Hey everyone! I'm kinda new to vintage, played legacy since 2013 and been playing vintage on MTGO since the VMA drafts made the P9 really cheap, so I guess my text will have some wrong ideas but I'd like some help to get to a new understanding of things here.
I got a concern about oath. Have you ever felt that griselbrand is no longer a good choice of creature for oath? I'm testing a 2 inferno titan 1 griselbrand build now with some conflicting results (been very good at challenges, but poor at leagues). Also, I've tested bryanpk's list on MTGO but got very poor results, probably because there's a lot more of complexity on it (specially for someone new to the format), and I really don't enjoy getting beaten out for 12 dollars each 5 games, so I decided to drop that and go to the more mainstream build of it.
I don't know how to list the deck here in a way that it stays organized, so I'll link the list I got kinda lucky last weekend with so that you have an idea what I've been working with: DECKLIST
One thing I noticed, is that post-board things usually go much slower for our opponents (hate in, business out usually), and oath end up becoming a really good tutor for our fatties with cage in play. I've been very lucky, on my probably 10 "caged oath" activations so far, I've always got to find what I needed (and could cast), the inferno titan. But that's a 33% chance of hitting griselbrand.
Other thing is that most of the times an inferno titan does the trick, and I'd even say that the % chance of winning with a inferno titan getting hit is higher than griselbrand. Maybe I'm taking too long and needing to get rid of the board when oath gets activated. I really don't have enough experience yet to say what's the matter here. But when I get griselbrand in hand that's pretty terrible. Except for the extra-long game or when you have 5 lands/moxen + lotus you just can't cast griselbrand, and it will always be a bad card to have in hand, as well as a bad card to discard to dack fayden (1 less target, as is inferno titan too). But inferno titan is ok to have in hand, because you can get to cast it a lot of times (most of the games, I'd say).
Maybe there's a better option (other creatures, or not doing this), but I guess I'll try dropping griselbrand for the 3rd inferno titan.
Other thing I've tried in the last challenge (which kinda worked out) was to drop the oaths against more controllish matchups. If we resolve a bomb, aka inferno titan or planeswalker, it's really hard to deal with, and sometimes oath does nothing with cage. Maybe it's better to make them have 4 dead cards (probably more, like nature's claim or whatever), and get to a more controlish "bomb-based" game. Maybe get more walkers and manarocks? Something in the sideboard? Have you ever dropped completely the oath plan for something else? Did that work out?
Other thing is, what do you think about punishing oath nowadays in vintage? It seems like a cool idea to get rid of aggro decks, planeswalkers, and to have some (very slow) inevitability, alongside it's card advantage engine with dack fayden and to kill excess of opponent's tokens or yours even when fighting against a oath deck to see who gets less creatures in play.
Sorry for the long and probably hard to understand text, but it's really hard to express myself when there are so many ideas combined with lack of knowledge about the format.