A Common Dilemma

Welcome back to Uncommanders, where I do my best to take the supposed rubbish that fills your booster packs and turn it into a playable Commander deck. With the rules of Pauper EDH holding me in place, I can only use 99 common rarity cards and one uncommon commander. So what uncommander are we going to use today?

Reyhan, Last of the Abzan

Metal Menagerie

What are our goals in the deck? We want to get to the win with a consistent board state and by buffing our creatures up with counters. We can use modular to constantly keep a large creature in play, then use the counter synergies to create an ever-growing army. If we do it right, our opponents will struggle to put us down. 

Let's start with the modular creatures. The cool thing about being able to move the plus ones around is how it makes your entire board into a threat. Oh, you kill my 6/6? I'll move its counters onto my commander, and now it's an 8/8. In order to get this kind of board state consistently, we need as many interchangeable pieces as we can count. Every card that says "Arcbound" on it goes in, but there's also a small series of creatures that act like they have modular, such as Star Pupil

Just having modular creatures doesn't scale up our threats quite enough, however. We need ways to get more and more counters onto our creatures in order to produce real monsters. Proliferation is by far the best method, so let's bring in Volt Charge

Given how many artifacts we're playing, we can commit to a minor affinity theme. 60-card Pauper affinity lists are a great source of inspiration here, and we can add Myr Enforcer

The Gears of the Goliath

So now, with the meat of the deck looking juicy, we've got to add the spices. Built to Last

I'll continue my deck as a food metaphor by moving to the veggies, the cards you need to play the game. Let's add in the typical Pauper Removal, known as Lightning Bolt

Oiling the Machine

Okay, my projections of huge creatures seem to be a bit hopeful. The deck only runs around 15 cards that have the modular ability, and maybe 1o more that add counters. If we want to get to the massive robot fantasy that I've been envisioning, we need more ways to make the bots big. Problem is, all the team-wide buffs are overcosted. Now for Wrath, Now for Ruin!

https://www.archidekt.com/decks/5258764/machined_mayhem

This has been one of my more successful pauper decks, and I'm really happy with how it's like a reincarnation of my old Reyhan deck. The power's down a bit, but it still packs a punch, and the energy is exactly the same. I'm always looking for the right strategy that hits the sweet spot between tomfoolery and competitiveness, and the modular theme does that for me. Until next time, happy brewing, and tell me if you have any decks that feel just right!