Great primer! Your last primer got me started again in this format. I also have a ascended lawmage deck. It is a bit more on the voltron side than yours and it can draw quite a lot of cards. Ocular halo is a sweet card on lawmage also it keeps you protected while attacking.
Do you know pdhhomebase? It's a newer website on pauper commander.
Do you mind if I link you primers (horror and lawmage) on reddit?
Wow! That's an awesome primer! Thanks a lot for it! You could try to include condescend and vedalken dismisser. But I think your build is close to optimal. Thanks for sharing!
By coincidence I stumbled over an article on redit that reignited my interest in pdh. I saw that corpsejack menace gets downshifted to uncommon an can therefore be used as commander. I am just in the process of building a deck for him using mechanics that place counters on my permanents such as scavenge. Half way through I stumbled over gilder bairn. Now I wonder if gilder bairn would just be a better version of corpsejack menace because he can use his ability several times a turn. What do you think?
What makes me think the most is that good cards for both dechs are usually green. Black adds stuff like grim harvest, a few scavengers, a few proliferate cards and removal. On the other hand blue gives access to more graft cards, counters and tutors.
Hello everybody,
Yesterday I played the BG version with 4 gurmag anglers and 4 aura gnarlids. I played 3times against combo. If i have a good start I am usually fast enough to win against combo. I am quite happy with the mainboard. When it comes to the side I am quite undecided about what cards would suit this deck aside from rofello's gift. I am thinking about contaminated ground and evil presence against tron. Do you have some other card suggestions that work well in my deck?
I think you could consider to go in two directions from there:
- You include deathspore thallid and go in a control direction. Then you might pick up some cards from this list:
- You go in direction of a agro list:
I think currently you are more on the agro plan. Do you need to stick to a 5$-budget?
Time for a first feedback:
I built both (GWr and GB) lists and took the GWr list for some testing games in paper. Initially I changed the list into an GWb list featuring 3 Pestilence dropping curse of the pierced heart. I played against a fast version of delver-fiend and a net decked affinity list. I happened to win each game with about 50 life. The deck has some weakness against really fast decks. Against the player with delver-fiend I was very lucky to have kirtar's desire in my hand every game. Still, after the games I exchanged one copy in the main with crystallization and added one copy in the sideboard. The reason behind this addition is that this card can be fetched with the pilgrim and cannot be handled with apostle's blessing once it enchants a creature. As soon as protective sphere hits the table the games are getting hard for my opponent to win. Affinity is about the same. Of corse atog can mess with my auras on his artifact creatures but with protective sphere on the board he is unlikely to get the combo kill with fling.
All in all I felt quite comfortable with the deck. I am still looking forward to face a counterspell based control deck tounderstand that match up. The next step with the decks is a testing session with the GB version.
My thoughts go in a similar direction as egg_chen. The mechanic is white and the ability by it self is the best of it's kind because the bounce effect is optional and not as narrow as the abilities of the whitemane lion or the glint hawk. That means it opens new directions for brewing for decks that want to bounce different card types such as enchantments. You can now effectively mix different card types you want to bounce. Up to now you had to chose blue for skyfisher 5-8. With the aviary mechanic you could make a GW enchanted kitty. There is a nice interaction between the mechanic, kor skyfisher, heliod's pilgrim, hobble, auramancer and abundant growth.
Interesting list. I like the look of the more recent build. Seal of Doom might be worth looking into to clear out some bigger threats that might be out of range for Pestilence or if you need to save mana in later turns.
Seal of doom is an interesting option and probably better suited than stab wound. The downside is definitely the reduced range of creatures it can hit. I reduce the number of stab wound to include 2 seals. But I have to keep in mind when I plan the sideboard that I have 2 dead cards against MBC. Nethertheless, the inclusion of the seal is worth it.
Rofellos's Gift is also a great card for recursion if you need it. This might be worth a slot in sideboard against control or anything that might run enchantment hate in game 2 and 3.
