Is Oathbreaker Already a Dead Format?

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Post by Card Slinger J » 4 years ago

I have a local playgroup who already has decks built for it though I rarely ever see them play unless it's EDH / Commander or Pioneer. I had Nissa, Steward of Elements / Nissa's Triumph currently being built yet I'm thinking of tearing the deck apart to focus more on EDH / Commander since it's obviously the most popular format being played at my locals. I actually made a joke one time about how broken Oko, Thief of Crowns could be in Oathbreaker though nobody seemed to really care. I don't want to continue wasting money on a format that nobody's going to play even If I built the decks for my friends to borrow.

One of my friends who ran Ral, Storm Conduit / Expansion // Explosion was forced to tear the deck apart to add in cards for EDH / Commander and Pioneer though I couldn't really tell If he was actually planning on getting out of Oathbreaker or not. Another one of my friends has an Oathbreaker deck around Ugin, the Ineffable / All Is Dust including one that's based on Chandra herself that I rarely ever see him play since he's usually busy playing the Transformers TCG when he shows up at my locals. There's another LGS I go to on Friday nights where nobody plays Oathbreaker at all.
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I haven't seen anyone playing for quite some time. Format looks busted as hell and nearly unbalanceable to be honest. There was a scene at our shop for a while but it went tiny leaders pretty fast.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

So, not to be a downer but almost all upstart variant formats experience this. Remember Tiny Leaders? remember pauper commander? remember horde?

The fact that commander stuck around is a lot of luck combined with the fact that it just ended up being different enough in a good way that people wanted it still after months / years. Many of the upstarts since then have looked too much like commander where as commander was so far removed from everything else it kind of worked out.

Oathbreaker reminds me of brawl, but like, on almost all of the fronts I don't want it to.
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Post by Kelzam » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
So, not to be a downer but almost all upstart variant formats experience this. Remember Tiny Leaders? remember pauper commander? remember horde?

The fact that commander stuck around is a lot of luck combined with the fact that it just ended up being different enough in a good way that people wanted it still after months / years. Many of the upstarts since then have looked too much like commander where as commander was so far removed from everything else it kind of worked out.

Oathbreaker reminds me of brawl, but like, on almost all of the fronts I don't want it to.
It's also worth pointing out that Oathbreaker's short lived explosion of popularity was not due to the merits of the format, but because it became a rallying point by a vocal minority who threw a tantrum when War of the Spark was released and filled with Planeswalkers they couldn't play as Commanders. Merit is truly what comes down to the fast growth and decline of these spin-off formats, and interest drummed up by short lived outrage is no merit at all.

More often than not, the interest in these starts with a small group of people finding something to gripe about or that isn't broken and doesn't need fixed, be it the length of Commander games, not being able to play Planeswalkers as Commanders, the cost of the format, or whatever scapegoat for their personal problems endsup being the epicenter of their outcry. They get enough people to rally behind them for the moment and raise curious eyebrows and try to create a format with little thought more than what they want to change based on their personal grievances, then unsurprisingly, the game play falls short and a whimper of a base of players remains mostly not because of the quality of the format but because of the investment they made when they thought it might be something.

They've all been badly designed formats by the all-too-many people who think designing a game is easy (formats are in and of themselves games within a game), and Oathbreaker didn't have any business being in the spotlight it gained born of knee-jerk reactionaries on Twitter and influencers/content creators seeking clicks. It should have just stayed the ill-conceived format it was played at an after school club instead of being the subject of gullible viewers of YouTubers/Twitter influencers spinning content for the hot topic of the moment that would soon pass.
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Post by RxPhantom » 4 years ago

Oathbreaker, much like Tiny Leaders, never passed the smell test for me. I couldn't envision it being a better or deeper play experience than Commander, so I never bothered. Commander is the greatest, so when I hear of any new format whose description is "It's like Commander except...," it's almost always a hard pass.

What really surprised me is the Professor's once fervent endorsement, as well as EDHrec creating an Oathbreaker section of their site, which I'm sure is a dead zone at this point.
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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

I think the core of the failure of these formats is mostly the lack of a playerbase. None of them are such a different experience from commander that they really make anyone want to commit to a format with so many fewer people to play with.

Ultimately I think the thing commander offered back in 2006 or whenever that was unique, at the time, was (1) a focus on social multiplayer, (2) a place to play all the dumb bombs that didn't work elsewhere, and to do the dumb synergies that didn't work elsewhere, and (3) the ability to build around a card you really liked without needing to have a ton of tutors and recursion to ensure you had it.

