Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about King of the Oathbreakers!

King of the Oathbreakers is a four mana 3/3 with flying and whenever the King or another Spirit you control becomes the target of a spell, they phase out and when the King or another Spirit you control phases in, you create a 1/1 Spirit creature token with flying.

Phasing in is an interesting mechanic, because it isn’t quite exile because your tokens don’t disappear like they were exiled and it does not trigger enters the battlefield effects, but it is a form of protection. The King has an ability similar to old Illusion creatures, but with the upside of making tokens.

Ideally we are looking for ways to phase out our Spirits out and bring them back to ever increase the size of our Spirit army.

The first thing we need is a way to get a bunch of Spirits into play, and there are plenty of ways to get that done.

Invasion of Tolvada//The Broken Sky can serve us well because not only does it bring back a permanent from the graveyard into your hand on the front side, but it can be an anthem to our creature tokens that also gives lifelink and makes a new Spirit token at the beginning of your end step on the back side.

As far as utility Spirits come to mind, Guardian of Faith is a way to phase your board because it can target your Spirits, which will phase them out any way, as well as your non-Spirit creatures from a board wipe.

Divinity of Pride is a Spirit that can get huge immediately because the Commander starting life total is 40, Kyoki, Sanity’s Eclipse to exile a card from an opponent’s hand, and Selfless Spirit if you need a way to protect your creatures from a board wipe.

The tricky part in making this massive Spirit army is finding cards that can target multiple creatures you control that won’t have a significant downside to you casting it.

Scapegoat is a decent enough card to bounce your own things, but in this deck it reads as a one mana instant that phases all of your creatures because it targets them, which I believe triggers the abilities of the King and the Spirits first before resolving, meaning you lose none of your Spirits and don’t need to recast them.

Same with Heaven’s Gate, another one mana instant that changes to color of one or more target creatures, Remedy prevents the next 5 damage to any number of targets, and Embolden does it for 4 damage.

There are also generic ways to phase your things out, though those tend to be more expensive. Perch Protection makes you four 2/2 Bird tokens and if you gift an extra turn to an opponent your permanents phase out, your life total can’t change, and you gain protection from everything.

It’s a cheaper Teferi’s Protection price wise, but it does have a major downside of being six mana and giving an opponent an extra turn. If you have access to Teferi’s Protection, then that would be the better option but it is pricey.

The downside to all of our things being phased out is that we are opening ourselves open to attacks, but it also means we can play more board wipes to compensate.

Wrath of God is one of the premier creature destruction effects, is cheap to buy and to cast, and prevents regeneration if that matters.

Kirtar’s Wrath also destroys all creatures but if we happen to have Threshold then we get an additional pair of Spirits, Austere Command to be a modal answer for artifacts and enchantments along with creatures, and of course Farewell if we need to get rid of nearly everything.

When our creatures come back, we have access to a plethora of anthems like Long-Forgotten Gohei, Banner of Kinship, and Rally the Ranks. As an additional way to win, we could include Halo Fountain to untap fifteen creatures we control to win the game.

If you really want to have a definitive aggro win, then you can attempt to get Cathar’s Crusade to work since phasing does not remove the counters, but be warned that the math will get frustrating if you have a huge number of Spirits coming in.

King of the Oathbreakers is a neat build around, even if it can become go wide Spirit aggro in its most ideal scenario. Having phasing slowly come back to the foreground as a mechanic is interesting and I’m curious to see where future design space takes it.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual