If you want to go competitive, I think Tatyova, Benthic Druid or Adeliz, the Cinder Wind are your best bets. Too bad it has to be a legend, though, because that really restricts your options.
Zada, Hedron Grinder is also a ton of fun and can kill people extremely quickly. Definitely worth checking out.
I've honestly felt pretty good about the 3 Gush in my deck, mostly because it feeds Foil and Deep Analysis. While my Delver matchup is still unfavourable, I am almost always winning at least one game in the match now, which means that the deck is fairly competitive against the top deck in the format.
I think we have an even more serious question on our hands now: Does Turbo Fog even need to play Jace's Erasure anymore? Clear the Mind, when played in multiples, prevents us from ever running out of cards. We could literally let the opponent draw themselves to death.
Pros:
It would require less deck space. You only need two copies of Clear the Mind in the mainbord, which leaves more space for card draw or counters or something.
It is even more difficult to interact with. Non-Blue decks will have no other way of killing us other than by using graveyard hate, and even that isn't completely reliable. We wouldn't have to worry about enchantment destruction anymore.
It replaces itself in your hand.
Cons:
We no longer have a clock. The opponent will literally be able to draw their entire deck. If they have an answer for it, we are screwed.
Games will go long all the time. Like, really, really long.
It is one more mana to cast.
I'm seriously considering playing this card and foregoing Erasure completely, or relegating a single copy to the sideboard to speed up kills versus aggro decks.
What do you all think of Persistent Petitioners? Could advisor tribal be a viable archetype? Seems hilarious. You would only need about 4 activations of its final ability to kill someone.
Impassionate Orator is a beefier Soul Sister. Pretty good ability for a bear.
Summary Judgement is probably the white removal spell that White has needed alongside Journey to Nowhere. 5 damage is the necessary threshold a card like this needs to have in order to see mainstream play. It kills Anglers, which is huge! Being able to play it right after attackers are declared is also relevant.
When I saw Clear the Mind, I screamed "NOOOOOOO!" Pauper finally has a card that can shuffle its owners graveyard back into the library. And it Cantrips! This is huge. This is a way for Blue decks to stop Mill decks (like Turbo Fog)from winning. For me, there are three options here: 1) This is a must-counter spell, 2) Turbo Fog needs to run graveyard hate like Relic of Progenitus to reduce the effectiveness of the card, but weakening its sideboard plan against Blue decks that would otherwise not warrant graveyard hate or 3) Turbo Fog needs to play its own copy of Clear the Mind in its sideboard to keep up. This card may also begin a trend towards durdling decks that do absolutely no milling but only survive while the opponent draws themselves to death. This should be an interesting card!
Prying Eyes is a massive draw spell! Instant speed draw 4 is excellent, regardless of having to discard 2 afterwards. I like it a lot! I feel like it could see play as a singleton in a lot blue control decks. UB Mystical Teachings maybe?
Sage's Row Savant is an aggressively costed card for its stats and abilities. It reminds me of Omenspeaker, but with more of an aggro bend, which I don't hate. Aggro decks want to be able to smooth out their draws too.
Goblin Gathering is a pretty hilarious card that I think could be fairly powerful in the right build. Consider a control deck with Pieces of the Puzzle and Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall to consistently make 4-5 Goblins at a time. Could be an interesting deck. The card is still rather expensive on the front end for only two goblins, but it's great as soon as there is a single copy in the gy.
Sagittar's Volley is yet another pushed anti-flying green card. It looks powerful on paper to beat Delver (kill a delver and ping all the faeries), but can it really beat Aerial Volley?
Wrecking Beast has an amazing amount of text for a beatstick common filler. a 6/6 with trample and haste is well worth 7 mana in my books. This is one of the cases where the haste seems so much better than the counter only because it's on a green card.
Applied Biomancy has the lure of being a 2 for 1. I think they could have made the pump a little bit bigger, like +1/+2 or something to really make it great.
Rubblebelt Runner has some interesting text that I've only seen on a rare, which is Legion Loyalist. Is it relevant to Pauper? Not particularly, but I think it's worth mentioning because it's so unique. Pauper really got some treatment this set!
Hey folks! We're well into the spoiler season with only two weeks to go before release. Not too many commons to talk about, but here are a few interesting things nonetheless.
Blade Juggler could have had potential if it had been a 2/2 with one less to Spectacle. As it sits, it's pretty average.
