I've top 8'd the past two vintage challenges with sun titan oath bringing back underworld breach. The deck feels pretty absurd since even if you're not winning by casting time walk 10 times, you often just bolt them 7 times. Two mana hardcast yawgwill has been good as a random value card on several occasions, but I think the card specifically shines in oath because it means your oath triggers actually win the game instead of you having to pass back.

Honestly, the first list felt really smooth even with the combo pieces, and I naturally vault-keyed people multiple times without oath triggers just by playing a xerox game. Cutting things down to a more streamlined control deck in the second iteration was largely because the combo pieces felt unneeded in games where I actually resolved an oath trigger.

Also, I say the combo heavy first iteration felt smooth, but several people after me tried the list and had pretty terrible runs with it, so I think I might have just drawn the right half of the deck at the right times. The second list has a lot less dead cards while retaining a high probability to win with a single oath trigger, so I think it's a better version.

I've got a bunch of these stored up, I'll drop a couple of my favorites.

This deck has gone 5-0, 4-1, and a 4-2 in the challenge this past week with a list I haven't really seen anyone else trying. The only loss in leagues involved two mulls to 4. I bubbled out of the top 8 after losing a win and in where I played pretty horridly.
5-0 list

I've found force of vigor to be just better interaction than force of will recently, and being virtually mono green pre board has felt very good. The most broken draws still involve vengevine and hollow one, but the addition of hogaak and bloodghast have made the average draws a lot more aggressive. Hogaak has made soft hate look pathetic, and pretty much every match I've lost I feel like it was my play errors that caused it, not the deck being beat.

This doesn't seem to have really gotten any attention on tmd, but I played in this, and many for fun practice games through the discord, and the format has been great so far. Lots of cards that can end the game on turn 1 obviously, but tons of counterplay and interesting deckbuilding decisions.

This was run in a league format, meaning we just played each other round robin when we had time, and no one was locked into a single deck. I played three different decks in my 4 matches, prison shops, hollowvine, and a turbo tinker deck.

I'm a big fan of manatraders, a rental service for mtgo. One of the biggest advantages of mtgo is being able to swap decks league to league, so I try to take advantage of it as much as possible, and renting is the best way to do that. I know lots of players will buy just fetches, or just forces, or some other wideranging format staple, and use a rental service to fill in the blanks in whatever decks they want to play.

People have already been having success with thassa's oracle. Multiple 5-0's in dedicated combo decks with demonic consultation.

@botvinik said in Pitch Dredge:

@psyburat

I don’t claim that my build is correct but I claim my decision is correct in my build.

Playing less than 4 vigor in your 75 in dredge is incorrect. Can you explain what about your build makes you not want to be capable of beating shops, or any grave hate, or PO?

@naixin

In order:

• Revoker can be a problem, but for the most part you want to just force their most meaningful play and resolve flux post board. My loss in the challenge top 8 was because I stupidly let them resolve a lodestone golem with force in hand because I had a vial, then they followed up with revoker and I was too far behind to win. But in the 6 rounds before that, I played vs shops twice and beat both of them by just making land drops they couldn't wasteland away.

• The deck was build with beating combo in mind. I think rod is very unnecessary, especially since you're not playing much mana accelerants to play it on turn 1.

• The manabase would have to drastically change to support white cards. Honestly, even with 9 islands the deck sometimes struggles to cast non merfolk blue spells. Deafening silence is the most relevant of the white cards you could play, and I don't think it's worth the added weakness playing white would add to your manabase

• My very first list a couple months ago was actually UB with paradigm shift, demonic tutor, vamp tutor, and demonic consultation with 4 oracles, but I found that the end result was just me putting a bunch of medium cards in my deck to turn 5 kill people, which was accomplished by just casting lords anyway.

@moorebrother1

I think the best matchup for daze is vs the bazaar decks, and vs other decks I prefer counters like fluster/mindbreak trap/force of negation. So which you play I think mostly relies on what matchups you'd like to focus on.

Unforutnately mono blue doesn't get great threats in a deck like this, but the best one is almost certainly brazen borrower. It's a fast evasive clock, a good tempo card, and gives you more outs to things like marit lage that you otherwise are pretty cold to. The other option I'm a big fan of is thieving skydiver, because it's an absolute house vs shops and a decent body with upside vs other decks, but I think brazen is probably better.

Unrelated, I'm glad to see someone playing subtlety in a tempo deck in vintage, I've been wanting to try that but haven't had the time to try and build it.

@moorebrother1

Mtgo player ianmarsh has been playing a deck like you're describing for months. The list has changed around a bit, so you might want to look their their past decks to see the progression, but the most recent result was this deck link

Divining witch tends to be better than shift because it doesn't get pyro'd, and you can activate it to find the oracle, then activate it next turn to win with the oracle. It's also just a risky tutor, which is much better than a dead exile your library card.

It's not exactly the same, but this reminds me of kannister's latest take on dredge. Built to be very resilient vs hate, especially things like surgical, tabernacle, and wasteland. Link

@naixin

Null rod could be in the board if you expect a ton of ravager, but that's just not a large enough meta share for me to board more cards in what is already a reasonably favorable matchup. PO has mostly died off, and the deck has a million counterspells to fight against it anyway. Other than those two matchups, I can't think of any where I'd want rod.

Pithing needle and attacking it with true name. In the challenge vs bug, they turn 1 oko'd me, and I ended up stabalizing the board by stealing food with skydiver multiple times, tapping down food with tidebinder mage, and attacking it with true names and the flyers. Needle is the easiest answer though.

@botvinik said in Merfolk:

I like how angry this list is my only real question is do you think you have enough spells and wastelands to fit a cruze or a DTT?

I think even one delve spell would be pretty greedy without fetches. Maybe a cruise, but it would never be live before turn 6 or so I don't think.

I haven't touched this deck much recently, but I did play a challenge with it yesterday so I thought I'd share my list. I went 4-2 top 16, losing a match to bant where I misplayed my force, and a match vs oops where I didn't have any creatures in my top 30 cards and died to hardcast narcomoeba beats. I beat shops twice, skydiver stealing stonecoils, basic islands, and fluxes continue to make that matchup incredibly good. I beat dredge, I think that's surprisingly a good matchup with the current board plan because you can waste the bazaar, protect your hate, and not die to hollow ones. Last win was vs BUG, plan was the same as ever vs fair blue, cast an uncounterable true name and then watch them spin their wheels for 8 turns until they lose. The only match I missed having lords was vs oops, but I would have been happy to have literally any creature.

I might experiment with moxen over vials now that I'm playing 4 breachers and no lords, but vial was still pretty reasonable in my matches.

I'm a big fan of manatraders, a rental service for mtgo. One of the biggest advantages of mtgo is being able to swap decks league to league, so I try to take advantage of it as much as possible, and renting is the best way to do that. I know lots of players will buy just fetches, or just forces, or some other wideranging format staple, and use a rental service to fill in the blanks in whatever decks they want to play.

Haven't seen magmatic channeler mentioned yet, that's probably the best red draw engine outside of dreadhorde while also playing blue.

@lienielsen

That's just incredibly false. Fetchlands are already lands that effectively tap for more than two colors, and they have other upsides like shuffling and fetching sanctuary. If you have 4 three color indestructable lands in your 3 color deck, that's a significantly worse manabase than playing 9 fetches and 6 duals.