Magic Memories: Oath of Druids

[Oversoul]

Although some of the core features, such as the adoption of Forbidden Orchard as an Oath enabler and the split between graveyard-based combo vs. planeswalker-based control, were already well-established by late 2000's, big changes were on the way. The early 2010's saw the introduction of stronger planeswalker cards. Of particular interest were Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Dack Fayden. More recently, other planeswalkers have taken over, but for several years it was mainly those two. Jace, the Mind Sculptor was of particular importance here. It offered disruption, card selection, and built up to an inevitable win condition if not answered. For most decks, the most practical way to deal with Jace was to attack it with multiple creatures. But having multiple creatures on the table against an Oath player could be extremely dangerous.

Another important development in the early 2010's was the advent of three new creatures that became some of the most powerful options for Oath payloads...

 

[Ferret]

The sad part about all of these insane cards is how well they'd work with Tibalt's Trickery these days...

 

[Oversoul]

The sad part about all of these insane cards is how well they'd work with Tibalt's Trickery these days...

You're not wrong. I haven't seen anyone try Tibalt's Trickery with Griselbrand, but Legacy players have used it to cast Emrakul. Since they're casting Emrakul instead of just cheating it onto the battlefield, they get the cast trigger too. So that's pretty brutal.

 

[Oversoul]

Of the three big Oath payloads that emerged in the early 2010's, Emrakul was the first one on the scene. I just mentioned that cast trigger, which is a pretty big deal. And of course, cheating Emrakul out with Oath of Druids means you don't get the cast trigger. This card is much deadlier if you are able to cast it somehow. Emrakul doesn't have a haste, but taking an extra turn effectively simulates that. You also get to untap all of your stuff and take another draw step. Upkeep effects and land drops are unlikely to matter too much at that point, but they are there as well. But since the creature costs a whopping 15 mana, we're forgoing all that and passing the turn, which does come with some risk. Oath players might go for this creature anyway, as it does have certain perquisites...

• At 15 power, almost no opponent is ever going to survive being hit twice by this thing.
• Protection from colored spells means that most creature removal tools are rendered ineffective.
• It flies over most blockers in the Vintage format.
• There's a built-in effect similar to Gaea's Blessing, but generally better. If opponents do manage to kill your creature, it shuffles your graveyard back into your library and you can Oath it back up again.
• Annihilator 6 is such a big haymaker that just attacking with Emrakul means you've usually won the game against most opponents. Sure your opponent might have a flying blocker, but so what?

Those factors all make for a potent package, and Emrakul still crops up in Oath lists, over a decade after it was first printed. But it's not right for every Oath deck. In particular, Emrakul doesn't really do anything on the turn you first Oath it up, so you're passing the turn to an opponent who knows exactly what you're about to try and who might have some answer to your threat. Also, using Emrakul as a kill condition is kind of an isolated thing, independent of notable synergies in an Oath deck. That's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you don't need to rely on other cards to help secure the win once you have Emrakul out and ready to attack. On the other hand, the ceiling on what Emrakul is capable of is pretty static. For that reason, older payloads like Tidespout Tyrant or Auriok Salvagers had some considerable advantages over Emrakul if they could be paired with their appropriate combo cards. Emrakul might be better in a vacuum, though.

Another drawback was and is that Emrakul is almost impossible to hard-cast in an Oath deck. Tidespout Tyrant was difficult to hard-cast and doing so wasn't commonplace, but it could be done, particularly with a Black Lotus. But that's eight mana, not fifteen.

 

[Oversoul]

Blightsteel Colossus isn't quite as popular as an Oath payload as Emrakul is, but comes with one major advantage: you can Tinker it in. For this reason, it's often seen alongside Emrakul as a kind of backup. Even if you never get Oath of Druids + Forbidden Orchard online, you can Tinker away a Mana Crypt or whatever and acquire a creature that can one-shot your opponent. Blightsteel Colossus doesn't deal with blockers or other defensive tools as well as Emrakul does, although Infect does give it some staying power over multiple turns. But if unblocked, it does kill the opponent a turn faster than Emrakul.

Oath decks that run Blighsteel Colossus tend to be the same ones that run Dragon Breath, and the potential for an immediate one-shot kill plays into that.