I love Burning-Tree Vandal. This card is aggressively costed for its abilities. Being able to haste out and rummage just for attacking is excellent. If you can't attack profitably, you can always opt for a 3/2 for 3 with a great ability. I doubt it will see much play, but it's a beautiful card.
Skewer the Critics is one of the better riffs on Lightning Bolt I've seen in a while. This will see play in Burn for sure. You are damaging the opponent every turn with burn, so activating the cheap Spectacle cost shouldn't be an issue. Great card!
People have already written about Growth Spiral since it was one of the first cards to be spoiled. It's an excellent rate for an instant speed spell. Is this the only way to make land drops during an opponent's turn in Pauper? In any case, it's certainly got potential.
Skewer the Critics is an awesome card that will see lots of play in regular Pauper. I'm not sure that Lightning Bolt effects in large number are that effective in PDH. We could basically have like 9 bolt effects in a deck right now, but I don't think that would make for a good deck.
Hey everybody! I'm here to take a look at another build.
Garna, the Bloodflame is an extremely powerful general and lends itself well to Aristocrats strategies and aggressive strategies. Although sacrificing stuff is one of my favourite things to do in Magic, I'm going to go with a deep synergistic aggro deck: Rat Colony.
Garna feels very powerful in a list like this. She allows us to get a lot of card advantage with her first ability by getting multiple creatures back after combat or a board wipe. This makes it easier to make attacks that would otherwise be unprofitable and keeps us aggressive.
I completely forgot that Garna also has another juicy line of text: Your creatures have haste. This is also perfect for an aggressive list as it means we can deploy our returned creatures again next turn and keep attacking right away.
Garna can also allow for small value plays with cards like Faithless Looting. discarding two creatures and getting them back with Garna means we draw two cards for only 1 mana, on top of whatever we get back from a combat phase. Seems great!
Other than that, this deck is pretty straightforward. some spot removal, some graveyard hate, some artifact hate, some mass removal and a few cards to bring creatures back from the graveyard. Urborg Uprising was my introductory benchmark card to PDH card evaluation, and it still rings true today.
This is the first time I've knocked out a PDH list in about an hour, so this really felt quick. If I forgot anything, please let me know!
Uhh, Growth Spiral looks pretty awesome for turbofog. We love to draw and loves to put lands into play. This card does both, and at instant speed. I certainly want to try this out!
I think it's okay. Not sure if it will be worth playing. It only draws one, but it does have the advantage of technically being a 1 mana spell by letting you play a land. I can see a lot of scenarios where this would only be a draw 1 for 2, which is terrible. I think it would be a little too inconsistent to be good in our deck. More testing required!
I've also been thinking recently about how the meta shift from UR to UB Delver dominance might make UG Turbofog a bit more competitive. A lesser chance of running into Spellstutter Sprite is a huge boon, IMHO. Also, UB Delver has more black removal that can't go to your face ala Lightning Bolt.
Plus, if they want to cycle through their Thought Scours, they have to mill themselves. On one hand, you're feeding they're Delve with your milling, but on the other hand UB Delver can already mostly assume it can cast all the Gurmag Anglers it can draw.
Isn't it great? UB decks are such a walk in the park usually, I can't imagine that Foil pushes them into a favourable position against us, especially considering we also play it.
With these Dimir decks running rampant and a bunch of aggro decks coming in to try to stop them, this seems like a good time to play Turbo Fog.
I'm still worried about Burn and am trying to find ways to improve the matchup. Here's where my list is so far.
I've stripped down to 18 lands, which feels alright. I'm still a little concerned about opening hands, but I have to trust the deck. It does make room for more goodies!
3 Gush and 3 Foil has been feeling pretty good. There have been a few scenarios where Foil was just bad, though. The draw package has been super synergistic, however. Deep Analysis has been a really powerful addition, and feels quite at home with Foil and Gush, since both make me discard cards, either to pay for the cost or to discard down to hand size. I've also been feeling comfortable hard-casting it for 4 occasionally.
I put Quiet Disrepair back in the deck, but only as a 2-of. I think that against Burn, my plan is to bring in Relic of Progenitus and Lignify so that I have a total of 9 other artifacts and enchantments in the deck, which makes casting Quiet Disrepair pretty realistic, especially considering that I'll also be facing the odd Curse of the Pierced Heart. This gets around having to play artifact lands, which would be difficult with the current setup. I could see myself playing a single Tree of Tales, though. Lignify should be pretty strong against them, so only Relic feels like a wasted slot in that matchup. Worth it? We'll see.
