Welcome back to...

The Eternal Spotlight!

Hello again, fellow Magic: the Gathering Online enthusiasts! It's time for another installment of "The Eternal Spotlight", and I have plenty to talk about this time around.

First of all, I've been completely immersed in Vintage as of late. I've become a student of the format, reading as much as I can, and I've joined Vintage forums and Facebook groups. I can't begin to explain how excited and enthusiastic I am about playing Magic these days. My only regret regarding MTGO and Vintage is not getting involved sooner!

Last week, I discussed my first Vintage deck, and briefly mentioned a couple of other decks (TPS and my brew). I was spending most of my playing time practicing Vintage matches with The Perfect Storm, and some with my brew (also a Storm variant). I was winning a few matches, and scattered games here and there, but my overall match win percentage was not very good. Many of my losses were due to my own inexperience and play mistakes, but also the Storm decks weren't really giving me the types of hands that end up winning. I had the idea in the recesses of my mind that I needed to find a new deck, and put Storm up on the shelf for now.

I own copies of Griselbrand, so the idea of making an Oath of Druids deck seemed easy to pull off. I started making some trades, and soon I had an Oath deck. I didn't have enough in trade to pay for Omniscience at that time, so I started with a traditional Oath deck without Omniscience. I had my doubts about Oath, mostly that it wasn't powerful enough compared to the OmniOath decks that are much more poplar nowadays. Soon after I had a 95% finished list, I took the deck into the tournament practice room and crushed the first match I played.

That first match win with Oath convinced me that I had something worth playing, so I kept practicing, and finishing the list as the days passed on. Here's where I ended up:

There's a little spoiler in that deck list header for all of you. I took this list into my first Vintage Daily Event, after playing the format less than two weeks, and nearly spiked it. I was undefeated going into round four, having only lost one game in round one. My opponents were all great players, too. In fact, my round one opponent was the creator of the 4-0 TPS list that I'd downloaded and played with.

Here's a quick recap of the rounds: Round one I faced TPS with Monastery Mentor, and I won 2-1. Game two, I sideboarded as if my opponent was playing a Mentor-Control deck, which turned out to be a mistake. Game one had revolved around Mentor so much, that I wasn't aware of any Storm cards. Game three, I changed how I sideboarded, and did my thing, cheating out a Griselbrand and riding it to victory.

Round two, I played against a Gush/Tendrils deck and won 2-0. Game one, things were relatively easy, with an early Griselbrand. Games generally don't last long if you activate an Oath of Druids.

Game two, I had to fight through a Swords to Plowshares on my first Griselbrand, and also a (Graffdigger's Cage) that came down before I could Oath a second time. Luckily, I was able to Abrupt Decay the Cage with my Oath trigger on the stack, and that set me up to win quickly.

Round three, I faced a Shops deck, I won 2-0. Game one, I had my first land Wastelanded, and my opponent had no other plays. Turn two knowing that my opponent likely was on Shops and had no Counterspells, I played Forbidden Orchard, Mox Sapphire, and Mox Jet, and played my Oath. Next turn, I got out a Griselbrand, then played Mystical Tutor fetching Time Walk. I was about to draw seven cards and take another turn when my opponent conceded.

Game two, my opponent lead with Mishra's Workshop, a Mox, and Witchbane Orb to stop me from activating Oath. Luckily, I had a Force of Will, and countered it. I had another Orchard/Oath by my second turn, and things looked good for me. I got out Griselbrand, drew some cards, and passed the turn. My opponent played a Phyrexian Metamorph copying my Griselbrand, which made things interesting. I went with the plan of trading my copy of Griselbrand with his Metamorph, and Time Walking into another Oath activation for myself. I had Hurkyl's Recall and Jace, the Mind Sculptor as outs that I could also draw into, so I didn't feel too worried about the situation. Ultimately, my opponent did block, and I drew more cards, Time Walked, and started over again. My opponent never drew an answer to my Griselbrand, and ultimately conceded the match.

Round four, as I alluded to, I lost. I faced abstrakt66 and his Tasigur BUGr deck, which seemed to have every imaginable answer to my deck's game plan.

