Over the past year or so, Pauper Commander (PDH) has become one of my preferred ways to play Magic: the Gathering. I’ve always been a big advocate of fan-designed formats as well as multiplayer games and PDH provides the best of both worlds!
If you haven’t tried out the format yet… I highly recommend checking out this weekend’s RIW Pauper Commander PDH Championship event in Livonia, MI. I played last year and it was an absolute blast.
Here’s all the details for this upcoming weekend’s festivities:
Also, a reminder I’ll be doing PDH playtesting with PDH players who are traveling into town for the event on Friday evening. So, feel free to drop in and get some games in before the big event on Saturday.
TRYING OUT PDH? HOW DOES IT WORK?
What’s stopping you from trying out PDH…? If you’re not playing, my guess is that you don’t have a deck… yet. The good news is that unlike other, more established multiplayer formats the cost of entry to build a deck is relatively low and the format is extremely Brewer Friendly and fosters a lot of creativity. 🙂
Before I get ahead of myself and jump into my latest deckbuild, let’s take a second and briefly discuss what makes PDH unique or different from traditional EDH.
1. YOUR COMMANDER CAN BE ANY UNCOMMON CREATURE (Doesn’t have to be Legendary)
2. 99 CARD SINGLETON DECK (Every card must have a printing at Common)
3. STARTING LIFE TOTAL IS 30 (and 16 Commander Damage)
4. RHYSTIC STUDY & MYSTIC REMORA ARE BANNED
Essentially, the format delivers exactly what it promises: a version of EDH that is played out with Commons (and an Uncommon Commander).
In today’s article I’ll be walking you through my approach to building my latest deck, Marionette Apprentice as a guide to getting started and bringing your own PDH ideas to life on the Battlefield.
First things first, you’ll need to pick your endboss to take into battle…
My advice for getting started is to try and identify your favorite style of deck and go from there. Since the cardpool is limited to Commons, the tools we have access to are not nearly as objectively powerful as traditional Commander, which means the viability of a wider array of archetypes tend to be powerful.
For instance, The Marionette Apprentice deck is the fourth PDH deck I’ve built from scratch and I’m still on the fence about which Commander I’m going to play! It’ll likely boil down to what I’m feeling on the morning of the 27th after my playtest session at the shop Friday Night.
If you want to check out a few more decklists to get a feel for deckbuilding, here’s my Gauntlet:
Each of my decks represents a style of play that I have a fondness for from my years as a tournament Mage. My only regret is I can’t play all four!
Anybody who read my articles from CFB back in the day knows that I’m a huge fan of playing Mono Black decks in both Pauper and EDH and so building one for PDH has been on my bucket list for a while. I toyed with a few different Commander options but ultimately none spoke to me until I saw Marionette Apprentice on the MH3 Spoiler. What a fun Commander to build around for multiplayer!
Its ability to drain each player repeatedly makes it a strong linchpin card to build around.
Step 1: Pick two or less colors and a style of gameplay you enjoy.
Step 2: Find a powerful Uncommon to build around.
One thing that I find sort of unique about PDH is that the Commander is perhaps even more important than it is in even traditional EDH. A PDH Commander tends to be the single most important game piece in the 100 card deck. I observe this is because you only get access to a single Uncommon (and always have access to it!) So what you put in the Command Zone isn’t just one’s signature spell but also typically the most powerful and synergistic one you bring to the table!
Once you’ve settled on a style of deck to play and found a spicy Commander to enhance the strategy, the last step is to put together the 99 card pile to go around it.
Marionette Apprentice is a pretty straightforward build around card in the sense that what we’d want to put around this Commander is a robust cast of creatures and sacrifice synergies that take advantage of the Commander’s static ability to drain hit points from all opponents.
Here’s what I’m currently jamming:
Mana Curve for Marinotte Apprentice:
CMC = 0 → 34
CMC = 1 → 30
CMC = 2 → 24
CMC = 3 → 6
CMC = 4 → 4
CMC = 5 → 2
I’m a big fan of efficiency and consistency so I try to keep the CMC’s as lean and tight as I possibly can in any multiplayer deck, but especially so in PDH.
“Pauper” isn’t code for weak, or slow, gameplay! It simply means the “types” of effects one has access to are limited and scaled back. For instance, I’ve found that aggressive strategies tend to be better positioned in PDH than other traditional Commander because the Pauper cardpool isn’t nearly as dense on options for sweepers, Tutors, or redundant combo pieces.
