Pauper Commander - Poison-Tip Archer
Keep it Simple
It's occurred to me that one of the best things about Pauper, and, by extension, Pauper EDH, is the simplicity of the card pool. There's nothing big or flashy, just a bunch of commons that, while mundane, are the backbone of all of Magic. Even the most flamboyant of formats, Legacy and Modern, play commons like Crop Rotation, a card that has a basic yet strong effect.
There's nothing complex about these cards, and that's why some of them are so strong, so rather than build a deck with combos or strange twists, let's dial it back and play a deck inspired by the simplicity of commons. A simple deck that just wants to do one thing and do that one thing really well.
The commander I've selected is Poison-Tip Archer. All this fella cares about is that creatures are dying. If bodies are sent to the graveyard, the Archer will do the rest and drain our opponents out. We have one job, and if we work hard at it, we have a strong deck.
I guess if I'm gonna be dramatic about the source of inspiration for this deck, I might as well make up some more themes. Let's talk about life and death. In order for the every living thing to meet its demise, it must first be born. For the end of life to come about, there must be life in the first place. If we're gonna be sacrificing a ton of creatures, we need a ton of creatures to start with.
Therefore, inspired by the progression from birth to death, we're going to run a bunch of creatures that create their own spawn to populate the earth, sometimes literally. Dread Drone, Nest Invader, Kozilek's Predator, and Eyeless Watcher all bring Eldrazi Scions and Spawns with them when they enter, doubling or even tripling the number of bodies we have to sacrifice.
Handily, many of the tokens we're making can sacrifice themselves, reducing the need for sac outlets.
Some creatures leave life behind when they exit the mortal plane (The Battlefield.) Brindle Shoat summons its mother at its early passing. Nested Shambler falls into a pile of forest life when its rotting abode gives out. Eyeblight Cullers inspire younger brethren to fill their roles in the elven society.
We all create new life as we live ours, whether it's through inspiration, protection, or uh, more physical means. All these creatures represent the life we pass on as we depart. But what's actually important is that we can sacrifice them twice and trigger our commander an additional time.
A lot of these cards will make even more than two bodies, like Fin-Clade Fugitives, whose encore ability can make up to three creatures upon activation. That's three creatures to be sacrificed, and three more Poison-Tip Archer triggers.
Cards in the deck are ranked by how many times they can make our commander trigger on their own, and the top dog is definitely Exquisite Huntmaster. It's got an encore ability, just like Fin-Clade Fugitives, but it creates another body when it dies. Six creatures. Excellent!
The final part of our extended circle of life metaphor is rebirth. We die, and our bodies decompose, absorbed into the ground that grass, flowers and trees will soon sprout from. The useless, decaying flesh will feed new life. In Magic, rebirth is a lot more literal. We're just gonna return creatures from our graveyard to our hand, then recast them.
Death Denied is one of our best cards, allowing us to get creatures back equal to the amount of mana we have. A ton of card advantage. Evolution Witness can grab us one one creature on it own, but if we have something like Ivy Lane Denizen out, it can grab us many more.
Revive the Shire gets us back any permanent, which is most of our deck. Finally, Dread Return and Unearth can bring cards straight to the battlefield, which can be extremely strong at the right times.
Sacrificing and recurring the right creatures over and over again can create a ton of value and potentially expand our board state, meaning that the Poison-Tip Archer will soon spell death for our opponents.
Now that we've got the life part of the deck, let's figure out the death part. Death comes about in all sorts of ways for us, from natural causes, to disease, to pure misfortune. But in this deck, we've got something specific in mind: ritual sacrifice.
We're running all the usual sacrifice cards, from Viscera Seer to Village Rites. Let's start with a lot of efficient draw spells. The original is Altar's Reap, and it's since been upgraded to Reckoner's Bargain or Corrupted Conviction. These spells provide strong card advantage, but they have the downside of only letting us sacrifice once creature at a time, not enough to win the game with our commander.
To remedy that, we're also running a ton of free sacrifice outlets, like Ashnod's Altar, Carrion Feeder, and Bloodthrone Vampire. At no point in the game should we have trouble getting triggers from the Archer, and we can often send our whole battlefield to the graveyard at once.
It's also important to keep in mind that our opponents' creatures can also trigger our commander.
Killing stuff on the other side of the board isn't our main focus, given that it's difficult to wipe out opposing creatures en masse, let alone ensuring that our opponents have a hoard in the first place, but there are a few cards that can do the trick. Fleshbag Marauder, Accursed Marauder, and Abyssal Gatekeeper will force four sacrifices across the board and create four death triggers. These cards are known as edict creatures, just like Diabolic Edict.
The difference between them and Diabolic Edict is that they count as an additional death trigger and can be returned with cards like Evolution Charm. Remember, it's important to play card types that your deck cares about. Our deck cares about creatures, so everything that can be a creature, should be.
But even as life cycles, we eventually get to the point when all things must go. The apocalypse, I suppose. In pauper, there's not much in the way of board wipes, but there are two cards that can emulate a plague. Crypt Rats and Pestilence will wipe the entire board if we put enough mana into them, causing a potentially game-ending amount of death triggers. If we activate these at the right time, we can just win.
And that's the deck. Like I said, it's extremely simple, just like our lives. Things live, and things die. Some might say that they're born just for the purpose of dying, but I think that our cards create a lot of meaning even in the minuscule amount of time they're on the board.
No matter how small and insignificant that 1/1 Squirrel may seem, it could always be the difference between victory and defeat. Consider that the next time you're thinking deep thoughts.
No Magic: The Gathering token has ever questioned its purpose in life, even if it's just there to make two mana with Ashnod's Altar. It doesn't worry about such useless things as the meaning of its existence, it simply persists, until its time is up. Whether that's depressing or enlightening, I don't know, but I do know that it makes a strong pEDH deck.