I had a conversation with a new store clerk at my LGS about Magic and I haven't been able to get what he said out of my head lately.
He said he doesn't like Magic: the Gathering because he feels the mechanics are limited in design because of the nature of the game. He is a big-time board game player and prefers them over a collectible card game like MTG because they explore unique design space that just isn't possible otherwise.
This got me thinking about the "new" mechanics we've been getting in recent sets. I'm starting to feel like new keywords tend to be more of the same. Adjusting power/toughness of creatures, offering casting costs discounts for meeting certain criteria, giving you tokens, manipulating the library...
Is anyone else feeling like we're beating a dead horse? I'm especially tired of seeing 1/1 tokens and +1/+1 counters in specific.
I don't want this to be a negative discussion, so do you think that there could be new designs for cards that really think outside the box? I still love the game and I think the new cards are cool and all, but I can't shake this feeling that we're not breaking new ground.
It reminds me of the time when everyone was playing Blue for Treasure Cruise.
This time, though, a card like Foil doesn't necessarily take 100% of the blame for the big shift in the meta. It's only a drop in the bucket that's seemingly overflowing at this point. Does Blue have too many goodies?
A part of this is new card smell. UMA has only been out for like a week, so people are trying out cool new brews and additions to archetypes. There are more people playing online now than before. Creativity and popularity are good things for our favourite format.
Cantrips are enablers, but I don't think they are negative enablers. They make blue a great start for anyone looking to strengthen a combo or set of cards that would otherwise be kinda janky.
I think people will start to metagame and representation will change. When Treasure Cruise was banned, we entered an era of fast aggro decks where Stompy was king. Mono-Green and Boros Midrange are still good archetypes to play against these blue based decks. Be faster or go bigger is the name of the game. That's not to say you can win all the time. Delver decks have unbeatable draws.
Blue should be countering spells, filtering draws, enabling combos and tempo-ing people to death. That's what it does everywhere. But there's one card that kind of breaks what Blue does, and that is Delver of Secrets. I love the card and it's kind of the flagship creature of Pauper, but maybe it's time to let go. It's hard to imagine the format without it, but I think Blue would be a much fairer colour without a 3/2 beater on turn 1.
Growth Spiral is definitely better than Explore if you're in Simic. Instant speed is always a good thing, and this card also ignores normal timing restrictions for playing lands, which can lead to some interesting things. This could turn into a very cheap, cantripping ramp spell.
Is it good enough to see play? Maybe. I think I'll try it in Turbo Fog, but I have my doubts about it.
A player in our group recently made a Boros Archangel Avacyn deck that has been doing quite well. It focuses on angels, but plays a few key non-angel creatures that help her flip whenever she needs to.
I have to say, it's very hard to wipe the board with Avacyn in the command zone. Flash and giving her things indestructible is super powerful. The flip side is just gravy and gives you access to Red.
You could also consider building a Boros deck with many of the Boros legendary angels in the deck and switch them in and out of the command zone depending on how you feel.
Angel of Despair is also a pretty cool downgrade for a commander. Could take the helm of a nice Orzhov control deck, being both removal for any permanent and a solid finisher. Also, blink effects!
Do you think Fire//Ice is good enough in a multiplayer environment? I'm sure it's great in 1v1s, but it seems like it would be underpowered versus cluttered boards. Shattering Pulse is just a value card versus mana rocks and artifact decks. I think every deck needs some sort of answer to artifacts in EDH.
Do you mean using Mark of Mutiny targetting Zada to give all my creatures a +1/+1 counter and haste? seems decent! Not sure if it's worth it over other slots in the deck, but definitely an interesting card.
I like Temur Battle Rage because it's only two mana, making it easier to combo with a few other pump spells and end the game on the spot. Uncaged Fury is usually better as a standalone card, though.
Good change! Looks a lot more stylish. Although it feels kinda like Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Why do all community websites just imitate the big social media guys?
My favorite card is Deftblade Elite. Although I'm not generally a White player, this card is just so sweet; he has won me games. Whether he's killing a provoked creature every turn with lots of pump like Honor the Pure or Catapult Squad, or he's getting a dangerous blocker out of the way so my other creatures can get through (and lives to do it again!),he gets the job done! Just an all-round good card. and a common 1-drop, too!
I really like your introduction! Very concise and explains where the archetype comes from.
