Pauper Commander - Lazotep Chancellor

Lazotep Chancellor by Josu Hernai

 The Unexplored Territory of pEDH

The commanders of EDH are all pretty well explored. Almost every deck is pretty recognizable, from the busted Dragon that is Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm to the goofy politics of Kwain, Itinerant Meddler. Even the bad commanders are pretty recognizable. No one's really scared about the dude playing Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero. The point is, EDH has been almost completely explored. There's no real hidden gems anymore.

But not in pEDH! There's just as many commander options, but the format's full of new land. Check out this card I found!

Two more power on the board for one mana every time you discard? We can make a huge Army with this! I had no idea this card even existed, but a simple scryfall search revealed it to me. There's so much to be discovered in pEDH, it feels like I'm searching through the jungle for El Dorado. Let's see what we can make with this guy. 

Pieces of the Puzzle

Clearly, the first part of this deck needs to be discard. We need to be discarding cards for as little mana as possible in order to pay the tax and make our Zombie Army bigger. Then, we need to decide what to do with the Zombie. I've played against all kinds of Sauron, the Dark Lord decks, and the thing I've noticed about him is that you're almost always better off just saccing the Army. You can get a million Blood Artist triggers, or you can make a ton of mana with Warren Soultrader. However, none of those cards are Pauper-legal. In a pEDH meta, would it be better to make one big dude? I think we'll have to experiment to see. 

Droppin' Cards (And Drawing Them!)

But first, the part we know how to do. The cool thing about discard is that it usually comes tacked on with card draw. There's a million cards that say draw, then discard, called looters, and those are the ones we want to use. How about Compulsive Research? Drawing three and discarding one is good, but I think we want most of our looting to be a bit cheaper. Careful Study is fantastic, costing us only one mana to trigger our commander twice is a great rate, and we get some potent card selection out of it. Ideas Unbound is similar, putting six power on board for five mana. 

But what if we could discard cards for zero mana? Here's where our looters come in. All of them require a two-mana investment during an early turn, but once they lose their summoning sickness, we can draw and discard for the small price of tapping them. That can become an absolute load of value, especially if we control more than one of them. My favorite has to be Looter il-Kor, which lets us get in for damage while we're looting. 

While looting is a great way to trigger our commander, there are other ways to discard. Check out Oblivion Crown. If we've got enough cards in hand, it can be a solid way to end the game out of nowhere. Bog Witch gives us a Dark Ritual every single turn in exchange for discarding, which we were going to do anyways. Delirium Skeins isn't right for every situation, but we are playing a card draw deck, meaning that we can devastate our opponents' hands while keeping at least some of ours. 

Bone Splinters is an easy bit of removal, and Macabre Waltz is a handy way to get back cards we might not have previously  needed. However, the final and best way to discard pains me a bit, because its twelve-dollar Reserved List price tag doesn't quite fit in the Pauper spirit. Regardless, Tortured Existence lets us pay one mana to trigger our commander, meaning two mana equals two power. This can be extremely powerful, especially because we can do it at any time.  

Sac or Smack?

Now that we're getting plenty of triggers on our commander, let's figure out what to do with that Zombie Army. There's no shortage of sacrifice outlets in Pauper, but usually, when I'm playing them, I'm doing it for the sacrifice itself, not the payoff. There's not much point in sacrificing a 2/2 just to get the temporary buff on Nantuko Husk. Viscera Seer has a much more usable payoff, but still, a scry 1 feels mediocre. The best cards to use seem to be Deadly Dispute and Village Rites, which both provide a huge boost in card advantage. Of course, there is Ashnod's Altar, which will pay for the discard trigger itself and add one more. 

These cards make up most of our payoff for the Army. Most of the time, the Army is simply an effective chump blocker, or sacrifice fodder. However, there are a few cards in the deck that immediately change our gameplan should we see them in our hand. Haunted Cloak and Vorrac Battlehorns give the Army trample, meaning the bigger the better. With the amount of power our commander generates, we can be swinging in for huge sums, and trample prevents chump blocking. Even better than that, there's Aqueous Form, Cloak of Mists, and Invisibility, which straight up say "No blockers." 

But sometimes, just attacking isn't good enough. We need that damage to be direct. The cards Essence Harvest and Rite of Consumption can fling our Army for what will often be lethal damage. These cards can pierce through a horde of blockers and end games out of nowhere. Unfortunately, they're not instant-speed, like Fling itself, but they still do a similar job. 

Goin' Mad

At this point, the deck is quite satisfactory. Our card filtering is very effective, and we can feed a Voltron gameplan without running out of cards. There's a ton of evasion, and we're difficult to stop given how fast we can rebuild. However, there's one problem: a ton of the cards that we're discarding just go to waste. The deck doesn't utilize the graveyard very well, as it's focused on just the discard. I don't think I want to add a graveyard package either, as it'll diminish the consistency of the deck. However, I did notice one card in the deck that might provide the solution. Hell Mongrel is a free discard outlet, but it also has madness, allowing itself to be played after we discard it. If we can discard madness cards, we'll be using a much greater portion of our deck, and therefore be increasing our card advantage. Just the Wind is an effective bounce spell, alongside Unsummon and Vapor Snag. Same with Dark Withering, although it's almost necessary to play that card with madness, thanks to its mana value. And while Obsessive Search is very simple, it's very effective, turning a discard into a draw. 

Hidden Gems

When building a deck just with scryfall filters, you tend to find some very underplayed cards  that you wouldn't find elsewhere. Cast Dihada's Ploy after a Tolarian Winds, and you can double your hand size. Mind Rake can be used to target a player, but in EDH, you'll most likely want to force each player to discard two, for less mana! And Dreamscape Artist is a rare instance of blue land ramp, letting you repeatedly Harrow for the additional cost of discarding a card. 

Deck Complete!

That's the deck! This is one of my favorite decks I've built, mostly because of the unusual themes. The more obscure cards I get to build with, the more fun I have brewing. On top of that, I get to find plenty of new cards to build with. Every time I write one of these articles, I keep track of all the new cards I find when building it. My count here is 13. That's thirteen new cards that I can consider for future decks. Did I write about any cards you haven't heard of before? Any that you might consider? Until next time, happy brewing!