Thassa's Oracle / Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

[Swift2210]

Being the OP I guess I can elaborate, the player I mentioned who was using a Toothy deck plays budget decks. I have never seen him play a card that is worth more than $30 and so seeing him regularly pub stomp with his own budget Toothy deck was concerning. I don't actually think I have seen him lose with that deck and we all know its coming whenever he plays it. That entire deck is probably like $100-300 and he made it himself. The guy doesn't own any fetchlands. His toothy deck still kills us on average between turns 4 and 8 though and it defends itself with plenty of Aetherspouts / counterspells. The whole deck is things to power draw him and then counters / anti attack effects. Its brutal.

Flicker that guy a few times and you draw your whole library. Its really simple and fast and it doesn't take much $$$ to build.

Lol! That man has my respect. It's not easy to build and optimize a budget Toothy deck to take out a table consistently. This takes time and perseverence. Rule of Law effects would slow him down by quite a bit.

My thoughts on the topic: Thassa's Oracle. I've felt from day 1 it was banworthy. It's the cheapest, most efficient combo floating around with Consultation. And it's difficult to stop with some out of luck colors like green having almost no playable options besides stax pieces to prevent them from being cast together or Lifeforce to interact with it. There are very few cards which I think should be banned. Thassa's Oracle is one of them. It's too good.

[umtiger]

At least they finally figured out that printing Tainted Pact + Oracle was not a good idea for historic.

For a moment, those winning lists were looking like cEDH decklists. You had a do a double take.

[ISBPathfinder]

Yea, I honestly would say that Oracle can be just as toxic in this environment its just that most players are not looking to play at this level. Its also a really big all in sort of move so if someone does have relevant interaction that gets past your own counter options its mostly a GG situation for you going for it.

That said, I did sort of think about doing some sort of Tainted Pact / Inverter of Truth / Doomsday oracle deck. Building what I hate isn't really the solution though. The worst part of these cards is that as the meta gets better these cards actually probably get worse but they pray on decks that aren't heavy blue.

[pokken]

I've been thinking a bunch about thassas oracle lately and I think it might not actually be the issue. Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries were still quite dominant before and I think maybe Tainted Pact and Demonic Consultation are the issues.

If it takes two other cards or infinite draw to win, these effects all become very fair since infinite mana or cards can kill a variety of compact ways.

Are there any other single cards that wipe your library for so little?

Thought Lash is close I guess?

[ISBPathfinder]

I've been thinking a bunch about thassas oracle lately and I think it might not actually be the issue. Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries were still quite dominant before and I think maybe Tainted Pact and Demonic Consultation are the issues.

If it takes two other cards or infinite draw to win, these effects all become very fair since infinite mana or cards can kill a variety of compact ways.

Are there any other single cards that wipe your library for so little?

Thought Lash is close I guess?

I went through years of not ever having seen Tainted Pact and Demonic Consultation as cards in commander where I was terrorized by Thassa's but yea if you are looking at the strongest enablers you are correct.

If it were me I would hit Tainted Pact, Demonic Consultation, and Thassa's Oracle because I don't think the game is any better for having any of them in the format. It still leaves the lab man wincon and jace but it doubles the cost to play the wincon and takes it off of being an ETB.

[pokken]

If it were me I would hit Tainted Pact, Demonic Consultation, and Thassa's Oracle because I don't think the game is any better for having any of them in the format. It still leaves the lab man wincon and jace but it doubles the cost to play the wincon and takes it off of being an ETB.

I'd be ok with that personally, oracle is pretty annoying as the finisher in 2-card "commander draws deck" combos which there's a decent number of.

I think, in general, getting rid of pact and consultation would have the most amount of positive impact for the least number of bans but I have no objection to oracle going too.

[ISBPathfinder]

If it were me I would hit Tainted Pact, Demonic Consultation, and Thassa's Oracle because I don't think the game is any better for having any of them in the format. It still leaves the lab man wincon and jace but it doubles the cost to play the wincon and takes it off of being an ETB.

I'd be ok with that personally, oracle is pretty annoying as the finisher in 2-card "commander draws deck" combos which there's a decent number of.

I think, in general, getting rid of pact and consultation would have the most amount of positive impact for the least number of bans but I have no objection to oracle going too.

Yea cutting oracle doubles the cost of the wincon and opens it up to more disruption. Even if you kill the best self mill effects there are still a lot of cards out there that very efficiently do it its just that those are hand and feet better. But like, how hard is it to move from those two to doing a Doomsday stack? That is a big reason I think you won't be happy if you just cut those two. Doomsday might be slightly less efficient but all of this is just too damn efficient and hard to interact with.

[pokken]

Yea cutting oracle doubles the cost of the wincon and opens it up to more disruption. Even if you kill the best self mill effects there are still a lot of cards out there that very efficiently do it its just that those are hand and feet better. But like, how hard is it to move from those two to doing a Doomsday stack? That is a big reason I think you won't be happy if you just cut those two. Doomsday might be slightly less efficient but all of this is just too damn efficient and hard to interact with.

I am always thrilled to see someone doomsday. Good luck surviving until ya next turn :D it's so much more awkward to try to crack a doomsday pile.

The real next step is Hermit Druid but again it suffers from not having haste and requiring a lot of derping.

Once you get past pact and consult everything gets so awkward expensive and easier to interact with.

By the time you're at Jace plus Thought Lash i feel like you're not meaningfully more powerful than three card persist combos or traditional stuff like top monolith rings.

[ISBPathfinder]

Some of my fear is that for some reason a lot of people don't see an issue with Thassa's Oracle as a wincon. I don't know why that is but I have seen a hell of a lot of her since printing without ever building a cEDH deck myself. From a optimized to the teeth point I don't know what the next best lab man / oracle wincon would be I just don't want to keep experiencing it.

I have only seen one or two decks ever Doomsday but I can tell you, I have lost ever time I saw them do it because they were playing that into casual commander decks. I don't know what a next optimized wincon to self mill would be for sure I am just tired of it.

[pokken]

Some of my fear is that for some reason a lot of people don't see an issue with Thassa's Oracle as a wincon. I don't know why that is but I have seen a hell of a lot of her since printing without ever building a cEDH deck myself. From a optimized to the teeth point I don't know what the next best lab man / oracle wincon would be I just don't want to keep experiencing it.

I have only seen one or two decks ever Doomsday but I can tell you, I have lost ever time I saw them do it because they were playing that into casual commander decks. I don't know what a next optimized wincon to self mill would be for sure I am just tired of it.

I think Oracle going because it's so hard to interact with is probably the strongest argument. Jace they lose if you remove it while the ability is on the stack, so pretty reasonably vulnerable at least.

Honestly I think one of the biggest "shifts" that needs to happen in commander is people recognizing what interaction surface is and understanding that if your deck can only lose to counterspells, it's a problem in casual period.