Araumi of the Dead Tide - Pauper Commander

Alejandro Fuentes • February 23, 2025

Deckbuilding Pauper Commander

A Merfolk Massacre

Welcome back to another installment of Pauper Commander. What's on the menu today? Seafood, I suppose, because today's commander is a Merfolk that'll chop your opponents up like fish. Araumi of the Dead Tide

was one of my standouts from Commander Legends. I recall people being blown away by the power she offered despite her uncommon rarity, and honestly, the performance of the deck is still kind of nuts. This is a commander that can flip games inside out, and it just so happens to be Pauper-legal. Araumi has been one of the top pEDH commanders for a while, and I think it's about time we did a deck tech on this legend. 

What exactly does Araumi do that's so powerful? For the low cost of tapping and exiling cards from your graveyard equal to the number of your opponents (usually three), you can grant any creature in your graveyard encore, which was this cool mechanic from Commander Legends that let you bring a creature back for a turn, sort of like unearth, except it made one copy of the creature for each opponent. Most of the cards in the set with encore were pretty balanced, and none of them stood out a lot. Impulsive Pilferer

has had some longevity, but that's mostly because Treasure synergies got really popular. But of course they decided to print a commander that can give literally any creature encore, and of course that's going to make certain cards go absolutely insane. 

Exponential Advantage

Let me show you an example. Floating-Dream Zubera

is probably the premier card of the deck, a two-mana Spirit that draws you a card for each Zubera put into a graveyard this turn, when it dies. It's usually an unplayable card in Commander, only ever drawing you a single card as it croaks. But with Araumi, you'll have three copies that all die on the same turn. The first one draws you a single card. The second draws you two. The third draws you three more. For just two mana, you've drawn six cards. That is some cool synergy, and it's very powerful.

The rest of the deck is going to be filled with cards like that. Gray Merchant of Asphodel

, for instance, will have one copy enter, which sees itself and drains your opponents for three (Assuming Araumi is still on the board). Then the second copy will enter, and drain for five. Finally, the third copy will enter, and drain for seven, putting the total up to 15 damage per opponent, and 45 life gained. All for just five mana. 

My favorite of these is probably Shepherd of Rot

. On its own, it'll drain each player for six life. But if you have more Zombies, that number can get much higher. One more Zombie makes the number nine. Two more brings the count to 12. Interestingly, there's a large number of Zombies in this list, so you're likely to drain for a lot with the Shepherd. 

Everything is Tripled

Not every creature has abilities that get exponential, but there are plenty with strong ETBs and LTBs that we can abuse. Mulldrifter

is the obvious one, drawing six cards for five mana. Not quite as good as Floating-Dream Zubera
, but hey, you also get six power in the air. Speaking of fliers, you have Cloud of Faeries
 and Peregrine Drake
, who can ramp you by either four or ten mana, respectively. Organ Hoarder
 is a card advantage machine, getting you the best three cards from the top nine of your deck. Aarakocra Sneak
 and its other initiative pals will hurl you through a dungeon. Some creatures you can even use as board wipes, like Death's-Head Buzzard
. It's not super efficient, but in Pauper, -3/-3 to all creatures kills nearly everything. 

But the most lethal group of creatures has to be Accursed Marauder

, Fleshbag Marauder
, Demon's Disciple
, and Slum Reaper
. All of them have the same text, reading "When this creature enters the battlefield, each player sacrifices a creature." With encore, of course, we're going to be getting that trigger three times, and while we can just sacrifice our three copies, our opponents will have to sacrifice three creatures each. It'll be a massacre.

Smoothing Out The Engine

But maybe the most important group is the untappers. Araumi taps to activate her ability, meaning you can usually give only a single creature encore every turn. Unless, of course, you reanimate a creature that can untap her! How about Corridor Monitor

? When it enters, you can untap Araumi three times, and if you have the mana, you'll have an army that turn. Clever Conjurer
 and Vizier of Tumbling Sands
 are even better, as they can be played normally, and double your activations every single turn. But they can also be reanimated and do the same thing as Corridor Monitor
.

So we have a bunch of powerful stuff to reanimate now. But how do we get all that into the graveyard while also grabbing a bunch of stuff to exile with Araumi's ability? We need to mill ourselves, and the best way I can think of doing that is with even more creatures. One of the biggest deckbuilding rules is that your support pieces should synergize with themselves. Since we're building a deck around creatures, our mill pieces should also be creatures, and the advantage is obvious. If we encore out Crow of Dark Tidings

, we get twelve cards to the graveyard rather than the four that the card was designed to mill. Halimar Excavator
 can mill six for two mana. Sage's Row Denizen
 can probably fuel our graveyard for the whole game on its own. The point is, by using creatures to fuel our creature theme, we can have a lot of synergy that just shows up naturally, much more than if we used Tome Scour
 instead. 

Araumi of the Dead Tide - Pauper Commander

View on Archidekt

Lands (38)

Sorceries (2)

Enchantments (1)

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That's the whole deck! There's some removal in instant and sorcery form, but for the most part, it's all creatures that can be brought back with our commander, and every single one of those creatures pulls a heck of a lot of weight in the deck. This deck fits together like a puzzle piece, and when playing it, it's very satisfying to see everything mesh. I can definitely see why this deck is one of the best in Pauper. But of course, there are plenty more great decks to review. Which should I do next?

Alejandro Fuentes

Alejandro Fuentes

Alejandro Fuentes's a nerd from Austin Texas who likes building the most unreasonable decks possible, then optimizing them till they're actually good. In his free time, he's either trying to fit complex time signatures into death metal epics, or writing fantasy novels.