In my last “Brainstorming” article, I was going over my personal take on a white weenie Oathbreaker deck with Gideon Blackblade/Brave the Elements at the helm, which you can find here. I always like to see what kinds of brews and card recommendations pop up in response to these articles, and Reddit user blaseblaseblah had a number of interesting ideas for other possible inclusions in the Gideon list. They pointed out that the Exalted mechanic (example, Sublime Archangel) pairs fairly well with Gideon’s +1 ability, along with other possible inclusions like Angelic Exaltation, Precinct Captain, Grateful Apparition, Slith Ascendant, Lightwielder Paladin, Wandering Champion, and Blinding Angel. Thanks for all the sweet card suggestions, blaseblaseblah!
For this week, we’ll be taking a look at a deck with a very different strategy in mind. This list is primarily a self-mill deck, which is an archetype I actually haven’t experimented with very much yet in Oathbreaker. Tinkering around with this deck has been an interesting experience, and I’m mostly satisfied with how it’s turned out thus far.
The Oathbreaker & Signature Spell
The two most popular Blue/Green Oathbreakers on EDHrec, at the moment, are Nissa, Steward of Elements (188 decks) and Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner (177 decks), but this list is built around the slightly-less popular Tamiyo, Collector of Tales (121 decks). This iteration of Tamiyo is very distinct from the other versions of Tamiyo, as well as from the other various options for Blue/Green Oathbreakers. Her static ability provides some incidental protection from discard and sacrifice effects, but this deck cares more about her loyalty abilities. Tamiyo’s +1 ability is particularly key to this deck’s strategy, and her -3 ability pairs with it nicely as a way to regrow any specific card we mill over, if necessary.
Noxious Revival isn’t a Signature Spell I had ever really considered using before, but it actually synergizes pretty well with Tamiyo, Collector of Tales. On top of being able to recur a card milled over by Tamiyo, Noxious Revival can set up Tamiyo’s +1 ability by putting a card on top of our deck for us to name. The fact that it can be used at instant-speed is also very handy, making it a bit easier for us to play around targeted graveyard hate and more difficult for our opponents to play around our recursion.
Noxious Revival‘s mana-cost of one green-phyrexian-mana adds another layer of flexibility to this strategy. There will be plenty of times that we won’t mind paying our Signature Spell’s full cost, but we can also choose to pay 2 life to make it cost one less mana if that’s more convenient for us in the moment. Having said that, we probably won’t be casting Noxious Revival more than once or twice per game, which is totally fine. Noxious Revival is just one more means of recurring cards from our graveyard, not our main enabler or payoff.
The Deck
Decklist: Tamiyo Revival
Besides being broadly defined as a “self-mill strategy”, this deck has an interesting mixture of ramp, goodstuff, and combo elements. We can win games via ramping into large threats, beating down with generically strong creatures, or by getting off an alternate win-condition. With this deck, we can even mill an opponent out of the game if we want to. This odd level of flexibility can make the deck a bit difficult to pilot, but it will also be difficult for our opponents to stop all of our possible avenues to victory.
In case this deck’s design wasn’t already off-the-walls enough, I decided to go one step further by including a 10-card wishboard to pair with Fae of Wishes. My own playgroup allows the use of wishboards as long as we avoid building them for “unfun” reasons. I personally greatly enjoy using 10-card wishboards because of the added redundancy and versatility they can lend to a deck. In this deck’s case, I figured Fae of Wishes could prove to be particularly effective since the discard cost on its activated ability isn’t even necessarily a downside in this type of strategy. It’s also important to note that not all playgroups are okay with this type of house rule, so make sure to check in with your playgroup before bringing this kind of deck to a game night. Worst case scenario, you can always just replace your “wishing” card with one of your wishboard cards when playing with people that don’t like wishboards.
Now that you have a general idea of what this deck is trying to do, let’s look at some of the specific card choices.
- The Self-Mill: Even though our Oathbreaker will usually be doing most of the heavy lifting in this department, it never hurts to run a bunch of redundant enablers. Hedron Crab is one of the most mana-efficient mill creatures ever printed, and it pairs particularly well with other inclusions like Sakura-Tribe Elder. Satyr Wayfinder and Mulch mill ourselves while helping us hit our land drops consistently, as does Life from the Loam. We can also mill ourselves or our opponents from our graveyard by paying Sweet Oblivion‘s escape cost. Millikin and Perpetual Timepiece are a few low-cost artifacts that can be tapped to repeatedly mill ourselves over the course of a game. Although it isn’t technically “self-mill”, Frantic Search is a way to fill our graveyard that functionally costs zero mana.
- The Staples: This deck is running a lot of payoffs that you would expect to see in this kind of strategy. Thassa’s Oracle, Laboratory Maniac, and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries are all alternative means of winning the game that are easy to achieve in this type of self-mill deck. We can also win the game through regular means with creature-threats like Tarmogoyf and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath. Splendid Reclamation doesn’t immediately win us the game, but it can set us up to win on our next turn, especially when it’s paired with the likes of Field of the Dead. We’re also running a few other ways to turn our self-mill into more solid card advantage, such as Search for Azcanta/Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin and Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy/Jace, Telepath Unbound.
- The Spice: They may not be quite as beefy as Tarmogoyf, but Nimble Mongoose, Werebear, and Gnarlwood Dryad are all decent low-cost creatures that get larger after we start milling ourselves. We can create a similarly large creature token when we eternalize Champion of Wits, and Emrakul, the Promised End is a naturally large threat that can easily cost as little as seven mana once this deck gets going. A lot of our creatures don’t have any natural form of evasion, but we can give all of our creatures evasion by milling over Wonder. Meeting the four-types requirement for delirium obviously isn’t very difficult for this list, so Traverse the Ulvenwald is a handy tool we can use to find many of our finishers. If we’re ever in a situation where we don’t want to completely mill ourselves out, we can use Psychic Spiral or Echo of Eons to shuffle our graveyard into our deck and start the self-milling process all over again.
