In my last “New Perspectives” article I went over what was basically a midrange “goodstuff” build of Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord/Brought Back, which you can find here. I always love to see what different brews/recommendations players have to share after reading these articles, and there were a lot of different ideas that came up in response to my Sorin list. One of my favorite set of suggestions came from reddit user blaseblaseblah who pointed out that Crypt Rats works very well with Sorin, especially when you have a lot of mana to spare thanks to Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers. Reddit user SignatureSpellBomb also had a lot of ideas for the deck, my favorite recommendations being Martyr’s Cause and Viscera Seer. Thank you to both blaseblaseblah and SignatureSpellBomb for these sweet suggestions!
@max_rf on Twitter also showed me their own Sorin brew (which you can see here) that aims to gain a ton of life and combo off with cards like Bolas’s Citadel. I don’t think I had ever seen a Sorin combo deck running Bolas’s Citadel before, so my thanks to @max_rf for sharing their list with me!
For this week’s article, we’ll be taking a look at a deck with a much more focused strategy/theme in mind. Ikoria’s limited environment introduced a variety of two-color subthemes based around specific keywords, including a green/white subtheme built around vigilance. Since many players consider vigilance to be one of the strongest keywords in Oathbreaker, I decided to take a stab at building “vigilance tribal” in Oathbreaker.
The Oathbreaker & Signature Spell
The reason that vigilance is such a strong keyword in Oathbreaker is because being able to attack and defend simultaneously is one of the most powerful things you can do in the format, at least when it comes to creature-based strategies. With only having a starting life total of 20, it can be pretty easy to take out an opposing player fairly quickly; however, this also means it can be very easy for you to get knocked out by the rest of the table if you’re not careful. On top of that, many Oathbreaker decks usually aim to keep their Oathbreakers on the table for as long as possible, and that often requires some amount of on-board defense. It only makes sense that a keyword like vigilance would thrive in this type of format.
The “vigilance tribal” theme introduced in Ikoria is limited to green and white, but I’ve decided to add blue to the mix this time around. This choice is entirely based on the fact that Tamiyo, Field Researcher seems like the perfect Oathbreaker to put at the helm of this strategy. Tamiyo herself can fit into almost any archetype, but her +1 ability is especially well-suited to a deck full of vigilant creatures because of the way her ability is worded. If you target your own creatures with the ability, you’ll get to draw a card whenever they deal combat damage on offense or defense until your next turn, and this deck’s offense is its defense, and vice versa. Tamiyo is a card-advantage-machine in this deck, and will almost certainly win the game on the spot if we manage to keep her alive until she can ultimate.
Although I thought of Tamiyo almost immediately when brewing around this deck idea, it took me much longer to think of what kind of Signature Spell would be best suited for this type of strategy. I considered putting in some generically strong protection effect, like Heroic Intervention or Flawless Maneuver, and while I’m sure that would prove to be effective, it doesn’t seem like a very fun option to me. I eventually settled on Chord of Calling after I realized that vigilance works nicely with convoke, and being able to tutor for and cheat in a creature at instant-speed opens up some interesting deck building possibilities.
The Deck
Decklist: Tamiyo the Vigilant
The game plan of this deck is pretty straightforward: play some early mana ramp, run out as many creatures with vigilance as we can, play Tamiyo, profit. Instead of running a multitude of ways to give our entire board vigilance, this deck’s creature-base is almost entirely made of creatures that already have vigilance on their own. I found this deck building restriction to not be particularly harsh either, given vigilance’s inherent strength in Oathbreaker.
I’ve also dedicated a few spots in the creature-base to creatures that could potentially be handy to search up with Chord of Calling at instant-speed. I wouldn’t go as far as to call this list a “toolkit deck” like many other Chord of Calling lists, and we aren’t running any game-winning combos either; however, this deck does have a few tricks up its sleeve that we can use to catch our opponents off guard.
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 Vigilant: Ikoria has given us two main payoffs for playing this archetype, those being Alert Heedbonder and Frondland Felidar. The former is a great source of incidental lifegain that will keep us nice and healthy, and the latter with help us get around blockers or preemptively tap down opposing attackers. Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate is another card from Ikoria that is perfect for this strategy since we can use her to make a beast token with vigilance every turn. We can also make smaller vigilant tokens with Brimaz, King of Oreskos, who is a pretty efficiently-costed threat himself. Faeburrow Elder is a perfect mana dork for a three-color deck like this one, and Taranika, Akroan Veteran can turn the rest of our mana dorks into large, vigilant threats as well. Sylvan Advocate is an early-game creature that can grow into a pseudo-Tarmogoyf, once we have enough lands in play, and its static ability will also buff our Celestial Colonnade whenever we choose to animate it.
- The Staples: There’s a surprisingly high number of strong creatures in Oathbreaker that coincidentally have vigilance stapled onto them. Loyal Unicorn, Cliffside Rescuer, and Baird, Steward of Argive are all strong options for white creature-based strategies that happen to have vigilance, and Questing Beast also has vigilance among the rest of its novel’s-worth of rules text. Heart of Kiran is essentially a two-mana Serra Angel in the right list, and it pairs wonderfully with planeswalkers like Gideon Blackblade and Elspeth, Knight-Errant. We can also make our variety of vigilant creatures even more threatening with the help of some staple cheap power buffs like Shadowspear and Rancor.