Game one, I had a mediocre draw, and was quickly Thoughtseized and countered out of contention. Game two, I had a great hand, landed a quick Oath of Druids, and won the game by concession before even finishing my Oath activation.

Game three, was a fairly close game. My opponent played very well, and I made at least one egregious punt, where I completely misplayed a Preordain. In the end, I was set to die to my own Mana Crypt even if I did pull a miracle out of my rear-end. Abstrakt66's deck plays Notion Thief, which happens to be very good against me, as it wrecks all my cantrips and other card-drawing spells. Plus, in this deck, it's often combined with Dack Fayden to force the opponent to discard two cards, while he draws two himself. It is a brutal interaction, trust me.

When I played that Preordain ,and should have shipped both cards to the bottom, it really hurt. I realized my mistake as soon as the Preordain finished resolving. I'm not sure if I could have won the game if I had not made that mistake, but I'm sure that it kept me from having a chance at finding an out. I'm still learning the format, so I'm not going to be too hard on myself, I'll just make sure I don't do it again.

I feel as though I should mention that my round 2 and round 3 opponents were very courteous and nice after I won. I had extremely good draws in both of those matches, and the games were pretty lopsided in my favor. It's not easy dealing with losing to an early Oath of Druids/Forbidden Orchard with Force of Will backup, and these guys were nice about it.

Being able to do well in this Event felt great. Any of my readers that know me outside of this article series knows that I have trouble finding time to play in any events whatsoever. I have family and work commitments that just have to come first. The handful of Daily Events that I've played in the year or so since I started my MTGO account have all ended up poorly, and it's been a thorn in my side. I know that I'm not the best player in the world, but I also know that when I'm playing my "A" game, when I'm in the zone, I'm a very good player. Being able to prove my skill in a tournament makes me happy, and hopefully, lends a bit of credibility to my writing, especially since Vintage is far from an easy format. Hopefully, I can 4-0 the next one, but for now, I'm content with this finish.

Griselbrand Oath Deck Tech

At its heart, Oath is a control deck. Of the five pillars of Vintage, Oath belongs under the Mana Drain decks. This just means that it's a control deck, many decks in this category don't even play Mana Drain. The other piece of the puzzle, this deck, like most Vintage control decks, has an unbeatable combo finish it can use. In Griselbrand Oath, we have Oath of Druids to cheat out Griselbrand. Then, Griselbrand draws you enough cards to find the other combo, Time Vault and Voltaic Key. The deck plays a healthy amount of Counterspells, including an old favorite of mine, a single Mana Drain.

Here's a breakdown of the essential cards:

Here we have the meat of the deck, the main unfair trick that this deck uses to close out a game. Oath requires that our opponent has at least one creature in play, and Orchard makes sure that they do, and fixes our mana. Synergy between cards has never been more obvious. I included the one Show and Tell in this group, because it's another way to cheat in your flying Yawgmoth's Bargain. Sometimes, you draw the Griselbrand, and need a way to cast it.

Big Daddy Griselbees is our bomb. He does everything, and wins by himself. He also draws us into more gas. I don't know about you, but I never get sick of drawing cards.

This is our second combo, Key/Vault. Infinite turns are pretty good, as it turns out. Interesting fact, when I started playing Magic, this combo didn't work, as Time Vault had "Power Errata" (that has since been removed), that made it work using "Time counters", that could only be added by sacrificing a turn. Apparently, people used to play Animate Artifact and Instill Energy on Time Vault in the early 90's, and the DCI put a stop to it.

Jace is a control deck's best friend. You can Brainstorm every turn, or bounce an opposing creature. Also, his ultimate wins the game by itself. This card is also great in a mirror match, to bounce opposing Griselbrands or Emrakuls.

One quick aside, since playing Vintage, I feel like Jace is even more powerful in this format than he is in Legacy. It's just my opinion, but I feel that a lot less decks play a sizable amount of creatures, so Planeswalkers in general seem to be under less pressure. That leads them to spiral out of control more quickly, which makes them a bigger threat. Also, with a Lotus, Moxes, or other accelerant, you can get a turn one or two Jace, which is tough to beat. If anyone agrees or disagrees with this statement, please, let me know. I'd love to discuss it.

