Oath of Druids in No-Power Vintage

[LostButSeeking]

Hey guys,

In my town we play No-power vintage every two weeks. If you guys haven’t played this format (which I understand), it looks a lot like Legacy but with no brainstorms and the occasional “Oops, I just drew Yawgmoth’s Will. Guess I won”.
I recently got a playset of Oath of Druids and a pair of progenitus to play in this format. I put it into a countertop/standstill shell with mishra’s factories and the whole bit. The deck looked alright, but performed miserably. The problem is, you only have one spell—Oath of Druids—that you need to resolve. Only one dangerous spell. I rolled to non-basic hate, counters and discard. Chalice at 2? Game over. It was really disappointing.
It also didn’t help that I am the worst land-drawer in the history of magic. I regularly mana screw with 26 land decks. This deck particularly hated me. I ran 19 lands with 3 chrome moxes, and I would mana flood 6 games out of ten. I once needed to countertop for two, but had only lands on top, so I cracked a fetch, only to see two chrome moxes and a land afterward. I cut a land, and mana screwed all of the next ten games. Ugh.
So I took it apart. But I think the concept is sound—Oath of Druids and Progenitus are good cards I hear—but something about the execution was wrong.
I was hoping to pick your brains about what you would run in Legacy if Oath of Druids were legal. Is progenitus the right creature? I looked at the vintage lists, and many of them run triple Platinum Angel instead, but Legacy as a format runs a lot more removal.
Is countertop the right protection for this? I also thought about using discard to protect Oath, but as I would have had to get Thoughtseize, which is a touch pricey, I ran with what I had instead. The ability to run maelstrom pulse now (something ELSE I don’t have, but such is life) looks sexxy as well.

[rockout]

In Vintage Oath, I run 2 hellkite overlords because nothing says win like t1 oath, t2 oath up hellkite smash for 8 cast time walk, "t3" oath up another hellkite, win, all with force/negate back up.

I guess in Legacy the best creature is by far progenitus/empryial archangel

[Brad Herbig]

In Vintage Oath, I run 2 hellkite overlords because nothing says win like t1 oath, t2 oath up hellkite smash for 8 cast time walk, "t3" oath up another hellkite, win, all with force/negate back up.

I guess in Legacy the best creature is by far progenitus/empryial archangel

I would probably do one Hellkite Overload and one Akroma, just for variety that still wins on your "next turn".

[kicks_422]

Magister Sphinx and Progenitus should be your creatures. No question.

[AngryTroll]

What does your list look like?

I think I'd start with...hmm, well, 4 Ponders and 4 Brainstorms, but that probably doesn't work too well in a Vintage list.


Enlightened Tutor fetches Oath, Standstill, and Counterbalance; with those colors, you can run some combination of Mishra's Factories, Faerie Conclave, and Nantuko Monestaries to make Standstill work. I guess Monestary isn't nearly as good in a creature light format like Vintage as it is in Legacy; Factories probably do it, then.

[LostButSeeking]

You guys wanted my decklist, despite how atrocious it was. Here it is.

Land

6 Fetches
2 Trops
3 Islands
1 Forest
4 Forbidden Orchards
3 Mishra’s Factory
4 Chrome Mox

Combo
4 Oath of Druids
2 Progenitus

4 FoW
4 Spell Snare (these were awful here, by the way. They never countered the things countering Oath, and were thus useless)
4 Daze

1 Crop Rotation
2 Gaea’s Blessing

4 Sensei’s Divining Tops
3 Counter Balance

And the last . . . 9? Spells were cantrips, I think. Brainstorm was the best (Oh, my, progenitus in my hand? Guess I have to storm the brain . . .) I think I used impulse, which was awful, but I don’t know what that last spell was. Probably a singleton Ponder or something. The decklist is close. Maybe I had one fewer land and another cantrip.

[GreenOne]

What about misdirection? Seens good against disenchant effects, edict effects, counters.

