Mana Clash, one of my newer article series, is where I take a look at individual deck archetypes and what they can look like in Oathbreaker. It’s been a while since I last wrote for this series, primarily due to Ikoria/C20 previews, but I’m excited to finally get the chance to write one of these articles again. In my last Mana Clash article, which you can find here, I went over creature-token strategies, and this time I’ve decided to go over what different stompy decks can look like in Oathbreaker.
The Archetype
On the surface, stompy decks have a pretty simple and straightforward strategy in mind: play big creatures, attack your opponents, rinse and repeat until your opponents are dead. All stompy decks share this basic goal, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t different flavors of stompy decks out there. Although stompy decks generally look to build up a threatening board of creatures to overwhelm their opponents with, the exact means of doing so can differ from deck to deck.
For example, most green stompy decks run very cheap mana ramp in order to accelerate into their top-end threats as quickly as possible. Other decks use creatures with mechanics like Evolve to build their threats from the ground up. Some stompy strategies utilize creatures that fill the board with tokens and/or buffs your board as a whole, overwhelming their opponents by going both wide and tall, to an extent.
Fortunately for those that enjoy playing these kinds of decks, Oathbreaker is a great home for various types of stompy strategies. The fact that players only start with 20 life means that taking an opponent out the game will often be easier than it would be in a format like EDH. The existence of Oathbreakers/Signature Spells also give stompy players the opportunity to have access to protection effects like Flawless Maneuver or Heroic Intervention in the command zone, making their board that much more resilient. You could also always choose to run a finisher, like Triumph of the Hordes or Tower Defense, as your Signature Spell, giving you a guaranteed way to end a game after you get your board set up.
The biggest weakness of most stompy decks also happens to be its biggest strength: they typically only know how to win via beating their opponents’ faces in, and they’re usually very good at winning this way. However, this narrow focus also means that it can suddenly become very difficult for a stompy player to win if their opponents find a way to keep their creatures in check. A secondary weakness of stompy decks is that if they’re lacking in card advantage, or their means of card advantage is cut off, their creatures can gradually become outclassed as the rest of table deploys their own threats.
Now that we’ve gone over the general archetype, let’s look at the specific builds I have prepared for today.
Build #1: Domri SMASH!
Decklist: Domri SMASH!
Gruul is probably the most classic color combination for stompy decks, and there’s a good reason for that. Green has the biggest creatures, red has the fasted creatures, and both colors have access to many different ways to buff their creatures’ power. This particular gruul list is actually my personal Oathbreaker stompy deck of choice, largely due to its surprising amount of versatility. Domri, Anarch of Bolas brings most of the extra muscle to this build with his static ability, and his +1 ability will help us deploy our threats as soon as possible. Both his -2 ability and our Signature Spell, Domri’s Ambush, give us easy access to means of interaction with our opponents’ threats, which will help ensure that we’re able to push our damage through to our opponents’ faces.
- Redundant Creature Buffs: Even though we have our Oathbreaker to buff our creatures’ power, we’re going to want to have plenty of redundant ways to make our creatures more threatening. Castle Embereth is the perfect land to have when we’re going wide, while Kessig Wolf Run will be handy when we’re trying to go tall. As for other instant-speed tricks, Ghor-Clan Rampager is an efficiently-costed threat that can be used as a targeted pump spell when needed. Rancor is a resilient aura that can make any of our creatures more threatening, and Syr Faren, the Hengehammer will turn any power boosts on him into yet another power boost whenever he attacks. We can use Arlinn Kord to buff one or more of our creatures, depending on which side she’s transformed on, and the added vigilance/haste given by her front side can be particularly useful. Surrak, the Hunt Caller and Khenra Charioteer don’t give our creatures an actual power boost, but the added haste and trample they respectively give to our creatures will still help us close out games even faster.
- Best Buff-Targets: Obviously all our creatures will benefit from our many different power buffs, but there are some creatures in the deck that will especially want the added boost. Both Kari Zev, Skyship Raider and her pal Ragavan will benefit from our board-wide pump effects, like our Oathbreaker’s, and Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin can create a miniature token army with just one or two attacks. We’ll also usually be able to afford to give Gruul Spellbreaker haste in this list since we’ll already have so many incidental ways to raise its power. Even some of our little mana dorks, like Birds of Paradise and Gilded Goose, can easily become legitimate threats when given a little added “oomph”. Even still, my two personal favorite creatures to buff in this deck are definitely Gingerbrute and Tin Street Dodger. These two little guys will often be functionally unblockable thanks to their activated abilities, which will be all the easier to pay for thanks to Domri!
