Now that Commander Legends Top 10 season is over with, I can start getting back to my regular article-writing routine. I kicked off the “Flashback” series just as Commander Legends previews wrapped up, and that article focused on retuning an old Bant Flyers list (article linked here). For this week’s “Flashback” article, I’m digging even deeper into this blog’s past by revisiting a list from my first “New Perspectives” article (which was also only my second article on the blog in general). Y’all know how much I love sacrifice-based shenanigans, so I’m excited to take another look at aristocrats with Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast!
The Old Version
Decklist: Daretti Aristocrats
When you’re talking about aristocrat strategies in Oathbreaker, Rakdos-colored Daretti may not be the first planeswalker that most players will think of; however, when paired with a Signature Spell like Kuldotha Rebirth, he provides plenty of sacrifice fodder to fuel the deck’s main game plan. Like just about any other aristocrats list out there, this deck is looking to use the death of our own creatures to drain/ping our opponents out of the game. This specific deck was actually the first real aristocrats list I had ever built before, both in general and in Oathbreaker specifically. Black/red is a pretty traditional color combination for this style of deck, so the main challenge for me at the time was simply finding the right balance of sacrifice fodder, sacrifice outlets, and sacrifice payoffs.
I’m not going to go over the specifics of the old list as much as I did in the original article, but here are the important cards that I’m keeping in the new version of the deck.
- Sacrifice Fodder: Carrier Thrall, Doomed Dissenter, and Mogg War Marshal will all leave behind extra bodies after they die, giving us even more fuel. We can add even more creatures to the board with Weaponcraft Enthusiast, and these tokens can even be sacrificed to Daretti or our Signature Spell. Ophiomancer can also create a lot of extra fodder over the course of the game as long as we sacrifice our snake token at the end of each turn. Filigree Familiar‘s death trigger doesn’t provide us with any extra damage or bodies, but I’ll never say no to a little extra lifegain and card draw. Even still, our best piece of sacrifice fodder is definitely Vindictive Lich, which is at its most powerful in a multiplayer 20-life format like Oathbreaker.
- Sacrifice Outlets: The best sacrifice outlets we have access to are ones that are free and repeatable at instant-speed, such as Goblin Bombardment, Viscera Seer, and Yahenni, Undying Partisan. These types of cards will allow us to “go off” and deal a lot of damage to the rest of the table out of nowhere when paired with our sacrifice payoffs. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is a similarly-effective sacrifice outlet, and the life loss from his ability will often be counterbalanced by our various drain effects. Other sacrifice outlets like Phyrexian Tower and Priest of Forgotten Gods offer particularly powerful effects, but they can only be activated once per turn. We also have Recurring Nightmare, which acts as both a sacrifice outlet and a means of recursion that will keep the value train rolling. To top it all off, we’ve also got access to a handful of one-time sacrifice outlets like Diabolic Intent, Heartfire, and Spark Harvest.
- Sacrifice Payoffs: We can turn our creatures’ deaths into damage with what I like to call “drainers and pingers”. Creatures like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat will help even out life totals at the table, while other creatures like Hissing Iguanar and Mayhem Devil can throw damage at whatever targets we want. In lieu of those options, we can go digging for more gas with cards like Skullclamp or God-Eternal Bontu (the latter of which is a pretty effective threat, as well). We can even go tall, if need be, by sacrificing a bunch of our creatures to Westvale Abbey to transform it into Ormendahl, Profane Prince!
The Updated Version
Decklist: Flashback Daretti Aristocrats
Similar to the deck in my last “Flashback” article, I ended up swapping out 10 cards with this list. I built the first iteration of this deck not too long after Throne of Eldraine released, and believe me, there have been a lot of new cards printed for sacrifice-based strategies in the year since then. Even after making all of these adjustments, there are over a dozen other cards I would have liked to test out, but I already feel very satisfied with where the updated version stands.
Let’s take a look at the specific cuts and additions I made to the deck, as well as other cards I considered trying out.
