Pauper Commander - Dina, Soul Steeper

These past two months we've been exploring the best decks of the Pauper format, from the Snakes of a Fynn, the Fangbearer

Dina, Soul Steeper

Let's start by dissecting Dina's text box, because she does actually do a bit more than the Blight-Priest. Her first ability is exactly the same of course, draining our opponents for one life every single time we gain any amount of health.

Then, we have an activated ability, asking us to pay one mana and sacrifice a creature to give Dina +1/+0 until end of turn. Huh. That ability seems... mediocre? We're sacrificing a creature's power, that would otherwise stick around on the board, in order to give Dina a temporary boost. That seems difficult to take advantage of, but a deck is forming in my head that uses both abilities. 

Dina's basic list looks simple enough, but I think it has a few flaws. It's saturated with every possible way to gain small amounts of life, from Deathgreeter

Kazandu Nectarpot

Would Witherbloom Pledgemage

What's a creature-focused gameplan that can gain a ton of life? Let's start with the creatures that actually gain the life. Obviously, you have Essence Warden

Okay, so we want creatures to enter the battlefield and die. Let's play a bunch of creatures that sacrifice other creatures, and gain life while they're at it. Vermin Gorger

Now we've got a whole cycle of life on our battlefield.

There are a few more miscellaneous creatures that fit in here. Night Market Lookout

Then, Vampire Neonate

Then, we have some creatures that take advantage of all this lifegain. Of course, we have our commander and some extra copies, Marauding Blight-Priest

But we need more than one creature that gets really big, so let's figure out another way to do that. Luckily there's a set of creatures that can get to mammoth sizes really quick. Carrion Feeder

A sudden alpha strike? Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that. This is where Dina's second ability comes into play. Like I mentioned before, Dina's sacrifice ability doesn't really do anything helpful normally, so we need to create some special reasons to use it. The first thing I thought of was lifelink. There are plenty of enchantments that can grant Dina the ability to steal life when dealing damage, like Eternal Thirst

By enchanting her with these Auras, we can use her own damage boost to gain a ton of life. We can also equip her with things like Whispersilk Cloak

I've won so many games with those cards, and it's so satisfying every time. 

I think Dina's ability is mostly going to be used at the very end of the game, to convert a board full of creatures into one powerful menace. Before that, it's all just a grind game, where we slowly erode our opponents life with all the drain that the deck is packed with.

It ends up being overwhelming for our opponents as every game action we takes involves an "Everyone take one." Then, when everyone's at ten life or so, we start sacrificing things to Dina and knocking people out. 

And there's the full deck! To be honest, I'm not sure if I should've thought about Dina's second ability at all. Like I said in the beginning, it's just not that powerful, and we don't have a whole lot of tools to take advantage of it in Pauper. However, I stand by my decision to get rid of all the random life gain/drain effects. Ill-Gotten Inheritance does work, but not as much as an Essence Warden when it's well looked after. When your deck makes engines with itself, that's how you know it's got potential, and this deck is packed full of synergy. I'd still call this one a success. Which Pauper commander should I check out next?