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

The general I started out with was Commander Liara Portyr

*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

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

Krenko's Command

In theory, the best one of them all is Empty the Warrens

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

*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

Clearly Liara Portyr

Nope, nope, nope. I experimented briefly with Craig Boone

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

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

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

We have a deck almost completely constructed, but let's add a few more pieces specifically suited to Arabella

How about a group of cards that's been getting printed since Alpha? Dwarven Warriors

And because we're less focused on our tokens attacking, we'll turn them into damage in other ways. Molten Gatekeeper

 I'll clean up the list, replacing Wrenn's Resolve

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.