These formats often offer similar things, but commander already does them, and it has a lot more people. I'm not sure if commander is actually better - sure, maybe oathbreaker is busted, but it's not like commander isn't. But much like the best console is the one with the best games, and the rest is mostly irrelevant - the specifics of the commander-like format are mostly irrelevant, what matters is who plays it.

I do realize that a decent number of people played oathbreaker, but I was never able to find a game personally. And also the sort of people likely to pick it up on a whim are also less likely to stick with it through thick and thin. As soon as it became clear I wasn't going to have people to play with regularly, my oathbreaker was disassembled immediately.
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Post by Drusus » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
So, not to be a downer but almost all upstart variant formats experience this. Remember Tiny Leaders? remember pauper commander? remember horde?

The fact that commander stuck around is a lot of luck combined with the fact that it just ended up being different enough in a good way that people wanted it still after months / years. Many of the upstarts since then have looked too much like commander where as commander was so far removed from everything else it kind of worked out.

Oathbreaker reminds me of brawl, but like, on almost all of the fronts I don't want it to.
Just to minorly correct if you don't mind, Horde did actually get recognized by the nice folks at Wizards. Theros, Born of the Gods, and Journey into Nyx each came with a special horde-mode deck. First one was 'Face the Hydra', second was 'Battle the Horde', and third was "Defeat a God'. Each of these challenge decks were part of the game day for each set. Also they came with special hero cards and also the novelty of building a godsend.

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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
4 years ago
Oathbreaker, much like Tiny Leaders, never passed the smell test for me. I couldn't envision it being a better or deeper play experience than Commander, so I never bothered. Commander is the greatest, so when I hear of any new format whose description is "It's like Commander except...," it's almost always a hard pass.

What really surprised me is the Professor's once fervent endorsement, as well as EDHrec creating an Oathbreaker section of their site, which I'm sure is a dead zone at this point.
There is some merit to jumping on the bandwagon early. If the product takes off you have the benefit of being ahead of the curve and possibly corner the market. And if it doesn't, well then you quietly merge/remove it.
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Post by Dunharrow » 4 years ago

I will say that Oathbreaker at least tried to innovate by putting a spell in the command zone. Unfortunately, this was a very broken innovation.
I think that if people want to make a format for Planeswalkers, they need to build in an answer to ultimates. Something like: "Start the game with an emblem that says: "Sacrifice 3 permanents: Counter target Planeswalker Ability"'
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Post by lyonhaert » 4 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
4 years ago
I will say that Oathbreaker at least tried to innovate by putting a spell in the command zone. Unfortunately, this was a very broken innovation.
I think that if people want to make a format for Planeswalkers, they need to build in an answer to ultimates. Something like: "Start the game with an emblem that says: "Sacrifice 3 permanents: Counter target Planeswalker Ability"'
And then everybody just runs tokens in their decks. It's always a bad sign when you feel like you need to add things like that to "balance" it.
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Post by onering » 4 years ago

Oathbreaker was doomed from the start. Not only was it competing with Commander (the more established format is always favored in a competition for players because it has a built in and dedicated player base, meaning that the newcomer has to be appreciably better to make it), it also managed to trade on a concept that made it more busted than commander. Commander can be busted, sure, but you need to set out to make it so, while with Oathbreaker you had to actively try to not make it busted if you were going to build with any synergy between walker and spell, or even just going for good stuff. It was an obviously busted concept, and was at best a lark that you could throw together for a few matches before anyone had a handle in what was good, a neat little diversion for an established and long standing play group. Even beyond competing for a player base and the busted concept, the fact that you were restricted to PW commanders was something it could never hope to overcome. Allowing PWs as commanders is already less popular than the status quo of excluding them, so a format that ONLY allows planeswalkers is by default alienating a significant chunk of the player base to start with. Then, it also alienates a portion of another large chunk of the player base that doesn't care either way about PW commanders, because by limiting it to only PW the ones that aren't interested in running PW commanders themselves (while being ok with others running them) get turned off. I'd even venture that a portion of those who actually want PWs as commanders would be turned off by this, because they don't want ONLY PWs as commanders.

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Post by Kavu Enthusiast » 4 years ago

I don't think what happened to Oathbreaker was special or unique to Oathbreaker. I think it's the same reason all the other EDH variant have died off even when interesting (I personally thought TL was interesting and a place to play lower cmc aggro strategies that just couldn't punch high enough in a 40 life total battle cruiser format).