Is Cadaverous Knight really a core creature? It barely looks playable, to me anyways.
Maybe comment on each creature and specify in what style it belongs to (control or aggro), so that we can get a better idea of where they belong. You can also include ''shells'' of decks, in other words cards that must be run in order to make the deck function.
A notable exclusion from your otherwise rather full list is Nameless Inversion. This card is a complete beast in this deck, as it's recurable removal, with cards like Ghoulcaller's Chant and Ghoul Raiser.
Bonesplitter probably deserves a mention, as do other pump spells like Unholy Strength (there are many variants available).
I think Top 8 and Video sections are wishful thinking, as there are no sanctioned paper pauper tournaments. If you can get your hands on some MTGO videos playing Zombies, that might be a useful tool.
I suggest a section on Peasant (five uncommons max). It doesn't require a much bigger metagaming knowledge, just another card search. There are lots of uncommon candidates for Zombies.
A brief (or very detailed) matchup breakdown and analysis would be very appreciated. I like to test against many of the top decks in Pauper to see where mine stands, but I understand it's not possible for everyone, considering play-mates and time.
Overall, I think you're scraping the bottom of the barrel for playable cards, and cutting some of the more "fringe" ones is probably a good idea (you can also use the rating system to determine the value of each card to the deck). But it's a really good start! I look forward to seeing the rest!
Zada, Hedron Grinder is also a ton of fun and can kill people extremely quickly. Definitely worth checking out.
I've honestly felt pretty good about the 3 Gush in my deck, mostly because it feeds Foil and Deep Analysis. While my Delver matchup is still unfavourable, I am almost always winning at least one game in the match now, which means that the deck is fairly competitive against the top deck in the format.
I think we have an even more serious question on our hands now: Does Turbo Fog even need to play Jace's Erasure anymore? Clear the Mind, when played in multiples, prevents us from ever running out of cards. We could literally let the opponent draw themselves to death.
Pros:
Cons:
I'm seriously considering playing this card and foregoing Erasure completely, or relegating a single copy to the sideboard to speed up kills versus aggro decks.
I am loving some of the new additions!
Impassionate Orator is a beefier Soul Sister. Pretty good ability for a bear.
Summary Judgement is probably the white removal spell that White has needed alongside Journey to Nowhere. 5 damage is the necessary threshold a card like this needs to have in order to see mainstream play. It kills Anglers, which is huge! Being able to play it right after attackers are declared is also relevant.
When I saw Clear the Mind, I screamed "NOOOOOOO!" Pauper finally has a card that can shuffle its owners graveyard back into the library. And it Cantrips! This is huge. This is a way for Blue decks to stop Mill decks (like Turbo Fog)from winning. For me, there are three options here: 1) This is a must-counter spell, 2) Turbo Fog needs to run graveyard hate like Relic of Progenitus to reduce the effectiveness of the card, but weakening its sideboard plan against Blue decks that would otherwise not warrant graveyard hate or 3) Turbo Fog needs to play its own copy of Clear the Mind in its sideboard to keep up. This card may also begin a trend towards durdling decks that do absolutely no milling but only survive while the opponent draws themselves to death. This should be an interesting card!
Prying Eyes is a massive draw spell! Instant speed draw 4 is excellent, regardless of having to discard 2 afterwards. I like it a lot! I feel like it could see play as a singleton in a lot blue control decks. UB Mystical Teachings maybe?
Sage's Row Savant is an aggressively costed card for its stats and abilities. It reminds me of Omenspeaker, but with more of an aggro bend, which I don't hate. Aggro decks want to be able to smooth out their draws too.
Goblin Gathering is a pretty hilarious card that I think could be fairly powerful in the right build. Consider a control deck with Pieces of the Puzzle and Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall to consistently make 4-5 Goblins at a time. Could be an interesting deck. The card is still rather expensive on the front end for only two goblins, but it's great as soon as there is a single copy in the gy.
Open the Gates I mention because it is great fixing for 3-5 colour decks, but probably won't beat cards like Utopia Sprawl, Abundant Growth or Nylea's Presence.
Sagittar's Volley is yet another pushed anti-flying green card. It looks powerful on paper to beat Delver (kill a delver and ping all the faeries), but can it really beat Aerial Volley?
Wrecking Beast has an amazing amount of text for a beatstick common filler. a 6/6 with trample and haste is well worth 7 mana in my books. This is one of the cases where the haste seems so much better than the counter only because it's on a green card.
