The Best Mechanic
Even while playing Pauper, I tend to build complex decks with a lot of different parts, and it gets kinda exhausting, so why don't we build a simple deck today? Queza, Augur of Agonies is about as straightforward as it gets, but she's still very good. I mean, obviously. She rewards you for doing the best thing you can be doing: drawing cards.
There is genuinely no better game action than filling your hand. To win a game of Magic, you need cards in hand, and the more 0f them you get, the more your chances go up. The more cards in you hand, the more win conditions you have, the more removal, the more ramp, and Queza rewards us for doing all that. She even maximizes the amount of ramp and removal we can have in our hand by acting as the win condition herself! While very basic in concept, the fundamentals of the game make her a powerful commander by nature.
Card Draw
So let's get started. What do we need? Literally just card draw, right? Yup. So what's the best card draw in Pauper?
Let's start with the little cantrips, the one-CMC spells that do nothing but draw a card. Opt is the most basic, and then there's its graveyard-oriented version, Consider. But even better than those are Preordain and Serum Visions, which scry not once but twice. Dang. Anyways, you've also got Ponder, which completes the cycle of cards that went crazy with storm in modern. Usually, I try to avoid these spells, because they do nothing but waste time replacing themselves, but here, our entire goal is to draw cards, so they're quite perfect.
Then we can step up a mana to stuff like Sign in Blood and Night's Whisper. In my opinion, this is the sweet spot for card draw, at least in a normal deck. You want your card draw spells to at least fetch two cards, to net a positive amount of cards in hand. Otherwise, what's the point? And I think three or two mana is exactly the amount you want to pay. Once you're paying four mana to draw a few cards, you're really sacrificing the opportunity to play game-changing spells, but when a spell costs three or two, it can easily be played early or in addition to other spells later, so Diresight, Read the Bones, Mulldrifter, and even something basic like Divination are all great spells.
But of course, for this deck, drawing lots of cards is our tempo play, so we're not going to shy away from big costs. Syphon Mind is one I'm glad to play here because it draws three cards while negatively effecting our opponents. There's Deep Analysis, a bad deal on the first go, but a fantastic one on the second, and we've got Lórien Revealed, a card that saw a surprising amount of competitive play.
But then we get to the really expensive card, Treasure Cruise. Eight whole mana?! Holy crap. Except it's got delve, making it one of the best card draw spells of all time. It's literally Ancestral Recall at its best, a card that's part of the power nine. Yeah, it doesn't get much better than drawing three cards for one mana.
Some other notable standouts are Tolarian Winds, which nets you negative one cards in hand, but will often trigger Queza quite a few times, and Whirlpool Rider does the exact same thing, just when a creature enters the battlefield.
Borrowing 100,000 Arrows is a fun one, and not just for the amount of cards it draws you. There's quite an interesting story that goes with the card. Apparently, a general needed 100,000 arrows for an attack, an incredible amount. Procuring these out of nowhere was a seemingly impossible task. Unless, of course, they were gifted to by your enemy, who had a lot to spare. By floating several boats near to an enemy encampment on a foggy night and spooking them with loud drums, the General managed to startle his enemies into pelting scarecrow boats with thousands of arrows that could easily be reused. The card itself is very thematic, gaining a great advantage from your opponents. And the bonus is that you get to tell that story every time you play the card!
Spinning our Wheels
At this point, I figured the deck was pretty much done. I had my card draw, and that was all the deck really needed, but I decided to make sure Queza stayed safe by adding a bit of protection, and that decision ended up creating a whole other aspect of the deck. At first, I toyed with the idea of just adding things like Whispersilk Cloak to protect her, but then I switched to Cloudshift, because I enjoyed the idea of catching an opponent unaware with instant-speed protection. Then I realized that I was also running Mulldrifter, which works fantastically with any blink spell.
Actually, I was running a lot of creatures that draw cards, like Spirited Companion and Inspiring Overseer, so I quickly added some more blink, from Ephemerate to Ghostly Flicker. Then, I realized that I could really benefit from running Archaeomancer, which could let me recast my biggest draw spells, like Flux and Tolarian Winds. It wasn't long before an engine developed, where my creatures could be flickered, returning blink spells or card draw spells, which drew into more blink and card draw. It's a pretty basic mechanism, but it snowballs quickly and really smooths out this deck.
Then, the last part of this deck is a set of cards that maximize our damage output. Epicure of Blood and Marauding Blight-Priest add another three damage to Queza's trigger, while Academy Wall can add an additional ping every turn. Murmuring Mystic doesn't have any synergy with Queza herself, but it makes a ton of fliers as this deck spins its wheels. And Decanter of Endless Water allows us to retain our colossal amount of cards.
Yup, that's it. Just one big pile of card draw, with more ways to recast our card draw spells. That's literally all there is to this deck, and it works quite well! Of course it does. Why wouldn't it? We're just drawing cards. To be honest, I'm already bored of this deck. It's simple and effective, but repetitive as hell. Let me know, is this your jam, or do you prefer a bit more action?
