New sets get me brewing. Anytime there is a cheap tutor, especially at instant speed it’s worth taking a look. Mausoleum Secrets has some limitations for sure, you have to jump through some hoops, but are those hoops unmanageable? And are the benefits worth it?
Mausoleum Secrets
1B
Instant
Undergrowth — Search your library for a black card with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of creature cards in your graveyard, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
My first inclination is to try to build something around a deck that would want Street Wraith and Faerie Macabre. They are both free to get in your graveyard, and are both legacy power level already.
So that’s a good first step, but what else can we be doing?
I was thinking of other cards that could synergize with both of those creatures and thought of Oath of Ghouls. This reserve list beauty (Oath of Druids isn’t reserved?!?!) can be a powerful but slow card advantage engine and it cares about creatures in your Graveyard (Wraith) and keeping creatures out of your opponents graveyards (Macabre).
So two reasonably costed card advantage and tutoring engines that synergize with creatures that power them up. A good and grindy start. So what sort of deck would want these sort of actions going on?
Probably a mid range or control, we aren’t fast, and we care about the game going long and have the ability to find the perfect answers and to re use them if they are creatures or if we have a creature that can regrow them, which luckily black already has in Xaiodun, the One Eyed.
That leaves us with a skeleton that looks like this as a starting point. It’s possible we don’t want that many Oaths or Secrets but I’d like to start them out high to really see how well they work.
3 Oath of Ghouls
3 Mausoleum Secrets
4 Street Wraith
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Xaiodun, the One Eyed
So we need some disruption to get us to the late game to then grind out opponents, we are also going to be pretty mana hungry. I haven’t done extensive Gatherer Searches, just yet but I have a good idea of the things I want in here in theory. We don’t actually need to just pack a ton of bullets in here, there are a lot of reasonable catch all answers, and we can use bullets to cover more corner cases.
Some options for disruption:
Lilly of the Vale
Thoughtseize
Therapy
IOK
Collective Brutality
Hymn
Lilly works well with Oath of Ghouls. Lilliana the last hope’s negative ability is also pretty valuable in here, for dumping things in the bin but might not be what we want in the main deck.
I’m leery of thought seize, as our draw engine is going to be pretty life loss based, because of Street Wraiths, which leads me to want some Brutalities.
I’ve run IOK in Pox, but every time you need to grab a 4+ spell it drives you nuts.
Hymn is great, but we are probably going to be very bottle necked at 2.
Assassin’s Trophy seems like the best catch all we could be on. (I’m probably going to run a split of Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom Pulse in their place until I can afford them or the price comes down, which will make the deck much worse I’m sure, but I have to start somewhere).
Fulminator mage interests me quite a bit. We want to slow the game down and create mana advantages, and we want things that can self sacrifice or get into the graveyard on their own.
4 Fulminator Mage
3-4 Assassin’s Trophy
2 Lilliana of the Vale
2 Collective Brutality
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge
We need some more creatures if this is where we are starting, and we need to pack in some more life gain as well.
Dark rituals are something that might be interesting too for kicking up the speed, but they add some inconsistency and also might not work great with how our curve is. Probably worth testing.
The life gain options aren’t super great, I think Kalitas, traitor of Geth and Gray Merchant of Asphodel are decent as one ofs, but are going to be hard to tutor for. Gifted Aetherborn is actually a pretty decent card, but not very powerful, it’s sort of what we are in the market for.
Other creatures we are in the market for with effects that work with our overall plan:
Kitesail Freebooter
Fleshbag Maurader
Minister of Pain
Rotting Rats
With a first draft like this I’m ok with a bunch of weird numbers and one of’s just to see what works and what is valuable to us.
I worry that there isn’t enough early action, and want to up the 1 drops a bit.
4 Street Wraith
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Xaiodun, the One Eyed
4 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitesail Freebooter
1 Fleshbag Maurader
1 Minister of Pain
2 Gifted Aetherborn
3 Oath of Ghouls
3 Mausoleum Secrets
3 Assassin’s Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Lilliana of the Vale
2 Collective Brutality
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Fatal Push
4 Wasteland
3 Bayou
6 Swamp
6 Fetches
1 Urborg, tomb of Yawgmoth
This looks like it needs a bunch more creatures to turn our engines on a bit. I wonder if we can just drop some of the spells for similar creatures.
Another idea I had was run the full boat of Stitchers Suppliers and Cabal Therapies. It not only powers up your engines it also helps with the 1 drop slot.
Testing will tell.
After sideboarding there has to be a strategy to mitigate Surgical Extraction. I’m not sure exactly what that will entail, it might just be our own surgicals to grab theirs.
I think this is a fun idea with some potential, and would love to get some feedback especially if I’m missing something super obvious.
On paper this looks a little clunky but it’s doing a lot of powerful midrange stuff that really isn’t present in the format right now and I think some of these strategies are worth exploring even if the exact details aren’t right in this early phase.
I actually bought a playset of oath thinking it would be a good engine sans DRS.