This card should be included in the sideboard. I have 21 green cards in the deck. It further lets me reuse seal of doom or dead weight.
I feel that this version of the deck has problems against bogles. Are there good enchantments to handle them or do we need to use edicts and nausea? I had also seal or primordium and quiet disrepair in mind but is that really enough?
GB is getting quite far of my initial idea of the deck but it looks super solid! Instead of sultai scavenger I use two aura gnarlids because they can close out the game rather fast. Here is the current list:
I think dropping white comes at a heavy cost. I loose the tutors, life gain and the protective sphere. Still I put in pestilence as a wincon. Green helps me quite well by looking for enchantments and filling my graveyard. But I can't profit from the cards in the yard. I also find it problematic to empty my library so quickly. I think the GB-build is like a worse(no life gain) version of a BW pestilence deck. How would you build it?
After adjusting the lands I start liking pestilence because it takes care of swarming creatures while ticking my opponents life down. I have quite enough life gain to survive the damage myself. Additionally, I can target it with the protective sphere to not take damage myself. The curse of the bloody tome could be favored in matchups against fog or teachings. Does anyone have other suggestions for wincons in this deck?
Hello Curby,
Thank you for your post. You brought up the following topics:
- Name of the deck
- comparision of my deck with a control deck
- handling creature threats
- handling noncreature threats
- the mana base
I will try to bring up my point of few to these topics.
Name of the deck
I chose this name because this deck has a lot of enchantments and it can draw quite a good amount of cards with kruphix' insight. Maybe enchanted pacifist is a better name? On the other hand there is not even one pacifism in the deck I am open for suggestions.
Comparision of my deck with a control deck
You are right about that there are a lot of 1 for 1 in the form of pacifism effects. Control decks try to outvalue their opponent. Usually this happens with card draw, mass removal or cantripping spells that affect the board (like MBC) My deck has card draw in the form of kruphix' insight and a way of handling several threats with protective sphere. The deck consists of 11 removal 4 card for card draw (usually draw 3), 4 cantrips, 4 tutors and 4 additional ways to remove enchantments and artifacts in the main. Furthermore, I am playing 6 cards that gain me life over the course of the game and 10 lands that give me life by entering the battlefield.
Handling creature threats
Generally, for handling standard creatures I can unse my pacifism auras or the protective sphere. At the beginnin of the game I have to use more auras because In the early and the mid game I have to accelerate and adjust my mana to efficiently use the protective sphere. Problematic are swarm strategies or decks that are very fast in deploying a lots of threats. For these decks I play many cards in the sideboard like kirtar's desire, echoing decay and pestilence. Following, I will adress some special threats separately:
Hexproof creatures - my auras don't work here. But protective sphere does. Until I can deploy it, I have to use quiet disrepair to destroy important auras.
Vehicles - as it was mensioned before they are quite annoying as my auras work on sorcery speed. But I have mainboard answers to them in my main in the form of quiet disrepair. Also faith fetters and oblivion ring can stop a vehicle.
Guardian of the guildpact - I wonder if I even need to handle this creature as by itself it is not very impressive by itself. In the main I have 1 pillory that I can search for with 4 tutors. Alternatively I could include plumes of peace or curse of chains. Unless I really have problems with handling it I might try to gain more life than it can do damage.
Artifact creatures - I wanted to mension that in this matchup I have additional removal in the form of quiet disrepair. It is really slow though.
Handling noncreature threats
Generrally, the deck can handle noncreature permanents quite well. Oblivion ring and quiet disrepair can handle everything that is based on an enchantment or an artifact. Damage from instants and sorceries such as rolling thunder or a lightning bolt can be handled with protective sphere.
The mana base
The mana base is an important part of the strategy as it needs not only to support the mana requirements for my spells but also all 5 colors of protective sphere to catch dangerous threats that can't be handled with an pacifism effect in time.
