Pauper Commander - Digging for Dinos

Historic Hammering

I usually don't pay much attention to precon cards for the sake of Pauper; they don't really print new common or uncommon cards in those decks. The only time the precons have real relevance to the Pauper format is when they downshift cards to Pauper legality. However, I noticed recently that the Doctor Who and Warhammer 40K precons added quite a few new uncommons, and some of them really stand out, like Displaced Dinosaurs. 

I had to reread this card a few times when I first saw it. It seems really powerful, doesn't it? Turning every historic permanent into a 7/7 when it enters? With sagas and legendaries, this isn't too crazy, but there's almost 100 zero-cost artifacts. Paying zero to transform an artifact from my hand into a 7/7? Yeah, that sounds like a good deal, and that's what Displaced Dinosaurs offers us. Any artifact we cast from our hand, heck, any artifact we create, becomes a massive creature for basically no cost. The one thing really preventing this card from being insane is simply the fact that most decks running a ton of low-cost artifacts don't really want a random seven-drop dino, but in PauperEDH, we can build the perfect deck for the card and really take advantage of its power. 

Ramping Up

First things first, we have a commander that costs seven. Even in regular EDH terms, that's kind of absurd, and we'll need to ramp a lot to compensate for it. Luckily, we're in green, so that should be no issue. Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, all the usuals are perfect for early game ramp, pushing us a head slightly. Shoutout to Edge of Autumn, a card that only ramps you in the early game, then provides you with card advantage late game. It's honestly in competition with Rampant Growth here, and barring decks that need ramp throughout the entire game (like this deck), I think it should probably replace it. 

However, this deck needs ramp far beyond the early game, and a single extra land per turn, via standard ramp spells, isn't really gonna cut it. I could just run cards like Explosive Vegetation and Skyshroud Claim and get some stable, land-based ramp going, but if you've read my articles before, you'll know that I have a much more fun solution. Almost every year, we get a card like Market Festival printed again, and by now, we have a ton of them. By themselves, these cards are perfectly fine ramp cards, sharing investment to output ratios with many other ramp cards. However, if you have a way to untap them, perhaps an Arbor Elf, you can make a ton of mana. I've used this strategy in the past, and it's not hard to amass close to twelve mana by turn five. There's no issues with assembling these ramp pieces, either, because creatures that untap lands are plentiful at common. Using this strategy, I'm confident we can always get our commander out early. 

Safe and Sound

Once we have our commander out, we're gonna want to keep it that way given how easily it can become overcosted if it's removed too many times. Luckily, green is the perfect color for ensuring that our commander stays on the field. Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Gaea's Gift, Snakeskin Veil, and several others give our general either indestructible, hexproof, or both. This style of card has been getting printed for decades now, so we have plenty of them at our disposal. A little tip: it's definitely best to wait until you have one extra mana for a Ranger's Guile when you cast your commander in order to minimize the risk of the Dinosaurs getting wiped out immediately. Never tap when you have an instant. 

Cheerio!

The turn after that, when we have our commander secure, is when the fun starts. At this point, we've been saving a bunch of artifacts in our hand that we can cast for very little mana, so we can absolutely flood the board. There's a few different sets of artifacts we can use, so let's go over each group. 

First, we have all the zero-cost artifacts. These don't do too much other than come in as a 7/7 for free. That's strong, but not enough to justify running all 15 Pauper-legal ones, so let's just add Lotus Petal, Welding Jar, Everflowing Chalice, and Tormod's Crypt. These all have some amount of utility, even if it's very slight. We can also run Darksteel Citadel and Tree of Tales, which will usually end up getting played early, but if we draw them late, they're free creatures. 

The second category makes use of a cool detail in Displaced Dinosaurs' wording, which is that the cards getting transformed don't lose any abilities. That means if we play a 1/1 with flying, it becomes a 7/7 with flying. Therefore, we have an easy way to get evasion, and we have to worry less about blockers. Hovermyr and Ornithopter of Paradise are effective attackers, but the real gem is Ichorclaw Myr. If we can get that guy through, our opponents are in trouble. 

To double up on evasion, we're also running some low cost Equipment, which do two things. Obviously, they can be equipped to give flying or trample, but they can also transform and attack themselves. It's a little strange to think that attached Equipment can attack as their own body, but there's nothing in the rules that says they can't. Oh, and don't forget you can attach them to each other. The game is weird sometimes. 

The final category of transforming artifacts are tokens. A lot of cards, like Revive the Shire, grant us an extra Food along with an already desirable effect. In this deck, that's an extra attacker. There's also a number of cards that can generate a token every turn. They're few and far between in Pauper, but the ones we've got are quite strong. Magnifying Glass and Glittermonger ask us to tap them, while Goldvein Pick and Prying Blade need us to get in with combat damage. These cards are a bit more expensive than an Ornithopter, but the armies they can produce are well worth it. 

Testing...

As I expected, this deck has absolutely no problem ramping. Why would it? We're in green after all. But what green does struggle with is card draw. Often we play out our starting hand very fast, casting Llanowar Elves into Rampant Growth into Fertile Ground, but then we'll get stuck, and if we're unlucky, it'll be when we're one land away from casting our commander, leaving the deck, and about half the cards we draw, completely useless. We need a way to dig through our deck and find those last critical land cards to get the deck up and running. Adventurous Impulse and Commune with Nature are fantastic for that, reaching as deep as five cards to find those missing land drops. Even better is Ancient Stirrings, which can also grab artifacts. I considered running Mulch and all its pals, but this deck has basically no graveyard synergies, so there's not much point. 

The Bigger You Are, The Harder You Fall

All in all, this deck does exactly what you'd expect. A ton of mana, big creatures, and explosive turns, but it's extremely vulnerable to any sort of interaction. That's just what you get for running a really big dinosaur as your commander. This deck suffers a lot from doing nothing when the Displaced Dinosaurs are dead, and can often go several turns without doing anything. A bit more card draw might allow for a few more game actions, but at the cost of making the deck less explosive and consistent, since our card draw only gets lands. Still, it's a fun deck, and a blast to play when the game goes right. Does that make it worth it?