Why did Oathbreaker die?
Oathbreaker forum
Posted on Jan. 30, 2022, 12:36 a.m. by TypicalTimmy
The only argument against it I have ever seen is it being an EDH clone - just play Commander.
But to me, that doesn't feel like a valid point of criticism. It's still a 4-player Singleton format with a Commander. It follows the rules of EDH. It's so easy to pick up, that I can't see why it wasn't.
TypicalTimmy says... #3
I did, and still do when I have the chance. I have several Oathbreaker decks IRL and a few online.
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Consistency: Because each deck is only 60 cards, and you have 2 removed for the Commander and Signature Spell, each library is only 58 cards. It makes for extremely fast-paced games because there is a lot less "clutter" to get through. As a consequence, it is also far more honed. It's very easy to make a cEDH-style Oathbreaker deck with minimal effort
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Flexibility: There are hundreds of Planeswalkers. 257 at the time of this post, excluding the four (Wanderer, Tezzeret, Tamiyo and Kaito) from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. With the addition of Signature Spells, there are thousands of deck possibilities and directions to go.
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Far more emphasis on the Commander: Signature Spells can't be cast unless your chosen Planeswalker Commander is in play, which makes the game feel far more dynamic and interactive.
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Fun, casual format: Because Oathbreaker doesn't have a competitive meta (Despite easily making cOB decks), it feels a lot less hostile. What I mean is, I have had far more negative experience playing EDH than I have had playing Oathbreaker. People feel more relaxed and casual and joyous when playing it, and I think it is because the Competitive feel isn't there as strongly.
But there are cons, which I suspect is part of the reason why it died.
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Some colored combinations are not possible as not all colored combinations are printed in Planeswalkers.
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While all Planeswalkers are usable, some are more valued than others. As a result, when choosing Jace or Liliana or Chandra, you'd be at a huge disadvantage choosing some over others.
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Not all styles of play are available: Because your deck is largely tied to your Planeswalker, some deck archetypes aren't viable. (But others open up or become more viable as a result).
I just sort of feel like most people focus on the negatives over the positives. It's a supremely fun format and very budget friendly. Everyone I play the format with seems to absolutely enjoy it, even if they have reservations at first.
The whole reason I bring up this thread is because I just got back from playing several games between Jaya Ballard with Collective Defiance and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Brain Freeze. Those decks bounced off each other in hilarious and spectacular manners, being burn and mill alike.
January 30, 2022 2:16 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #4
Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Heroic Intervention is also a super fun deck.
I have (online) a $4,000 Kiora, Master of the Depths and Karn's Temporal Sundering deck that produces both infinite turns and infinite mana.
Tezzeret the Seeker can easily go infinite with The Chain Veil and if you have Dramatic Reversal, it's just insane.
Sorin Markov and Toxic Deluge is disgustingly efficient.
January 30, 2022 2:28 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #5
I forgot to mention, I also have a Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast + Chaos Warp deck that basically cheats out Eldrazi titans. It's so bonkers.
January 30, 2022 2:34 a.m.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #6
I have neverplayed Oathbreaker and I actually knownobody who plays it.
What I always wanted to build is a deck with Huatli, the Sun's Heart and Wave of Reckoning.
Are you sure it's 60 cards? I'm pretty sure I've read about 100.
January 30, 2022 2:47 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #7
seshiro_of_the_orochi, here is the official Oathbreaker website and their rules.
All games I have played start at 30 life for 1v1 and move to 40 life for 3+ player games but the rest we keep the same.
January 30, 2022 2:50 a.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #8
I think the issues I see with the positives you laid out are thus:
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as far as consistency goes, you'll never be able to match formats that aren't singleton--it's just not mathematically possible for the odds of you drawing a single card to be equal to that of four.
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there are 1,244 legal commanders for EDH as of now, with 14 being planeswalkers. That flexibility is hard to trump, and there's just always going to be more legendary creatures than planeswalkers.
But I agree with some of your other points:
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putting more focus on your commander and their spell makes for dynamically different gameplay (something a format desperately needs to survive--difference).
