Oathbreaker MTG: rules, deck building and how to play
Oathbreaker is a 60-card multiplayer format led by a planeswalker and a Signature Spell. Deck rules, the command zone tax, starting life and the ban list.
more for each earlier cast from the command zone.In this article
Oathbreaker is Commander’s shorter, faster cousin. You lead with a planeswalker instead of a legendary creature, the deck is 60 cards instead of 100, and you get a second card in the command zone: a Signature Spell you can cast again and again.
The format was created by the players behind weirdcards.org and still has its own rules committee. Wizards now lists it on its official formats page, and the numbers in this guide come from that page and the committee’s site, oathbreakermtg.org.
How Oathbreaker works
Each player brings a 60-card deck made of:
- 1 Oathbreaker: a planeswalker card, starting in the command zone
- 1 Signature Spell: an instant or sorcery, also in the command zone
- 58 other cards: one copy of each, except basic lands
Games are free-for-all for 3 to 5 players, everyone starts at 20 life, and you can attack any opponent. The last player standing wins.
| Oathbreaker | Commander | |
|---|---|---|
| Deck | 60 cards | 100 cards |
| Commander | A planeswalker | A legendary creature |
| Extra command zone card | Signature Spell | None |
| Starting life | 20 | 40 |
| Commander damage | No | 21 |
| Players | Usually 3–5 | Usually 4 |
The Oathbreaker
Your Oathbreaker must be a planeswalker on its front side, so cards that only transform into planeswalkers don’t qualify. Its mana symbols set your color identity: every card in the deck, including the Signature Spell, can only use mana symbols that also appear on your Oathbreaker. Colorless cards are always fine.
That’s the same idea as Commander’s color identity rule (rule 903.4), and it means a mono-red walker like Chandra, Torch of Defiance gives you a mono-red deck.
Like a commander, your Oathbreaker goes back to the command zone if it would go to your hand, library, graveyard or exile, if you choose. Partner planeswalkers work too. Each one brings its own Signature Spell.
The Signature Spell
This is what makes the format feel different. Your Signature Spell is an instant or sorcery inside your Oathbreaker’s color identity, and:
- You can cast it from the command zone only while your Oathbreaker is on the battlefield under your control.
- When it resolves, it goes back to the command zone instead of the graveyard.
- If it would go anywhere else (countered, discarded, exiled), it goes to the command zone instead.
A few pairings show how it plays:
- Chandra with Lightning Bolt: a repeatable 3 damage to any target as long as Chandra survives.
- Narset with Brainstorm: Narset stops opponents from drawing more than one card a turn while you keep digging.
- Liliana with Damnation: wipe the board, and Liliana draws you a card for each of your creatures that dies.
Because the spell only works while your planeswalker is out, opponents attack your Oathbreaker as much as they attack you. Protecting it is half the game.
Command zone tax
Both cards follow the same tax as commander tax: each cast from the command zone costs more for every earlier cast from the command zone that game. The two taxes are counted separately.
So if your Oathbreaker has died twice, it costs 
extra on the third cast. If you’ve cast your Signature Spell three times, the fourth cast costs 
extra. Casting one doesn’t raise the cost of the other.
Starting life and no commander damage
Everyone starts at 20 life, half of Commander’s 40. The committee’s FAQ says the lower total accounts for the fact that your Oathbreaker will soak up a lot of attacks that would otherwise go at you.
There’s also no commander damage rule in Oathbreaker. Even if your planeswalker becomes a creature and attacks, its damage is just damage. For how the 21-damage rule works in formats that do use it, see our commander damage guide. The starting life guide compares Oathbreaker’s 20 with every other format.
Ban list
Oathbreaker uses its own ban list, kept by the rules committee at oathbreakermtg.org. A 60-card deck finds its best cards much more often than a 100-card one, so the list hits fast mana hard: Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Jeweled Lotus, Dark Ritual and the Power Nine are all banned, along with cards like Doomsday, Tinker and Natural Order.
The committee’s last two updates (summer 2025 and February 2026) made no changes. The format also doesn’t use Commander’s brackets or Game Changers list.
Building your first Oathbreaker deck
- Pick a planeswalker that protects itself. Walkers with a +1 that makes blockers or removes threats survive longer, and your Signature Spell only works while it’s alive.
- Pick a Signature Spell you want to cast every turn. Cheap removal, card draw and board wipes all work, because the tax only grows at a time.
- Start around 22–24 lands in 60 cards and adjust after a few games. That’s our rule of thumb, not a format rule.
- Use “your commander” cards. Command Tower and Arcane Signet count your Oathbreaker as your commander.
If you want the same command-zone feel with a lower budget, Pauper Commander is the other big community format. Our formats overview compares both with the rest.
Tracking an Oathbreaker game
You need each player’s life from 20, a tax for every Oathbreaker and one for every Signature Spell. Dice work, but tax is easy to forget after the third time a walker dies.
Lotus lets you set the multiplayer starting life to 20 and gives each player a commander tax counter that goes up 2 per tap, which works for the Oathbreaker. You can also tag the game as Oathbreaker in your game history.
