Understanding the Oath Mirror Match

**When most people see two Oath of Druids decks paired up, as they were in the finals of GP: Seattle, they cringe. I disagree. The Oath Mirror is actually one of the most interesting and skill based matchups in Extended. Instead of the game proceeding along its predetermined path, as most matchups do, this battle is like a chess match, and revolves around small advantages. Because the deck has so many single cards and manipulation, and so many of those cards are useful, there are more different cards that matter than in most matchups. First, a breakdown of the Oath deck as it applies to the mirror matchup. By the way, the name Oath is permanently fixed onto this deck, but this isn't really an Oath deck any more than the old blue/white control decks could be called Wrath decks. The Oath is just the primary mode of creature control.

First, the damage sources. Each deck will probably have three creatures. The most likely setup is Morphling, Spike Feeder and Spike Weaver. The next most common is probably Morphling, Feeder and Shard Phoenix, and the third is 2 Spike Weaver and a Thorn Elemental. In addition, each deck probably has three to five creature lands, normally 1 Faerie Conclave and 2 Treetop Village. There are two kinds of situations for the creature battle: Either Oath of Druids is on the table, or it is not. If Oath is on the table, any creature advantage in play is only short term. Soon both players will have a Morphling and nothing else if their setups include one. Otherwise a Morphling will be looking at a Thorn Elemental. If two Morphlings are out, the creature lands become much less effective and any player who taps too much mana on their own turn takes a Morphling hit. If the Morphling faces a Thorn Elemental, the Thorn player does 7 a turn while the Morphling does 5. In exchange for that, generally the Morphling gets the first hit. But the Morphling can be chump-blocked by a Conclave, but that's not generally that important because the Conclave can get Wasted (or Plowed), but the Morphling requires two mana a turn and that can matter, etc.

If Morphling gets plowed you will die to the opposing Morphling unless you kill off your creatures and the other Morphling isn't in play yet. These decks have only 2 Oath of Druids in them, and use Enlightened Tutor for other things in this matchup. Players who draw Oath will often bury it back in their libraries with Brainstorm or sometimes throw it to Forbid. There's always a chance that they can't play one. Many players don't pay enough attention to the chance to try for a creature win, especially if you know your opponent is trying to avoid both Oath and his creatures. After sideboarding changes things even more, but that will come later. Often a game is won by a Morphling.

That's sort of the 'Oath battle,' the battle between the creatures other than lands. This battle is hard to win and is normally a draw, but if either player wins it the game ends. If you cast a creature and this forces the opposing Oath onto the table, that's a draw, since you both spent one card. If they have to tutor for the Oath, you actually gained advantage from it, and an additional small advantage is you have less useless creatures in your deck now if you decide to sacrifice yours. Also note that if you are running the Weaver/Thorn strategy, and you play Weaver, if they respond with Oath you can let them Oath and win the game if the Thorn isn't Plowed. Because it is fought last, this is the fourth war. The two Swords that are probably on each side have to be kept in mind here, and even more in the third battle: The battle for creature lands.

Each player here has four Wastelands, three to five manlands and about Twenty-three lands total. If the manlands attack each probably has two Swords. Having a Wasteland, either in hand or in play, prevents your opponent from keeping countermagic up, and after the first few turns is unlikely to cripple the opponent in the long run. Once a player starts attacking with his lands while the opponent has white mana untapped, he 'enables' his opponent's previously useless Swords, effectively decreasing his land count by two. That's a serious problem since both players want a lot of land and have four Wastelands each which leave them both to operate with an effective sixteen or so lands a lot of the time. Attacking also taps your mana. Often a player will 'let his opponent back into the game' by letting his lands get Plowed, because he has enough extra mana and sees a chance to win the game. It's generally not a good idea to try to win this way if you're already winning, but if you feel the game slipping away it may be worth the risk. Of course, if the extra land doesn't matter at all go for it. Life totals don't seem to matter in this matchup, but they do. Each four life is a card when a player gets down Sylvan Library, and your life total forces you to play differently when it starts getting too low. Threats that would be only annoying become capable of ending the game. And often, a player with extra manlands can trade long term advantage (lose the second war) and risk losing his advantage in the third war to press his advantage in the third one. This can be both a desperation move and a play to win when you think your opponent is vulnerable. In general, whenever you attempt to press your advantage here being forced to tap your mana risks the second war.

