Pretty cool and unique Oathbreaker combo I THINK I invented. Here's the combo:
- Cast Grist, the Hunger Tide
- Cast Recross the Paths ((((after this, to win on the spot you will need 1 black + 1 of any color, and either the ability to draw 1 card OR a combo piece already in hand))))
- As Recross says "any order," reorder your deck with all remaining insects on top, followed by Dread Return, Songs of the Damned, Yawgmoth's Will, and then Exsanguinate
- Activate Grist +1, milling all your bugs and also Dread Return as the last card, making 15 or so insect tokens
- Cast Dread Return using the Grist tokens, targeting Grave-Shell Scarab
- Pay 1 and sacrifice Scarab to draw Songs of the Damned
- Cast Songs. You need 15 creatures in your yard minimum OR additional fast mana cards you can recast off Will. We'll use 15 creatures to illustrate mana in pool going forward
- Use your extra draw from Conjurer's Bauble, Unbridled Growth, Street Wraith, or Chromatic Sphere to draw into Yawgmoth's Will---8b. If you can't draw but have a tutor in hand, tutoring for Will or Belcher is an option here, Will lets you recast the tutor from grave to find Exsanguinate. Also note that if you had Songs or Will in hand already, you can combo off without needing the extra draw at all, so it is good to tutor for one of these before going off if possible.
- Cast the Will. Down to 12 mana
- Recast Songs from graveyard, up to 26
- Cast Stirge (or bauble, sphere, etc.) from graveyard, and activate to draw Exsanguinate. 23 mana
- Cast Exsanguinate for lethal!
So yeah that's the combo. It might seem overly convoluted and bad, but in practice it's decently reliable and can be very fast, as fast as turn 3 but more consistently turn 4-6. You can go off all at once with 8 mana or do it across turns, all at once is hypothetically safer but playing turn 3 Grist often enables your turn 4 win. And even if you whiff or are interacted with, you still have a massive board and huge Grist who ults for 15+ damage on the next turn. There are some other lines where you tutor for Goblin Charbelcher, or go wide with Grist tokens and reanimate Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest. The biggest weakness of this deck is interaction, for which our only option is pretty much Veil of Summer. It may be worth also running Autumn's Veil but I was really pressed to make cuts. Could possibly trade out the worst tutor, Imperial Seal, but it's tough because seal FINDS the veil. Duress and Unmask are good cards too, and Cabal Therapy probably gets good if you can fit all 3, possibly worth it in a control/combo meta. Oh and there's Xantid Swarm ;) Whatever you do don't cut any bugs!!! There's 17 so you can draw 3 and be safe, and also they are good at dying so there's that. BTW you can add Street Wraith in your stack to add 1 to the creature count. Another funny piece of tech is Gigapede which allows you to discard your Dread Return if it ever ends up in hand, but will cost you a turn. The deck also has some issues with mana screw, we can't run (front facing) lands and are only 2 colors so we are very limited on mana sources. Jeweled Amulet and Blood Celebrant are cards I'd like to try to fit... However since our entire combo is in the command zone, we can mulligan fairly aggressively to find mana.
Now, I'm not saying this is the best most competitive Oathbreaker deck, but I think it's a really hilarious and fun combo and something I've been wanting to try and make with Grist for a while. And it's certainly good enough to win games. I'd rate the power level for this one a solid 8, if 10 represents any given competitive meta list. I think I have this deck pretty well optimized, it's really tight with basically just the combo, tutors, mana, and no flex slots. But as always I'd love to hear feedback and suggestions, especially for any cool new bugs or mana sources I may have overlooked from the newest sets!