This might be a promising shell
Just saw this deck and I'm absolutely in love. As a mono-color player at heart, I'm thinking 4x Port, 4x Wastelands, 4x Urborg, and a bunch of swamps along with Dark Ritual, Sticher's Supplier, and Cabal Therapy will probably be my set up. The other idea I had was to run Bomat, Badlands and pray the next set gives us good stuff for BR. We could even go for a BR reanimation backup plan. I'll drop some lists later, still getting used to the forum.
-Gasmaskdandy
I've played oath of ghouls in a number of brews. It combos with...leyline of the void...Scavenging Ooze...the new Tormod's Crypt bear...contamination...Shriekmaw...buried alive getting necrotic ooze and friends...(tidehollow sculler if you have a sac outlet and ideally vial). The new tutor you mention can find helm if you run Leyline of the Void.
Originally Posted by Laser Brains
I wish it was true. :)
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Bought my playset of Oaths. I'll be testing the deck with a friend either tonight or soon, and I'll report back. I'm going to try going mono-black, but I'm stuck on whether or not to run port or maybe painter-stone. Testing will give us results.
Hey folks, i'm loving this idea, here is my take...
3 Oath of Ghouls
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 High Market
5 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Forest
4 Assassins trophy
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Collective Brutality
4 Street Wraith
4 Bad Moon
1 Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
4 Faerie Macabre
4 Shardless Agent
1 Island
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Tropical Island
1 Plague Channeler
1 Minister of Pain
2 Archfiend of Ifnir
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
Its a lot of fun and shardless adds another 4 tutors and you are happy to hit everything. I could do with more life gain but as has previously been mentioned its hard to come by, maybe thinking outside the box, something like trading post maybe?
Any suggestions?
Bad moons are Mausoleum Secrets, my bad
This looks really solid actually...only thought is there isn't much top end post explorer. I would look to add in green Sun's Zenith plus scavenging ooze and some bigger gsz threat. Scooze helps make sure oath doesn't become a liability. I would cut some faerie Macabre.
Oath of Ghouls doesn’t target so you could use Silent Gravestone vs. Surgical.
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That's true and i think that card is super powerful, but it does shut off our Macabre's which might be an issue. It's possible keeping both in after board could be fine vs very grave reliant decks.
I think it could probably survive one surgical but the second would be difficult, so surgical on surgical could be a strategy too.
Thanks for the kind words Gasmaskdandy
@Kinda, the new tutor can't fetch helm as it's not a black card.
I had another idea, might be too weak, but twisted Abomination or any of the mana cycling creatures might be a good draw engine and something to do on turn one. This would relieve pressure on the street wraiths.
Options include:
Architects of will
Horror of the broken lands
Archfiend of Ifnir
Undead Gladiator
Lurching Rotbeast
Horror seems the best by far, but Architects have their reasons and a one of Archfiend could be useful.
If there is an additional cycling package it will let a lighter mana package be feasible.
Good point...um...painters servant plus grindstone?
If you're cycling a ton and filling your graveyard with creatures, I would consider these cards:
Living End
Living Death
Crypt of Agadeem
Yahenni's Expertise
Crypt seems bonkers, potentially close to Gaea's Cradle power level in the right circumstances. It allows for fairly high converted mana costs to be feasible, like with Living Death. Multiple Street Wraiths and/or Faerie Macabres, or an enabler like Putrid Imp, could make it tap for easily 4+ on turn 3. This might be too slow without acceleration like Dark Ritual, but I think Dark Ritual would work fine as well. You then have big mana and a big payoff (4+ creatures on the battlefield, hopefully lethal the turn after you cast it.) This might be closer to Modern power level, but it still seems really cool.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Living End is just too slow, unless we are building around it. I think Living Death is sort of in the same camp too. I think once we have Card advantage engines on line, or are able to tutor for 5 drops we shouldn't need much help winning form that position, but i could be wrong, maybe having a nice one of "I win" style card to close things out quickly is what we want to be doing.
I'm not sure what Yahenni's Expertise is supposed to do for us.
Crypt however is very interesting. Coming in tapped is a big draw back, but I'll definitely try a couple out and see if they are too clunky.
They would help us to start deploying the big 5 drop threats when we are trying to actually win the game after it's been locked up.
Was doing some thinking and i think a 1 of Bone Shredder should go in here. It's clunky but it is very recursive and a flying blocker is pretty valuable as well.
I think i'll start testing this:
4 Street Wraith
4 Faerie Macabre
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
4 Fulminator Mage
1 Xaiodun, the One-Eyed
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Minister of Pain
1 Bone Shredder
3 Oath of Ghouls
3 Mausoleum Secrets
3 Assassin’s Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Collective Brutality
4 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Fatal Push
4 Wasteland
3 Bayou
4 Swamp
6 Fetches
2 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Urborg, tomb of Yawgmoth
Would like a recursive creature that could make the opponent discard. But Thrull Surgeon is too clunky. I'll do a gatherer search to see if there is anything interesting.
With Horror in the mix for the draw engine, i'm more ok with Thoughtseizes being in here as our life total will be less pressured now.
koskun falls might be going to deep, but with our fairly heavy land destruction theme i would be interested in this maybe out of the board. But we don't really have cheap creatures to keep if fuelled.
Great impulse Schorchrd 29!
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