Oath of the Gatewatch 1: Unofficial Thread

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ Events
1

As with Oath of the Gatewatch 2, I didn’t see an official summary thread for this event, so I thought I’d start one. Basic information is as follows:

Rewards - Gold Tier
5 - 400 manarune.png
10 - Basic Booster
15 - 5 manacrystal.png
20 - 700 manarune.png
25 - Kaladesh Booster Pack
30 - 15 manacrystal.png
35 - 1000 manarune.png
45 - 25 manacrystal.png
55 - Kaladesh Booster Pack

1. Cyclone Sire
Ribbons
2 - take 10 or less damage
1 - take 35 or more

Loyalty: 0 - gain 3 mana

Mana: Blue +1

24 health

2. Reaver Drone
Ribbons
2 - cast 3 or less spells
1 - cast 8 or more spells

Loyalty: 0 - Deal 3 damage to your opponent unless they control at least 2 colorless creatures

Mana: Black +1

31 health

3. Seed Guardian
Ribbons
2 - cast 3 or less supports
1 - cast 8 or more supports

Loyalty: 6 - Summon a 3/3 wolf

Mana: Green +1

33 health

4. Cliffhaven Vampire
Ribbons
2 - Win with 10 or less health
1 - Win with 40 or more health

Loyalty: 3 - deal 1 damage to your opponent and gain 1 life

Mana: White +1

38 health
Cards:
Kor Castigator
Mind Raker
Mindmelter
Reaver Drone
Kalastria Healer

5. Jori En, Ruin Diver
Ribbons
2 - Summon no creatures with defender
1 - Lose 5 or more creatures

Loyalty: 0 - all cards in hand gain 3 mana

Mana: Red/Blue +2

103 health
Cards:
Creatures
Flayer Drone
Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Matter Reshaper
Mina and Denn, Wildborn
Reality Smasher
Walker of the Wastes
Tyrant of Valakut

Spells
Kozilek’s Return

Supports
Mirrorpool
Captain’s Claws

6. Mina and Denn, Wildborn
Ribbons
2 - lose 3 or less creatures
1 - lose 6 or more creatures

Loyalty: 6 - give all of your creatures on the battlefield Berserker, Trample and +2/+2 until the end of the turn

Mana: Green/Red +2

113 health
Cards:

Creatures

Jori En, Ruin Diver
Sylvan Advocate

Reality Smasher

World Breaker

Supports
Mirrorpool

Oath of Nissa

Oath of Chandra

7. Inverter of Truth
Ribbons
2 - kill 3 or less enemy creatures
1 - kill 6 or more enemy creatures

loyalty: 6 - Convert all void gems to black gems, then ingest every gem of your opponent’s color.

Mana: Black +4
Red/Blue +3
White/Green +1

294 Health
Cards:
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet: https://beta.mtgpq.info/cards/KalitasTraitorOfGhet
Wasteland Strangler: {{pageTitle}} | mtgpq.info
Sire Of Stagnation: {{pageTitle}} | mtgpq.info
Oblivion Sower: {{pageTitle}} | mtgpq.info

Drana, Liberator of Malkir: {{pageTitle}} | mtgpq.info

Remorseless Punishmenturl: {{pageTitle}} | mtgpq.info

8. Worldbreaker
Ribbons
2 - Summon no creatures with defender
1 - Lose 10 or more creatures

loyalty: 3 - destroy all gems of your opponent’s color

Mana: Green +5
White/Red +4
Black/Blue +1

412 Health
Cards:

Creatures

Gladehart Cavalry
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
World Breaker
Oblivion Sower
Kozilek, the Great Distortion

Spells
Nissa’s Renewal
Bring to Light

Supports
Zendikar Resurgent
Oath of Nissa

2

Updated with additional information.

3

regarding battle no. 7 (Inverter of Truth opponent):

I was able to win the battle and get the 1 extra ribbon for killing 6 or more enemy creatures, but unless I can win the battle and kill 3 or less creatures, I won’t get the extra 2 ribbons and will then never reach the score of 55 to get the final reward (I am at 53 now). There are only a possible 56 points total, so these 2 ribbons are a must. The problem is that the enemy brings out a creature that has (Activate 2, destroy first creature that you control and first creature you opponent controls). There is almost no way to stop him from destroying his own creature and one of yours, thus adding to the 3 or less enemy creature count. Any ideas on how to do it? (I came somewhat close on my last attempt. He was down to 83 hitpoints left and 3 of his creatures were destroyed when I ran out of hitpoints.) Has anyone been able to do it? If so, what planeswalker did you use?

4

I have not even tried to get those last ribbons, but I would imagine that any successful attempts would involve a deck that has several options for disable/kill/bounce. Basically, having cards in hand that enable you to disable and/or get rid of that creature (I"m thinking it’s Ayli?) as soon as it appears, since disabling will deactivate the kill power while the creature is disabled.

5

That’s what I did. A Jace 2 deck with Anchor to the Aether, Crush of Tentacles and Engulf the Shore works wonders for bouncing. But yeah, Ayli is a pain. Best you can do is hope that the board gets filled up with other creatures so she can never come out. Imprisoned in the Moon helps by taking up a slot while also reducing the damage you take.

6

Yeah, Inverter Of Truth’s Kill 3 or less objective is an absolute pain.

Aside from people’s idea of playing blue and use bounce, Frog or Moon, I personally would suggest, risky and requiring much replay as it is, Ob Nixilis discard. The reasons:

  1. Inverter’s ability means that playing with anything other than black makes it hard for you to get your matches.
  2. By playing black, Inverter’s own ability also help curb itself, since its deck aren’t filled with enough Devoid cards (whereas you can play Mind Raker and Transgress the Mind)
  3. With enough draw (Tamiyo’s Journal, Ob’s own first ability, Behold the Beyond), Ob’s ultimate can be surprisingly lethal very quickly once it’s out. If you have a few life gain (lifelinkers, for example), as long as Ayli doesn’t show up, ever, this becomes mostly a battle of getting your ult out and then burn it to death with card draws.

Again as I said, this often takes several retries, but it’s one of the methods I pretty much swear by.

Speaking of discard, Liliana v1 is probably worth trying too. Thanks to the fact that Inverter’s own ability hurts itself by removing black gems, playing a discard-heavy Liliana like this theoretically should allow you to empty its hand while you Dark Petition or Floorboard your victory away.

7

I have had a lot of success running a Ob Nix deck that is mostly creature kill and discard spells.
Despite the board not having much black out there, the inverter doesn’t get black either.

as far as the 3 kills or less, i think it is more luck with keeping the creatures out of its hand. behold the beyond would make this much eaiser, but i dont have it.

8

In case it helps with collecting info, there’s a thread from last summer with all of the AI decklists for the OGW 1 and 2 events, in a bit of an obscure location because it was created before the Events subforum (or multiple events, for that matter) existed. The rewards are outdated of course, and all of the opponents that used to skip their turns now make matches in addition to using their respective 0-loyalty abilities, but the objectives, mana gains, abilities, and decklists remain unaltered as far as I can tell. I recently attempted to find the mysterious 10th card for Reaver Drone, which was the only missing card from that thread, but finally gave up after seeing nothing new despite waiting 333 turns (according to the battle log) and casting umpteen copies of Gonti, so it’s probably safe to assume that deck only has 9 cards total.

9

Updated with some additional information on enemy cards (mostly from @Dodecapod’s informative post)

10

Bumping this, since it seems the Oath events are back in rotation for now.