The best way to win the third war, of course, is Trade Routes. If you have Trade Routes, you're probably not using the second ability that much unless it gets late or you have Abundance. Instead, you're using it to protect your lands. Eventually, a Treetop Village or even a Conclave backed by a Trade Routes will win the game, unless it is trumped by an opponent who gets down creatures and wins the third war. That's the multiple war structure of control battles. Eventually winning the lower numbered wars will win the higher ones. Trade Routes is very helpful in the long run, and is the equivalent of putting your opponent on a clock. You can begin to press the advantage in war three over time. However, this does encourage you to tap mana, and it does mean a card you don't have in hand. If you used Enlightened Tutor to go get it, that can be especially dangerous, because this will put your opponent in a dangerous position in the second war, often in time to use it to win the third.

The second war is the war over card economy. The key cards involved are Aura of Silence, Sylvan Library and Abundance. Aura of Silence can be used to stop your opponent from trying to cast these enchantments, since they would just get killed and make you vulnerable due to the extra mana you would have to tap, or as enchantment removal on the spot. Sylvan Library is generally considered more powerful, and an Aura that can kill a Sylvan almost always does. If you have Aura of Silence on the table for an extended period, it means you cannot lose the second war in one turn and probably not any time soon. This gives you much more free reign to cast other enchantments, attack with creature lands or even try to cast creatures. It doesn't let you get more or better cards, but the crippling of your opponent's potential threats will allow you to take any other advantages you have. Getting the Aura onto the table when you have the chance instead of Sylvan should be done more often than it is, also because it is that much harder to win a counter war over a three mana enchantment, especially if your white sources are also blue sources. The Sylvan can come later, and you have more room to tap out during the counter war over it. However, Aura is not as immediately deadly to the long game (follow that?).

If a player gets Sylvan Library onto the table and gets to untap, they should start to dominate the game quickly. The card lost by casting the Sylvan can be reclaimed right away and an extra card drawn, although it's generally hard to draw more than two cards without putting yourself at unneeded risk. You've going to win the second war with your Sylvan, so why risk a loss in the third one by being too aggressive? Once you have that Sylvan, your goal is to protect it while getting out Abundance. More generally, the goal is to use your library manipulation to insure you have the right mix of lands and spells, and that you have the right spells. At this point the right spells are generally counters to help back up the Abundance. You'll also need the Abundance itself or an Enlightened Tutor to go get it. The threat of that Abundance keeps your opponent on the defensive, because if he ever gives you an opening you'll win the game right there. It normally doesn't take more than a few turns for the combination to overcome anything on the board. However, the opponent can still use that short window to his advantage: If you used your resources to get these one or both of these two enchantments into play, you may well be very vulnerable right now, and a major attack could work. If it doesn't, or doesn't work fast enough, you just lose.

More generally, your goal once you have the ability to drop the Abundance is to maneuver your opponent into a fight over something else that will let you get the Abundance. If you have lesser threats like Trade Routes you can cast them. Use counters whenever you think they will counter back, because you'll need to tap four mana in order to cast Abundance. You can use similar tactics with Sylvan Library or Aura of Silence, but it's not as effective. Tap your white mana so you can't use Swords to Plowshares, and maybe they will attack. You can even try exposing the second Gaea's Blessing if you're careful. In general, I think having Abundance in your hand is undervalued. Many players will choose to shuffle their decks and avoid drawing it if they're not ready, but to me that just forces them to lose a card to find it later. That brings up another question. How important is it if one player loses all his Gaea's Blessings?

Generally, not as important as it looks. That player can no longer use Oath of Druids well, and cannot reclaim cards, but in the short term it means nothing. The opponent now has a good reason to cast Oath of Druids if he can, but that can end up being another waste of a card if manlands go in for the kill. Without Blessing you're going to lose eventually (unless you counter his Blessing as well), but you have plenty of time to win. If you get Sylvan Library and Abundance you'll still win easily, for example, and so will a Morphling without an answer. One card to watch is the Trade Routes, since that will win the game quicker than missing the Blessings will lose it. In fact, I'd trade the Blessings for a Sylvan Library most of the time. You're always annoyed when your opponent casts a Blessing, since they're putting good stuff back into their decks, but you can't afford to try and counter it.

The first war is the war over getting enough lands to function. In many control matchups drawing more lands than your opponent is automatically an advantage. Here, it's normally an advantage because neither player generally has enough of them. But if your opponent has significantly more lands than you it makes sense to start casting threats out of your hand if you have them, and often there will be no good answer. The basic questions here are the early game ones, though. When do you mulligan if you know you're in the mirror? Some of that depends on how aggressive you think your opponent will be. If you think your opponent is better with the deck, the last thing you should do is be afraid to move. Instead of letting small decisions accumulate, you should press any advantage you can find and try to win. But most players will be very conservative.