This is our suite of countermagic, these spells help us to enact our plan, while also disrupting our opponent's plays.

Mental Misstep This card is very narrow, but it's free to cast, and hits a lot of relevant spells in Vintage.

Mana Drain can't be Mental Missteped, and gives you some colorless mana next turn, so it's good to have as a singleton. It hits any type of spell, and it's a hard-counter as well, which makes it much more useful to this strategy.

Force of Will is our free Counterspell. Misdirection is usually just our fifth Force, but it's even better than Force when it's used to steal an Ancestral Recall from someone.

Flusterstorm is good against storm, but also is better than a Spell Pierce in a counter-war. The storm adds up quick, which makes paying for all the copies impossible.

All control decks need some way to control the board, and to deal with a resolved threat. Abrupt Decay answers a great deal of relevant threats, and it pulls double-duty as an anti-hate card. Grafdigger's Cage, for instance, is good against this deck, and dies to Decay. All of the annoying Spheres that a Shops deck plays, along with Chalice of the Void can be destroyed with Abrupt Decay. Lately, I've used in in a pinch to take out Monastery Mentor, a card that will kill you if left unchecked.

Standard card-filtering cantrips, these smooth out your draws, and help keep dead cards out of your hand. When playing a deck like Oath, you rarely ever want to draw a Griselbrand. Being able to scry or shuffle away unwanted, un-castable cards is vital to success with this archetype.

These are our tutors, and they stitch the deck together, making sure we get what we need. Sometimes, you can't help that you drew a Griselbrand, and these tutors can all help you find the miser's Show and Tell in the main deck. Two of these tutors can find any card, for instance, an Oath or an Orchard, to get things rolling.

One important role that these tutors play, is in setting up a win. If I can help it, I'd prefer not to pass the turn after I get a Griselbrand into play. A play that comes up quite often, is to Oath up a Griselbrand, put a (Timewalk) on top with a Mystical Tutor, draw seven cards, then take an extra turn and attack. Gaining another seven life means that you can draw even more cards, hopefully finding the Key/Vault combo, or a (Yagmoth's Will). This allows at least one more attack, possibly more, and that's usually enough to ensure that you end up winning the game.

The restricted list. I'm not going to cover all of the power in the deck, as well as fast mana like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and the like. Their function is to either speed your deck up, draw cards, take an extra turn, or do any number of degenerate, broken interactions. These cards serve the same function any time they are included in a Vintage deck, and there is no ambiguity as to how they work.

YawgWill (or YawgWin as I've seen it called) is pure value, even in a non-storm deck such as this. The other function is serves, along with Gaea's Blessing, is to replay cards lost to an Oath of Druids activation. Blessing also shuffles itself and the graveyard back into the library if it gets milled by Oath of Druids. It's very possible to run out of cards with this deck, so recycling the graveyard is a handy ability.

The rest of the deck is lands, mostly Duals and Fetches, but there are utility cards like Library of Alexandria, and mana-ramp like Tolarian Academy.

Deck Tech: Sideboard

Here we have the standard anti-dredge hate that's important for any Vintage deck. Dredge is a strong, consistent deck that will eat you alive quickly if you let it.

Anti-Storm tech, these cards also help in a counter-war. Mindbreak Trap can take care of a Tendrils of Agony all by itself, and it does it for free.

Nature's Claim and Abrupt Decay are in the sideboard for extra permanent removal.

Thoughtseize is for matches where more disruption is needed. Playing a Thoughtseize before trying to resolve a key spell helps pave the way for that spell to be resolved successfully.

Show and Tell is plan "b" for cheating Griselbrand into play. I almost always bring this in after game one, because I assume that I'll see a Grafdigger's Cage at some point. I'm considering running more copies somewhere between the main deck and sideboard, because it really is a very helpful card.