I understand the merits of a mana base as curby suggerst it but I think it is better suited for a domain/zoo-style deck. I think running ash barrens and basics reduces the effectiveness of protective sphere.
At the moment I have the following amount of colored sources for each color:
Green: 25 (17 lands 8 enchantments)
White: 16 (8 lands 8 enchantments)
Black: 10 ( 2 lands 8 enchantments)
Red: 12 (4 lands 8 enchantments)
Blue: 8 (enchantments)
I counted the number of ways how I can produce a certain color provided I can cast my color fixing enchantmentsfor protective sphere. The most sources I have for green because my colorfix is green. The second most is white because my auras are mostly white. It seems i made a mistake by prioritizing red over black. I have to change the numbers there to support pestilence. If I would use ash barrens I could not facilitate protective sphere in the same way. Would you recommend rhystic circle as an alternative? I think that my ramp is not strong enough to effectively use the rhystic circle.
This deck aims to stop the opponents creatures with enchantments while he is slowly loosing life points from the curse. I built this deck in paper and only played it once since then against a casual azorius deck from old ravnica. The game took forever and was decided by me loosing and my opponent only having 3 cards in his library. That game was epic and a constant struggle forth and back. Actually exactly how I like some games from time to time. Against other pauper decks I estimate my matchups against aggro in general fairly positive. I guess my worst matchups are MUC, delver and combo in general.
My sideboard allows me to surprise my opponent with armadillo cloak and ancestral mast whisch help me to end the game quickly if needed to be. As I also expected swarm decks to be problematic I added some sweepers. The curse of the bloody tome comes in against decks that gain more life than my curses can handle. I am pretty sure that hexproof should be a positive matchup because I can lock their attackers out of the game with protective sphere.
By checking my deck and the sideboard you can see that I am still trying different options. I would like to get some feedback on my choices or suggestions for other cards. What do you think of the deck?
Your selection contains rares and uncommons. Do you want to stick to pauper?
I have some questions about your game plan:
- how long does it take to set up your lock?
- with the lock you try to win the late game by leaving them with only lands on top. Right?
You mentioned some cards to mill you opponent blindly . This only helps you game plan if you can see their library.
As far as I can see you can only do that with the witch. I see that you have many ways to get the witch
From almost anywhere I imagine that it must be quite difficult to set it up in time before your opponent
gets you first. How often did you play the deck jet?
I am also playing around with the idea of a deck that tries to control the opponents top deck.
The deck can be found here:
Can you let us know how the deck worked out for you and how your matchups were?
Thanks for sharing your idea!
Do you know pdhhomebase? It's a newer website on pauper commander.
Do you mind if I link you primers (horror and lawmage) on reddit?
By coincidence I stumbled over an article on redit that reignited my interest in pdh. I saw that corpsejack menace gets downshifted to uncommon an can therefore be used as commander. I am just in the process of building a deck for him using mechanics that place counters on my permanents such as scavenge. Half way through I stumbled over gilder bairn. Now I wonder if gilder bairn would just be a better version of corpsejack menace because he can use his ability several times a turn. What do you think?
What makes me think the most is that good cards for both dechs are usually green. Black adds stuff like grim harvest, a few scavengers, a few proliferate cards and removal. On the other hand blue gives access to more graft cards, counters and tutors.
Did you consider:
meteor shower? - propably too bad.
stream of life - Lifegain
Yesterday I played the BG version with 4 gurmag anglers and 4 aura gnarlids. I played 3times against combo. If i have a good start I am usually fast enough to win against combo. I am quite happy with the mainboard. When it comes to the side I am quite undecided about what cards would suit this deck aside from rofello's gift. I am thinking about contaminated ground and evil presence against tron. Do you have some other card suggestions that work well in my deck?
- You include deathspore thallid and go in a control direction. Then you might pick up some cards from this list:
- You go in direction of a agro list:
I think currently you are more on the agro plan. Do you need to stick to a 5$-budget?
