Hmm, seems more like a fit for a Legacy Shallow Grave reanimator deck

@vaughnbros I was thinking more of being able to cast multiple loams per turn through moxen/mana dorks (1-2 before attacking, dredge them back and cast them again post combat), allowing more abuse of bazaar's filtering. Too bad Vinelasher Kudzu and Lorescale Coatl/Chasm Skulker don't have any evasion.

The double trigger would have been good for any bug deck running deathrite and a mox jet. Oh well.

Too bad a UGw noble heirarch time vault deck would probably lose to walking ballista much of the time.

If you attack enchanted player do you get 2 untap triggers? Would make an amusing addition to a bazaar of baghdad + life from the loam draw engine deck.

Obligatory "this is a voltaic key that doesn't get misstep'ed" point.

Typed it out for you. I appreciate the pics, but had no f'ing clue what virulent plague was until you wrote it out, lol.

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I was simply highlighting the incongruity of a post that frames the issue in terms of Turbo-Xerox (TX), asserts that TX is dominant in the format, and then opposes the restriction of Preordain.

If TX is dominant, you attack the cantrips, which is why Ponder and Brainstorm are restricted, not win conditions. Because if it's TX that is dominant, and not the win condition, then restricting Mentor should have no bearing on the dominance of TX, according to the logic Rich set out. The analysis as presented and conclusions of the OP are logically inconsistent.

That assumes the entirety of the problem is with the engine. The way I view @The-Atog-Lord 's argument is that the engine has been sufficiently hurt, but the end game is still too strong, and insulates itself too well from interaction.

I tend to agree that the best answer to mentor is mentor, and the second best answer to mentor is to hope you can prevent it from entering play. The third best way, going over the top, is only feasibly done by oath at the moment, and as has been said; all the hyper efficient hate pieces to over the top strategies have been printed in the same color as mentor.

I have said since it's printing that mentor is at the same power level as tinker, though in a shell designed around it that should probably be amended to more powerful than tinker. I am firmly in the camp of restricting mentor.

As far as gush getting an unfair axe, I'm very doubtful. Gush happens to be the best draw spell for control decks, and the best draw spell for tempo (or TX) decks, and allows for far too much flexibility to switch roles seamlessly in the middle of a game for no real cost (in terms of game play or deck construction).

It isn't a good thing when two control decks can whittle themselves down to a topdeck war and then one flips a gush and chains off ending their turn with win conditions in play and protection in hand. Without gush you get win conditions or protection during the topdeck war, with gush you get both.

In terms of misstep, I believe it is overall unhealthy for the format. While it does keep the 1 mana tutor and vault key decks in check, there are other cards that do that too. Unfortunately it also knocks out a variety of excellent answer cards.

I run 4 of them in salvagers oath because in addition to disrupting the opponent's normal game plan it is also better than force of will in protecting my own plan. Countering that swords to plowshares after I oath and before I draw has won me lots of games and made lots of salt. Being able to counter those grafdigger's cages, even against workshops, is a huge boon. And still I will be one of the first to say it is a dumb, no cost, no skill counter that needs to go.

This already feels like too much of a wall of text so I'll leave out my thoughts on workshops.

-Wiley

I enjoyed the article, and I always like seeing updates to blasts from the past, especially when it turns into a history lesson for people :)

A good resource for ancient decks is the encyclopedia I put together years ago: http://www.archive.themanadrain.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=20uoj23uahaav36id5q6jqulr0&topic=37514.0

It took a lot of time to make and maintain and I kind of dropped it after a while, but there is an awful lot of information there.

Concerning the list in the article, it seems like reanimate would serve better than animate dead since you aren't trying to go infinite with dragon, and your most likely early target will be a welder. I would also turn at least 1 of the inkwell or myr into a wurcoil.

Another thing to note is that CA predates revoker, so It might be in your best interest play some answers to it in the main if you want to use your welders vs shops. (Granite Shards ftw)

Does this really buy any turns against a vintage aggro deck? For instance, if you are going up against a mentor army aren't they attack for something like 5-7, then 15-20, then 17-25? Even if you go back to 20 life they might still have enough power on board to one shot.

Similar for something like eldrazi, who swings out with reality smashers and tks for 9-14 a turn, and since you pseudo time walk yourself by hampering your land based mana (and them presumably attacking your artifact mana) they get to do it twice before you reap any real benefits.

On the other hand, this has potential of being a combo enabler with yawgmoth's bargain/griselbrand/necropotence. But for that the only thing going for it is as a burning wish target, since we have had children of korlis for years.

@Khahan said in Where is Oath right now?:

In any given tournament you can get the unbeatable nutz draw or the "where is my other combo piece?" draw and be left hanging. In years past this was Ok because the format was different. Oath held up better in the long game while it dug for answers. Today if it stalls there are too many decks that are just too fast for it. Even creature decks like mentor and ravager shops can beat it.

To be fair, there were a lot of games that I won just because I was a bomberman deck as well as an oath deck. One standout game was against shops where they landed double t1 grafdigers cages and a foundry inspector. I went t1 land, lotus, salvagers. His t2 saw tangle wire and another creature. I played land go, his t3 saw no sphere effects so I recurred lotus in my upkeep, made infinite mana in my main, hard cast griselbrand and over half of my deck until the rest of the combo was assembled. I also won at least 2 games against mentor just with salvagers recurring ee and pyrite spellbomb with no lotus.

Bomberman is a vintage worthy deck, and running it alongside oath does a couple of trade offs:

1. You have a really shitty mana base. No helping this, oath decks almost universally require running risky mana bases.
2. Your tutor for salvagers also often gives you access to the other combo pieces. It also costs less than other tutors normally run by bomberman.
3. Your yawgmoth's bargain gains you life and deals 7 by itself.
4. Since you only have to run the one salvagers and none of the other creature tutors you can have a higher density of countermagic in the deck. And awkward or not they still make a huge difference in the current meta.
5. Since you are already in white, you have great answer cards for anything you might face so long as you can anticipate it in your sideboard plans.
6. EE is just plain awesome, especially in oath and bomberman.

Down in my corner of the Southeast we finished up our first league a couple of weeks ago. It consisted of 3 months of tournaments with Legacy for 3 weeks and Vintage for 1 week each month. I ran Shuhei's version of Brian Kelly's oath list from the VSL all three weeks, no cards changed.

Overall I placed 1st, 3rd and 2nd. Going 10-2 in matches overall, losing to BUG Hate and Paradoxical Storm.

The matches I lost involved T1 null rod and double answer to oath both games from BUG Hate, and T1 win with force back up from PS. Outside of these matches the deck ran amazingly well, beating a wide variety of shops, mentors, oath, paradoxical and tezz decks.

If I were to continue playing oath (which I probably will considering PS seems to fair poorly against shops despite its power level) then that list is were I would start. Enchantment hate is the only thing I ever felt light on, and the counter density makes playing the control role super smooth regardless of what you're going up against.

The only other options I would consider playing would be demon oath with rune-scarred demons in a similar counter dense shell (stronger vs null rod but weaker to needle/cage/priest), or possibly (and this would require a lot of tinkering to get things right) a null rod/root maze style oath list with lots of permanent based hate.

Unfortunately the best version (in my opinion) of oath is all but unplayable online, so if that is the only play method available to you then you might try one of the other two types I listed.

No room for crucible of worlds in the 75? I would have figured that would be a major selling point of standstill. But given that I can't see anything I would immediately cut for it I will give this list a try for a while.

Good job on the finish.