MTG Salvation

I've been having fun tinkering with Oathbreaker lists, so here's another one!

Here's the plan:

• Play hatebears, beat faces.
• Use Teferi, Time Raveler's +1 to cast Day's Undoing at the end of your opponents turn.
• Use Smothering Tithe with Day's Undoing to make a ton of mana.
• Use Alms Collector with Day's Undoing to strip hands.
• If you need/want to, lock out the game with Teferi, Time Raveler + Knowledge Pool.

I've chosen a number of generally good hatebears, but it would be reasonable to tweak that list based on meta calls, personal preference, etc.

As always, questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome.

Updated the list with some changes after having played a few games.

I like Selfless Spirit in this sort of deck. It stops wraths in a quite devastating way.

Also, perhaps weathered wayfarer - the card is stupid in multiplayer and can, using fetch lands, be very good in duals as well.

Mother of runes is also a great hate bear.

Have you looked at the death and taxes legacy deck? It is in essence mono-white hate bears.dec and some lists may have some other suggestions.

Aether vial is a common card in hate bear decks.

I do not like Geist of Saint Traft too much, since he does not do anything except on offense and he dies too easily there (from my pov).

Selfless Spirit isn't a bad card, by any means, but the problem with something like that is that they see it coming. They know I have wrath protection sitting on the field, so they play around it. Either they use spot removal on the spirit first and then wrath, or they use a non-destroy wrath (notable that Cyclonic Rift is in just about every blue deck, and Winds of Abandon will be in just about every white deck, among other things). I've played Selfless Spirit and similar cards in the past, and never been as happy with them as I hoped I would be.

Weathered Wayfarer is a fine card, but I never want to see it any time other than turn 1 when I'm not going first. It was a consideration when I was originally putting the list together, but it didn't make the cut.

Aether Vial gets a whole lot worse in a singleton format when you don't have a lot of creatures at the same CMC. Original list had like 10 creatures at 2 CMC, and Aether Vial was in there. As I played the deck, I found I was getting run over too frequently and needed to cut a number of the less universal hatebears for things that were more impactful. Turns out there are a ton of aggressive decks in this format, and I could neither race them nor hold them back sufficiently.

Geist of Saint Traft was a recent addition and I've actually been super happy with it. Having one person he can attack into and throwing the angel elsewhere is pretty common, and he holds a sword like a champ.

While legacy Death and Taxes is a fine place to look for some amount of inspiration, as well as other hatebears/stoneblade/tempo sorts of decks, it's important to note a few things:

• While it plays a lot more like legacy/modern than commander, this is still a singleton, multiplayer format. You've got multiple opponents to deal with, and don't have the reliability/consistency of multiple copies of a card, and there are many cards that are only good because you can play them in multiples.
• Many of the choices made in those sorts of decks are specific meta calls, intended to answer specific threats with a heavy presence in their respective formats. Many of those choices don't apply here and must be taken with a grain of salt.

That said, when I first assembled this list I definitely began with many of the cards found in those decks as a starting point. Play time and tweaking has brought it to where it is now.

If you are in multiplayer in not-green, weathered wayfarer should be active nearly all the time. I play it a lot in duels and typically it will win on ca alone if left unanswered, even if I am going first and even if I do not get it turn 1 (admittedly, I often end up building around land tutoring, so it should perhaps not be too surprising), because of fetchlands and similar.

Quote from Reaper9889 »

If you are in multiplayer in not-green, weathered wayfarer should be active nearly all the time.

That is absolutely true for Commander, but significantly less so for Oathbreaker. Even if it were active 90% of the time, it still wouldn't be good enough. If it put the lands into play it would be a different story.

The card is fine in mono white where you need all the card advantage you can get, but that's just not the case here. Especially not with Day's Undoing in the command zone.