Pauper Commander also doesn’t suffer from having “broken” cards like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, or Dockside Extortionist in the format. There’s no incentive (or real capacity) to redundantly tutor for the most powerful cards, which is cool because it means you end up playing with all the cards in your deck over time.
I’ve helped tune up a lot of PDH decks over the past year and my advice tends to be fairly consistent: Shave from the top end of your curve and try to create as much redundancy and consistency with regard to mana production and the low end of the mana curve.
The format is all about good fundamentals both with regard to deckbuilding and gameplay.
In typical EDH, there’s more incentive to play higher up on the curve. For example, extremely powerful Rares and Mythics that are capable of winning games outright. At Common, there really are not “free win” cards, as is the case in EDH. The games are less about packing decks with redundant tutors to find the broken cards and spamming them and much more about playing a coherent and consistent strategy and trying to make efficient plays.
One thing I love about the Marionette Apprentice deck is how jam packed it is with 1-drop options. I don’t think I’ve ever played so many 1-drops in a multiplayer deck before! I noticed when playing the deck that I always wanted to play my Commander on turn 2.
I didn’t put it in the Command Zone to not play it – it’s my best card and I want to get it deployed ASAP to start inflicting loss of life as my deck naturally starts to run its sacrifice for value engine.
Since I’m mono-color and have a two-drop Commander, there’s so much incentive to pack the deck with CMC = 1 drops as a way to generate consistently explosive openings. Let’s be real, my Apprentice drain deck isn’t looking to go to the late game with anybody… The strategic goal of this deck is to be nimble, make my plays early, and shorten up the game as much as possible by attacking the whole table with my Commander’s Drain ability.
Another thing I’ve learned about PDH is that a lot of multicolor decks tend to take turn 1 off to play ETB Tapped Dual lands (the only options available at Common) and so its a huge advantage to get to play 31 ETB untapped lands in my deck as well as deploy a threat on the first turn. The goal of the deck is to be quick and consistent to steal some sneaky fast wins with early pressure in the pod.
I have 23 1-drops that can be deployed proactively as material to the board on the first turn, which is nearly a quarter of the deck, and provides me a great shot at consistently hitting a 1-drop on the first turn to get my snowball strategy rollin’.
Apprentice is the first Mono-Color Commander I’ve built for PDH and I observe from my playtesting that playing a turn ahead of much of the table (thanks to all my Lands entering untapped) is a strategic advantage and so I wanted to bake that low curve full of one drops into my deck.
It also makes sense, that if we’re going to sacrifice material to spread damage around that we want the material being sacrificed to be inexpensive on the CMC spectrum (and preferably leave some material behind to play with).
The last step of putting together a tightly wound 99-Card Pauper Commander deck is the fine tuning… I did a Gatherer Search for Artifact and Black Commons with CMC < 4 with an emphasis on looking for sacrifice synergy cards; meaning, either cards that sacrifice my material, or cards that provide advantage when sacrificing or being sacrificed.
I don’t know the newer cards as well as the older ones so it’s always fun to see what’s new and I found some really neat PDH Sacrifice All-Stars.
Anything that sits in play, takes advantage of repeated sacrifice triggers and GROWS is a huge boon in a deck strategically centered around sacrificing material. Obviously, the Commander (Marionette Apprentice) does a great job of capitalizing but it’s always fun to “Go Big” and double dip on those redundant sac triggers.
The Vermin are another cog that has really impressed me. Mice grow up so fast! It also doesn’t hurt that Voracious Vermin brings extra material to the party in the form of a 1/1 Rat token.
In addition to some nice “make my monsters grow!” cards I also found some neat, cheap, bodies to sacrifice away for value.
Anything that leaves material behind when sacrificed is a huge benefit to the strategy. I’m basically playing every single CMC =1 creature I could find that leaves something behind when it bites the dust.
One of the things I most enjoy about PDH is that when one puts in a little bit of work into looking for gems that they can be readily found. Generally, I’m looking for cards that provide interesting synergy with my general strategy and Commander (while also keeping that mana curve nice and lean!).
PDH is a format I would recommend to a friend and enjoy playing in my own time for fun and enjoyment. I love that deckbuilding and plays, as opposed to broken cards, tend to dictate gameplay and determine how pods play out. It’s a “good fundamentals” format and a great way to learn or further explore Magic as a game.
I hope to see you at the RIW Pauper Commander Championship on Sunday, or around the shop on Friday evening for some playtesting for the main event!
