NYSE Open Deck Choice

Jewel Shops is the best deck in Vintage right now. That's a bad matchup for Oath, I was eliminated from both Eternal Weekends last year and my NYSE trial top 8 all by Jewel Shops. This sent me into an identity crisis to find a deck that's better against Jewel than Oath.

I played Doomsday and realized I can't get the necessary reps before NYSE. I tried various Time Vault Lurrus Combo decks and was running head-first into Null Rods and Ouphes meant for Jewel Shops. Vexing Bauble is showing up in all kinds of places, sometimes as a Saga tutor bullet, sometimes as a 3-4 of intentional part of a lock plan. All of that was terrible for the PO-style artifact-heavy combo decks that I love to play.

That all lead me back to Oath. I'm playing the basic Atraxa Oath core. Main deck Null Rod and Thoughtseizes to help in the terrible matchups (Jewel, Doomsday, Dark Ritual combos). Favoring 1 mana interaction in Steel Sabotage and Nature's Claim over maxing on free spells due to Vexing Bauble. Abrupt Decay over other easier-to-cast options to cover Bauble as well as Priest/Lavinia etc those slots are meant for.

Gaea's Blessing and 2nd Tabernacle are the cards I tried hard to find room for, but it's just not there if I want to play Thoughtseize. Season to taste if you're trying the deck.

I'm hoping for 1 or more of the following things to line up:

1. Jewel Shops is level 0. Decks that have good plans vs. Jewel (like BUG or other Ouphe/Rod prison decks) are level 1 to combat that. Oath is good against the level 1 decks that are good against level 0. I'm hanging out on level 2 and hoping I didn't overshoot the mark.

2. Skill differential. I believe I'm a stronger player than most of the field. I believe Oath is the deck I can play the best. If I play a better-positioned deck that I am worse at playing, I lose my skill differential and have to hope my deck choice can cover that gap. I don't believe any deck is so much better than the others that it will overcome the 8 months of steady experience I have with Oath.

3. Even if Jewel is 20% of the metagame, that's still 1 in 5 players. In a 7 round Swiss tournament, that's 1.2 Jewel opponents on average. Obviously winning decks float to the top and it isn't fully random pairings throughout the rounds, but I'm likely to play against more not-Jewel decks than Jewel.

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/MvFOpMknJUKUnL6BMoQv6w