- The Additions: As far as new pieces of sacrifice fodder, the two easiest slam-dunk inclusions were Serrated Scorpion and Juri, Master of the Revue. We’re ultimately going to be trying to knock out our opponents via sacrifice-based damage, and these two low-drop creatures can significantly increase our clock. Juri also comes with the additional upside of being a means of planeswalker interaction. I also included Anax, Hardened in the Forge as a new way to up our body-count. Woe Strider is an excellent new sacrifice outlet, as is the even-newer Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools. I especially enjoy how Tevesh can supply fodder or act as a sacrifice outlet as needed. Village Rites was another card I found room for right away, mainly for its instant-speed versatility. For new payoff options, I decided to run Bastion of Remembrance as a “second Zulaport Cutthroat” and Spiteful Prankster as a “second Hissing Iguanar“. We can also try to win the game with Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, who can fill in nicely as sacrifice fodder in the early game. Lastly, I found room for one more basic Mountain in the list to help prevent mana-screw since these other changes upped the deck’s mana curve a tiny bit.
- The Cuts: I quickly decided to cut Dreadhorde Butcher for Juri since it’s usually easier for this deck to grow Juri at various points in the game. I also eventually replaced Pawn of Ulamog with the similarly costed/templated Anax, Hardened in the Forge. Although the Pawn’s tokens have the upside of being able to sacrifice themselves, I’d usually prefer to just create more tokens since we’ll often already have a sacrifice outlet on-board. A lot of the other swaps were also what I’d simply consider “small” upgrades in specific effects; Falkenrath Aristocrat came out for Woe Strider, Falkenrath Noble for the Bastion, Grim Haruspex for Tevesh Szat, and Judith, the Scourge Diva for Spiteful Prankster. I made most of these choices because 1) table-wide drain effects are typically better than targeted ones, and 2) a lot of this deck’s sacrifice fodder ends up being token creatures instead of nontoken creatures. Most of the later cuts ended up being cards with more unique abilities. Reassembling Skeleton comes with the ability to recur itself, but it felt a bit inefficient compared to other cards. As much as I personally enjoy the good old Cauldron Familiar + Witch’s Oven combo, it also felt a bit more “cute” than “effective” due to Oathbreaker’s singleton rule. Plaguecrafter ended up being one of the final cuts simply because the deck really needed an extra land.
- Other Considerations: When looking through the sets released in the last year, it quickly became clear to me that I had no shortage of new options for this particular deck. I never really found room for Keskit, the Flesh Sculptor and Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith, despite how much I enjoy these two new cards. Keskit and Toggo seem like cards that’d be better suited for a deck looking to sacrifice a lot of artifacts and creatures, but this list really only focuses on the latter. As for sacrifice fodder, there were plenty of fine new options that just didn’t quite make th cut this go around; Careless Celebrant, Discordant Piper, Eyeblight Cullers, Fireblade Charger, and Impulsive Pilferer, more specifically. Lampad of Death’s Vigil and Weaponize the Monsters were on the shortlist of powerful new sacrifice outlets to test out, but I had trouble finding spots for both of them (mainly due to the activation costs). Blood Aspirant and Dargo, the Shipwrecker can both become pretty threatening, but I usually try to avoid having my payoffs simply be large creatures (with rare exceptions like Ormendahl). If I had felt like the list needed more recursion, then I would have probably tried out Call of the Death-Dweller or Nightmare Shepherd, but it never really felt necessary.
Daretti, Ingenious Aristocrat
Black/Red Daretti and Kuldotha Rebirth is my personal favorite Oathbreaker + Signature Spell combination, and I’m really glad I got to revisit one of those lists. Writing about sacrifice-based strategies always makes me happy, but it felt especially nice to give this deck another go around. It also felt like a fitting time to do it since The Oathbreaker Thoughtcast has been running for almost a full year now!
This specific style of article is still pretty new to me, so I’m definitely open to more feedback. Make sure to send me your thoughts on the article and decklist on Reddit or on Twitter!
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