pauper oathbreaker

With a brand new shiny light cast onto the Oathbreaker format over the last few weeks, my Pauper Commander-addled brain immediately started to think “what if I build an Oathbreaker deck but it was all commons.” After all the work that’s gone into developing Pauper Commander, surely there is a framework we can use to build a Pauper Oathbreaker variant as well (spoiler alert – there is). What initially started as a fun little how-do-you-do thought experiment amongst friends has garnered some actual interest from real humans on The Internet. As such, I wanted to write something up to set the stage and help folks get the ball rolling.

Obviously, adapting a format like Oathbreaker into a different context warrants taking a look at the existing rules and adjusting as necessary. For our initial foray into a theoretical Pauper Oathbreaker format, I think we can use the official Oathbreaker rules (found here), with the following changes:

• Your Oathbreaker and signature spell must be uncommon rarity.
• All cards in your remaining 58 must be common, printed at common rarity either in paper or MTGO at some point in Magic’s history.
• The following cards are banned:
  • Mystic Remora
  • Rhystic Study
  • High Tide

As far as the ban list goes, Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study should never see the light of day in a Pauper-based multiplayer context. They are banned in Pauper Commander, and here as well. The official Oathbreaker ban list contains three cards that would otherwise be legal in a Pauper environment – Dark Ritual, Mana Geyser and High Tide. High Tide is the only one that remains banned here.

Dark Ritual is not something that I foresee being an issue in the format. The play patterns that led to its banning in Oathbreaker do not exist here, and I think it’s a reasonable card to allow in this environment. Mana Geyser occupies a similar space, but is markedly different in terms of its power level out of the Command Zone. With signature spells limited to uncommon rarity, Mana Geyser is relegated to main-deck status and therefore not able to just cast itself repeatedly out of the Command Zone, which is what concerns me most. Thus, it’s also a reasonable card to allow.

High Tide, however, does have a few uncommon printings, which would allow it in the Command Zone as a signature spell. Cards that untap lands are already very popular in Pauper Commander, exactly because of cards that increase the mana output of lands. Because of how easy it is, historically, to abuse cards like High Tide, combined with a significantly increased accessibility out of the Command Zone, I think it’s fair to keep High Tide out just to err on the side of caution. Generally speaking, I think it’s a better approach to be a little more conservative when developing an idea like this, and then ease back where we may be able to down the road once it’s been fleshed out a bit more. It’s always easier to loosen the screws than tighten them.

Initially, when conceptualizing a common-centric variant of Oathbreaker, I was hesitant about the power level of uncommon signature spells. On further examination and discussion with folks deeply entrenched in the Pauper Commander community, I came to recognize that the power level deltas we find with uncommon instants and sorceries versus commons is really no different than that of uncommon creatures versus commons, which we see in Pauper Commander. It’s really the same dynamics at play. Additionally, limiting the Command Zone to uncommons, both planeswalker and signature spell, provides a consistent baseline with Pauper Commander, to which Pauper Oathbreaker is linked as a common-centric, singleton, and multiplayer format. Using these restrictions as a common starting point bridges the gap for those wishing to move from one to the other, while also opening up the Command Zone to spells and effects that we don’t even really see in Pauper Commander. Beyond accessibility, one of the key draws of a format like this is the way it allows us to recontextualize elements of the greater card pool, and it’s important that each format has something unique to offer. Between planeswalkers and an uncommon signature spell, I think Pauper Oathbreaker accomplishes this exceedingly well.

And now, the elephant in the room – there are only 21 uncommon planeswalkers. Be not afraid! An overarching theme of Pauper Oathbreaker, as with Pauper Commander, is that restrictions breed creativity. While the planeswalker half of your Command Zone may be limited, it really is the choice of signature spell that adds a unique flavor to your deck. The way I see it, the Planeswalker that you select will lean towards a general strategy or goal, and the signature spell will hone in further and define it in the specific way you want to explore. The decks that I’ve seen in this space so far, while sharing some planeswalkers as their chosen Oathbreaker, differ greatly in design based on the choice of signature spell.

I was able to organize a meeting of the minds for a recorded gameplay video (here!) using these basic rules, and I was pretty pleased with the results. The planeswalkers felt powerful and the signature spells added a really interesting dimension to a rarity restricted format. The entire game clocked in at around an hour, but less due to the gameplay and more due to the four of us being ponderous individuals. Definitely more compact than a normal Pauper Commander game, which was good to see translate down from Oathbreaker and its relationship to Commander. All said and done I’m interested in giving this little project more attention. I am increasingly in need of even more spaces in which to brew, and this one seems pretty sweet.