Hey all! This is my take on a colorless Oathbreaker deck. With an average CMC currently sitting at 2.50, this deck is aimed at being able to compete with the more competetive decks, such as
Ral, Storm Conduit
or
Narset, Parter of Veils
. Let's begin!
Budget Options
The biggest contribution to the total price is
Mishra's Workshop
. Replacing it with a
Wastes
would reduce the cost significantly.
Also
Mox Diamond
can be replaced aswell to lower the collective price
The Gameplan
The game winning plan is to create "infinite" colorless mana. Once that is achieved, we can spend the mana into
Walking Ballista
, essentially machine gunning our opponents life down, regardless of what the collective life total between our opponents is! Since 3 pieces are required to complete the combo, we need to be able to slow down our opponents. We do this, by incorporating an effective stax package. 1/6 of the deck consists of stax pieces. So, it's fairly likely to see some in an opening hand. Since this is a colorless deck. It is also likely that our opponents will focus their control on the other decks that operate faster. This is perfect, because it will give us additional time to assemble our combo pieces and pull off the win!
Infinite Mana Combo Explained
Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth
: Infinite Mana.
1.Have all permanents and any other source of two mana on the battlefield.
2.Tap Basalt Monolith to generate 3 .
3.Spend that mana to activate Basalt Monolith 's untap ability and put it on the stack.
4.Generate two mana from any other source to pay for Rings of Brighthearth triggered ability, copying the untap ability from Basalt Monolith , and putting that copied ability on the stack.
5.Let one untap ability resolve, and tap Basalt Monolith to generate in response to the second untap ability.
6.Let the second untap ability resolve and tap Basalt Monolith to generate for a total of six colourless mana floating.
7.Repeat steps 3-6, using the mana generated by Basalt Monolith to pay for every iteration after the first.
Other Combos
Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth + Sensei's Divining Top
: Go infinite then copy the top's effect. The first top effect will resolve drawing you a card and putting back on library. Second top effect resolves drawing you the top, but you don't put it back on library since it is in your hand and not on battlefield. Repeat to draw your entire deck.
Staff of Domination
+ Infinite mana: Draw your deck.
Metalworker + Staff of Domination
+ 3 artifacts in hand: Infinite Mana, then draw whole deck.
Challenges of being colorless
Speed - There are hardly any relevant colorless instants, our answers come from the abilities of permanents
Lacks cheap tutoring - Cards like planar portal are often too slow (in general artifacts tend to have high cmc compared to coloured counterparts)
Card draw is usually quite mana intensive
Opponents usually pack artifact removal
Artifact based removal can be hard to control
Acknowledging the weaknessed of this build preemptively, will only help the owner piloting the deck. Understanding how and when to interact is a part of learning how to utilize this build efficiently. Since this deck runs on a low total cmc, this consistency of the deck is high, compared to more casual builds. An upside to it being colorless though, is the owner can invest in cards other than the mana-base. Moreover, alot of these cards are "staples" in midrange stax decks. So the cards are reusable in other competive builds. Builds including other formats such as, C-EDH decks.
Dealing with other Competetive Decks
Warping Wail
successfully counters only sorcery spells. Luckily, most of the more competetive decks rely on a "sorcery speed" Signature spell to perform their combo. Some examples would be:
Day's Undoing + Narset, Parter of Veils
Genesis Wave + Nissa, Who Shakes the World
Other powerful, common, combos also can be disrupted by warping wail as well. Combos such as...
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Pestermite
Temur Sabertooth + Wirewood Symbiote
Divergent Transformations + Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
The deck transforms the tokens that
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
creates, into their combo pieces, which are...
Niv-Mizzet, Parun + Tandem Lookout
Tandem Lookout
can be exiled with
Warping Wail
first option of exiling a creature with power and toughness of 1 or less!
When
Silent Arbiter
is on the field, it helps prevent decks that run token generating combos, such as any
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
combo, from auto-winning when assembled aswell.
Synergies with Cruicible of worlds
Strip Mine
or
Wasteland
can be used more than once.
Inventors' Fair
can be replayed to search for our combo pieces
City of Traitors
can be replayed if a new land enters and its sacrificed
Lotus Vale
and
Scorched Ruins
force you to sac untapped lands when they enter the battlefield. With
Crucible of Worlds
out, you get a chance to replay the lands that were sacrificed later on.
If you liked this primer, make sure to +1 upvote it!. Thanks for reading!