- The Spice: I’ve also decided to use this deck as an opportunity to try out a few other creatures with vigilance that I haven’t played with as often. Cavalier of Dawn can be used to get rid of whatever pesky nonland permanents our opponents may have, including an opposing Oathbreaker. Brightling is one of the most versatile creatures in the deck due to its various activated abilities, and Stoic Angel is the perfect creature to have in a deck built around vigilant creatures. Although it doesn’t technically have vigilance, Derevi, Empyrial Tactician can untap itself whenever it enters the battlefield or deals combat damage, and we can use any other untap triggers to untap our lands for some extra mana. Selfless Spirit doesn’t have vigilance either, but I’m including it in this deck as a potential instant-speed search target for Chord of Calling. This list is also one of the first decks I’m using to try out the newly-printed Sawtusk Demolisher, a card I expect to see popping up in many more Oathbreaker decks as time goes on.
The Brainstorming:
I haven’t spent quite as much time working on this deck as I usually do before writing an article on one, mainly because building up to this iteration of the list took a surprisingly short amount of time. The general strategy of this deck is very sound, and there’s certainly no shortage of powerful creatures with vigilance to choose from; however, I am still a bit skeptical of a handful of cards in the list, and the deck as a whole doesn’t support Chord of Calling quite as much as I’d like it to. This is mainly due to the triple green in Chord of Calling‘s casting cost, which can be somewhat difficult to pay for immediately after resolving Tamiyo since only around 60% of the creatures in this deck are green. There are also still a lot of card considerations that I simply haven’t been able to try out yet, and I think there may even be room for an additional subtheme in this kind of strategy.
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.
- Cards I’m skeptical of: For the first time in this article series, I’m not actually 100% sold on the Signature Spell chosen for this deck. This particular list isn’t built in a way that supports Chord of Calling very well, but I would also like to avoid running a more generically strong Signature Spell that lacks any real synergy with the deck’s strategy. I’m going to keep Chord of Calling in for now, though if I ever change the Signature Spell I will also likely replace Selfless Spirit with a different protection effect. Spark Double is another creature I’m not certain about running in this list. I initially included as a way to copy Tamiyo and double-up on our card advantage, or even just copy one of our other vigilant creatures. Still, the fact that Spark Double doesn’t actually do anything on its own isn’t very appealing, and I can’t help but think the list would overall be better off just running one more regular threat.
- Cards I cut: In an earlier iteration of this list I actually tried running Keeper of Keys, which may seem like a pretty odd and random inclusion for a vigilance tribal deck. My thought process at the time was that if I was looking to cheat creatures into play at instant-speed with Chord of Calling, Keeper of Keys could actually make a pretty sweet tutor target to cheat in before I untap for my next turn. I ultimately decided that a CMC of 5 was a bit too high of a cost for Chord of Calling with this particular list. I also briefly considered March of the Multitudes as another Signature Spell option since it’s another instant that has convoke; however, aside from having convoke, this spell doesn’t really do anything for this strategy. Chord of Calling can at least be used to get an additional relevant body onto the board, and although putting a few random 1/1 tokens into play isn’t technically a bad effect, it also isn’t exactly what this deck is looking for.
- Cards I may try again: Gorm the Great is another sweet creature with vigilance that was in the first version of this deck, primarily as a way to help our other attackers get through for damage. For now, I’ve decided that the effect isn’t quite worth the cost, especially since it happens to fall at the same spot on our mana curve as our Oathbreaker. Another creature that I was extremely excited to try out in this deck was God-Eternal Oketra, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I try it out again in a future iteration of the deck. Oketra feels a bit awkward in this particular build since five mana is pretty much where our mana curve tops out, which often makes it difficult to get immediate value out of her triggered ability. Even still, on top of creating creature tokens with vigilance, Oketra’s double strike pairs very well with Tamiyo’s +1 ability, so I may just have to try lowering the deck’s mana curve for this one card.
- Other Considerations: If I ultimately decide that Chord of Calling isn’t worth it for this strategy, I could also see myself trying Sprouting Renewal, Ephemeral Shields, or Pack’s Favor as another possible Signature Spell with convoke. I’m also about 99% sure Glare of Subdual should be in this deck, and I’ll likely end up replacing Spark Double with it. Aside from those cards, there’s a whole slough of other possible inclusions that could work in this kind of strategy. There are a number of other generically good creatures with vigilance that I haven’t tried out yet, such as Conclave Cavalier, Herald of the Host, Segovian Angel, Sun Titan, and Untamed Kavu, just to name a handful. I bet it would even be possible to build the deck to have a toughness-matters subtheme with cards like Huatli, the Sun’s Heart, Aerial Responder, Mirri, Cat Warrior, Knight of Obligation, and Arcades, the Strategist. If not, then I wouldn’t mind finding room for Grafted Wargear somewhere (man, it feels like I’m putting that card in all of my Oathbreaker decks lately). Nissa, Who Shakes the World could be another strong addition to this deck, and she would work particularly well alongside Sylvan Advocate. The additional green mana she provides could even make it a bit easier to cast Chord of Calling.
Offense or Defense? Why Not Both?
Vigilance tribal is still a pretty new deck building archetype, but I think the strategy really has legs in Oathbreaker, whether you decide to go Bant or the more traditional green/white route. Since this archetype is still largely unexplored, I’m sure there are plenty of other possible inclusions that I haven’t even thought of. It’s not every day that one gets to experiment with a brand new deck archetype, and I’m excited to see what other vigilance tribal brews players come up with as time goes on.
Have you built any Oathbreaker decks around Tamiyo, Field Researcher? Are there any particular cards you would try out in this kind of deck? Send me your Tamiyo and/or vigilance tribal brews and 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