[Guevera59]

Negate instead of Spell Snare? I hear Negate is the shit in Vintage

[Shanghi Knights]

personally i think bogardan hellkite and magister sphinx is the best combo to use with 1 dragon breath in the deck so one has haste for the last 5 life.

[LostButSeeking]

Negate instead of Spell Snare? I hear Negate is the shit in Vintage

It's not really vintage, though. The people worth playing against play legacy decks without brainstorms. And there's a LOT of tribal aggro. My theory was, a legacy deck that runs a card banned in legacy should be able to beat legacy decks, yes? The reason I was playing spell snare is that aggro is so prevalent in our meta. Lots of zoo, WW, elves, goblins, merfolk, rogues. But Oath > aggro without the spell snares. I have seen this. I think negate is worth a try.


personally i think bogardan hellkite and magister sphinx is the best combo to use with 1 dragon breath in the deck so one has haste for the last 5 life.

I don't exactly understand what you're saying here. For one thing, I don't get both of the creatures at the same time. Magister Sphinx is admittedly very sexy (and I have a playset to run in Hypergenesis.dec in extended if I ever feel like it) but Sphinx and Jenny have exactly the same clock, and jenny is much tougher to kill.


What about misdirection? Seens good against disenchant effects, edict effects, counters.

Hmm, I like the idea. I don't have them. More things to protect Oath = better.

Is this it, though? Is this what you would run, were oath legal in legacy, give or take a couple of minor changes? Because if so, oath's being banned pretty sad. The deck stomps on scrubs, no question, but it rolls to countertop, tempo thresh, landstill and lots of other real people decks. Or maybe I'm just unlucky with this deck. Some decks like you, other decks don't.

[TheRock]

While Progenitus is a fairly good card, there is very little removal in Vintage and there is still none that I would care about in Legacy. In particular, most of the removal used to stop Inkwell only hurts other artifacts. I will promise you that no sound Oath deck is running Platinum now.

Even though you can get your creature destroyed rather frequently, Hellkite and Akroma are clearly the best two cards for the job. The only reason you would want to run "Jenny" is if you need another pitchable blue card or you sees tons of Swords, and a budget Oath deck isn't going to have that problem. Swords sucks against Oath and it always will suck against Oath.

Brainstorm and Ponder are mandatory one-ofs and you only need one Blessing (if you are worried about removal, 1 Jenny would work in its place). If at all possible, you also want every important black tutor you can get (Demonic and Vampiric at least). Lotus Petal should be in the deck because it fuels turn one goodness and turn one countermagic, and you may want to look at Mana Crypt if you have one.

Impulse was a good fit for the powered version because of the colorless part, but you probably want something like Portent instead because you want Oath turn two. It doesn't matter if the card sucks as a topdeck - you want pieces fast and you want the countermagic behind it to win.

I made this in a hurry because I'm at work, but I agree with the earlier poster about creatures and I can answer any question

[roflwaffles]

Here is a modified decklist of my Vintage Oath deck into Legacy, if Oath of Druids was legal.

Lands (19)
4 Forbidden Orchard
3 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Islands

Creatures (2)
1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

Spells (39)
1 Lat-Nam's Legacy
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Negate
3 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
3 Lim-Dul's Vault
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Oath of Druids
1 Pernicious Deed
3 Intuition
4 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will

If your metagame is anything like Legacy's, then Progenitus deserves a slot over Akroma, seeing as Swords to Plowshares will completely wreck you if it resolves.

[MMogg]

Maybe I'm too olde schoole but I can't imagine not running Swords to Plowshare (or Path to Exile) in Oath. I think the Accumulated Knowledge should be cut. Horrible synergy with Oath. Also, Ancestor's Chosen is crazy good against aggro.

[MattH]

For non-powered Vintage, these lists are depressingly light on the non-power vintage-only cards. Where's the Mana Drain? LoA? Vamp? Demonic? Sol Ring? Imperial Seal?