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allowing for ease of budget pushes the format--in my mind--to the realm of playability by itself. Sadly, the topic of budget, proxying, power/cost of deck balancing, etc. is a tough one to broach, so that may not carry as much weight as it ought.
I worry that the format would get broken if too many players focused on it though--I know I could only play against Ajani Vengeant+Stone Rain so many times, and that's not even that good a combo.
January 30, 2022 3:34 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #9
From what I've heard, the format was figured out pretty fast, with decks that win consistently before turn 3. I've actually played a little bit of Oathbreaker. It was a fun week, but two customizable cards you will always have access to, leads to very, very little variance in how your deck plays out. It's fun to brew, but boring to play after your deck "did the thing" 5 times. It's what was broken about companions, and it was hard for the gameplay to stay interesting for a longer time, the amount of fun per deck you brew, was not worth the effort of sleeving the cards in the end.
That was the experience of at least half the people who tried brewing with me in Oathbreaker, and they went back to established constructed formats in no time. And running out of people to play with, is the death of any format.
January 30, 2022 6:31 a.m.
I don't think Oathbreaker ever stood a chance--it is, at its core, just a worse version of Commander. The major draw of Commander is the increase of variance that singleton provides... and Oathkeeper undermines that very core element by increasing consistency with the Planeswalker's signature spell. Failing to offer anything new while undermining one of the core components that people like about Commander? That is not how you supplant the most popular format in the game.
That's not to say people cannot enjoy themselves playing it, but it does mean it is not going to take the world by storm and was destined to peter out once the initial novelty wore off.
January 30, 2022 11 a.m. Edited.
TypicalTimmy says... #11
Caerwyn, funny that you use the phrase "by storm" because both decks I played last night had Storm in them lol
Jaya Ballard went somewhat infinite with Runaway Steam-Kin and a graveyard fully loaded with 1mv and 2mv burn spells. Cast a Past in Flames into Pyretic Ritual into a Seething Song and dump the mana into Lightning Bolt, Shock and other similar spells. Then finish with Grapeshot. Dealt like 39 damage in one turn haha.
January 30, 2022 12:10 p.m.
Everyone here has covered some really good reasons, and I guess the only one that I'd add is that Oathbreaker didn't fill a desired play style like commander did. As the game speeded and power creep set in, a lot of players were looking for a slower paced casual game that also featured some of their favorite legends from the past. The fact that there was nothing like commander probably led to a lot of people turning to it originally, and now that it's an established format, it combines an existing player base and a new fan who wants to explore the commander cards that are in print.
On the flip side, for things like Oathbreaker and Brawl, they bring more of a new variation rather than really aim to do something unique. Which, not all brand new concepts will be successful either, but I think for a format to succeed it needs to be both new in execution and in what it gives to the player. If the format offers something that people want, like commander or pauper or modern, then it will have a place. But if it's just trying to play into being an existing format but different, it can definitely have a hard time, even if it is better than the original format.
January 30, 2022 2:06 p.m.
Skimming some of the Oathbreaker meta and tier list sites, I'm impressed on how affordable it seems to be. Maybe that's a consequence of it being a fairly niche market, but I didn't see any deck valued above $250, and many of them were below $100. The tiers do seem to be fairly stratified, but it seems reasonably approachable.
Of course, the more mainstream it goes, the more expensive it's going to get. So maybe it's in a good place for what it wants to be right now.
January 30, 2022 2:53 p.m.
I liked the idea of Oathbreaker a lot, mostly because it was a reason/excuse to use some of my unused cards. I have a bunch of planeswalker cards that I "like" and "want to use," but they aren't all good fits for the EDH decks I make.
More to the point of the thread though, my biggest complaint about OB was essentially I felt it was going to get broken/solved too soon. Consider that in a basic mono-color EDH deck there are certain staples that "every deck should run". That ends up being a good portion of the 99. But keep in mind that most EDH decks have 36 lands. 99 minus 36 is 63, meaning if you ignore staple lands for now, you really can only put 63 spells in your deck. To make the "best" decks (basically cEDH or close), I'd say up to HALF of those 63 cards could be all just staples.