The better ones will hold back for a mistake or manipulate their opponents into one, the weaker ones won't know what to do. That means you can keep any hand that isn't a total disaster. Drawing Null Rod or Ivory Mask, the only really useless cards here, is no big deal, and neither is drawing too many Tutors. No one can afford to counter Brainstorm, so eventually you'll be able to rid yourself of any cards you don't want with one of the many shuffling effects in the deck. However, they can leave you vulnerable early on. The key is not to reveal this to your opponent. Similarly, drawing early Wastelands gives you the option of using them on normal duallands to try and cripple your opponent or force through a Sylvan Library or Trade Routes. I wouldn't do this for Trade Routes unless you need to discard extra lands (unlikely this early), but it's definitely worth it for a Sylvan. Also, if you use Wasteland on a Faerie Conclave, and that was your opponent's first land, it's generally worth it to press that advantage if you have a second. It's more questionable to Waste two duallands, but if you have the Sylvan (or Tutor) with Force of Will backup it's worthwhile. The first few turns of the game are very scary.

Having gone backwards from the end of the game makes it possible to start at the beginning like this again. Every point of damage you can do will probably matter later on for a Sylvan Library (and you'll probably win the game if it doesn't), but it isn't worth risking a Sylvan. Most decks have zero Disrupts or one, so you can probably ignore that possibility, but don't expose your lands to Swords to Plowshares and don't put yourself in a position of having to counter one either. That can be even worse. Both players have the option to try and assemble above average hands and go for a quick win. That 'win' would be Sylvan Library, cast with Force of Will backup or under a potential Counterspell, or both. That also includes a quick Aura of Silence when both players or neither have a Sylvan early. Once the Sylvan gets onto the table things get more dangerous, since both players have access to more threats.

The waiting game begins, as both players have enough mana to cast threats but not without leaving themselves vulnerable. Generally no one does anything, knowing the traditional rule that 'whoever casts the first spell loses' in these situations. But without an effect that can win the game without the other player getting a turn to kill it or match it, and even those being long term, that rule is much less solid. There's only one Morphling to watch out for, and there's a good answer for it (Oath). There's no Balance, no Amnesia, no Stroke of Genius. There are no end step threats besides Enlightened Tutor. This makes it worthwhile to use threats to draw out counters if you feel you're at a disadvantage (or less of an advantage) in the waiting game. There's the danger that you will enable your opponent's removal if you cast creatures, but otherwise your creatures are just as crippled. Both creatures and answers to them tend to be hidden whenever possible by Brainstorm. This makes it a very profitable to plan to simply overwhelm the opponent with threats.

This plan is for when you think the game is slipping away normally, or you have a bad hand for fighting a normal war. You should also keep an eye on the effect this strategy will have on the clock. Give them a chance to hide those creatures, Oaths and maybe Swords. Don't worry, they'll take it. When you get the chance, don't do it. In fact, do the opposite. Then just start casting creatures. Jump straight to the third and fourth wars. This won't work if the rest of your hand is useless, since they will have more action cards than you, but works wonders if they have a slight land advantage and you've hidden Tutors and the dead cards (Null Rod and Ivory Mask) as much as possible. They may well call you a bad player but they have to either counter it (you win the fight) or let it through. If they let it through they have to start tapping their mana in order to do something before the threats outright win the game, and that will let you turn their land advantage into a disadvantage. Watch out when doing this, it doesn't always work and isn't called for that often, but once every few games someone passes up a chance to do it. Never take your eye off a chance to win the game with threats. Often Oath players and Forbiddian players have less counters than they look like they have.

Once one player gets an advantage, it generally snowballs. Eventually, Sylvan and Abundance combine and sweep the board in short order. Note, however, that this can often take a long time, both in turns and in time.

Naturally, things change after sideboarding. Before when I talked about Oath I basically snatched a sideboard for it out of thin air, full of the 'good stuff' you might want to Enlightened Tutor for in any situation. But between once again working with Scott Johns, who keeps reminding me how important sideboarding is and how precise it needs to be, and getting a chance to watch the deck operate more, I'm in a much better position to evaluate that. From watching those players, it became clear the optimum sideboard for Oath is far from clear, especially as it applies to the mirror match, and in part two I'll try to deal with those and other issues, especially the role of the clock in this match. Fifty minutes just isn't enough even for fast players, and you need to adjust your play to that.

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