Facing a Shops deck, or any deck running Wasteland, having one more basic land is very helpful. I bring this in when I'm concerned that my mana base will be under attack.

Taking an Oath...

I'm no expert when it comes to this Oath deck, or Vintage in general. I have picked up a few tricks along the way, however, and I'll go over what I've learned. Some of these things are applicable in other situations as well.

Playing Counterspells:

Mental Misstep is a card that I don't think I fully understood at first. Besides seeming narrow at first glance, I often used it to counter whatever happened to be the first available target. Sometimes, the first spell you see with a converted mana cost of one will be a good target, for instance, if you sense the Ponder being cast is searching for something vital, like a source of mana or combo piece.

One thing that I've started to do with my Mental Missteps is to save them to counter my opponent's (Mental Missteps) instead of just nailing the first Preordain that floats on by. There are a ton of decks playing this counterspell, as it's free to cast and can fit into almost any deck. Saving my Misstep as protection for my Ancestral Recall or Vampiric Tutor has proven to be a valuable tactic. At any given point, the odds of your opponent having one Mental Misstep are pretty good. The odds of them having two are surely somewhat lower, so having at least one card to protect your important spell raises your chances of resolving that spell.

The longer you play with Mental Misstep, the more you see beyond its limitations. There are a wealth of good targets being played in Vintage, so using your Missteps wisely is vital. Casting a less-important target to bait out an opposing Mental Misstep can also be a smart play. I learned to be wary the first time wasted my misstep on a Brainstorm, only to have my opponent then cast an Ancestral Recall that I couldn't stop.

Force of Will is a great card, although I'm sure that you all know that it's card-disadvantage by now. I don't usually cut them when I'm sideboarding like I do in Legacy, because I have more card drawing and therefor exiling cards isn't as steep of a cost. Still, losing two cards to stop one card is not sustainable, and you can be quickly ground down by multiple must-answer spells. As always, choose what to Force wisely.

The other free "counterspell", Misdirection, really only functions like a Force when you're in a counter-war. This is a great answer to Ancestral Recall though, and you can also change the target of an Abrupt Decay. Abrupt Decay is a good card against an Oath deck, as it kills an Oath and can't be countered. Remember, you can, in response to an Abrupt Decay on your Oath of Druids, give your opponent a token with Forbidden Orchard and redirect the Decay to the token (unless they have no other targets that is).

Activating an Oath of Druids:

The triggered ability of Oath is put on the stack immediately following the beginning of each upkeep, so you can get rid of a pesky Grafdigger's Cage with an instant before the ability resolves, making sure you get your Griselbrand.

Every time one of my Oath's goes off, I take a look at all the cards that hit the graveyard, provided f I didn't hit the Gaea's Blessing to recycle my graveyard. The reason for this is that the quickest way to win after landing Griselbrand is to chain Time Walk with Yawgmoth's Will, or to hit the Key/Vault combo.

You need to know what card or cards (if any) you need to try to draw into that first turn with Griselbrand. If you managed to hit Yawgmoth's Will, Time Walk, along with either Time Vault or Voltaic Key, then drawing more than seven cards isn't probably needed. If you're Griselbrand gets targeted with a removal or bounce spell, then by all means, go nuts drawing cards to find an counter.

Knowing what's left in your deck is also important if you plan on trying to draw counterspells in response to removal. With any deck, you need to know exactly what's left in your library. Due to the fact that you can trade life points for cards in Griselbrand Oath, knowing what cards are left is even more relevant.

If you have an active Oath, and a time walk, letting the first Griselbrand die might actually not be that bad. You can just get another one by taking an extra turn, and then you'll have made them spend a removal spell. Presumably, you'll have enough counters to protect your threat. The thing to remember is, if they are trying to kill Griselbrand during your turn, they're also trying to force you to draw cards early, which in turn means you'll have to most likely discard at the end of turn, and you'll lose some value in the process. If I know that I can't win the first turn I have a Griselbrand, I usually try to wait until the turn has ended to draw seven, so I don't waste cards by discarding them.

