Legends Legends - Pavel Maliki
Welcome once again to Legends Legends, our now nearly twice-weekly dive into 1994's Legends and its suite of 55 original legendary creatures. We're over halfway through, with this Pavel Maliki deck marking our 35th Legends Legend to date!
Deep in the weeds of the six-mana uncommon vanilla and "french vanilla" creatures, we've had to start getting a little weird with it to keep our deck builds interesting. To avoid doing another fire-breathing-focused Commander deck, this Pavel Maliki deck is themed around creatures with power four or greater. How do we combine the Temur Ferocious ability with a Rakdos Commander? Let's find out!
General Thoughts
Pavel Maliki is a six-mana Rakdos 5/3 with a worse Firebreathing effect, costing instead of just a red mana for +1/+0. Even compared to a Shivan Dragon, Pavel fails to strike much fear in our opponents' hearts. Instead of doubling down on creating specifically one red and one black mana to pump Pavel, we'll take advantage of the fact that he's already a five-power creature when he hits the field.
Combined with a host of synergistic effects, and some five-power creatures with more utility, this Pavel Maliki Commander deck promises to play a unique game not seen in other Rakdos archetypes.
Sticking Pavel
Pavel's high mana cost means we don't want to pay to cast him more than once, so we're using cards from my favorite Rakdos archetype to keep our Commander on the field. The scam effects, like Ashnod's Intervention, Malakir Rebirth, Not Dead After All, Supernatural Stamina and Feign Death, are excellent one-mana responses to any targeted removal.
Not of This World might seem like a non-synergy with this deck, but if Pavel Maliki is on the field, we'll only need to pay to make his power 7, thus making our colorless counterspell free. I think that's a fair price for a counterspell outside of blue.
Finally, of course we're running Lightning Greaves over Swiftfoot Boots. Since our commander's mana cost is already so high, we don't want to waste any more the turn he arrives by equipping our hexproof boots instead. This makes it impossible to target Pavel with our scam effects, but also makes it impossible to target him with removal. You take the good with the bad.
Medium-Sized Monsters
Cards that care about other creatures' powers have been around for a long time. This deck features cards from Shards of Alara all the way through to Wilds of Eldraine. It's one of red and green's hallmark effects, and it can easily be abused with low-cost high-power creatures like Ball Lightning or Master of the Feast.
First, let's go over our selection of creatures with power four or greater. Since we'll be investing a hefty six mana into our commander, we'll want the rest of our 4+-power creatures to cost less than four mana, if possible.
Our Ball Lightning creatures make excellent cheap creatures with a high power. Lightning Skelemental is my favorite, but Blistering Firecat shouldn't be disregarded.
Bonecrusher Giant and its Stomp Adventure are famous across formats for their utility.
Anyone who played in the original Innistrad Standard remembers what a pain Vexing Devil was. The "correct" response from opponents is always to take the four damage and kill the Devil, but remember we can use our Scam effects to return it to the battlefield and sink another four damage into an opponent for just two mana total. If we're lucky, we'll even stick it to the board on the second ETB.
Turret Ogre isn't flashy, but it's useful to have a medium-sized reach blocker around when you're staring down those Spirits decks. Bhaal's Invoker also won't end games, at least, not until we can assemble our infinite mana combo.
Rowan, Scion of War is both a midsize threat and a key combo piece for finishing out the game (more on this later).
In that same vein, Worldgorger Dragon is primarily here for use with our Animate Dead combo, but in a pinch can always be a 7/7 flying trampler for use in combat by itself.
Giant Cindermaw and Master of the Feast are two different kinds of control in this deck, stopping those pesky Vampire lifegain decks from going off and keeping your opponents' hands clear, respectively.
Finally, Koth of the Hammer's first ability can create a 4/4 creature out of a Mountain each turn, ensuring we have a power four creature for triggering our effects.
For Powers Four and Up
What exactly are we using to synergize with our power four-plus creatures? A host of Ferocious effects from the Tarkir sets, for one, including Crater's Claws and Temur Battle Rage (the perfect spell for turning our mid-size Pavel Maliki into an actual threat).
Sarkhan's Unsealing gives us a consistent source of damage on the table, and a possible board wipe when we cast Blistering Firecat or Worldgorger Dragon. Where Ancients Tread works similarly, albeit being a little harder to trigger.
Bloodthorn Taunter helps give our biggest creatures haste, and Warbeast of Gorgoroth compensates us for the loss of our midsize creatures.
Furious Rise and Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest both help us dig through our library to get to just the cards we need to combo off, while Dragon Breath and Dragon Shadow will reanimate themselves and attach to Pavel Maliki as soon as he enters.
Finally, so long as we have a creature with power four or greater, our Flamewake Phoenix will return as an attacker each turn for just one red mana.
Crushing Defeat
We have a few paths to victory in this Pavel Maliki Commander deck, only two of which require infinite combos!
The first combo is the famous Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead effect.
We'll use this two-card combo to generate infinite mana from our basic lands, then dump all of that mana into Crater's Claws or Exsanguinate. We can also dump this mana into Bhaal's Invoker. If we have Pavel Maliki and Where Ancients Tread on the field, we won't even need the X-spells.
The next combo involves Rowan, Scion of War, Wall of Blood, and our Exsanguinate.
Another cheesy combo, instead of infinite mana, we make our Exsanguinate cost 30 colorless mana less by paying most of our life into Wall of Blood, then obliterating our opponents with a nearly free spell.
These combos are difficult to assemble and fragile as all hell, so don't be afraid to burn all of our tutors fetching these cards, and using our scam effects to protect Rowan, the Wall, or Worldgorger.
We can always use Revel in Riches alongside our Brass's Bounty, too, if we're looking for a quick game-ender in the late game.
Finally, there's always good ol' combat damage. Pavel Maliki is not a weak creature and can get really nasty if we use our infinite mana from Worldgorger Dragon to pump his power up. Dragon Shadow, Rogue's Passage, and O-Naginata all give him some evasion; enough to take a player out of the game with Commander damage easily when we hit him with a Bulk Up or Temur Battle Rage.
Mana Base
Pavel Maliki is an expensive commander, as are many of the key cards in this deck. We can't afford to miss a land drop in this deck, so we're running 36 total, plus a Solemn Simulacrum, Wayfarer's Bauble, and Burnished Hart for fetching them. In addition, we've got eight mana rocks, including the slower Rakdos Locket, Kolaghan Monument, and Rakdos Cluestone, since we need to continue to ramp past turn three in most games.
Budget
As it turns out, this is one of the cheaper decks on Legends Legends to date! Could you believe a deck built around a niche theme in the wrong colors wouldn't run the bill up the wall?
Revel in Riches is this deck's most expensive card behind its Demonic Tutor (which can replaced with any other cheap tutor of your preference). If we're going to replace our Revel in Riches, though, I'd recommend cutting the Brass's Bounty as well and swapping in some more high-power creatures, like Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger or a Magus of the Bridge.
Pavel Maliki Decklist
Wrap Up
I tried to build this Pavel Maliki Commander deck around an uncommon theme for Rakdos decks, and whether or not it works remains to be seen. It's definitely possible for this deck to "do the thing" it wants to, albeit at a slower pace than most other Legends Legends decks (and, by extension, most other decks in your pod). Let me know what you think it could use to power up its game plan in the comments!
Thanks again for reading!
