General New Format: Oathbreaker

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
My experience was it was very combo oriented. Companion showed us the power of an 8th card, a 9th card just REALLY pushes the incentives to do anything but fair magic.
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

My teenage son and his schoolmates played oathbreaker for a bit, but it swiftly devolved into repetitive brokenness and they reverted to Commander.

If only to placate ravnic, I wonder if there would be any value in having an oathbreaker cube, similar to how some people have designed commander cubes.
 
Brad

Brad

Oathbreaker is a multiplayer format where each player builds around their favorite Planeswalker. Each player’s deck consists of 60 total cards as follows:
  • 1 Oathbreaker (a Planeswalker card)
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Oh, cool. Commander for Planeswalkers. That makes sense.
  • 1 Signature Spell (an instant or sorcery card)
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OH NO.

Having access to two cards is one too many. Automatic combos in the command zone. Yikes. That said, this could be a cool draft format where the command zone cards are limited in such a way to not immediately end games.
 
Mown

Mown

Brad said:
Oh, cool. Commander for Planeswalkers. That makes sense.

OH NO.

Having access to two cards is one too many. Automatic combos in the command zone. Yikes. That said, this could be a cool draft format where the command zone cards are limited in such a way to not immediately end games.
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Fun fact, if you have partner planeswalkers as your oathbreakers, they each get their own signature spell.

I think Oathbreaker is a sort of fun EDH-alternative, and likewise it relies on players not tryharding and just messing around. The temptation to put something busted in your command zone probably greatly increases when you go from one card to two though, as can be seen with a lot of the popular partner pairings who are a lot more conservatively designed than literally every instant and sorcery in the game.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

I tinkered with Oathbreaker a little bit a while ago. It's fun if everyone is messing around, but it immediately falls off the cliff into Sweaty Try-Hard Land if people are playing it seriously.

Which is a shame, because I really liked how my ramp deck played:

 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
People are already paying 6 mana for a 3/2 vigilance in their control decks, it basically doesn't matter how bad the 8th card you get is: it's an extra card.

You can balance things like this, you just have them replace a card in your opener instead of being an additional card.
Eg:
1679529117790.png
MSEM has a few of these. They use different deckbuilding constraints than companions can, because it's a digital format. Companions have to use deckbuilding constraints that can be disproven by a single cardplay.

And yes, just in case anyone was wondering, if there isn't any cost to adding your 8th card or making your opening 7 better, it's free and now everyone has to do it.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

The frustrating one is this dang Cat Beast:



Control decks look at this and go "wow, thanks, I wasn't planning on running any creatures in the first place!"

And then Snapcaster Mage cries in the corner...
 
Rusje

Rusje

Chris Taylor said:
People are already paying 6 mana for a 3/2 vigilance in their control decks, it basically doesn't matter how bad the 8th card you get is: it's an extra card.

You can balance things like this, you just have them replace a card in your opener instead of being an additional card.
Eg:
View attachment 8103
MSEM has a few of these. They use different deckbuilding constraints than companions can, because it's a digital format. Companions have to use deckbuilding constraints that can be disproven by a single cardplay.

And yes, just in case anyone was wondering, if there isn't any cost to adding your 8th card or making your opening 7 better, it's free and now everyone has to do it.
Click to expand...
You are spot on! But the problem is that it is even better than a random card. You know what the card can do and build around it.
For fun and giggles, assume you are allowed to have 2 basic lands as signature. Then aggro will likely not have ANY lands in their deck! (Maybe chrome mox and it’s ilk, but no lands) This leads to always drawing gas.
 
Velrun

Velrun

LadyMapi said:
The frustrating one is this dang Cat Beast:



Control decks look at this and go "wow, thanks, I wasn't planning on running any creatures in the first place!"

And then Snapcaster Mage cries in the corner...
Click to expand...

Could easily have been solved but I guess they didn’t want it to be too restricted. They could have given it something like ‘and you have to have at least one in your starting deck’.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Obligatory Snipcaster Mage:
1679605200502.png
I know he's not Kaheera compliant but y'all need this fella in your life

Edit: Okay apparently I didn't have this sitting around on my drive so I made one fresh:
mfkMlxw.png
 
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