Vintage Doomsday

Playing Thassa's Oracle in Vintage means playing Doomsday. Okay, and also sixty-nine other cards, so let's go over what those choices should be.

The Core Deck
Winning the Game
Building a Manabase
Card Draw
Interaction
Picking a Sideboard
Recommended Deck
Piles
FAQ

The Core Deck

These fifty-four cards are generally agreed upon to be the core when playing Doomsday in Vintage. I'll go over these cards and the options for the remaining six flex slots. Generally these are going to be filled with one more land, a few pieces of card draw, and the remaining will be ways ways to interact with the opponent. Let's start with our victory condition.

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Winning the Game

Doomsday wins with Thassa's Oracle in one of two ways. One route is simple. Cast Thassa's Oracle. With it's ability on the stack, cast Demonic Consultation. If Consultation resolves, name any Vintage-legal card not in the deck. The library is now empty, Oracle's ability resolves and victory is obtained. Even if the opponent kills the Oracle at this point, they lose. If there are zero cards in the library, they must either counter the Oracle or its ability.
The other, fairly obviously, is to resolve Doomsday and build a five card pile that lets Thassa's Oracle claim victory. The basic pile will be Ancestral Recall or Gush, Black Lotus, Thassa's Oracle, Flusterstorm and any other card that could be helpful. Piles will be discussed in further detail later.

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Building a Mana Base

Play fourteen lands.
Island or Snow-Covered Island is personal preference.
When playing nine Fetch Lands a sideboard slot will likely be dedicated to a basic Island. For jewelry, two Moxes and Lotus are all that are needed, but this low artifact count does not mean immunity to Null Rod effects. Black Lotus is a key piece to winning most of the time.
Watery Grave may seem out of place, but it is the best option for another Blue and Black producing land that increases resilience against Surgical Extraction on Underground Sea. But more importantly it is a Black source that can be used with Daze or Gush.
To avoid Surgical Extraction and Pithing Needle type effects, a variety of the four Island-fetching Fetch Lands are played. This can matter, but don't worry if you end up playing four each of Flooded Strand and Polluted Delta.

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Card Draw

Drawing cards is important to Magic, but Thassa's Oracle puts a twist on when and how many we draw. Legacy Doomsday players may be surprised the first time they lose from their opponent casting Ancestral Recall targeting someone other than the caster, but this is real consideration.
The free draw and cantrips should be fairly obvious.
It might seem weird to call Time Walk card draw, but using it as such is very common.
And then there's Necropotence. Do we really need this? It gets sided out against many aggro matchups, and can make managing your life total difficult. But the raw card advantage it gives cannot be ignored.

Card Draw Options

1-2 Street Wraith
Street Wraith is "free", but every life point counts when using Doomsday. Be careful.
1 Cling to Dust
Cling to Dust acts as card draw as well as interference with Dredge, Underworld Breach decks, or even just Deathrite Shaman. Of course, you will be gaining three life if you target a creature card, but that can help.
1 Peek
This may seem like a bad version of Gitaxian Probe, but being an Instant allows valuable information to be obtained before the start of your turn and also helps to draw a card when Narset, Parter of Veils or Leovold, Emissary of Trest hit the table.
1 Portent
The Ice Age predecessor to Ponder, this "slowtrip" can help dig and can also mess with the opponent's deck. This information can be useful, as on the rare occasion it can serve as a kind of Gitaxian Probe (i.e., see what your opponent is playing) to figure out if going for a turn one Doomsday would be safe.
1 Sleight of Hand
A fairly uncommon choice, but it allows fairly deep digging that gets round Narset, Leovold and importantly Hullbreacher as it does not draw, but rather puts the card into your hand. It is important to remember that the other card goes on the bottom of the deck.
1 Treasure Cruise
This card is powerful, but remember that you mostly likely won't be casting it after Doomsday.

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Interaction

Interaction options

1 Chain of Vapor
Where Cling to Dust lets us pre-sideboard against graveyard decks, Chain of Vapor is a well-rounded piece of removal for the variety of pieces that slow us down. Any of the CMC increasers from Shops, Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and so on. Be careful about casting this when you have Necropotence out, as your opponent copy Chain to bounce your Necropotence.
1-2 Daze
Have you really lived if you have never cast Dark Ritual off of Mox Jet and cast Daze on it so you could bounce Underground Sea and replay it for another ? To be serious, Daze is a powerful counterspell, and worthy of your consideration.
1 Duress
Why Duress over Thoughtseize? Life total and what we want to remove. Brain Freeze, counterspells, Shops hate pieces, there are enough things Duress takes that we do not need to worry about the versatility Thoughtseize provides. Also, Misdirection cannot be used on Duress.
1-2 Flusterstorm
Flusterstorm's power in Vintage should not be ignored. We are playing fast and playing on the stack, so cheap interaction is key. Watch out for opposing Flusterstorms, however.
1 Force of Negation
While not very potent on our turn, this one-of helps give more resilience when we are on the draw. Force of Negation is useful even against decks like Shops, as it helps to keep more opening hands.
1 Mystical Dispute
Vintage is a very Blue format, so having Spell Pierce for that can answer a variety of problem cards is very valuable. Sometimes it is a more expensive Mana Leak, but its versatility is outstanding.