Pauper Commander - Adeliz, the Cinder Wind

Alejandro Fuentes • August 19, 2024

Budget Pauper Commander

 

Something I've wondered for a while is whether kindred decks are viable in pauper. In 60-card Pauper, the answer is absolutely yes, given that decks like Elves and Goblins have been on top for most of Pauper's history. However, in those decks, you only need five or six great cards of a type, and the deck is complete. In pEDH, you often need up to 30 or 40 different creatures of that type, and if most of them are weak, the deck is going to be no good.

In addition, you need a reason to play that type at all. If you don't have cards that care about one creature type, then you might as well just be playing other creatures. Ever noticed how Elves are an extremely strong type, while Spiders kinda suck? That's because Elves have a ton of cards that care about other Elves, like Priest of Titania

. You're rewarded just for playing Elves. Meanwhile, Spiders only have Ishkanah, Grafwidow
 and Shelob, Child of Ungoliant
. The rest are just normal cards with creepy art. We don't want to build a deck like that, so we need to find a creature type with a lot of lords. If you don't know, cards that support their creature type are called lords, a moniker inspired by Lord of the Undead
. To build a kindred deck at all, we need to have these cards, or the deck has no purpose. 

So why don't we start with a lord in our command zone? Adeliz, the Cinder Wind

has caught my eye. She's low to the ground, has some relevant keywords, and acts a lord that can buff Wizards to great heights by doing something they love doing anyways, casting instants and sorceries. Even if we can't find too many Wizard lords, we can absolutely find Wizards that care about instants and sorceries, and their abilities will often translate to a buff from Adeliz. She is the perfect commander to build a kindred deck around. 

What is this Wizardry?

First things first, let's grab some Wizards. We already know that we need to build around casting a ton of instants and sorceries, so Wizards that enable spellcasting are our target. Archaeomancer

and Shipwreck Dowser
 are obvious inclusions, allowing us to grab the best spell we've already used. Goblin Electromancer
 is a must-have, cutting the cost of many of our spells in half. Burning Prophet
 is a cool one I haven't seen before; it tacks a scry and a buff onto every single noncreature spell we cast. Murmuring Mystic
 makes some Birds, which unfortunately aren't affected by Adeliz, but are useful nonetheless. And finally, there's several creatures with prowess, like Cyclops Superconductor
, that will become huge quite quickly. 

One way to ensure we can get as many triggers from Adeliz as possible is to simply draw more cards, and let me tell you, Wizards love drawing cards. Sea Gate Oracle

and Augur of Bolas
 are great ways to get some selection. Thought Courier
 lets us get rid of the cards we don't need for the ones we do once a turn, while Windrider Wizard
 lets us do that every single time we cast a spell. 

Another thing to consider is that, because our commander buffs our Wizards, we'll naturally want to attack, and some evasion will be much welcome. Luckily, our pool of pauper Wizards is full of a little subcategory of creatures called Flying Men

. The only things necessary to be considered a flying man are a CMC of one and the keyword flying. That's it. The original isn't a Wizard, but there's plenty that are. Delver of Secrets
 was Legacy-playable, meaning it's more than welcome here. Snaremaster Sprite
 has the ability to act as removal if we need it, or it can just be an attacker. Wingcrafter
 can give one other creature flying, and Merrow Levitator
, though not one-CMC, has the potential to give our entire team flying. 

Casting Spells

The next task is to find the best instants and sorceries for the job. The first thing we want is cards that will help us take advantage of Adeliz's buff. Crash Through

and Warlord's Fury give our entire team some keywords, even if first strike is a bit mediocre. Temur Battle Rage and Assault Strobe are extremely strong, often representing lethal damage if our opponents let a big enough creature through, and to help with that, we've got Brute Force. 

Our second category is cards that cantrip. In this section, only two things matter. Does it trigger Adeliz, and does it draw a card? If the answer is yes to both, then it goes in. Renegade Tactics, Expedite, Crimson Wisps, Opt, Preordain, Ponder, and Consider all are easy inclusions. Paying one mana to give our entire team +1/+1 is a great deal, no matter what. 

One last batch of instants and sorceries we can add is our interaction. Given that we're playing Izzet colors, most of this is just counterspells. We've got all the classics, Counterspell, Arcane Denial, Negate, and Foil. For thematic sake, I figured I might as well add Ixidor's Will, even though that card is quite weak. For things on the board, we have some classic burn, in the form of Lightning Bolt and Flame Slash, along with my favorite bounce spells, Unsummon and Vapor Snag. They're not catch-all answers, but hopefully we can just win before they things they can't remove become a problem. 

Improvements

The deck does what it needs to, but even with Adeliz in the common zone, it still doesn't feel quite like a kindred deck. We need some stuff that actually cares about the fact that we're playing Wizards, because right now, Balmor, Battlemage Captain is simply a better commander. (Yes, I did notice he exists halfway through building this deck, and yes, this section is how I'm justifying playing Adeliz instead.) The first thing we can add are the two cards that wizardcycle, Vedalken Aethermage and Step Through. In the past, I've used these cards to find combo pieces, but here, they can just find our best Wizards. That best Wizard will often be Stonybrook Banneret, which is a convenient cost-reducer that most often finds itself in Merfolk decks, but also happens to help Wizards out as well. And finally, Information Dealer isn't an incredible card, but it ties the deck together nicely. 

Uncommanders - Adeliz the Cinder Wind

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Artifacts (2)

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I swear, if I see one comment about the word "kindred" being woke...

Do you think kindred decks are any good in pEDH? We're missing a lot of the key pieces to typical kindred decks, like Herald's Horn or Door of Destinies, but hey, at least we've got Path of Ancestry. This deck performs well enough for me to call it a success, but I have to admit that's mostly because it's a spellslinger deck, not due to the incredible synergy of Information Dealer. In the future, I might see if Elves, the best regular EDH kindred deck, are any good, and after that, I'll check if it's even possible to build a creature type that doesn't really support itself. Will I be able to build a kindred deck with entirely external kindred support?

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.