Getting into a new format is always a shifty proposition. After all, you don’t really know what’s good, what’s bad or, most importantly, what you’ll have the most fun playing. No one ever wants to spend hundreds of dollars on a new deck or a bunch of specialized staples only to end up disliking them or the format–but, nevertheless, the best way to figure out whether something is for you it to play it.
Enter Budget Brews! In this series I’ll be providing three decks for around $50 each, complete with Oathbreaker and Signature spell. These decks will help you break into this awesome little format without breaking your bank account, and will provide a good base build to improve upon over time if you find you like it!
Hualti, Sun’s Champion: The Best Offense Is A Good Defense
Already one of the most popular builds, Huatli/Tower Defense is a straightforward Selesnya aggro deck. You play a bunch of creatures with high toughness, convert that toughness into attack power with Huatli and supercharge them with Tower Defense (effectively +5/+5 to all creatures for only two mana!). This is a great place to start with Oathbreaker: Huatli is cheap and has a high starting loyalty, meaning you can be aggressive without worrying about her dying on the crackback or being prohibitively expensive to recast; Hualti’s hybridized mana also means she is easy to cast; and, finally, her “toughness matters” ability leads you to some interesting synergies, such as your creatures being immune to Ensnaring Bridge or Retribution of the Meek, or turning cards like Slagwurm Armor into absurdly powerful buffs. If you’re a fan of Doran the Siege Tower or Arcades the Strategist in Commander, give Hualti a whirl!
Upgrades
While most of the deck will stay the same regardless of your budget, there are a number of great tools that are out of reach for $50:
- Ensnaring Bridge: With Ensnaring Bridge out, you’ll be stopping pretty much all attackers… except your own.
- Meekstone: Similar to Ensnaring Bridge, Meekstone curbs your opponent’s aggression while never affecting your own.
- Heroic Intervention, Sylvan Library: These are just solid cards to have access to. Intervention helps keep your team alive and swinging, while Sylvan Library is just a ridiculously good draw engine.
Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner: Beckon the Beyond
You don’t need money to serve our otherworldly Eldrazi masters–only accept this spice! This build does what Kiora wants it to do: ramp up, play big monsters. Whether Kiora, as a character, likes that these are Eldrazi… well it doesn’t matter what she wants, does it?
The Signature, Energy Tap, is a spicy one. For one blue mana, you tap one of your creatures to produce colorless mana equal to their casting cost–meaning you can jump pretty high and hard up the curve without needing to hit more land drops. And given that Kiora can untap that creature, you can accumulate a huge amount of mana off just two castings of Energy Tap! Kiora’s untap (and the suite of creatures that untap lands themselves) works wonderfully with Simic Growth Chamber, mana-boosting land auras like Wild Growth and, of course, Eldrazi Temple.
Upgrades
Primarily this build needs two things: more efficient mana ramp sources and better payoffs. Here are a few ideas:
- Lotus Field, Ancient Tomb, Eye of Ugin: Lands which produce more than one mana are always welcome in Kiora, and Eye of Ugin has both the virtual ramp of its cost reduction and that sweet tutor ability.
- Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Emrakul, the Promised End: Any of these titans will close down a game quickly, but their price (each one is over half our budget on their own!) kept them out of the running.
- All is Dust, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: In a better build, we can afford to dispense with the untap creatures and land auras, and thus play better board wipes to clear the way for our titans.
Sarkhan, Fireblood: Dragon Appeasement
Let them hear you roar! This list is all about slamming Dragons and beating face, and it works extremely well despite the budget! While Oathbreaker as a format tends to run lower to the ground than Commander, Sarkhan offsets your higher curve with his second plus ability, granting you extra mana for Dragon spells. Oh, did I mention Sarkhan has two plus abilities? And he only costs three mana! His first ability is extremely useful as well, letting you loot away Mountains or dead cards for fresh ones, and while the game will likely be over by the time you can activate his ultimate, chances are it definitely will be once you do!
The Signature, Sarkhan’s Triumph, is exactly what you would expect Sarkhan’s Signature to be: tutor up a Dragon for mauling your opponents. An important card to note in this build is Feldon of the Third Path, who for 2R can resurrect (well, replicate) a Dragon you discarded to Sarkhan’s looting ability!
Upgrades
Generally speaking, a lot of the best Dragons are hard to fit into the $50 budget, such as Balefire Dragon. Beyond those, however, these are some cards that come to mind:
- Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon, Ruination: One thing that makes decks like these hard to keep alive in a game, especially a group game, is that your opponents will eventually have either answers to your threats or will deploy better threats than what you can muster. Enter land hate–specifically nonbasic hate. By deploying either an early Moon effect or Ruination and keeping our density of basic Mountains high, you can slow down (or outright stop) your opponents’ game plans while steadily advancing your own.
- Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded, Sneak Attack: With such a high density of large creatures, it’s always a good idea to have a backup method of cheatimg them into play. Purphoros doubles as a threat himself once you have the required devotion to red, and the Haste he provides is also very much welcome in this kind of deck.
- Ancient Tomb, Urza’s Incubator: Finally, having more ways to generate chunks of mana (or reduce the cost of your Dragons) will smooth out your turns, ensuring you drop a big, scaly threat early and often.
Conclusion
If you’re new to Oathbreaker, or just looking for a spare or backup deck on the cheap, I hope one of these lists piqued your interest! I have a feeling I’ll be revisiting Sarkhan, Fireblood in the near-future, so keep an eye out if he’s your style!
If you’re hungry for more Oathbreaker content, I want to take a moment to share with you The Oathbreaker Thoughtcast, a great blog ran by Alex Enders. On their site they cover all sorts of Oathbreaker stuff; it is a superb resource if you’re delving deeper into this format. So what are you still reading this article for? Go check their site out now!
Breakin' Brews 