It kinda seems like the casual player base at large is only really interested in playing one format for the vast majority of its play and any new format or format variant is never *really* competing to share a seat at the table for consistent play so much as it's always competing to displace and replace the current main play style of the average casual player. They want to pick the one they like and play that and keep their headspace in that one format. Even when the said formats are quite distinct from each other and the type of play they offer the player base basically selects for one and it's like watching an allele frequency in a population fix to one variant in real-time. It's even more true when the two formats are similar.

Just look at what happened to 60 card casual. Just look at the Casual 60 forum in this site...just...look at.it (it's sad guys). For a while when it was first spreading EDH was a cool variant we played in my group.for a different game experience than normal. Eventually, it took over basically all LGS play and often seems like only older players have much interest in playing 60 card casual and EDH in tandem because they still have decks they spent years making unique and interesting as any EDH deck, often with ideas or strategies that just aren't executable in EDH (some of my favorite 60 card decks are like this: kavu tribal, 4 color ice age block snow deck, W/U Oriss Grandeur).

60 card casual and EDH are very different in terms of the games you can have and even that wasn't enough to let them coexist in most playgroups people eventually decided they liked EDH better and migrated. It was hard to get most players outside of my kitchen table group to play different variants like Star, Emperor or Hidden Ally and those didn't even require a different deck be built specifically for that variant. Any variant of EDH has to supplant it or is doomed to fade away. Casual players generally like having the one main format they know and aren't super interested in dabbling in multiple casual formats at once. It's just what I've seen over years of play in more than one group.

What saying is I haven't played my Kavu or Oriss decks in about a year or more and I'm sad about it guys.
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Post by Treamayne » 4 years ago

Kavu Enthusiast wrote:
4 years ago
...play different variants like Star, Emperor or Hidden Ally and those didn't even require a different deck be built specifically for that variant..
That's why I've posted the Tribal and Rainbow Stairwell posts in this section, and made suggestions to the Star thread. I miss Star, Emperor, Tribal Legacy, 5 Moons, Rainbow Stairwell, etc.; and that's why I like exploring how to merge them with EDH, since EDH is an easier game to find.
Kavu Enthusiast wrote:
4 years ago
Eventually, it took over basically all LGS play and often seems like only older players have much interest in playing 60 card casual and EDH in tandem because they still have decks they spent years making unique and interesting
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Post by motleyslayer » 4 years ago

The format got a bit of interest in my area over the summer but quickly died off. Mostly people who favoured it for 1v1 games played it and once they lost interest, the format died in my area

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Post by ZenN » 4 years ago

Interestingly, my group is still playing it. We've all got 2+ decks. We've been really enjoying the change of pace, with the lower life totals and being able to actually play aggro. I don't know how much longer we'll keep playing, but for now we're having fun. Our average game night now is generally a handful of OB games fist, then on to EDH.
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Post by darrenhabib » 3 years ago

I don't know what busted things go on in this format, but I read See the Truth and thought of this.

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Post by Vessiliana » 3 years ago

darrenhabib wrote:
3 years ago
I don't know what busted things go on in this format, but I read See the Truth and thought of this.
Thank you for pointing this out! My playgroup still plays Oathbreaker, admittedly less often than Commander, but it is fun for those little decks that I just wasn't satisfied with in Commander. (Arlinn Kord // Arlinn, Embraced by the Moonwas the first one I built.)

My Sir's Jace, the Mind Sculptor Oathbreaker just got a new signature spell!

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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

As someone who's group is still playing OB, I was pretty excited to see See the Truth for sure. Not sure where it's going yet, but I'll definitely be making use of it.
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

I was curious the other day, so I tried to go find the Oathbreaker section of EDHrec. It appears to have been quietly removed.
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Post by lyonhaert » 3 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
3 years ago
I was curious the other day, so I tried to go find the Oathbreaker section of EDHrec. It appears to have been quietly removed.
It still exists. It's just that the obvious link in the top right under Latest News isn't there anymore. Nor do there seem to be any other links. :laugh:
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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

Yeah, I definitely still visit the EDHRec OB section relatively frequently.

It still gets info on new decks being built, because that's all automated, though it doesn't seem to pick up information when existing decks get modified (not sure if the normal EDHRec stuff does that or not...).

