This deck was originally christened "Oath of Whatever" after innumerable changes to the deck's creature base. Conceived months in advance of PT Rome '98, it was ditched after Urza's Saga entered the format. It was later resurrected for the 1999 PTNY qualifier season.

Version 3.0 - March 1999

This version of Oath of Whatever improved the really slow speed of the original version. Instead of the Sylvans and Thawing Glaciers, we added Scroll Rack and Flood Plains, an entirely different combo. The addition of Archangel made it possible to win in under 45 turns. Disrupt helped us survive the early game in an environment overrun with discard and search spells.

The addition of Arcane Lab standard gave us the ability to play the deck in two ways: A standard Oath deck, and as Counter-Mishra versus the endless supply of combo decks.

Enlightened Tutor was added later to give us a speed butor was added later to give us a speed boost in finding our critical hoser cards: Oath versus decks like mono red, and Lab versus decks like High Tide and Memory Jar.

In matchups versus non-creature decks like Pox, the sideboard gave us the ability to mutate the deck into Counter-hoser, with Karma being the card of choice versus Pox, since we can tutor for it easily and black has difficulty removing it. In matchups where we sideboard out the Oaths, they were replaced with four countermagic, usually Mana Leak.

Version 2.0 - October 1998

I created an early version of this deck for, of all things, multiplayer! Tired of being left out of the group games at my local shop, I figured an Oath of Druids deck would be nice and nasty. Left alone, this deck could use Thawing Glaciers every turn and Sylvan, slowly building up a dangerously large Triskelion like a Rocket Launcher.

4 Oath of Druids
4 Impulse
4 Force of Will
4 Arcane Denial
4 Brainstorm
3 Forbid
3 Gaea's Blessing
3 Sylvan Library
2 Spike Feeder
2 Counterspell
1 Triskelion
4 Tropical Island
4 Thawing Glacier
4 Wasteland
3 Forest
11 Island

For some reason, Manuel and I modified it for extended. It couldn't beat red r extended. It couldn't beat red very easily, but it definitely took a chunk out of Necro and anything resembling a slower creature deck (like Living Death).

The purpose of this deck is basically just to abuse Sylvan Library as much as possible and put +1/+1 counters on your Triskelion. The countermagic is just to keep you alive.

Not the most high tech deck I've ever played, but easily one of the most fun.

Cathy Nicoloff