Pauper Commander - Cormela, Glamour Thief

Alejandro Fuentes • March 23, 2025

Deckbuilding Pauper Commander
Cormela, Glamour Thief
 by Bram Sels

Cormela's Combo

Those who read these articles regularly will know that I've already written about today's commander, Cormela, Glamour Thief

. Last time I wrote about her, I was looking for the ideal madness commander, and she fit the bill perfectly. But now, with my madness vision satisfied, I want to take a look at Cormela's usual Pauper deck, the deck that makes her one of the best cPDH commanders.

Yeah, turns out Competitive Pauper EDH does exist, and it's quite cool. It's similar to cEDH, but there are a few big differences. Firstly, there's the fact that you can only use commons. Duh. But in terms of the way decks are constructed, I've noticed one big contrast: cEDH decks typically cram as many combos as possible into 99 cards. In the EDH card pool, there are thousands of two-card combos, and the more of them you get in one deck, the more likely you are to find them and win.

In pEDH, there are maybe six combos efficient enough to be worth playing in each shard or wedge, and as a result, Pauper decks usually focus on one combo and commit the whole deck to getting that one to go off. That being said, Pauper combos usually have many, many variations of the cards that combo, so even though it's just one combo, there could be 30 cards in a deck that could make it happen. 

I'll start this article off by explaining the combo that Cormela is built around. The first piece is Cormela herself, who acts as your source of mana. She's designed to act as a ritual, giving you free mana, but only once a turn, so if you can get her to activate over and over, you get infinite mana. In addition to this, she returns an instant or sorcery to your hand whenever she dies.

This is where the card Demonic Gifts

comes in. "Until end of turn, target creature gets +2/+0 and gains 'When this creature dies, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control.'" So if we use Cormela's mana to cast this, we can float a blue or a red; then when she dies, she'll return Demonic Gifts to our hand, and she'll return to the battlefield herself, ready to activate again, thanks to haste and that one mana left floating. Add in any free sacrifice outlet, and you can do this forever!

Cormela, Glamour Thief
Demonic Gifts
Ashnod's Altar
Infinite blue mana that can only be spent to cast instant and sorcery spells
Infinite colorless mana
Infinite death triggers
Infinite ETB
Infinite LTB
Infinite magecraft triggers
Infinite red mana that can only be spent to cast instant and sorcery spells
Infinite sacrifice triggers
Infinite storm count
Commander Spellbook

Pieces of the Puzzle

The great thing about this combo is that there are a million different ways to fill each slot. Let's start with those sacrifice outlets. The first one that'll come to mind for most people is Ashnod's Altar

. It's arguably the best sacrifice outlet in all of Magic, and it's clear why. We get two mana every time we sacrifice Cormela? Sick! With either Ashnod's Altar
 or Thermopod
, we can get infinite red or blue mana. But you'll soon see, we don't necessarily need infinite mana to win the game. 

So let's get some other sacrifice outlets in here. Carrion Feeder

and Viscera Seer
 are perfect one-drops to turn our combo on. They don't do much else, but when all we need is a way to sacrifice a creature, the bare minimum will do just fine, and these are as cheap as they come. Still, we're perfectly willing to invest a few more drops of mana into Bloodflow Connoisseur
, Bloodthrone Vampire
, or Nantuko Husk
. The more the merrier!

Next, we need some more copies of Demonic Gifts

. Luckily, there's a ton of them. Fake Your Own Death
, Return to Action
, and Abnormal Endurance
 for two mana, plus Supernatural Stamina
, Undying Malice
, Not Dead After All
, and Feign Death
 for one. Each of those does the exact same thing, and are perfectly usable in the combo. The only one of these cards that we can't play is Undying Evil
, because for once, the clause of a +1/+1 counter preventing the recursion actually matters here. Unfortunate, but not damning to the deck. Eight other copies of the card should serve us fine. 

How We Win

With our combo established, we now have to win. As I mentioned, if we have Ashnod's Altar

or Thermopod
, we can make infinite mana, but most of the time, we're just going to have infinite death triggers, infinite ETBs, infinite LTBs, and infinite spell casting triggers. Wait, seriously? We get all of that from this combo? Why would we even think about infinite mana when we have that? 

Okay, how about some storm cards? Our combo gives us infinite storm count, so Grapeshot

will instantly win us the game, while Empty the Warrens
 and Temporal Fissure
 will nearly guarantee it to us. Galvanic Relay
 is a bit harder to use, but it essentially gives you infinite card advantage on your next turn, so if you can survive till then, you should be golden. 

But it's probably easier to take advantage of those casting triggers with Kessig Flamebreather

, Firebrand Archer
, or all the other copies of those cards. With just one of these on the board, infinite casts means infinite damage. Simple enough. Erebor Flamesmith
, Guttersnipe
, Unruly Catapult
, and Thermo-Alchemist
 will all find a home in the deck. 

I could also add Falkenrath Noble

and several other cards that care about death triggers, but I think between the spellslinger cards and the storm cards, we're pretty well off in terms of ways to win. But if further testing revealed that we were lacking in that department, these cards would be a simple swap in. 

Everything Else

The rest of the deck is just a bunch of ramp and card draw, but it's a bit sweatier than usual, because we're building a competitive combo deck. For instance, in addition to the usual Counterspell

and Arcane Denial
, we're also running Daze
 and Foil
. Unnecessary? Maybe, but it's a combo deck, so we might as well play all the ridiculous cards that go with it. High Tide
, Pyroblast
, Snuff Out
, Dispel
, welcome to the deck. There's only one place where it's socially acceptable to play these cards, and it's right here. 

Pauper Commander - Cormela, Glamour Thief

View on Archidekt

Commander (1)

Buy this decklist from Card KingdomBuy this decklist on TCGplayer

Welp, that's what a Competitive Pauper EDH deck looks like. Maybe it's a bit overkill for a budget format, but if there's a Magic: The Gathering format, there's gonna be a competitive version of that format.

What do you think of this deck? Did I do Cormela justice? Do I need more sweaty cards in here? Let me know!

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.