Pauper Commander - Arabella's Small Dolls
The story of today's deck is a bit of a mess. I had one idea, and that idea didn't exactly work out, so I moved to another idea, then abandoned that one, too, but eventually, I found Arabella, Abandoned Doll, just what I needed to make this deck work.
The general I started out with was Commander Liara Portyr, a Boros legendary with a very strong effect. All you need is a creature attacking each opponent and you get three extra cards with a three-mana reduction on them. That's very strong, and given how good Boros is at attacking, I figured Liara Portyr had the potential to helm a formidable deck. Here's how that went.
*Past Alejandro*
The first thing I need is a bunch of creatures that can attack, and one concept I'm going to use to get those is the mechanics myriad. The whole premise of myriad is that a single creature can swing at every opponent simultaneously, and that's just what we need. It's especially cool that we only have to keep the original copy of that creature alive in order to use it again. Of course, the unfortunate thing is that there are only four myriad creatures in Boros Pauper. We'll take them all of course, from Wyrm's Crossing Patrol to Tiamat's Fanatics, but we're gonna need more.
The next best thing is just having a ton of tokens. Goblin tokens, Soldier tokens, Human tokens, anything will do as long as we can generate a bunch of little attackers to swing out. It helps if they're expendable, too, because they're absolutely going to die in combat.
We can run a little bit of evasion in this deck, but not enough to keep every one of them alive. To remedy that, we'll just let them be expendable. We can make a lot of small guys, have them attack, let them die, (maybe even sacrifice them for more value), and reap the rewards of Liara's trigger .
Krenko's Command is the first token generation card I'll include. It's about as simple as it gets. Two mana for two power and toughness on the board is good enough. What's more important is that we're getting two bodies, two attackers. There are plenty more versions of this card we can run, with varying mana-to-creature-count ratios. Hordeling Outburst, Raise the Alarm, and Dragon Fodder are some of the top picks, but we'll stretch all the way to Captain's Call. We need all the little guys we can get.
In theory, the best one of them all is Empty the Warrens, which has the potential to make an absolute hoard, as long as we can cast a few spells before it.
These cards are good, but the downside of this strategy is that our cards are single use. Once those moments and sorceries are cast, they're gone.
But what if our instants and sorceries can be reused? Our commander exiles cards from the top of our deck, then reduces their cost. What if we can put cards from our graveyard on top of our deck? If we can do that consistently, then we can loop spells over and over again, replaying them from the top of the deck and reducing them with Liara's ability. If we can cast some really good spells over and over again, we'll have a strong win condition.
*Present Alejandro*
So... this was the part of the deck I was really excited about, the part that I thought would really make this commander shine. Unfortunately, I soon realized that kind of effect is very rare in Magic, and especially in Pauper. There was no way to pull off that strategy consistently, and my whole plan for the deck fell apart.
At this point, Liara Portyr's shortcomings were coming through. She's a five-mana commander that generates a lot of value, but she doesn't actually get you anywhere. Yes, we could keep churning through the deck, but we'd only have one-use spells, and no matter how many of those we cast, we're never going to have a consistent engine on the field. We'll always be struggling to find the next token-generator as our current ones get removed. The army just won't grow strong enough to close out a game.
Clearly Liara Portyr isn't what a Pauper deck needs, but I still have a cool deck that makes a lot of little guys, and I don't want to abandon it. Surely there's another uncommon Boros commander that cares about small guys. What about Craig Boone, Novac Guard? He needs two creatures to attack, something out deck was already designed to do. He might do the job.
Nope, nope, nope. I experimented briefly with Craig Boone and quickly found out that he's got quite the fatal flaw: for whatever reason, your opponents are given the choice of letting you damage a creature or taking the damage themselves. Problem is, the more damage you're dealing, the less your opponents are going to want to take it. If you have ten quest counters on Craig Boone, there's no way your opponents are going to take ten damage instead of letting their creature die, and even when he has relatively few counters on him, your opponents can still take the better choice of taking two damage than letting a valuable creature die.
At no point do you get the good end of the bargain. The only good thing about him is the fact that he has lifelink. This did inspire me to add the enchantment Spirit Link to the deck, because equipping it to Craig means you gain twice the life, but even though that's cool, it's definitely not enough to rescue this awkward design from oblivion.
But then I had a deck with a ton of small creatures and several lifegain enchantments. What was I supposed to do with that?
Although Craig Boone wasn't the commander for the deck, he did lead me to another commander that deals damage with an ability, one I should've thought of sooner, given I wrote a review of it: Arabella, Abandoned Doll is hot off the press from Duskmourn, House of Horror, and, somehow, she's exactly what we need.
Arabella cares about small creatures, which we have a ton of, turning them directly into damage at our opponents' faces. Even cooler, she gains life, but she doesn't have the keyword lifelink on her. If we grant that to her with Scourge of the Nobilis or Hopeful Eidolon, we'll be gaining an absolute boatload of health points.
We have a deck almost completely constructed, but let's add a few more pieces specifically suited to Arabella. She has an attack trigger, meaning evasion is a must. Not much beats Whispersilk Cloak when it comes to unblockability, but we only have one of those, so we'll have to get creative.
How about a group of cards that's been getting printed since Alpha? Dwarven Warriors gives any creature with power two or less, which is our whole deck, unblockable. These creatures are known as tunnelers, and there's a ton that we can run: Goblin Tunneler, Dwarven Nomad, Pathmaker Initiate, the list goes on.
And because we're less focused on our tokens attacking, we'll turn them into damage in other ways. Molten Gatekeeper, Impact Tremors, and Witty Roastmaster will all support our commander's damage-dealing efforts, allowing us to turn some unused creatures into a few extra points of damage.
I'll clean up the list, replacing Wrenn's Resolve and Reckless Impulse with Demand Answers and Thrill of Possibility. Now we should be good!
View this decklist on Archidekt
This deck came together out of nowhere, gelling as soon as the right commander was found. After realizing that the plan of putting cards on top of my deck wasn't going to work, I thought I'd have to give up on this list, but to my surprise, the perfect answer was right under my nose. Remind me to look at new cards more often, and consider that you might have a deck whose ideal commander has just been printed. It's always worth a look.