- The Wishboard: Constant Mists and Maze of Ith are two cards we can use to protect ourselves during combat, and we can quickly turn combat around on our opponents with the help of Reins of Power. As far as spot removal goes, we have Reality Shift to take care of creatures and Imprisoned in the Moon to neutralize opposing Oathbreakers. Cyclonic Rift can also be used as a targeted bounce spell when we aren’t using it as a one-sided board wipe, and Primal Command is a swiss army knife of a spell that can also be used to remove opposing Oathbreakers. If we need to dig a bit deeper into our deck, we can use Drawn from Dreams to go seven cards deep and partially refill our hand. For a bit of added redundancy, we also have The Mending of Dominaria for more self-mill/recursion/ramp and we have Rude Awakening as yet another possible win-condition.
The Brainstorming:
I’ve had a lot of fun brewing with this deck, though I can’t help but wonder if there’s still something missing from the overall list. I’ve played my fair share of self-mill decks in a few different formats, but this is the first time I’ve ever restricted myself to only playing blue and green. Not having access to black cards, in particular, has been a very interesting deckbuilding restriction, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some possible inclusions I haven’t heard/thought of. In addition to discussing some other possible inclusions for the list, let’s take a look at the current inclusions that I’m most skeptical of, previous inclusions that I cut from the list, and the cuts that I may end up putting back in the list.
- Inclusions I’m skeptical of: As usual, there are only a few current inclusions I’m not completely sold on. I like the sacrifice and ramp effects stapled to Springbloom Druid, but I think Harrow might be a stronger choice due to the fact that it’s an instant that puts the lands into play untapped. Genesis is a decent source of recursion that’s great to mill over, but I am a bit worried that three mana might be a bit too high of a cost for its ability in this deck. I’m also not entirely sure how consistently useful Pulse of Murasa is in this deck, but the lifegain attached to it is pretty appealing.
- Cards I cut: One of the first cards I tried out and eventually cut from this list is Prophet of Kruphix. I never got the chance to play it in EDH before it got banned, but this list is unfortunately not very well suited for the type of value that Prophet of Kruphix offers, given its somewhat low creature-count. Titania, Protector of Argoth didn’t seem like a great fit either since this deck isn’t really built to repeatedly cycle lands between our graveyard and the battlefield. I also found that this deck doesn’t run enough instants/sorceries to justify playing Rise from the Tides, especially considering the card’s high mana cost. Nexus of Fate is another high-cost spell I used to run, mainly for its shuffle-in effect, but I found it to be clunky and unnecessary. I thought Visions of Beyond might work well in this type of self-mill strategy, but getting 20 or more cards into our graveyard quickly can be a challenge even for this kind of deck. Disallow was also in a previous iteration of this list as a piece of interaction, but it has since been replaced by Fierce Guardianship.
- Cards I may try again: There was a long period of time that I ran Marit Lage’s Slumber and snow-covered basic lands as another way to win after getting off a Splendid Reclamation. At some point, I decided it was a little too “cute” to justify keeping it in the list, but I certainly wouldn’t mind trying it out again, even if I only put it in the wishboard. Centaur Vinecrasher is another creature-threat I’ve tried out, and if I find that the deck needs to be able to get more bodies on the ground then it’ll probably be the first creature I try to add in. Given that this deck is a pretty dedicated self-mill strategy, I should almost certainly find room for Golgari Grave-Troll. I honestly can’t completely remember why I cut it out of an earlier version of the deck, especially since it’s such an effective way to mill over a lot of cards in a short amount of time.
- Other considerations: Another dredge card I may try to find room for is Golgari Brownscale, given how strong incidental lifegain is in Oathbreaker. It isn’t uncommon to run some number of wheel-effects in these types of decks, so Windfall is another card I may want to consider. Ethereal Forager is a new creature from Commander 2020 that seems like it could fit fairly well in this kind of strategy, though I’m unsure if it’s actually a necessary inclusion. Another card from Commander 2020 that I wouldn’t mind trying out is Obscuring Haze, if I could manage to find room for it. Long-Term Plans is another spell that’s paired fairly often with Tamiyo, Collector of Tales that I may try out in the 58 at some point. If I ever decide to run snow-covered permanents in the list again, I’ll probably also try running Ice-Fang Coatl just as a solid blocker. I could also see myself running Ramunap Excavator, Tireless Tracker, and/or Tatyova, Benthic Druid if I ever decide to lean a bit more into the deck’s ramp/lands subtheme. Oko, Thief of Crowns is another obviously powerful possible inclusion, even if it doesn’t really have any synergy with the rest of the deck.
Not Your Run-Of-The-Mill Oathbreaker Deck
It’s been a very interesting experience to tinker around with a non-black self-mill deck. I’ve especially enjoyed messing around with all the different ways the deck can win, as well as figuring out when and how to best utilize Noxious Revival in tandem with Tamiyo’s +1 ability.
Have you tried brewing a self-mill deck around Tamiyo or any other planeswalker in Oathbreaker? Are there any particular cards you’d try out in this kind of list? Send me your brews/suggestions in the comments or on Twitter, and I’ll highlight my favorite responses at the beginning of my next “Brainstorming” article!
About the author: My name is Alex Enders. I am a college student that’s been playing MTG for almost eight years, though I only recently began experimenting with writing content. My personal formats of choice are Oathbreaker, EDH, and draft. My other interests include music, education, and most things nerdy. You can find me on Twitter (@AAAEnders) or email me at aenders2112@gmail.com