The OB section is definitely very lacking in features compared to the main site. It hasn't even gotten the dark theme capability, sadly.
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Post by Hawk » 1 year ago

I am a bit baffled this got WotC approval. I see more discussion still about Tiny Leaders and Pauper Commander than I do about Oathbreaker. EDHRec (not the end all, be all I know) has dropped support for it as of last fall, and hasn't published an article about it since 2020. There is no "meta data" for it on MTGGoldfish. Heck, the actual Oathbreaker website hasn't been updated or had a new article since last October - 6 months ago. The subreddit was mostly a ghost town until last week when this became a recognized format - it is admittedly pretty busy now, so I guess folks are excited?

Just still surprised to see this.

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Post by TheGildedGoose » 1 year ago

I've always liked the idea of Oathbreaker but never got to really play it. I, for one, welcome a new official casual format and am excited to start brewing for it again. I'm a little disappointed that it's multiplayer, though. My gut tells me the format will be dominated by combo, and I just wanna Liliana of the Veil + Hymn to Tourach folks.

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Post by Hawk » 1 year ago

TheGildedGoose wrote:
1 year ago
I've always liked the idea of Oathbreaker but never got to really play it. I, for one, welcome a new official casual format and am excited to start brewing for it again. I'm a little disappointed that it's multiplayer, though. My gut tells me the format will be dominated by combo, and I just wanna Liliana of the Veil + Hymn to Tourach folks.
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This stupid thread caused me to hyperfocus on the format this weekend and yeah, seems like combo is the way. Starting with two cards in the command zone, one of which is an instant or sorcery, makes it very easy to do stupid things and the ban list is very loose. I think unless you very carefully cultivated a playgroup, it defaults to aggressive combos that win turn 4 or 5 pretty fast. In my own research I feel the top dogs are probably:

- Ashiok, Dream Render + Vampiric Tutor or Scheming Symmetry: This seems like the best shell for Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation. Ashiok is very good at disrupting some of the other big combo decks, and I think the superior commander compared to Kaito Shizuki, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, or adding a color for Aminatou, the Fateshifter or Geyadrone Dihada. I think a tutor as the Signature is better than just having Demonic Consultation as the signature, since it makes the deck more flexible and resilient to hate cards like Meddling Mage or Declaration of Naught. This deck should be able to more or less guarantee a turn-4 win without any moxen and likely with counterspell protection and is the "bad guy".

- Wrenn and Six + Crop Rotation: The other "bad guy", Wrenn comes down faster than any walker in the format and having Crop Rotation in the command zone lets you play every busted land synergy strategy without having to run almost any other tutors in your '58. Being a land-focused deck makes the deck fairly hard to hate out. Primary win is Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage, but the deck can also StripLock folks, grind Field of the Dead and Life from the Loam value, win with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle + Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, and more.

- Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler + Glimpse of Nature: A newcomer compared to the other two - Elfball. Tyvar gives your mana dorks haste, and Glimpse in the command zone makes it easy to go off and spam cards until you find a card that makes 4+ mana in a shot (Priest of Titania, Wirewood Channeler, etc.) at which point you can win with whatever you want. This is probably the fastest deck in pure goldfish mode, but also the most fragile of these three.

I've seen many claims of other good combo decks, but at least in my total theorycraft I struggle to believe that a lot of the others I've seen (the biggies being Jace, Wielder of Mysteries + Paradigm Shift, Ral, Storm Conduit + Expansion // Explosion, and Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded + Jeska's Will) are as fast, consistent, and resilient as those three pillars (although I haven't spent as much time on the "Will as Signature Spell" gimmick, and I do wonder if that deck with Wrenn instead of Tibs at the helm is a real contender)

If you do want to disrupt folks, I think the best shell to do so might be Chandra, Torch of Defiance + Price of Progress. Price pressures Wrenn immensely, and it's very easy to pack the deck with hate for the other two decks (hating Tyvar admittedly is much easier than hating Ashiok Thoracle). I had thought the true villain of the format might be Narset, Parter of Veils + Windfall, and I do think that deck is the fun police that prevents anyone from getting to just jam Huatli, Warrior Poet dinosaurs or Ugin, the Ineffable Eldrazi or Venser, the Sojourner blink or whatever, but every deck I just mentioned except maybe Tyvar is very resilient to Narset and the Windfall lock (and for Narset vs Tyvar it is totally down to who's on the play and who has the best draw, so Narset by no mean hard counters him). Wrenn fishes lands back out of the yard and is tutoring most of the time, Ashiok is spamming tutors too, and Chandra focuses on impulsive draw that skirts Narset's text as well. It also wouldn't stop a deck with Jeska's Will as the signature for the same reason, and only slows down but doesn't stop the JaceShift deck.

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