Applied Biomancy has the lure of being a 2 for 1. I think they could have made the pump a little bit bigger, like +1/+2 or something to really make it great.
Rubblebelt Runner has some interesting text that I've only seen on a rare, which is Legion Loyalist. Is it relevant to Pauper? Not particularly, but I think it's worth mentioning because it's so unique. Pauper really got some treatment this set!
Blade Juggler could have had potential if it had been a 2/2 with one less to Spectacle. As it sits, it's pretty average.
I love Burning-Tree Vandal. This card is aggressively costed for its abilities. Being able to haste out and rummage just for attacking is excellent. If you can't attack profitably, you can always opt for a 3/2 for 3 with a great ability. I doubt it will see much play, but it's a beautiful card.
Skewer the Critics is one of the better riffs on Lightning Bolt I've seen in a while. This will see play in Burn for sure. You are damaging the opponent every turn with burn, so activating the cheap Spectacle cost shouldn't be an issue. Great card!
People have already written about Growth Spiral since it was one of the first cards to be spoiled. It's an excellent rate for an instant speed spell. Is this the only way to make land drops during an opponent's turn in Pauper? In any case, it's certainly got potential.
Also, have you seen this?
Garna, the Bloodflame is an extremely powerful general and lends itself well to Aristocrats strategies and aggressive strategies. Although sacrificing stuff is one of my favourite things to do in Magic, I'm going to go with a deep synergistic aggro deck: Rat Colony.
Oh yeah, we're doing this.
1 Garna, the Bloodflame
Creatures (44)
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Viscera Seer
33 Rat Colony
1 Thunderscape Familiar
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Keldon Vandals
1 Blood Vassal
1 Crypt Rats
1 Falkenrath Noble
1 Thermopod
1 Ingot Chewer
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Other Spells (15)
1 Faithless Looting
1 Rites of Initiation
1 Altar's Reap
1 Tormenting Voice
1 Cathartic Reunion
1 Fling
1 Terminate
1 Doom Blade
1 Victim of Night
1 Destructive Tampering
1 Cosmotronic Wave
1 Mana Geyser
1 Urborg Uprising
1 Death Denied
1 Rolling Thunder
1 Library of Leng
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Thought Vessel
1 Commander's Sphere
Lands (35)
1 Command Tower
1 Opal Palace
1 Bloodfell Caves
1 Rakdos Carnarium
1 Cinder Barrens
1 Rakdos Guildgate
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Bojuka Bog
18 Swamp
8 Mountain
Garna feels very powerful in a list like this. She allows us to get a lot of card advantage with her first ability by getting multiple creatures back after combat or a board wipe. This makes it easier to make attacks that would otherwise be unprofitable and keeps us aggressive.
I completely forgot that Garna also has another juicy line of text: Your creatures have haste. This is also perfect for an aggressive list as it means we can deploy our returned creatures again next turn and keep attacking right away.
Garna can also allow for small value plays with cards like Faithless Looting. discarding two creatures and getting them back with Garna means we draw two cards for only 1 mana, on top of whatever we get back from a combat phase. Seems great!
Other than that, this deck is pretty straightforward. some spot removal, some graveyard hate, some artifact hate, some mass removal and a few cards to bring creatures back from the graveyard. Urborg Uprising was my introductory benchmark card to PDH card evaluation, and it still rings true today.
This is the first time I've knocked out a PDH list in about an hour, so this really felt quick. If I forgot anything, please let me know!
I think it's okay. Not sure if it will be worth playing. It only draws one, but it does have the advantage of technically being a 1 mana spell by letting you play a land. I can see a lot of scenarios where this would only be a draw 1 for 2, which is terrible. I think it would be a little too inconsistent to be good in our deck. More testing required!
Isn't it great? UB decks are such a walk in the park usually, I can't imagine that Foil pushes them into a favourable position against us, especially considering we also play it.
With these Dimir decks running rampant and a bunch of aggro decks coming in to try to stop them, this seems like a good time to play Turbo Fog.
I'm still worried about Burn and am trying to find ways to improve the matchup. Here's where my list is so far.
3 Fog
4 Tangle
4 Moment's Peace
Draw (20)
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
3 Think Twice
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Deep Analysis
3 Gush
3 Foil
4 Muddle the Mixture
Enchantments (4)
4 Jace's Erasure
Lands (18)
3 Forest
9 Island
4 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Thornwood Falls
2 Counterspell
2 Dispel
3 Lignify
2 Quiet Disrepair
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Aerial Volley
2 Penumbra Spider
I've stripped down to 18 lands, which feels alright. I'm still a little concerned about opening hands, but I have to trust the deck. It does make room for more goodies!