[conboy31]

Mana drain is fairly weak in vintage oath as it runs 3 colors and there is not much to drain into. I have found negate or even mana leak to have more utility in oath as it is easier to get the mana up t1 (not sure for unpowered). I run powered oath but don't even bother to use sol ring because very few spells even require the 2 colorless.

In unpowered stuff like null rod is probably garbage. Chalice might be strong as there would probably be a glut at 1 and 2 cc. 1 demonic tutor and 1 vampiric tutor is needed. Lim-duls vault goes a long ways for getting what the deck needs too.

[LostButSeeking]

It was a surprise to see this thread dredged up, but a pleasant one. I love oath of druids and was bummed when I couldn't make it work. Here's what happened to me (magically speaking) this summer.

I won a tournament with dredge, won another with dragon stompy, failed DISMALLY with Landstill (because that deck is REALLY hard to play and I suck at it horribly) and performed better-than-anticipated with a for-fun elves list. When we drafted M10, I was to the right of two players, one who rare drafted and the second one who went white/green lifegain, so I managed to drafted the silliest draft deck I have ever seen in my whole life.

However, I'm at college now (so I won't be able to make a tournament until December) and, in any case, the guy who sets the weird rules is leaving at the end of the year, and we're getting another guy who will let us play real legacy. I'll try to answer some questions. I am sort of interested in seeing if we can make a Legacy legal deck (other than Oath) that warrant's oath's banning, because my deck certainly wasn't it.


For non-powered Vintage, these lists are depressingly light on the non-power vintage-only cards. Where's the Mana Drain? LoA? Vamp? Demonic? Sol Ring? Imperial Seal?

Partly, it's that I had 10 slots left over in my decklist for "miscellaneous", because by the time I posted that list, I had taken the decklist apart to make dragon stompy and landstill. I'm certain I had sol ring in the initial list Another part of the problem is that I have moved away from that silly format, and play real legacy, and have traded most of those things for legacy cards (Yawg's will, demonic and vamp, etc.) or I never owned them (like Library of Alexandria). Thirdly, like I said, the deck already had serious problems against non-basic hate (which was relevant, since I tested about 20 games tempo thresh or merfolk).


Maybe I'm too olde schoole but I can't imagine not running Swords to Plowshare (or Path to Exile) in Oath. I think the Accumulated Knowledge should be cut. Horrible synergy with Oath. Also, Ancestor's Chosen is crazy good against aggro.

I am hideously biased for AK, as I started playing in Masques block. I still try to put it in any casual deck I can manage, but any use of it that doesn't involve intuition is wrong. Whether I should add intuition is another story.

I'm not sure Ancestor's Chosen or StoP is right for this deck. On the ancestor, because of Gaea's Blessing, the deck rarely has an inordinate number of cards in the graveyard. As much as I like sending them farming, the deck rarely had trouble outracing aggro decks, even something like dredge, if it can resolve oath. That was the problem for me, always. The deck had to draw oath and it had to be able to play oath and it had to be able to resolve oath. Everything else could be dealt with, but Oath was only four cards, and there are problems with discard, with not drawing oath, with non-basic hate and with countermagic. It was ugly.

I really think that black--for duress and/or thoughtseize--is correct, although if someone from the ANT thread came in and started expounding on the virtues of white for silence, I might be persuadable (in which case StP would be more understandable).


While Progenitus is a fairly good card, there is very little removal in Vintage and there is still none that I would care about in Legacy. In particular, most of the removal used to stop Inkwell only hurts other artifacts. I will promise you that no sound Oath deck is running Platinum now.

Even though you can get your creature destroyed rather frequently, Hellkite and Akroma are clearly the best two cards for the job. The only reason you would want to run "Jenny" is if you need another pitchable blue card or you sees tons of Swords, and a budget Oath deck isn't going to have that problem. Swords sucks against Oath and it always will suck against Oath.

Brainstorm and Ponder are mandatory one-ofs and you only need one Blessing (if you are worried about removal, 1 Jenny would work in its place). If at all possible, you also want every important black tutor you can get (Demonic and Vampiric at least). Lotus Petal should be in the deck because it fuels turn one goodness and turn one countermagic, and you may want to look at Mana Crypt if you have one.