Sideboarding:

It took me a little while to figure out how I wanted to sideboard when playing this list. I should also mention that I used my own sideboard configuration in the Daily Event, instead of keeping it the same as the list I initially downloaded.

In general, I bring in a Show and Tell and two Abrupt Decays in most match-ups, as a hedge against Grafdigger's Cage and the like. That configuration seems to be effective, and I haven't had any games where I wish that I hadn't brought them in.

I used five slots on graveyard hate, because I hate losing to Dredge. I wouldn't run less than four such cards in any Vintage sideboard, because Dredge is very strong. They can win through these cards anyway, but without them, you would need a lot of luck to survive.

Mindbreak Trap and Flusterstorm are to combat Storm decks, and Flusterstorm is great in a counter war. Ravenous Trap can also be used to fight Storm, as it greatly hurts Yawgmoth's Will. Without Will, storming off can be very difficult.

Library of Alexandria is an awesome card, but it's one of the first cards that I side out. It doesn't make colored mana, and I rarely am able to draw any cards with it.

Jace and Dig Through Time are also cards I cut after game one much of the time. I usually leave one Jace still in the deck still, because he's still good so much of the time.

One more card, Hurkyl's Recall. is often kept in throughout the match. After game one, Recall can be used as an answer to Grafdigger's Cage, and is very good against Mishra's Workshop decks.

Moving Forward...

I'll be continuing to play Oath of Druids decks for now. My experience with the archetype has convinced me that the deck still has plenty of game left to it. Most of my wins were brutal affairs, and the raw power of Oath of Druids was very evident.

There are two variations on this deck that I plan on testing. The first is the OmniOath version. I finished this list a few nights ago, and it has some promise.

If you've followed any of the Vintage Super League, you may know that LSV was playing this Omniscience version of Oath of Druids, and several MTGO players have since picked the deck up for themselves. Although OmniOath has some very powerful tricks up its sleeve, I've also encountered some really bad auto-mulligan hands. I'm going to keep practicing with this version, to see if I really like it better or not.

Sometimes, you get out a quick Oath of Druids, or Show and Tell a Omniscience on one of your first few turns, and draw through your deck, or chain through it with Dig Through Time, ultimately winning by taking an extra turn with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. When you get such a result, the deck feels terrific.

The flip-side is that the deck contains four ten-drops (Omniscience), five eight-drops (Griselbrand and Dig Through Time), and a fifteen-drop (Emrakul). That is a density of un-castable spells higher than even a Sneak and Show deck. That means that your chances of having to mulligan are significantly higher than normal, and even keepable hands can quickly turn ugly. I've lost several games with a full grip of cards that I could just never play.

Once I get a better feel for OmniOath, I'll write a more in-depth summary of the list.

The other deck from the Vintage Super League.

The other list I'm going to try is Rich Shay's Vintage Super League deck, which he called Fenton Oath. Rich's list has more Show and Tells than normal, as well as three Griselbrands. I like this configuration, because it makes Show and Tell much stronger.

This list looks very tight, and highly focused. I like that it has less reliance on Oath than other lists, due to the extra copies of Show and Tell. Since the metagame in the Vintage Super League is different from what you'd find in a Daily Event, there are probably some sideboard changes that would make a lot of sense. There isn't much graveyard hate, for example. I'll be trying this list out very soon as well.

What's up with Legacy lately?

Brainstorm is currently broken, it doesn't place the cards on top of your deck correctly.

Before I delve into the rest of this little Legacy segment, I'm going to segue into a rare opinion section. This is regarding the recent screwing-up of Brainstorm. Wednesday night, I saw a Facebook post from Rich Shay saying that Brainstorm was now bugged. Something in the fix that occurred during today's (4/1/15) downtime made Brainstorm not function right as a side-effect.

I hopped into a Vintage solitaire match, and tried to cast a Brainstorm as early and often as I could, and noted how it functioned each time. Every time I tried resolving it, out of five or more tries, the bottom card (the first card clicked, that is supposed to be drawn last) was drawn first. I'm not sure if it works correctly some small percentage of the time, but as a rule, if you're in a casual game, or a 2-man or whatever, put the card that you want to draw on the bottom by clicking on it first. That might help you draw the wanted card, if you're not just shuffling them all away, that is.