Now, in a 60 card deck, you typically have 24 lands, leaving you with 36 other spells. Which is ABOUT half of 63. So basically, if you want all the best support/tech, you might as well fill your entire deck with the best staples, and run a two- or three-card combo that is mostly contained in the Command zone. Which in turn means that only a handful of planeswalkers are going to viable as OB-commanders. That right there is a depressing lack of variance in deckbuilding that dampened my interest in the format. It honestly did seem like I was building for a "watered-down" version of EDH, and by NOT building this way, I knew I was hurting the deck.
So basically as plakjekaas and Caerwyn said before, variance in gameplay/deckbuilding was diminished in OB, thus it never drew the same positive attention that other player-made formats like EDH and Pauper have gotten.
Which is too bad, because I still like the idea of Oathbreaker, and still would play it, if I could.
January 30, 2022 5:51 p.m.
What personally kept me away from building a deck was the lack of options for commanders. Theres like 4 or 5 three cor options full stop and each color pair has what 2 maybe 3 viable options?? It seemed like everyone would just end playing the same walkers
January 30, 2022 6:21 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #16
Not supported by wizards and the signature spell is game warping to the point where it's a solved format.
Also, the entire format falls apart if the RC decides all planeswalkers can be commanders.
January 31, 2022 1:12 a.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #18
TypicalTimmy - technically they can be because rule zero but people will wait for the RC to tell them how they can and should enjoy the game lol
January 31, 2022 3:05 a.m.
Grubbernaut says... #19
Personally, I've always despised planeswalkers as commanders, so there was no draw for me.
February 1, 2022 5:05 p.m.
The problem that oathbreaker had at my local game store was you had two of us that made fun decks like I made Arln werewolves everyone else made Jace persistent partitioners to instant win on turn three
February 2, 2022 8:58 a.m.
My playgroup still actively plays Oathbreaker. Most players have at least 2 decks, some with up to 6. Thankfully most of my playgroup is not super competitive enough to bother building the turn 2-4 instant win meta decks, instead going with decks they find fun to play. As such, there is quite a wide range in the style of decks being played. Aggro, tax, milling, burn, TRON, Stompy, flicker, tokens...
Like Commander, Oathbreaker really only gets as 'busted' or 'solved' depending on the just how competitive the player is. From what I've read online, it seems to me CEDH is mostly a 'solved' version of Commander, yet a lot of people enjoy it.
There are a lot of fun Oathbreaker/Signature Spell combinations that can be done, just like there are a lot of fun Commanders out there for Commander. Not every card has to be of 'only the most efficient' to have fun.
Of course, if you're only having fun if you're winning turn 1-3, then that style of play is pretty much solved, but that goes the same for Commander as well.
February 3, 2022 10:27 a.m.
Grubbernaut says... #22
I'll take the opposing side, as a cEDH player; Oathbreaker's consistent access to a particular spell means that play patterns are going to be very deterministic at a competitive level. One of the most fun and interesting parts of cEDH, IMO, is the need to navigate to a win; you and your opponents don't (usually) know if you have it, and nobody knows what interaction to watch out for, leading to a lot of explosive wars on the stack. If I know you just always have access to Guardianship, or your wincon, it warps play. That's not to say it's bad or wrong, but the fact that there's a lot more viable cEDH decks than there are competitive Oathbreaker decks does indicate that cEDH is significantly less "solved."
And yes, that's in part because of the planeswalker restriction, of course. But even so - tier lists and the meta change very regularly. I think outsiders will always view cEDH as an "all turbo decks" format, but right now, it's more about hate bears, for example.
To be a bit more succinct: my overall thoughts are that the format's construction lends itself to competitive play, and the comparatively small pool of commander choices means the meta is going to be solved much more quickly and decisively than it can be in regular commander. And a lot of people, even competitive tryhards like myself, still get fatigue from playing nearly-identical games over and over again.
Omniscience_is_life says... #2
Idk. Do you play oathbreaker? If so, what draws you to it?
January 30, 2022 1:54 a.m.