Pauper Commander - Neva, Stalked by Nightmares

Enchanted

Man, why do I always stumble into awesome commanders five months after the set they were released in comes out? I wrote a Pauper-oriented review for Wilds of Eldraine and I still somehow managed to miss Neva, Stalked by Nightmares.

Pauper already has a lot of good enchantment commanders; Jukai Naturalist, Mesa Enchantress, and Eutropia the Twice-Favored come to mind. But Neva, Stalked by Nightmares has a few interesting things going for her. Firstly, she's in black and white. Most enchantment decks are primarily white, often paired with either green or blue. Interestingly, black has been gaining enchantment support for years now, and there're quite a few strong cards for us in that color, as you'll soon see.

Secondly, Neva cares about enchantments in the graveyard. Most commanders only care about casting them, or how many you have on the battlefield, so Neva looking for enchantments going to the graveyard is pretty unique. 

This gives us the chance to take advantage of something that's usually a downside. Auras can be extremely powerful, but when the creature they're enchanting dies, they head straight to the graveyard with it. That means a ton of hard work can vanish with just a single removal spell, and it makes Aura decks extremely vulnerable.

Neva doesn't do anything to protect the Auras, but she does give us quite a strong payoff if we lose them. We can use her as an insurance of sorts and can recover from the loss of card advantage with her scry triggers. 

+1000 Aura

So let's focus on Auras. Because our deck is designed to handle the loss of them, we're not going to shy away from stacking a bunch on one creature and playing the Voltron game. All the classics are here, from All That Glitters to Ethereal Armor, to Phyresis. There's evasion, in the form of Angelic Gift or Asha's Favor, and generic benefits, like lifelink on the aptly named Lifelink or Vampiric Link.

There's even an Aura that grants both, Gift of Orzhova. Stack enough of these cards on one creature, and either we start winning the game or we force an opponent to use their removal. For us, either scenario is good. 

We're not going to totally abandon the idea of ​​keeping our creatures safe, though. We'll still be running things like Hyena Umbra and Benevolent Blessing to make the task of removing our creatures as difficult as possible.

The idea is that we force our opponents to put a ton of effort into taking out one of our creatures, and once it's gone, we simply start to pile advantage on Neva instead and protect her even better. Ideally, she'll be huge at that point, and since our opponents have already spent their resources on another creature, she'll be quite the challenge for them to overcome.

Knights for the Armor

Since this isn't purely a Voltron deck, we're going to need some other creatures to put Auras on. Most of our hosts are just going to be generic creatures that synergize with enchantments and our commander. Grim Guardian slowly drains opponents as enchantments enter, while Wicked Visitor does the same when they leave. Warehouse Tabby makes a mouse as they head to the graveyard, and Savior of the Sleeping grows.

All around, we have value machines that serve a second purpose as enchantment wearing attackers. There are enchantment cost reducers, like Starnheim Courser and Transcendent Envoy, there's an Aura tutor in Heliod's Pilgrim, and there are even some ways to get enchantments back, like Auramancer and Tragic Poet.

But there are some creatures here solely for the purpose of wearing Auras. Slumbering Keepguard is the most obvious one, as it can give itself +1/+1 for every enchantment we control. It's naturally a strong attacker and will benefit from our many evasive Auras, but we're also running Changeling Outcast, Gingerbrute, and Tormented Soul for their evasive abilities. Trust me, unblockable creatures get scary when they're wearing Ethereal Armor. 

Extra Interactions

This deck is well equipped to carry out its gameplan of suiting up one creature, waiting for it to die, then attacking with a huge Neva, Stalked by Nightmares. But there's still a lot of cool things we can do within our overall theme of letting enchantments go to the graveyard. 

For instance, there's a number of Auras that go on other creatures in the hopes of them dying. Unhallowed Pact and Unholy Indenture can be put on a creature that's bound to be removed, and when it is, we'll get the creature on our side of the battlefield, and we'll get a trigger from Neva. 

There're a few cards we put on our own creatures that we expect to die, like Fungal Fortitude and Kaya's Ghostform. We'll get a trigger off of them and our creature back. But an additional thing we can do with them is put them on a creature like Ironclad Slayer or our commander, and then we can sacrifice that creature as many times as we can pay one or two mana.

I couldn't find the pieces to make an infinite combo, but having a creature that can die over and over again is incredibly handy when it comes to blockers. 

While Parasitic Impetus and Martial Impetus don't say anything about the graveyard, they tend to be put on creatures that will end up subject to a Feed the Swarm[ /el], and we can take advantage of that. Besides, they're strong cards anyways, and they trigger our [el]Grim Guardian, so what's not to like?

Then of course, there are just some enchantments that sacrifice themselves. Seal of Cleansing is a handy piece of removal that can also act as a political threat. Mire's Grasp is only ever going to be put on a creature that will immediately die, and while we don't really want to pay three mana to sacrifice Hopeless Nightmare or Omen of the Dead, we can if we need to. 

View this decklist on Archidekt

We'll add a bit of removal and some card draw, and then we've got a strong deck! What do you think of it? It's not the usual enchantress deck where you just cast enchantments that draw you cards to trigger enchantments that draw you cards, to keep casting enchantments and drawing cards. This certainly isn't a powerful strategy, but there are some cool interactions in this deck that are fun to mess around with. Not the deck I'd go with if I want to win a game, but I think it's great as a casual strategy.