Breaking Oath of Ajani
Oath of Ajani is a strategy-specific mana accelerator that might just change everything.
Decks that want to play their Planeswalkers early will want to play Oath of Ajani early.
Decks that have a lot of creatures might want to cash in on Oath of Ajani by playing it late(r).
Some decks have both lots of Planeswalker and lots of creatures!
The most obvious use case is to play your Oath on turn two… Then follow up immediately with a turn three Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Lots of decks fold to a Gideon when you play him on the usual schedule… But turn three? That is going to be a straight up game winner.
Cheating mana with Oath of Ajani
Oath of Ajani might be even crazier when paired with Oath of Nissa, plus Planeswalkers that can produce mana. Here’s an example:
- Open on Oath of Nissa for G.
- Turn two: Oath of Ajani; between these two Gatewatch Oaths, it is now really easy to cast Planeswalkers
- Turn three play Chandra, Torch of Defiance. You can [+1] Chandra to add RR to your mana pool… And then immediately play Nissa, Voice of Zendikar!
How would this work?
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar [normally] costs 1GG to play. But because of Oath of Ajani, Nissa costs effectively GG. Oath of Nissa lets you spend mana of any color to cast Planeswalkers. Ergo Chandra’s RR can pretend to be GG. So… “GG” (opponent)!
This is a reasonably tame use case. What if you went G, GW, 2BU instead? Discounts and rainbows are both at your command between Oath of Nissa and Oath of Ajani.
In any case, this is a heck of a turn three! You got to tick up the loyalty on Chandra and probably will have a Plant token to block. Next turn, with a land drop, you will have access to at least four mana (six with Chandra) meaning you can easily deploy two four mana Planeswalkers; maybe an even bigger payday!
Buffing Creatures with Oath of Ajani
The Oath isn’t quite a Crusade. Creatures have to be in play when you play the Oath to get the buff; but it is worth noting that the card is reasonably cheap, and putting a bunch of +1/+1 counters on an undetermined number of creatures is definitely something you might want to do.
We can see playing Oath of Ajani in a regular creature deck… But also in Planeswalker decks that produce lots of token creatures. It can be good friends with 0/1 Plant tokens, 2/2 Knights, Liliana’s Zombies, etc.
But wait! There’s more!
If you haven’t subscribed to the Top Level Podcast Instagram yet, what are you waiting for? Can you afford to miss the impending Flores Swimsuit Calendar?
In the meantime, at least check out our podcast “trailers” … This week’s mostly talked about another Aether Revolt card: Tezzeret, the Schemer.
Okay, give “Breaking Oath of Ajani” a listen now 🙂