- Late Game Resiliency: Given our narrow, aggressive game plan, we’ll want to have a bit of added resiliency to get us through the late game, when necessary. Earthshaker Khenra and Mother Bear can be exiled from our yard to refill our board with creature tokens, and Flamewake Phoenix can be reanimated as often as needed, so long as we have at least one other creature in play. Being able to refill our hand with more threats can also help us stay in the game, and Domri, Chaos Bringer‘s -3 ability will do so very consistently (with a whopping 31 creatures in this list). Tireless Tracker will turn any extra lands into additional card draw, and Tectonic Giant is a fairly new creature that can provide extra card advantage or damage as needed. Another very nice addition to this list from Theros Beyond Death is Klothys, God of Destiny, a resilient card that will peck away at our opponents’ life and build our own in the process. Hexdrinker is a similarly well-protected late game mana-sink that will quickly become a mini-Progenitus if our opponents can’t answer it immediately.
Build #2: Kiora’s Stampede
Decklist: Kiora’s Stampede
Stompy decks can also be made to have a much higher mana curve, and Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner is the perfect Oathbreaker to put at the helm of this kind of build. Not only will she help us accelerate into our top-end threats, she will also help keep the threats coming thanks to her static ability. The fact that she has a CMC of three means that she also pairs very well with one-drop mana dorks, similar to Domri, Anarch of Bolas. What makes Kiora better suited to this kind of big-mana variant than an Oathbreaker like Domri is the fact that she can untap any permanent, including permanents that tap for more than one mana. As for Signature Spells to utilize in this kind of deck, I can’t think of a better option than Selvala’s Stampede. This six-mana sorcery will allow us to cheat on mana-costs to an obscene degree, and it can easily be cast by turns 3 or 4 in this particular list. To add insult to injury, every creature with power 4 or greater we hit off of our stampede will draw us an extra card thanks to Kiora, meaning we’ll often be left with a full grip of cards even if our opponents manage to answer our massive board.
- Early Mana Ramp: I don’t think I’ve made a list with this many one-drop mana-accelerants before. This deck runs pretty much every one-drop mana dork under the sun, including classics like Birds of Paradise, Gilded Goose, Elvish Mystic, and Llanowar Elves, as well as less common choices like Fyndhorn Elves and Boreal Druid. Even still, the strongest mana-accelerants in this deck are, by far, Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, and Wild Growth. These three cards are specifically what can enable a turn-3 Selvala’s Stampede in this list, and they are without a doubt what this deck most wants to see on turns 1 and 2. The downside of having all of these mana dorks is that we can hit them randomly off of our Signature Spell, but I’ve found that Selvala’s Stampede is still very powerful in this deck even when we only hit a few large threats off of it.
- Redundant Card Advantage: Even though we’ll be drawing plenty of extra cards off of our Oathbreaker, having access to other sources of card advantage certainly won’t hurt. Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath and Keruga, the Macrosage have become infamous in Standard as of late, and I’d say they’re pretty strong inclusions for pretty much any Kiora deck out there. Stormsurge Kraken is another card-drawing threat that isn’t nearly as well-known, but it’s a very solid addition to the middle of our mana curve. We can also use Temur Sabertooth to bounce our creatures, which will save them from removal and give us the chance to replay them to draw more cards, even more so when we have The Great Henge in play. Cards like Prophet of Kruphix and Vivien, Champion of the Wilds will even give us the opportunity to replay these creatures at instant-speed, making it even easier for us to play around removal.
- Other Notable Threats: While the Domri deck aims to be low to the ground, this deck aims to overrun our opponents with giant monstrosities. Questing Beast and Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma are two of our lowest-costing threats, and either one of them can still do a lot of damage on their own. I would also consider Ghalta, Primal Hunger to be another low-cost threat in this deck since she’ll rarely cost more than four mana in a typical game. Just a bit higher on our mana curve is Bioessence Hydra, which can grow to be very large, even when our only planeswalker in play is Kiora. Other creatures, like Aetherling and Simic Sky Swallower, are here specifically because they’re both very difficult to answer and very effective at getting through for damage. Still, you can never be too careful, so we’re also running Vigor, Thunderfoot Baloth, and God-Eternal Rhonas just to make sure our stampede is deadly enough. Fittingly enough, this deck also plays Kiora Bests the Sea God as an additional way to help ensure our massive monsters meet as little resistance as possible.