Impulse was a good fit for the powered version because of the colorless part, but you probably want something like Portent instead because you want Oath turn two. It doesn't matter if the card sucks as a topdeck - you want pieces fast and you want the countermagic behind it to win.

I made this in a hurry because I'm at work, but I agree with the earlier poster about creatures and I can answer any question

Here, I wanted to point to something I said in the opening post

"If you guys haven’t played this format (which I understand), it looks a lot like Legacy but with no brainstorms and the occasional “Oops, I just drew Yawgmoth’s Will. Guess I won”.

Most of the time, the decks we see are undifferentiable from legacy decks, but without brainstorms. In a given tournament, I might see mono blue control, goblins, merfolk, enchantress, mighty quinn, some homebrew,and that dreadstill tempo-thresh list I complain about constantly. Removal is extremely prevalent in the format because of all the aggro--my standstill list had three wraths, four swords and three paths (with three cunning wishes for the four) and I didn't feel like it was too much because there's simply no combo to speak of. I don't really see the advantages of hellkite overlord over progenitus, because while overlord starts a turn earlier, it also takes an additional turn, and is vulnerable to removal.

The rest of your post, however, is probably right. I believe that lotus petal is probably better than most of the things I could be playing, although the deck already ran through cards like turn three wouldn't get here (with chrome mox, force of will, one mana card manipulation, etc.). Impulse proved to be a lousy-lousy card, because it never, ever did what I wanted it to.

Maybe I'll put the deck back together for december with Roflwaffle's list as a base, or maybe a more fun oriented build. Thanks for the comments everyone!

[roflwaffles]

Many Oath builds run Hellkite Overlord because it was the fastest possible win condition the deck has, besides possibly janky Serra Avatar/Cognivore with Dragon Fang/Breath.

Oathing up a Progenitus requires 3 attack phases after the upkeep it goes Oath'ed up. This is especially crucial when in this scenario

T1: Forbidden Orchard, go
T2: land, play Oath of Druids
T3: Oath up Hellkite Overlord, attack for 8+, go
T4: Oath up Progenitus, Hellkite attacks for 8+, go
T5: Attack for 18+, game

where as a build with Akroma/Hellkite would go more like
T1: Forbidden Orchard, go
T2: land, play Oath of Druids
T3: Oath up Akroma, attack for 6, go
T4: Oath up Hellkite, attack for 14+, game

The Akroma/Hellkite route is a full turn faster than Progenitus/Hellkite. Oathing up a Progenitus as your second creature and not being able to swing for lethal damage on the same turn is very frustrating.
Progenitus does at least warrant a spot on the sideboard for StP-heavy decks, over Inkwell Leviathan, and Simic Sky Swallower at least.

"Maybe I'm too olde schoole but I can't imagine not running Swords to Plowshare (or Path to Exile) in Oath. I think the Accumulated Knowledge should be cut. Horrible synergy with Oath. Also, Ancestor's Chosen is crazy good against aggro."

Actually I believe that you can put the Blessing on the stack after you oath, and play AK for all the AKs in your graveyard before they come back into your library. In general, however, they are relatively unsynergetic, I just can't find another decent card-drawing engine for Oath in Legacy. Perhaps Night's Whisper? Standstill would be nice if Orchard wasn't printed and we stayed with manlands. Skeletal Scrying is very unsynergetic with Oath as well. Ancestor's Chosen should be unnecessary because Oath wrecks most types of aggro.

Misdirections are GODLY in this deck, seeing as Orchards guarantee that you have something to misdirect the StP's to. Definitely run them if you can get your hands on them

[LostButSeeking]

Okay, you have successfully explained this to me. See, because Progenitus is legendary, I . . . felt in my head that I could only have one creature from oath in play at a time. Problem solved.