 

[Oversoul]

Griselbrand probably warrants its own Magic Memories thread, and I know that I spent some time in the Yawgmoth's Bargain thread reminiscing about Griselbrand. There's a lot of overlap in functionality between the two cards, but Griselbrand is a creature, so it's easier to cheat onto the battlefield without hard-casting it. Griselbrand has become the dominant creature option for combo decks at the top of their mana curve (or for them to cheat out). So of course, as a combo enthusiast, I've taken notice. After a hiatus on spending any money on Magic while pursuing my college degree, Griselbrand was one of the first singles I purchased. Completed a playset of the card back then, although if I did actually use all four in a deck I can no longer remember that. I played around with several different combo decks using this card, from Reanimator to Sneak & Show to Tin Fins to Dragon to EurekaTell. And of course, Oath.

In the first post of this thread, I explained that Oath of Druids was a card I had a lot of memories playing against, and not so much in the way of Oath memories with my own decks. I noted that I did build two Oath decks, and that both were short-lived. One of those was my Cognivore Oath deck. The other was, of course, a Griselbrand deck. We'll come to my experiences with the cards in a bit, but I bring this up now to get out of the way a rather prominent bit of bias here. Griselbrand was the card that renewed my interest in Oath of Druids and I'm well aware that I'm biased when I declare that Griselbrand is the most potent overall Oath payload ever and has held that title pretty much since the card was first printed back in 2012. So yeah, I'm biased. I'm also right about this! Griselbrand puts up results. Not every Vintage Oath deck has been a Griselbrand deck, but nothing else comes close, and I contend that it's easy to see why. Oath payloads other than Griselbrand tend to require either passing the turn (dangerous) or some particular configuration of cards in zones that might not always work (certain combo pieces hitting the graveyard from the Oath trigger or being in one's hand). All that's needed for Griselbrand to secure victory is enough life to activate it and a bit of luck. If that last part sounds like a catch, it really isn't. Like I said, Griselbrand puts up results. For instance, here's this old thread.

 

[Oversoul]

It occurs to me that the 2014 Vintage Championship decklist from the link in that thread Spiderman posted could be kind of instructive. It's a particularly control-heavy version of the archetype, even going so far as to run Mana Drain. Now, it could still be a pretty fast deck. This was Vintage, after all. You could swing in with Griselbrand, cast Time Walk, and do it again for 14 damage, putting the opponent in lethal range from the next attack. But mostly, this list uses Griselbrand and Jace, the Mind Sculptor for card advantage and kill conditions, with the rest of the deck supporting them and deploying powerful disruption. Here's the list...

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Griselbrand
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Show and Tell
4 Preordain
1 Time Walk
1 Ponder
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Flusterstorm
4 Mental Misstep
2 Misdirection
3 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
4 Oath of Druids
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Island
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest

Sideboard:
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Nature's Claim
3 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Pithing Needle

Although this is clearly a Griselbrand Oath deck, it's dramatically different from the Griselbrand Oath deck I built. Lists like this one were extremely control-heavy, at least as far as Griselbrand decks went. I wanted to build a combo deck. And for a while, I entertained the idea of switching my focus from Legacy to Vintage, so I planned to construct competitive Vintage decklists. My first foray into this was Burning Tendrils, a deck I'd been interested in for a few years. I had hoped that perhaps I'd posted a Burning Tendrils list here at the CPA, but my searches aren't turning anything up. If I do find a record of my Burning Tendrils deck, I'll post it in this thread. But I recall that the original deck I put together was directly copied from one of Stephen Menendian's lists, likely one of the ones in 2014. Any modifications I made would have been minor.

I can't remember the precise timing on when I built a Burning Tendrils deck, and most of Stephen Menendian's content that might jog my memory on the subject is behind a paywall. I did buy his Gush book, but at this time I am not motivated to fork over $10 for a series of old strategy articles on an obsolete combo deck. Tempting, but no. Seriously, I really did like this deck. Anyway, unless I happen to find some record I created of the deck I put together, I'll just go with the final 2015 version of Stephen Menendian's Burning Tendrils, which can be found online for free.

4 Defense Grid
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 Tinker
1 Necropotence
1 Mind's Desire
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Oath of Druids
2 Griselbrand
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
2 Mox Opal
2 Chrome Mox
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Mana Confluence
2 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine
4 Forbidden Orchard

Sideboard:
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Show and Tell
1 Balance
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Shattering Spree
1 Void Snare
1 Laboratory Maniac
2 Hurkyl’s Recall
3 Ancient Tomb
1 Nature's Claim
1 City of Solitude

This looks about like what I remember playing, although I have no recollection of using Laboratory Maniac in the sideboard.

