pie chart

Breaking Oathbreaker (Narset is a Menace)

Oathbreaker Artifact Combo Competitive Mono-Blue

jaymc1130


So, here's the story. I've been playing cEDH for about 2 years now and when my group heard of the new Oathbreaker format it took a while for us to get around to trying it out. It seems like a lot of fun and a natural move for us to make. We tried it this weekend for the first time and we think we already broke the format...

The format as a whole doesn't seem to be super fast, and a lot of the stuff played didn't seem to have the capability of ending the game before turns 6 and 7, let alone threaten early turn wins with imperfect information. Until we tried Narset, Parter of Veils paired with Timetwister as her Signature Spell. The deck is essentially just early ramp pieces to try and reliably get Narset out on turn 2. Turn 3 is the Twister turn. The goal is to dump the opening hand as fast as possible and then wheel to reload and dump more cheap ramp and artifacts that ultimately win with a Paradox/Scepter combo line and a looped deck, which, thanks to Timetwister being in the "command zone" is very easy provided infinite mana can be generated. All that's left is to find means of infinite draw, but this basically comes prepackaged with the Paradox/Scepter combos in Sensei's Divining Top plus a handful of instant spells that can be imprinted and the new Urza, Lord High Artificer for good measure.

In terms of proving a deterministic infinite mana loop there are 3 real lines to show as an example.

  1. Imprint Dramatic Reversal on Isochron Scepter with at least 3 mana production total and at least 1 blue mana from mana rocks.

  2. Imprint Boomerang on Isochron Scepter and have Paradox Engine out with at least 2 mana production total and at least 1 blue mana from mana rocks with a viable 0 cmc target in play on your board.

  3. Imprint Boomerang and have Paradox Engine out as above with Urza, Lord High Artificer in play on your board and enough mana to cast him 4 times after bouncing him to your hand each time to create the minimum number of constructs needed to repeatedly cast him from construct mana afterwards so that each new construct then generates net positive mana.

After proving the loop for infinte mana and proving the loop for infinte draw you establish a kill loop with Explosive Apparatus or use Boomerang on a loop to bounce all opponent's permanents and create an infinite army of constructs, wait a turn cycle and then swing for the win with an infinite army. The deck is pretty consistently doing this by turn 5, can do it earlier, and will do it by turn 6 barring significant amounts of interaction from multiple opponent's (which of course are all playing with some serious card disadvantage after such an early wheel effect drops them all to 1 card in hand while the Narset deck reloads to a full grip).

I'm new to Oathbreaker and haven't played a ton of games yet, but once this deck was crafted nothing else we played in our initial Oathbreaker run could win. For those of you out there who play a lot of Oathbreaker, I'd like to ask you folks what other competitive tier decks exist and how to they fair performance wise? Are any of the cards being used in this deck banned and we just don't know? Is this an issue that is known for the format and if so would a fix be in the work? We loved the concept of the format, but if this is the only thing viable in competitive terms we probably won't play it again, especially since we doubt this list is perfectly tuned and could likely be even more optimized.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Hi! Please consider becoming a supporter of TappedOut for $3/mo. Thanks!


Important! Formatting tipsComment Tutorialmarkdown syntax

Please login to comment

Date added 4 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Oathbreaker legal.

Rarity (main - side)

6 - 0 Mythic Rares

9 - 0 Rares

9 - 0 Uncommons

19 - 0 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 1.38
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Construct 0/0 C
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views