Loot has quickly become an iconic character in the MTG world. Whether you love him or hate him, the amusing Beast Noble has already been featured in three different sets in the last year.
The most recent iteration, Loot, the Pathfinder, has a handful of potent abilities that pull you ahead. The creature has seen some Standard play up to this point alongside Agatha’s Soul Cauldron as way to run away with the game. However, did you know that Loot, the Pathfinder is also making some noise in Vintage?
Vintage may be Magic the Gathering’s most powerful format, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for innovation with some new designs. Loot making an appearance in Vintage was not on our bingo card, but here we are!
Loot and Oath of Druids
- Mana Value: 2GUR
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats: 2/4
- Card Type: Legendary Creature – Beast Noble
- MTG Sets: Aetherdrift
- Card Text: Double Strike, Vigilance, Haste.
Exhaust – G, Tap: Add three mana of any one color. (Activate each exhaust ability only once.)
Exhaust – U, Tap: Draw three cards.
Exhaust – R, Tap: Loot deals 3 damage to any target.
At its core, this deck is quite controlling but features a two-card combination that allows you to pull ahead in short order. The two cards in question are Loot, the Pathfinder and Oath of Druids.
Oath of Druids is a strange two-mana enchantment with a ton of text, but its effect is rather simple. At the beginning of your upkeep, if your opponent controls more creatures than you, you reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a creature. That creature goes into play, and the other cards go into your graveyard.
Notably, this effect is symmetrical, so if you happen to control more creatures than your opponent on their upkeep, they get to dig for a creature to put into play. Luckily, this deck doesn’t play many creatures at all. In fact, the only threats in this deck are the two copies of Loot.
As such, when Oath triggers, you’re guaranteed to hit one of your copies of Loot. Most Oath decklists run an enormous monster such as Atraxa, Grand Unifier as their top-end card of choice. Loot may not be quite as game-breaking as Atraxa, but it still threatens to end the game in short order. Its “Ancestral Recall” exhaust ability is particularly strong, and it dodges typical removal like Fatal Push.
Part of what makes Loot appealing as your finisher of choice is that in games where you aren’t using Oath of Druids, Loot is a perfectly reasonable card to cast. Between old-school Moxen, Black Lotus, and Wrenn and Six picking up lands, casting Loot isn’t as hard as it seems.
Loot then attacks for a bunch of damage, draws cards, and removes problematic threats like Orcish Bowmasters and Lurrus of the Dream-Den. What more could you want?
Temur Control
- Mana Value: 1GU
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats: 4 Loyalty
- Card Type: Legendary Planeswalker- Oko
- MTG Sets: Throne of Eldraine, Breaking News
- Card Text: +2: Create a Food token. +1: Target artifact or creature loses all abilities and becomes a 3/3 green Elk creature with base power and toughness 3/3. -5: Exchange control of target artifact or creature you control and target creature an opponent controls with power 3 or less.
The rest of the deck is structured around control cards. A solid mix of disruption, card advantage, and Planeswalkers makes for a solid gameplan.
For disruption, Force of Will and Force of Negation keep your opponent off balance. Making sure dominant engines like The One Ring stay off the board is essential.
On the card advantage front, besides Loot and Ancestral Recall, Stock Up is another sweet addition from Aetherdrift. Digging five cards deep gives you a lot of agency, and helps you find specific cards like Oath of Druids in matchups where you want them. Conveniently, Stock Up also doesn’t trigger Orcish Bowmasters, which remains popular in the Lurrus control shells.
That brings us to the Planeswalker package. These cards provide alternate paths to victory that don’t involve Oath or Loot. We briefly mentioned Wrenn and Six as a nice mana engine. However, with Strip Mine and Wasteland in the mix, Wrenn and Six can also lock your opponent out of the game if they’re not careful. This combo is especially strong versus Mishra’s Workshop decks.
Oko, Thief of Crowns is another excellent Planeswalker that can come down early and mess with your opponent’s permanents. Of course, when you’re ahead, Oko can also start putting Elks on the offensive so you can close the game.
Dack Fayden, Narset, Parter of Veils, and Minsc and Boo, Timeless Heroes round out the Planeswalker section as one-ofs. There are plenty of artifacts in Vintage for Dack to steal, Narset is generically powerful and shuts down opposing card draw spells, and Minsc and Boo is a strong finisher.
Innovation for the Win
- Mana Value: 1B
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 1/1
- Card Type: Creature- Orc Archer
- MTG Sets: Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Card Text: Flash. When Orcish Bowmasters enters the battlefield and whenever an opponent draw a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, Orcish Bowmasters deals 1 damage to any target. Then amass Orcs 1.
Ultimately, it’s really interesting to see such a unique take on an Oath of Druids shell make some noise in Vintage. This deck is much less all-in on Oath, as you can tell by the fact that there are only two copies in the maindeck.
Nonetheless, Oath still gives you a route to victory against creature decks. Loot excels against Dimir Lurrus control, both as a way to deal with Lurrus or Orcish Bowmasters and also as a large threat. You just need to contain Psychic Frog, which Oko and Pyroblast do quite nicely.
The pilot of this decklist faced Dimir Lurrus control three out of the five rounds during their undefeated Magic Online League run, showcasing strength in the matchup. This deck’s abundance of Counterspells bodes well versus archetypes like Doomsday as well, and Null Rod out of the sideboard then makes it easier to handle artifact decks.
This version of Oath of Druids is certainly unorthodox, but it has game against a lot of the top archetypes. It’s Loot’s world, and we’re all just living in it.