 

[Oversoul]

In 2012, Burning Tendrils represented a striking fusion between tech that was old and had been gone from Vintage and tech that was brand-new. Early Vintage storm combo lists known as "Burning Desire" and "Death Storm" put Yawgmoth's Will in the sideboard and used Burning Wish or Death Wish (respectively) to fetch it. This bumped up the storm count and effectively skirted the restriction of Yawgmoth's Will. But Burning Wish was restricted and Death Wish was kind of a weak option and fell by the wayside. The unrestriction of Burning Wish opened this back up, but Lion's Eye Diamond remained restricted, so recreating the storm decks of 2003 was not possible.

Despite the lack of access to unrestricted LED, the idea of Burning Wish in a storm deck still held some promise. And it turned out that the most effective way to build a combo deck out of that was to throw in a separate package of Oath of Druids + Forbidden Orchard + Griselbrand.

Unlike the other Griselbrand decklist I've used as an example, this one does very little attacking with Griselbrand and is set up to win on the same turn that Griselbrand hits the battlefield. Burning Tendrils ran more mana rocks than its contemporaries, along with Dark Ritual. The fast mana and Draw7 spells made quick kills with Burning Wish into Yawgmoth's Will into replaying the graveyard a serious threat. Opponents who tried to race the deck with creatures risked enabling Oath of Druids into Griselbrand, and if this deck could draw 14 cards, it could probably win on the spot.

The Oath package here had some modest flexibility...

• Forbidden Orchard was an excellent mana source even without its Oath of Druids interaction. The token it made was generally inconsequential outside of the Oath synergy unless this deck was going for a Necropotence-based kill. The highly polychromatic array of spells in this deck made rainbow lands preferable, and I even ran Gemstone Mine, so Forbidden Orchard made sense as a land even if not going for an Oath-based kill.
• Griselbrand could be pitched to Chrome Mox if not being used as part of a kill. Apart from its default role as an Oath payload, it could be deployed with Burning Wish for Show and Tell or potentially flipped and cast of a Mind's Desire. With a full playset of Dark Ritual and a high count of mana rocks, this deck could even hardcast Griselbrand. It was rare to do take that last approach, but I've done it.
• Oath of Druids could act as a deterrent to slow down aggro-control decks and buy an extra turn to set up a kill with Yawgmoth's Bargain, Necropotence, Draw7 spells, or just plain old-fashioned natural spellslinging into a storm win. When not being used with Forbidden Orchard or to stall, it could be pitched to Chrome Mox. If Oath was triggered but a Griselbrand-based kill wasn't feasible, a backup plan was to use Oath to fill up the graveyard for a big Yawgmoth's Will. Siding out Griselbrand and siding in Laboratory Maniac would have been a niche option against certain decks.

I remember this deck being a blast to pilot, even though most of my experience was simply testing it against other Vintage decks using the Cockatrice software. The multi-pronged threats made the acceleration of Dark Ritual really stand out. Although my favorite Oath of Druids payload of all time remains Battlefield Scrounger for how silly and unique it is, Griselbrand has proven to be the most practical and competitive option, and reminds me a lot of some of my favorite cards (Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain).

Of the two Oath decks I actually built and played myself, this one was the more substantial and long-lived. In part, my fond memories of Burning Tendrils might be owed to how it was my first real Vintage deck. Prior to this, I'd build and played some Vintage decks on Apprentice, but for the first time, I built a Vintage tournament deck using real cards. I'd probably have kept it around for a long time, but time and the evolution of the format were not on this archetype's side. So although this deck was cool and super-fast and reasonably versatile, it was not that long-lived. Burning Tendrils was likely the strongest combo deck in Vintage from 2012 to 2015, one of the only combo decks that could potentially wade through the combo-hostile sea of unrestricted Mental Misstep and Lodestone Golem.

