Building an Oathbreaker deck inMagic: The Gatheringis a bit like designing a high-end menu: it’s all about pairing the right food (your Oathbreaker) with the right wine (your Signature Spell). Some pairings complement each other perfectly, leading to sparkling synergistic scenarios, while others sit somewhat separately on the table, decent alone but never really coming together into something great.
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If you ever wish to become a master deckbuilder, or indeed a master chef, then you’ll need to tap into the former, and choose a Signature Spell capable of working wonders alongside your planeswalker of choice. Below is our Oathbreaker recipe book: winning combinations that, at the risk of overdoing this metaphor, you may really sink your teeth into.
10Elminster/Graven Lore
Planeswalkers with passive abilities are a relatively new phenomenon, but they play extremely well in Oathbreaker, due to the consistency that said abilities provide. Rather than relying on having a specific amount of loyalty, these abilities are always active, meaning you can confidently build around them when it comes to the rest of your deck and your Signature Spell.
Elminster’s particular passive ability is no joke. Each time you scry, it reduces the cost of your next instant or sorcery by an equal amount. Combined with Graven Lore, which lets you scry equal to its cost, you can generate discounts of seven or more in combination with Elminster’s +2 ability, easily cheating out game-winning spells far earlier than intended.
9Ashiok, Dream Render/Mind Grind
A truly successful Mill deckmay be wishful thinking in a multiplayer format like Oathbreaker, but you can certainly give it a good shot with the right setup. Ashiok, Dream Render is a great planeswalker choice here, letting you mill cards and then exile their owner’s graveyard, and also shutting down the ever-present tutoring that goes on in singleton formats.
There are various options in terms of strong mill cards you can pair Ashiok up with, but our pick is Mind Grind. Not only does it hit every opponent simultaneously, but it’s also highly scalable, letting you slot it in whenever you run out of mill spells in hand. Mix it in with Ashiok’s -1 to permanently remove much of an opponent’s deck each turn.
8Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage/Arterial Flow
While it’s hard to truly replicate an 8-Rack deck in Oathbreaker, owing to the singleton restriction greatly reducing the archetype’s consistency, it helps that you can effectively include a Rack-like effect as your Oathbreaker. This comes in the form of Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage, a Rack that can also force opponents to discard cards, serving as an enabler for his own diabolical ends.
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To make the best use of these abilities, you’ll want to choose a mass discard effect as your Signature Spell. Arterial Flow is perhaps the best one available, forcing every opponent to discard two cards, and providing some incidental lifedrain on top if you throw in a couple of Vampires when building out the rest of your deck.
7Nissa Of Shadowed Boughs/Awaken The Woods
There have been many incarnations of Nissa across Magic’s history, but her green/black version from Zendikar Rising may just be the most interesting. Not only can she gain loyalty from her +1 ability, but she can also do so via landfall triggers, opening up a whole new avenue in terms of accessing her powerful -5 ability.
Awaken the Woods makes a great Signature Spell here. Since the tokens it creates are also lands, Nissa will receive loyalty equal to the X value you put in, which can easily propel her into double digits. From there, you may proceed to cheat out a huge creature or two with her -5, and maybe hard-cast a third using the mana from your new Dryad tokens.
6Dack Fayden/Gridlock
Dack Fayden is the consummate lovable rogue. Capable of stealing anything from any player, provided you can reach his powerful ultimate, his cocky smirk makes it hard to be angry even when you’re being blatantly two-for-one’d by his red right hand.
While his first two abilities are very powerful, it’s the ultimate we’re interested in here, and how it can allow us to pull offthe heist of a lifetimewhen paired with the right multi-target spell. Gridlock is the ideal candidate: it has a flexible cost, and can hit any nonland permanent, meaning you can steal anything you set your wicked heart on.
5Kaya, Geist Hunter/Blot Out The Sky
Most planeswalkers tend to be generic value engines, capable of performing well in most decks of their respective colours, but occasionally we see a ‘walker tailor-made for a specific archetype. Kaya, Geist Hunter is one such case, clearly representing a build-around card for a white/black tokens deck.
All three of her abilities create or buff tokens, making her great at any stage of the game in a tokens build. Naturally, a Signature Spell that also makes tokens would be the best way to leverage her power, and Blot out the Sky is a prime choice. Not only does it create a swarm of evasive tokens, but it can also double up as a noncreature board clear in a pinch.
4Tezzeret, Betrayer Of Flesh/Whir Of Invention
Tezzeret has always had a soft spot for artifacts, and his Betrayer of Flesh incarnation shows that more than most, offering three different artifact-centric loyalty abilities alongside a passive that supports them as well. To make the best use of his particular set of skills, you’ll want a way to easily access your important artifacts.
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Enter Whir of Invention. As an instant speed way of tutoring artifacts into play, it’s immediately a strong candidate for Tezzeret’s Signature Spell, but its improvise effect, which lets you tap other artifacts to reduce its cost, puts it over the top. The only Whir you’ll be hearing after this duo resolves is that of your opponents’ life counters spinning down to zero.
3Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God/Dark Intimations
Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God feels tailor-made for the Oathbreaker format. When everyone is guaranteed to be playing at least one planeswalker, his ability to replicate the loyalty abilities of each other planeswalker in play gains a lot of stock, and his other abilities remain as potent as ever.
To double down on the destructive power of his first ability, we’d recommend pairing this particular Bolas up with Dark Intimations, a card that, appropriately enough, foreshadowedthe iconic villain’s endgameback in Kaladesh block. Together, these two can put a huge drain on the resources of everyone at the table, before finishing things off with Bolas’ ultimate ability.
2Ral, Storm Conduit/Storm King’s Thunder
Ravnica’s resident spellslinger, Ral Zarek, has made a big impression in the few appearances he’s been afforded to date. His War of the Spark variant, with its ability to ping opponents and planeswalkers with every spell you cast or copy, is our pick for Oathbreaker, letting you control the board and get rid of your opponents’ Oathbreakers while you develop your own game plan.
To get the most out of this ‘walker, you’ll want to include cheap spells and ways of copying them, such as our Signature Spell suggestion, Storm King’s Thunder. As an X spell it scales well throughout the game, and it can multiply the effects of any spell you need, triggering Ral’s ping effect X times in the process.
1Professor Onyx/Plumb The Forbidden
There are few planeswalkers in Magicmore iconic than Liliana Vess, even when she’s living under the alias of Professor Onyx on Strixhaven. This iteration of Liliana features an interesting suite of loyalty abilities, but what we’re really interested in here is her passive, and how it interacts with Plumb the Forbidden, our Signature Spell of choice.
Since Plumb lets you copy it for each creature you sacrifice while casting it, and Professor Onyx deals 2 damage to every player each time you cast or copy a spell, you only need to sacrifice nine creatures to completely demolish the 20 starting life that each player gets in Oathbreaker. It’s about as close to a two-card instant-win combo from the command zone as you may get.
