itself? I hate playing cards like that. But beyond that, extra creature removal wouldn't change the situation that much under the Oath. In addition to this matter of principle, I wanted the full four copies of Forbid, partly to discard creatures, partly to have enough countermagic so that each counter wasn't precious. I was also finding that the extra Counterspells were crucial in many situations. Half your games came down to finding Oath of Druids, and half of them came down to counter wars over something else. I started testing the deck, with the creature base of Morphling, Spike Feeder, and Spike Weaver. It seemed obvious that you'd want a Weaver. The Weaver flat-out won games. Morphling and Spike Feeder are good cards, but a strong enough attack will still beat them. Spike Weaver just stares their hoard in the face and says "Go home, or us Druids will taunt you a second time!"

But there was a problem. I was losing games with Oath of Druids out. I would have Morphling and Weaver, and a Survival deck would deal with it. Or I wouldn't get the Weaver in time. Or I'd have to hold back with the creatures while a stupid Legion Land Loss deck some random guy was playing against me blew up all my lands. Morphling is nice, but it's only Morphling. If you want, you can quote me. It's only Morphling. The situation could get out of hand. They might even have a Morphling of their own. I needed a new plan.

Then I remembered the Type II Oath of Druids deck from Worlds. They didn't have Gaea's Blessing, so they had to win without reusing the creatures. The creatures base they used to do that was Thorn Elemental and Spike Weaver. Seemed like a good idea to me. Get an Elemental, get another Elemental, win. Three turns after the Oath hit the table, they were dead. I put in a Spike Weaver for protection. I found myself rooting for the Weaver most of the time, so I changed it to two Weaver and one Thorn, which also gives you the opportunity to Weave forever and lets you Oath up a Weaver even if you draw one. Sometimes, I would get the Thorn Elemental at the wrong time. Sometimes I would draw it, and would know I probably would never cast it.

But there was a flip side to that. I was winning games I had no right to win. I didn't just have parity with their creatures, I had their creatures trumped. I could be down to no land because they keep blowing it up, but that Oath still gets me that Thorn Elemental and wins me the game. If you also need to use Weaver, you still do need one mana. Also, if the Oath gets destroyed often a Thorn would still win the game. Instead of trying to take control, all I had to do was use my counters to protect the Oath. The Thorn Elemental can get plowed, but it almost never happened. And if it did, so what? I'd just have to take it slow.

The other question is which targets for Enlightened Tutor to main-deck and which to put in your sideboard? I tried Trade Routes out for a while, but found that more than half the time it did nothing or not enough. Ivory Mask is golden against some decks, but most of the time, you didn't want to draw it. Still, the effect was more important than with Trade Routes, because without Routes you can still Tutor for Sylvan Library. Because we saw Sligh as a bad deck (which it did turn out to be) and Necropotence as not being a threat (which turned out to be wrong), the Mask was still in my sideboard. Null Rod would be aimed at Necropotence and Tinker, neither of which was seen as a threat from anyone else, and Draw-Go, where it didn't seem to make that much difference. So it, too, was in my sideboard. We never pinned down the sideboard that carefully, but this is probably what I would have played if I'd decided to run Oath:

In many ways, I consider this a Sylvan Library deck as much as an Oath of Druids deck. Your goal is to get out a Sylvan Library and use it to get out Abundance, unless your opponent is so kind as to play a creature and let you win off the Oath. Clearly there are some oversights here, since I didn't do much testing with it late in the testing cycle, or react to the late metagame changes. Ivory Mask should make the main deck now, and if Tinker becomes big, so should Null Rod. I still think Trade Routes stays in the sideboard, though. A Powder Keg should have made the sideboard, although I still think not the main deck. It turned out I had more enchantment and artifact hate in my sideboard than most Oath decks, and certainly the Annuls (which were aimed at Recur/Survival and Necropotence) could be considered overkill. Mana Short, which was in Maher's sideboard, was also a good idea, and a Crater Hellion is probably more important than a Spike Feeder. To make up for these new main deck additions, the Phyrexian Furnace should probably shift to the sideboard, and the Arcane Laboratory can leave the deck entirely. I have an extra land in the main deck, and more ways to get more land in the early game if I need it, but I think if you can afford it: the extra land helps the deck. The basic Islands also seem worth it to me, and I think you can afford the two Cities of Brass.

As very strong words of caution, however, let me say this. I didn't do anywhere near the amount of work that Maher did on this deck, nor do I have his experience or success with it. This is just my opinion; I could be wrong. I'm sure part of it is that this version is much more my style than his would be. I think his version of the deck is excellent as well, although I would try to adjust his mana base to have a better shot at Enlightened Tutor on turn one followed by a turn two enchantment, and I really like the second Sylvan Library. If you want to play an Oath deck at a qualifier, you need to practice with the deck a lot. You need to learn it inside and out, and understand every card in your version. How you play the deck is going to determine which way your judgment calls should go, so don't rely on anyone else's decklist. Build your own. There are ideas here, and I hope you find them useful.

Final note: The matchup against Suicide Brown

This is one matchup we were always worried about, and after sideboarding the Oath deck was doing quite well. You can see much of the reason in this sideboard, which has the unusual Disenchant and Annul in it, but at least the Null Rod wasn't in the maindeck. We tried everything from Jester's Cap to Vision Charm here, as I mentioned in my analysis of Suicide Brown. All told, against this type of Oath strategy you probably are at a disadvantage no matter what you do (within reason). But the traditional Oath creature set is a lot easier to handle. Their getting a Spike Feeder or Shard Phoenix is great for you, and while Morphling isn't pretty, often it also isn't particularly big. They can sometimes race a Processor, but not all that often. Spike Weaver and Peacekeeper are the creatures to watch out for. Without those, a Colossus will also often carry the day. Also keep in mind that this deck can't always drop Oath at will. If it looks like you can't win otherwise, you can drop your Masticore and try to go all the way. Another trick is to try and wait until you can make two 10/10s in one turn, in which case your opponent may never get to Oath. The Oath deck ends up just racing to Null Rod, however, which means you must go quickly. Don't hold back after sideboarding for fear of their dropping an Oath, because their Enlightened Tutors no longer count as Oaths. They count as Null Rods. If you intend to play either deck, this matchup is in need of more testing, especially if the Suicide Brown deck adapts to hate by adding white.