Fall Brawl aftermath and second Mythic Store live tournament (part 1)

After the Fall Brawl, I decided to rethink my choice of creatures to use with Oath of Druids. Akroma and P. Nishoba were great, but only if they stayed on the board and – most importantly – in the game. The problem was that against control, those creatures were often exiled with Swords to Plowshares. I did have other win conditions left after that (namely, Sacred Mesa and Jester's Cap), but it would make the game much harder to finish in time versus control.

I decided to take a look at creatures that I could sacrifice at any moment to prevent them from being exiled. Without much testing, I entered the 2021 November Monthly with a list with 2 Chimera creatures and a Shard Phoenix. The idea with the chimeras was to be able to sacrifice one onto the other every upkeep to create a massive Serra Angel-like artifact creature that would emulate Akroma without being "exilable" with StoP. Shard Phoenix was there to clear the board if it would get too busy with creatures.

I kept thinking about my options though, and realized that a Triskelion would probably make a better choice than the Chimera plan. However, as the November Monthly had already started, I was stuck with the chimeras for the whole tournament.

Around the same time, another live tournament was held at the Mythic Store in Quebec City, and I decided that I would play a lone Triskelion.

This is the list I brought:

Raphaël A. Caron
November 6th, 2021
*Oath Parfait*

- Tax/Rack Engine -
4 Land Tax
3 Scroll Rack
1 Sylvan Library
1 Zuran Orb

- Parfait Redundancy -
4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Argivian Find
2 Sterling Grove
1 Replenish

- Oath Package -
2 Oath of Druids
1 Triskelion
1 Nature's Revolt
2 Gaea's Blessing

- Alternate Kill -
1 Sacred Mesa
1 Jester's Cap

- Removal and Silver Bullets -
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Humility
2 Aura of Silence
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Ivory Tower
1 Back to Basics
1 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Equipoise
1 Propaganda

- Mana Base -
4 Mox Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
11 Plains
1 Forest
4 Undiscovered Paradise
1 Archaeological Dig

- Sideboard -
1 Engineered Plague
1 Phantom Nishoba
3 Orim's Chant
1 Ivory Mask
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ray of Revelation
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Karmic Justice
3 Defense Grid
1 Replenish

The main changes were:

+1 Triskelion: The robot's ability to ping itself made it an unSwordable creature, while being big enough to stand in the way of most creatures, and it had the ability to shoot small ones too. At 6 manas, you can even possibly hardcast it, and as it is an artifact creature, Enlightened Tutor and Argivian Find have synergy with it. It was really good.

+1 Nature's Revolt: Looking for a better alternative to Greener Pastures to trigger Oath against creatureless decks, I came across that card and thought it could be very good, as it would also protect me versus mass removal like Pernicious Deed and Nevynirral's Disk. The only problem was that it could backfire if my opponent's lands kill me the following turn. If only there was a card to prevent that...

+1 Gaea's Blessing: It often felt risky to have a single Blessing in the deck. Having two feels much safer and allows Gaea's Blessing to be cast if drawn.

-2 Swords to Plowshares: Going even farther in my idea to have a maindeck built to beat control, I decided to cut anti-aggro cards to bring in cards that would be good vs control as well. So the 2 Swords were sent to the sideboard.

-1 Armageddon/+1 Back to Basics: While Armageddon could be a gamebreaking at times, it really needed the proper set-up to be effective. Back to Basics, while sometimes dead, is way easier to play and can be phenomenal in Premodern, as mana bases are not easy to build for most multicolored decks.

+1 Equipoise: A card I wanted to try versus permission control. The logic is that you will have less lands than your opponent, making them phase out their untapped lands during upkeep (they should have a few nonbasics kept in check with Back to Basics). In practice, it proved to be annoying, but not as great as I thought it would be.

+1 Propaganda: This card should be played more often. It's good vs aggro and the current control decks are affected by it as well (manlands, Decree of Justice tokens). It turns out to be the card that prevents the opponent to attack with lands animated by Nature's Revolt. I first saw it in Jose Carlos De Lucas' winning decklist.

-1 Serra's Sanctum/-1 Riftstone Portal/+1 Undiscovered Paradise: With Back to Basics being added, the Sanctum had to go, and Riftstone Portal proved to be unreliable, being sent back to the Library too often with Gaea's Blessing's trigger.

In my sideboard, I replaced Multani with the super-effective Nishoba and had to make some room for the Swords. Notably, Ray of Revelation was added after I saw Pablo Marcos run it in his winning decklist.