3 Gush and 3 Foil has been feeling pretty good. There have been a few scenarios where Foil was just bad, though. The draw package has been super synergistic, however. Deep Analysis has been a really powerful addition, and feels quite at home with Foil and Gush, since both make me discard cards, either to pay for the cost or to discard down to hand size. I've also been feeling comfortable hard-casting it for 4 occasionally.
I put Quiet Disrepair back in the deck, but only as a 2-of. I think that against Burn, my plan is to bring in Relic of Progenitus and Lignify so that I have a total of 9 other artifacts and enchantments in the deck, which makes casting Quiet Disrepair pretty realistic, especially considering that I'll also be facing the odd Curse of the Pierced Heart. This gets around having to play artifact lands, which would be difficult with the current setup. I could see myself playing a single Tree of Tales, though. Lignify should be pretty strong against them, so only Relic feels like a wasted slot in that matchup. Worth it? We'll see.
He said he doesn't like Magic: the Gathering because he feels the mechanics are limited in design because of the nature of the game. He is a big-time board game player and prefers them over a collectible card game like MTG because they explore unique design space that just isn't possible otherwise.
This got me thinking about the "new" mechanics we've been getting in recent sets. I'm starting to feel like new keywords tend to be more of the same. Adjusting power/toughness of creatures, offering casting costs discounts for meeting certain criteria, giving you tokens, manipulating the library...
Is anyone else feeling like we're beating a dead horse? I'm especially tired of seeing 1/1 tokens and +1/+1 counters in specific.
I don't want this to be a negative discussion, so do you think that there could be new designs for cards that really think outside the box? I still love the game and I think the new cards are cool and all, but I can't shake this feeling that we're not breaking new ground.
What are your thoughts?
It reminds me of the time when everyone was playing Blue for Treasure Cruise.
This time, though, a card like Foil doesn't necessarily take 100% of the blame for the big shift in the meta. It's only a drop in the bucket that's seemingly overflowing at this point. Does Blue have too many goodies?
A part of this is new card smell. UMA has only been out for like a week, so people are trying out cool new brews and additions to archetypes. There are more people playing online now than before. Creativity and popularity are good things for our favourite format.
Cantrips are enablers, but I don't think they are negative enablers. They make blue a great start for anyone looking to strengthen a combo or set of cards that would otherwise be kinda janky.
I think people will start to metagame and representation will change. When Treasure Cruise was banned, we entered an era of fast aggro decks where Stompy was king. Mono-Green and Boros Midrange are still good archetypes to play against these blue based decks. Be faster or go bigger is the name of the game. That's not to say you can win all the time. Delver decks have unbeatable draws.
Blue should be countering spells, filtering draws, enabling combos and tempo-ing people to death. That's what it does everywhere. But there's one card that kind of breaks what Blue does, and that is Delver of Secrets. I love the card and it's kind of the flagship creature of Pauper, but maybe it's time to let go. It's hard to imagine the format without it, but I think Blue would be a much fairer colour without a 3/2 beater on turn 1.
Is it good enough to see play? Maybe. I think I'll try it in Turbo Fog, but I have my doubts about it.
I have to say, it's very hard to wipe the board with Avacyn in the command zone. Flash and giving her things indestructible is super powerful. The flip side is just gravy and gives you access to Red.
You could also consider building a Boros deck with many of the Boros legendary angels in the deck and switch them in and out of the command zone depending on how you feel.
Angel of Despair is also a pretty cool downgrade for a commander. Could take the helm of a nice Orzhov control deck, being both removal for any permanent and a solid finisher. Also, blink effects!
Foil will be making my blue lists from now on...
Tethmos High Priest is going to generate a ton of value for white decks.
Reckless Wurm is a pretty powerful card in regular Pauper. Is there any place for it in PDH?
Do you mean using Mark of Mutiny targetting Zada to give all my creatures a +1/+1 counter and haste? seems decent! Not sure if it's worth it over other slots in the deck, but definitely an interesting card.
I like Temur Battle Rage because it's only two mana, making it easier to combo with a few other pump spells and end the game on the spot. Uncaged Fury is usually better as a standalone card, though.