If you were hoping to play a Daily Wednesday or Thursday, you're out of luck. WoTC has suspended those events to try to resolve the issue. Now, I wasn't planning on playing in an event on those nights, because I have to work the next morning and I don't need to be any more tired than I already am. However, if I had been planning on grinding some Dailies, I'd be furious. I'm still upset that I have to deal with this issue in a casual game, because it's an annoying thing to have to do.

I know that nobody at Wizards wants things like this to happen, and that they do try to fix things quickly if possible. I just feel like they should be doing better. Paper packs are sold at a profit, and have extensive material and production costs beyond creating the cards in R&D. Digital packs are sold at that same MSRP, tickets are sold for real dollars, and they have no material cost. That tells me that this game is extremely profitable, and I feel more could be done to ensure things like this don't happen as often as they do now. Please. Wizards. Fix this.

And now, what I've been playing...

Legacy has also been on my mind a lot, even though I've mostly been playing Vintage. This morning, actually, my game in the Vintage Tournament Practice room was taking a long time to fire, so I started a Legacy match while I was waiting. Luckily, my opponent conceded shortly into game two of my Legacy match, as I had just resolved a Show and Tell for Griselbrand.

I'm glad that I didn't have to try to play two games at once for very long. I've never been good at pulling the old double-queue, and that's partly due to only having one monitor. The way my computer is set up, switching quickly between windows is a pain, and I don't need to eat up my clock or make anyone mad with slow-play. I assume people that have better, bigger, and more monitors than I have an easier time playing two games at once.

If you couldn't tell from context, the deck that I was playing was Sneak and Show. That deck, and Reanimator are my two Legacy decks at the moment, although I am working on OmniTell now as well. I have the Omnisciences now, so I figured that I should get some more use out of them if I can.

Bring out your dead!

My Reanimator deck has changed up a little bit. I took out the Dazes for Thoughtseizes and a Misdirection. I have yet to test it out, and I might just switch back to Daze in the end. Thoughtseize is a great card to run though, as it acts as a foil to a lot of hate cards that Reanimator has trouble with.

My sideboard has a new Reanimate target, Sire of Insanity, Again, I haven't tested this change, but I know that the ability is very good against a lot of decks. I had a Jin-Gitaxias in the deck once, so I know just how good making your opponent hellbent is. The only downside I see is the anti-synergy Sire has with all of the decks counterspells and Griselbrand activations. Only time will tell, but I think Sire is good enough at his job to hold on to a spot in the board.

The Legacy metagame has moved around a bit in the last couple weeks, but Miracles is still on top. According to MTGGoldfish, ANT, Grixis Delver, Esper Stoneblade, and RUG Delver are next, in that order, in the top five most-played decks in the metagame.

My guess as to why Esper Stoneblade has become more popular, is the printing and subsequent adoption of Monastery Mentor. Mentor is an insanely good card, and it allows Esper Stoneblade to have some of the advantages of the Pyroblade decks of a few months ago, without having to dip into red. Also, the tokens generated by Mentor are strictly better than the elemental tokens made by Young Pyromancer. Since any non-land, non-creature card triggers prowess, generating lots of tokens is even easier. I don't think Monastery Mentor is as good here as it is in Vintage, because of Moxes, Black Lotus and the like, but it is still quite strong.

This is the end, my only friend, the end...

That's all I have time for this week folks. I tried to have more content than usual, and to make good on my promise to cover all eternal formats. Please, by all means, let me know what you think in the comments. I have a blog I'm working on too, I'll post a link, and update it as soon as I can. Right now, nobody is reading it, so writing for it seems like a futile endeavor.

Until we meet again...

Thanks for reading!

Joe Fiorini - Islandswamp on MTGO

Follow me @ twitter.com/josephfiorinijr

My super-important and highly-relevant (not really) blog: islandswamp.wordpress.com/author/joefiorini/