Alongside playing the games, the other aspect of Pauper Commander (PDH) that I find most fun is building the decks. Today, I’ll be featuring the newest deck I’ve put together: Third Path Iconoclast, with some information I’ve found useful about how to assemble new, ready to play, PDH decks. I’ll be using my Third Path Iconoclast 100 as a case study in how to build decks from the top down in PDH.
Essentially, PDH is just like regular Commander with the stipulation that ANY Uncommon creature can be your Commander (doesn’t have to be legendary) and all the cards in the 99 card deck must have Common printings.
PICK A COMMANDER TO BUILD AROUND
The first step in getting started building a PDH deck is to decide what Commander to play! I selected Third Path Iconoclast for a couple of reasons. First, Izzet or U/R, is a color combination I hadn’t played yet and I thought Iconoclast looked pretty fun and powerful to build around.
Whenever I cast a noncreature spell, Iconoclast provides a 1/1 colorless Human token which means the signature of my deck is that all my non-creature spells essentially have “make a 1/1 token” tagged onto them which is a powerful build around tool – especially considering Iconoclast is cheap to deploy at the front end of my mana curve at CMC =2.
Essentially, I’ll always want to deploy my Commander on the second turn and use it as a staging platform to run my offense.
I also don’t need to play as many creatures (and can play more noncreature spells) because of my Commander’s ability. Ponder, Brainstorm, and Preordain are even more incredible when they also produce a 1/1 token when cast and that type of interaction is the bread and butter of my deck.
We can’t cast all our sweet spells without adequate mana and so once we’ve selected a Commander it makes a lot of sense to make sure to surround it with a proficient mana base.
I’ve built several decks and have found that ~35 lands is the sweet spot for a PDH deck, typically with 20 Basics and 15 nonbasics.
In PDH all of the nonbasics (with the exception of Command Tower) enter the battlefield tapped, which means the color fixing they provide for a multicolor Commander is important but always comes at a cost of ETB tapped.
I’m also a big fan of Path of Ancestory (and it’s probably the third best dual land in format after Command Tower and bouncelands, since it ETB tapped but also provides some upside in the form of Scrye when we play a creature that shares a type with our Commander. It’s one of those neat Commander cards that is legal and definitely worth adding to a 100.
I also play spells, such as Mana Rocks and Rituals (which generate 1/1s with my Commander). In all of my decks I typically end up with about half of my deck (including the average 35 lands) working toward peak mana production: Rituals, Mana Rocks, and Mana Dorks. My deck can do some tricky Storm combos, which is always a lot of fun when it comes together that way in a game.
BUILD EFFICIENT SYNERGIES
One of the strongest synergies I identified with my Commander was turning Cantrips into 1/1 tokens. I’m really just playing to the natural strengths of my Commander. I want to turn my cheap Instants, Sorceries, and Artifact Mana into bodies I can use to pressure the table.
It’s pretty delightful to spend a turn looking at, drawing, and churning a lot of cards and being rewarded with a small pile of 1/1 Human Tokens in addition to the card selection while sculpting a powerful hand.
My commander essentially helps the deck create a ton of threats. In a sense, my Commander is the REAL THREAT which isn’t an uncommon way to build a PDH or EDH deck.
THREATS AND SYNERGY PAYOFFS
Since I know my offense is always going to run through Third Path Iconoclast it’s easy to identify the type of synergies I’m most interested in leveraging. Obviously, we’d want to find ways to make the most out of commanding and creating an army of 1/1 Tokens. Essentially, I was looking for cards that create synergy with a swarm of 1/1s.
I’ve included a lot of cards that ping ALL opponent’s whenever I play a noncreature spell or whenever a creature enters the battlefield under my control (which are parallel occurrences in Third Path Iconoclast).
Impact Tremors and Raid Bombardment are also killer Enchantments in this deck that help me chip away at opponent’s life totals while applying pressure to the board. I like spells that pressure ALL opponent’s since they tend to deal a disproportionate amount of damage in multiplayer and allow us to leverage our aggressive draws quite well.
Synergy, Payoffs, and Threats is the bulk of the deck. Typically about half of the cards in my experience and these spots fill up fast since they are the cards that help make the Commander so impactful.
Removal holds an interesting space in the deckbuilding of Pauper Commander because the multiplayer games tend to play out differently than regular Commander. Each player essentially will deploy their hand, but nobody can really come over the top with lock pieces, or “win the game” multiplayer Mythics.
On the other hand, it’s still important to be able to move important blockers or Commander attackers out of the way once the board is set. Some boards can get stalled which makes evasive attackers and removal quite useful.
I tend to like targeted removal a lot more in PDH than I do in typical Commander and have managed to find room for between 6-10 removal spells in all of my PDH decks. In fact, since many of the PDH decks tend to be quite fast to deploy, and because I like playing blue, I’ve been pleased with running some instant speed bounce spells in my decks.
I’m a big fan of Run Away Together as a way to loosen up the board and get some attacks in. I also really like to have a few Counterspells in my Blue decks to combat combos, swingy plays, or other Counterspells on my good stuff.
COMMANDER – Any Uncommon Creature
LANDS – 35 Lands (20 Basics / 15 Non Basics)
MANA SPELLS – ~6-10 (Mana Dorks, Rituals, Rocks)
SYNERGY, THREATS, & PAYOFFS ~50
REMOVAL / INTERACTION ~6-12