#3: Royal Stompy
Decklist: Royal Stompy
It’s not every day you see a stompy strategy outside of green, but it certainly isn’t unheard of either. When it comes to blue/red decks, most players tend to think of spellslinger/prowess strategies, but that’s not the kind of game plan this particular deck is running. The second +1 ability on The Royal Scions is perfect for a beatdown deck since it can turn most any creature into a sizable threat in combat. Having the option to loot with their first +1 ability can also be helpful, especially when it’s paired with creatures in blue/red that care about us drawing extra cards. Both of these abilities will gradually work The Royal Scions up to the eight loyalty needed for their final ability, which probably won’t take too long since they start at a whopping five loyalty. As for a Signtuare Spell to play with this dynamic duo, I decided to go with Thud, after much consideration. It can be surprisingly easy to build up the power on some of our creatures in this deck, especially with support from The Royal Scions, making Thud a nice burn spell that can be used to remove opposing Oathbreakers or finish off an opponent entirely. It is a bit unfortunate that Thud is a sorcery, unlike its cousin Fling (which is also in this deck), but I ultimately settled on Thud for the Signature Spell because of its lower mana-cost.
- Creature-Threats: Green may be the color with the most access to large, mana-efficient threats, but red and blue have their fair share of options as well. Anax, Hardened in the Forge provides us with a bit of insurance against opposing removal and he can become quite the threat himself, especially when he’s buffed up by our Oathbreaker. The static power-buff on Unchained Berserker makes it another great target for The Royal Scions, and it just so happens to have protection from one of the strongest colors in Oathbreaker. Thunderbreak Regent may seem like a bit of a random inclusion at first glance, but it makes a nice top-end threat for our mana curve given its evasion and static ability. We’re also running some creatures, such as Taurean Mauler, that don’t start out very large but grow over the course of the game. Faerie Vandal, Chasm Skulker, and Nadir Kraken become larger as we draw more cards, meaning they’ll pair particularly well with our Oathbreaker’s first +1 ability.
- Non-Creature Threats: Even though this deck isn’t a prowess strategy, it still has its fair share of noncreature threats. Riddleform, Smuggler’s Copter, and Heart of Kiran are the most mana-efficient cards in this category, and they all make great targets for The Royal Scions. Wandering Fumarole makes another fine target for our Oathbreaker, though it is more of a “last resort” option. Other cards, like Drake Haven and Improbable Alliance, will help us turn all of our looting effects into more of a board presence. Claim the Firstborn isn’t technically a “threat”, but it does allow us to temporarily take control of an opponent’s threat. Although this spell doesn’t have any particularly notable synergy with our Oathbreaker, it does turn into a very nice removal spell when paired with Thud.
- Graveyard Utility: With all the looting effect we have in this deck, we’re going to want to have cards that we’ll actually want to discard. Flamewake Phoenix and Phoenix of Ash are two flying threats that we can easily cheat back into play from our graveyard, making them great targets for our Oathbreaker and decent sacrifice fodder for our Signature Spell. Squee, Goblin Nabob is another creature we won’t mind discarding since he’s essentially a repeatable “free” discard. This deck also runs a few flashback spells for us to pitch when needed, such as Artful Dodge, Echo of Eons, as well as Faithless Looting itself. We can even turn discarded lands into extra value by using them to fuel Hostile Desert, which is yet another potential target for our Oathbreaker.
Shared Cards
Here’s a quick overview of what notable cards each of the lists share with each other.
- Domri & Kiora: Once Upon a Time, Arboreal Grazer, Birds of Paradise, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Gilded Goose, Llanowar Elves, Questing Beast, and Surrak, the Hunt Caller
- Domri & The Royal Scions: Lightning Bolt, Bonecrusher Giant, and Flamewake Phoenix
Stomps Here, Stomps There, Stomps Everywhere
Experimenting with all these different kinds of stompy shells was both very interesting and surprisingly challenging for me. Aggressive decks can be a bit more thought-intensive than some players give them credit for, particularly when it comes to sequencing. This factor can make these types of decks a bit more difficult to pick up, but in my experience it also makes the end result all the more satisfying.
Have you played any stompy decks in Oathbreaker? What planeswalker do you/would you play and build a stompy deck around? Make sure to share your thoughts and brews with me in the comments 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