Magic: The Gathering has spawned many variant formats developed by the community. Commander is by far the most famous, now an official format with wide product support. Some would say this has done more harm than good, but that is neither here nor there. Oathbreaker is another format created much more recently, and while it is acknowledged on the official Magic: the Gathering website, they still link to its independent community page.

Key Concepts

Similar to standard 2-player competitive Magic, decks contain 60 cards and players start with 20 life.

Like Commander, this is designed for 3-5 players in a free-for-all multiplayer game, decks are singleton aside from basic lands, and the command zone holds cards available for the entire game with an increasing cost each time they are re-cast. Color identity also defines the cards allowed for deck construction.

The special rules here include selecting a planeswalker card as the titular Oathbreaker, plus an instant or sorcery card as their "signature spell." Like the Oathbreaker planeswalker, this signature spell lives in the command zone and returns there after it is cast. Both cards can then be cast again at a cumulative cost of an additional two generic mana for each previous time it has been cast.

Clear as mud? Here is the official quick rule summary.

My Deck

I haven't played this format before, so this is untested, but I have enough experience to think this will be at least functional if I avoid all the myriad mistakes I've made in the past. Any mistakes here should be new and exciting!

I decided to use Chandra to build a red burn deck. I like aggressive red spellslinger decks. I've spent a lot of the last couple years playing around with other win conditions, and they're fun and all, but sometimes you just need to set everything on fire!!!

Anyway, I settled on Chandra, Pyromaster because:

A. Mana cost 4 is reasonably reliable in red compared to higher cost versions of Chandra,

B. I already own a copy of it, and,

C. I thought it would be fun and thematic to build a deck with many cards which directly reference her. I have about nine of those in the deck so far.

I'm less certain about the best signature spell for this, but for now, I'm using Chandra's Ignition, mainly because it has her name on it, and it might be nice to have a board wipe on hand in the command zone. Chandra's Triumph might be better since it can take out an opponent's Oathbreaker, just for one example. I'll need to actually play this a few times and see what works best.

You can see my entire deck on Moxfield. Have you played this format? If not, would you give it a try?Share your thoughts about the deck, the format, etc. in the comments!