[from Cairo]

Actually I believe that you can put the Blessing on the stack after you oath, and play AK for all the AKs in your graveyard before they come back into your library. In general, however, they are relatively unsynergetic, I just can't find another decent card-drawing engine for Oath in Legacy.

This is accurate. You can activate Oath, flip to a guy and if you hit Blessing with the shuffle trigger on the stack you can cast AK to take advantage of the AKs you Oath'd past.

That said, I'm still not that impressed with AK. It's good when you have and active Oath, but when you have an active Oath, you're in good shape already. I'd be more inclined to run Impulse (or something similar), even in an unpowered environment, because your bigger concern is getting to an Oath and digging up the protection to get it active.

[roflwaffles]

Oath probably won't get unbanned for a while. Other cards like Hermit Druid and Worldgorger Dragon would probably get off the list before it does. The popular opinion is Oath is too format-warping as it completely destroys any aggro deck. However, I honestly don't see it as THAT much more powerful than say, Dreadstill. Both decks are similarly built as control decks with a two-card combo which gets massive creatures who win the game in 2-3 swings. I'm not completely advocating that Oath should be unbanned, but it does warrant some testing.

Here is one of the more famous Oath builds in the last year in Vintage

James King Oath
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
1 Misdirection
4 Negate
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wipe Away
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize
1 Time Walk
4 Oath of Druids
1 Black Lotus
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Scroll Rack
2 Flooded Strand
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Island
3 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Wasteland

Sideboard:
2 Simic Sky Swallower
3 Oxidize
1 Life from the Loam
1 Massacre
2 Arcane Laboratory
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Tropical Island
1 Wasteland

Now taking out the banned Legacy cards sans Oath, we get the following

1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
1 Misdirection
4 Negate
1 Wipe Away
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize
4 Oath of Druids
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Scroll Rack
2 Flooded Strand
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Island
3 Polluted Delta
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Wasteland

Because Legacy allows 4 Brainstorms, which is absolutely amazing in Oath, we will put three more into the deck and get rid of the poor substitutes
-1 Scroll Rack, -1 Ponder, +3 Brainstorm

Chalice of the Void is played in Vintage Oath because it stops Moxen and other cheap accelerants on turn 1 and therefore slows down the opposition enough so Oath can have enough time to stabilize. In Legacy, 0 mana accelerants aren't played nearly as much and more often than not you would Chalice for 1 to stop Swords to Plowshares. I'm not sure if these slots would be deserved in Legacy. Because Swords to Plowshares is so relevant in Legacy however, this should warrant more Misdirections.
-4 Chalice of the Void, +2 Misdirection

Since we lose Moxen/Lotus, we need more lands.

This should really form the shell of a hypothetical Legacy Hellkite Oath list
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Hellkite Overlord
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
4 Negate
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Oath of Druids
2 Flooded Strand
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Wasteland

Now that we have none of the broken tutors that Vintage provides, such as Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Imperial Seal, we must find substitutes. Black is used in Oath primarily for these tutors, with Thoughtseize/Duress as an added bonus. Without these tutors, the next best thing is Lim-Dul's Vault, which should be run 3-4. Deed is also a possibility.

Legacy BUG Oath
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Wasteland
1 Islands

1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

2 Crop Rotation
1 Wipe Away
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
3 Lim-Dul's Vault
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Oath of Druids
2 Pernicious Deed
3 Intuition
2 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
4 Negate
2 Duress

However, a white splash is almost just as applicable, for Enlightened Tutor, Sterling Grove, and Swords to Plowshares. This may warrant playing the CounterTop engine as you have the Enlightened Tutors to fuel the combo pieces as well as Oath.

Legacy UGW Oath

4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Wasteland
3 Tundra
1 Islands

1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

1 Seal of Cleansing
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterbalance
1 Sterling Grove
1 Gaea's Blessing
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Misdirection
4 Oath of Druids
3 Intuition
4 Force of Will
4 Negate

[Adan]

Combo
4 Oath of Druids
2 Progenitus

BOMBO!