I see that I've already summarized the fall of Burning Tendrils in the Magic Memories thread for Tendrils of Agony. So I'll briefly recapitulate that here. In 2013, Young Pyromancer came out, introducing a more stable kill condition for decks that chained spells together. At first, it was seen as a complement to Tendrils of Agony rather than competition, but the two cards do have some nuanced gameplay differences, and Young Pyromancer isn't compatible with Oath of Druids anyway, so Burning Tendrils couldn't benefit from this card at all. The restriction of Lodestone Golem and the continued presence of the Mental Misstep metagame gave Young Pyromancer a boost. In 2014, Gush-based decks with Dack Fayden began taking over the high-velocity niche once occupied by Dark Ritual decks like Burning Tendrils. Then came Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time, which both dominated Vintage and, even once restricted, powered the infamous Delve/Dack engine. in 2015, Monastery Mentor gave these decks yet another boost. Most Tendrils decks were casualties of the inbred war between Gush Mentor decks, as traditional Ritual-based Tendrils decks were especially weak against the hate cards that Gush Mentor decks used in their own mirror matches.

The final nail in the coffin for Burning Tendrils was the printing of Dark Petition and the rise of the archetype known as Dark Petition Storm. Combo decks would continue to evolve, with DPS giving way to Paradoxical Outcome decks. But they'd leave the Oath package behind. Of course, even if Oath and Tendrils mostly parted ways, this wasn't the end for Oath decks in Vintage. Far from it...

 

[Oversoul]

The Burning Tendrils Oath deck fell by the wayside in 2015, and that's too bad. But Oath decks remained a major archetype in the Vintage metagame. Griselbrand was and is the most popular Oath payload ever since, with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Blightsteel Colossus both maintaining some presence in Oath decks for the same reasons they did when they first came out.

The latter half of the 2010's did see some diversification in Oath payloads, but some of the other changes to the format were more important. Remember those copies of Mana Drain in the 2014 Championship deck? Oath decks shifted away from being Mana Drain decks, boosting their tempo to remain competitive in an environment filled with faster Workshop decks and Gush Mentor decks. The trend toward Oath as a centerpiece in a planeswalker-based control deck continued. The late 2010's saw more powerful planeswalkers being printed, and Oath of Druids grew into its role. Forbidden Orchard was convenient in the highly polychromatic manabases of these planeswalker-based decks.

A creature that predated the big three Oath payloads took its own place in the spotlight.


Compared to the gamebreaking power of Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Blightsteel Colossus, this card looks a bit out-of-place. It just does a bunch of normal, fair stuff and is kind of a throwback to the days of Akroma. Unlike Akroma, Sphinx of the Steel Wind doesn't even have haste! Since Oath decks moved away from quick, cheesy kills an focused on taking over games with planeswalkers, that makes sense. Those abilities are useful, whether the Sphinx is blocking for you or blocking for your planeswalkers. And at 6 power alongside a 7-power Griselbrand, it's not like the clock here is truly slow and grindy. Oath decks aren't Stax decks. You don't play with your food. You emphasize disruption and responsiveness, but you follow it up with heavy-hitters and close the game out. And for those purposes, Sphinx of the Steel Wind turns out to be one of the best options, holding up better than prior "kitchen sink" fatties, such as Akroma. To this day, it remains one of the more popular Oath payloads. It can't be turned into a 3/3 elk, which is especially important these days.

 

[Oversoul]

There have been several other Oath payloads. I won't attempt to cover them all: some of the ones I have discovered appear to only show up in Vintage tournament results a couple of times, and that wouldn't capture all the other fringe options I never even found records of. So, I'll try to capture all the most prominent and successful Vintage Oath payloads I can. But ever since the fall of Burning Tendrils, Oath decks haven't really been in my wheelhouse, so this could be slightly misleading...


I wrote about the "Titan Oath" concept in the Magic Memories thread for Sun Titan, before I ever decided to start this thread. At the time, it made sense to place Sun Titan in the context of the whole M11 Titan cycle, and one of the most important roles Inferno Titan has played has been as the defining feature of Brian Kelly's Titan Oath deck. Generally, Inferno Titan is run alongside Griselbrand, although that's not always true. The idea here is to have an Oath payload that can close games out while still being cheap enough to hardcast in situations where the opponent keeps Oath offline. At six mana, Inferno Titan is expensive, but hardcasting is a serious option in some games. Inferno Titan's triggered ability makes it useful for picking off planeswalkers or evasive attackers that threaten your own planeswalkers. One trick that Titan Oath employed was double up on Inferno Titan triggers, such as by Oathing up a second Inferno Titan after the first one and then attacking with the first one, or by Oathing up one Inferno Titan and hardcasting the other. The distributed damage could clear blockers or bring down all opposing planeswalkers, and could sometimes just outright kill the opponent with direct damage.


Like I said, did go over some Oath of Druids history in the Sun Titan thread. While "Titan Oath" is based on Inferno Titan and I believe that Inferno Titan has put up more results as an Oath payload than Sun Titan has, I did note that Sun Titan was used with Oath first and will likely continue showing up after Inferno Titan falls out of favor among Oath players. This might have already happened, in fact. Sun Titan gives Oath a graveyard-based combo option akin to Auriok Salvagers or some Griselbrand lists. At first, this was done with Time Vault. Later combo options included Saheeli Rai, Dark Depths, and Underworld Breach. I went into more detail on this in the Sun Titan thread, so check that out if you're curious.


While not as popular as Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Gisela proved to be a potent secondary Oath payload alongside Griselbrand. Both of those damage-altering abilities are useful, especially when on the battlefield alongside Griselbrand and planeswalkers. This card seems to have fallen out of favor among Vintage Oath players, but for a couple years it was putting up some results.


Similar to Inferno Titan, the idea here is to have a creature that can be Oathed up quickly or hardcast a few turns later, depending on the other things going on in the game. Dragonlord Dromoka could punch through a hard control wall of countermagic and could let the Oath player sculpt a favorable hand and board state with impunity. This card was popularized by Brian Kelly, but fell into disuse as the competition evolved away from Dragonlord Dromoka's strengths. Notably, Dragonlord Dromoka could protect a Bomberman combo kill from spells, so it was sometimes used alongside Auriok Salvagers.


The prospect of Oathing up Laboratory Maniac, then Oathing again to empty the library is simple. And if it works, you literally win the game. But it's a bit precarious and this card has nothing else going for it in an Oath setup. It was primarily a sideboard card. It did see a little maindeck use, but I suspect that those decks were just weird. Until just now, it never occurred to me to wonder why Laboratory Maniac stop showing up in Oath sideboards, nor the timing of that trend. I remember it being effective, but I don't remember it falling out of favor, although it seems to have died out around 2016 to 2018.


I'm not as familiar with this one, but it seems to have become something of a successor to Dragonlord Dromoka. At 5UU, it would be a bit cumbersome to hardcast, and you don't get the combat advantages of lifelink. But the other abilities are strong. This things saw some play last year, but appears to have dropped off.


This is the most recent of the popular Oath payloads, and has taken on a role as the second most prominent Oath payload after Griselbrand. I remember that after this card was spoiled, Stephen Menendian and Kevin Cron on the "So Many Insane Plays" podcast debated the pros and cons of this in an Oath deck. With a mana cost of UUURRR, hardcasting Niv-Mizzet is difficult. But once this is on the battlefield, both triggered abilities are golden. Casting spells draws cards, which deals damage. Even if you've never seen this in action, you can probably imagine how broken it is, especially with all the hyperefficient instants and sorceries in Vintage. And that's before you pair it with Griselbrand.

 

[Oversoul]

There's a known trend in Vintage for most of the 2010's, in which Oath decks took up a small share of the metagame most of the time, but were usually more prolific in major tournaments. It became an expected factor in Vintage tournament analysis and discussion, as savvy players came to anticipate spikes in the representation of Oath in big tournaments. And despite minor changes here and there, Oath held up pretty consistently in this role. More recently, there have been two major changes.

1. The advent of new and superior planeswalkers in 2019.
2. The printing of Underworld Breach in 2020.

The first of those changes isn't really too much of a departure from what Oath decks were already doing. Dack Fayden remained a premier planeswalker for the archetype, but was joined by some new friends.


For the most part, these new options just made planeswalker-based control more effective, and the improvement to Oath as a gameplan was indirect. The notable exception would be the potential for Oko to turn an opponent's artifact into an elk, exposing the opponent to Oath of Druids even Forbidden Orchard has been kept off the battlefield.

Underworld Breach changed everything, and most Vintage Oath decks since February of 2020 have been Underworld Breach decks. The big card dump from library to graveyard that Oath provides has been perceived in different ways over the years, with some Oath decks built to exploit it (such as Bomberman) and other decks built to cancel it out (such as Gaea's Blessing variants). Underworld Breach takes this to an extreme, and has catapulted Sun Titan into a position as one of the best creatures to run in an Oath deck.


The card was banned in Legacy, but remains legal in Vintage, and has proven itself as a powerhouse. Not all Breach decks are Oath decks, but almost all Oath decks have evolved into Breach decks. Perhaps some new development will supersede this. It wouldn't be the first time: Oath decks have been a fixture in Vintage since 2004 and the only really consistent features have been Forbidden Orchard and countermagic. Nothing is sacred, and the Philosophy of Fire has shown tendency for new cards to shake everything up, sometimes even rendering slightly-less-new cards obsolete. But the combination of Oath of Druids and Underworld Breach displays a potency that stands out even by today's standards, and if I had to guess, I'd say that it's sticking around for a long time.

Oath of Druids in EDH
Well, that about covers it. While far from exhaustive, I've covered more history of Vintage Oath decks than I'd have expected to see at the CPA. The card is fascinating, but time has had an awkward effect: the old context in which I saw Oath of Druids as a casual player and in which tournament players used it in mainstream formats might as well be ancient history. The card left the now-dead format of Extended a long time ago and has never been legal in Legacy or Modern. Oath became famous in the Extended format, but almost all of its documented history has been as a Vintage card. Longtime Magic fans who remember the card would remember it for stuff like Morphling and Spike Weaver loops, but to be entirely fair, that stuff is basically prehistory, and the card has spent almost its whole lifetime as a Vintage-exclusive.

I'd be remiss if I didn't at least touch on Magic's most popular format. Oath of Druids has always been legal in EDH, and even got a reprint in the Commander 2016 product, appearing in the "Stalwart Unity" precon. This deck even has Forbidden Orchard!

Commander:
1 Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis

1 Veteran Explorer
1 Humble Defector
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Chasm Skulker
1 Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer
1 Selvala, Explorer Returned
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Akroan Horse
1 Windborn Muse
1 Horizon Chimera
1 Zedruu the Greathearted
1 Psychosis Crawler
1 Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
1 Realm Seekers
1 Rubblehulk
1 Progenitor Mimic
1 Blazing Archon
1 Orzhov Advokist
1 Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist
1 Selfless Squire
1 Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa
1 Kraum, Ludevic's Opus
1 Minds Aglow
1 Collective Voyage
1 Cultivate
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Tempt with Discovery
1 Wave of Reckoning
1 Reverse the Sands
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Migratory Route
1 Seeds of Renewal
1 Treacherous Terrain
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Swan Song
1 Arcane Denial
1 Oblation
1 Beast Within
1 Reins of Power
1 Benefactor's Draught
1 Entrapment Maneuver
1 Sylvan Reclamation
1 Sol Ring
1 Empyrial Plate
1 Howling Mine
1 Commander's Sphere
1 Temple Bell
1 Assault Suit
1 Venser's Journal
1 Keening Stone
1 Prismatic Geoscope
1 Oath of Druids
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Propaganda
1 Rites of Flourishing
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Lurking Predators
1 Hoofprints of the Stag
1 Evolutionary Escalation
1 Azorius Chancery
1 Command Tower
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Forbidden Orchard
1 Frontier Bivouac
1 Gruul Turf
1 Homeward Path
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Krosan Verge
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Mystic Monastery
1 Opal Palace
1 Rupture Spire
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Transguild Promenade
5 Plains
5 Island
5 Mountain
5 Forest
1 Ash Barrens

It's not really an Oath deck, but it does offer players the tools they might want to build one. The actual use of Oath here is a bit limited and, at the wrong table, dangerous. So I think it was probably a bit forced. I mean, it kind of works? I don't know. If I'm being really cynical, WotC wanted to run Forbidden Orchard in this deck because it would add financial "value" by reprinting a moderately expensive card, and made sense in the context of what this deck does. Oath of Druids would have been thrown in because Forbidden Orchard was already going in the deck anyway. I mean, I'm glad they did it, but it is a bit awkward.

Oath of Druids has never been particularly popular in EDH. The precon might have helped, but EDHrec shows the card as appearing in 1,051 decklists in the past two years. Based on the presence of some real nonbos on the card's page, I'd guess that between 20% and 30% of the Oath-containing decks on EDHrec are actually just modified versions of "Stalwart Unity."

I find Oath a bit underutilized in EDH, but I've been no help myself: I've never used the card in my own EDH decks. I have plans to remedy that, but no decklist at this time. Some day, though...