Time for a first feedback:
I built both (GWr and GB) lists and took the GWr list for some testing games in paper. Initially I changed the list into an GWb list featuring 3 Pestilence dropping curse of the pierced heart. I played against a fast version of delver-fiend and a net decked affinity list. I happened to win each game with about 50 life. The deck has some weakness against really fast decks. Against the player with delver-fiend I was very lucky to have kirtar's desire in my hand every game. Still, after the games I exchanged one copy in the main with crystallization and added one copy in the sideboard. The reason behind this addition is that this card can be fetched with the pilgrim and cannot be handled with apostle's blessing once it enchants a creature. As soon as protective sphere hits the table the games are getting hard for my opponent to win. Affinity is about the same. Of corse atog can mess with my auras on his artifact creatures but with protective sphere on the board he is unlikely to get the combo kill with fling.
All in all I felt quite comfortable with the deck. I am still looking forward to face a counterspell based control deck tounderstand that match up. The next step with the decks is a testing session with the GB version.
Seal of doom is an interesting option and probably better suited than stab wound. The downside is definitely the reduced range of creatures it can hit. I reduce the number of stab wound to include 2 seals. But I have to keep in mind when I plan the sideboard that I have 2 dead cards against MBC. Nethertheless, the inclusion of the seal is worth it.
This card should be included in the sideboard. I have 21 green cards in the deck. It further lets me reuse seal of doom or dead weight.
I feel that this version of the deck has problems against bogles. Are there good enchantments to handle them or do we need to use edicts and nausea? I had also seal or primordium and quiet disrepair in mind but is that really enough?
4 Kruphix's Insight
2 Commune with the Gods
Land
4 Jungle Hollow
5 Forest
11 Swamp
4 Dead Weight
4 Pestilence
2 Vessel of Nascency
4 Paralyze
3 Stab Wound
3 Quiet Disrepair
4 Fertile Ground
4 Abundant Growth
4 Gurmag Angler
2 Aura Gnarlid
In this list I am testing 2 vessel of nascency instead of 2 Commune with the Gods. Commune seems better though.
4 Kruphix's Insight
4 Commune with the Gods
Enchantment
4 Abundant Growth
4 Paralyze
4 Dead Weight
4 Stab Wound
4 Pestilence
4 Fertile Ground
4 Quiet Disrepair
11 Swamp
4 Jungle Hollow
5 Forest
Creature
4 Grim Guardian
I think dropping white comes at a heavy cost. I loose the tutors, life gain and the protective sphere. Still I put in pestilence as a wincon. Green helps me quite well by looking for enchantments and filling my graveyard. But I can't profit from the cards in the yard. I also find it problematic to empty my library so quickly. I think the GB-build is like a worse(no life gain) version of a BW pestilence deck. How would you build it?
At the moment I am playing with different wincons in my original build. I see the following enchantment based options:
- curse of the bloody tome
- curse of the pierced heart
- pestilence
After adjusting the lands I start liking pestilence because it takes care of swarming creatures while ticking my opponents life down. I have quite enough life gain to survive the damage myself. Additionally, I can target it with the protective sphere to not take damage myself. The curse of the bloody tome could be favored in matchups against fog or teachings. Does anyone have other suggestions for wincons in this deck?
Thank you for your post. You brought up the following topics:
- Name of the deck
- comparision of my deck with a control deck
- handling creature threats
- handling noncreature threats
- the mana base
I will try to bring up my point of few to these topics.
Name of the deck
I chose this name because this deck has a lot of enchantments and it can draw quite a good amount of cards with kruphix' insight. Maybe enchanted pacifist is a better name? On the other hand there is not even one pacifism in the deck
Comparision of my deck with a control deck
You are right about that there are a lot of 1 for 1 in the form of pacifism effects. Control decks try to outvalue their opponent. Usually this happens with card draw, mass removal or cantripping spells that affect the board (like MBC) My deck has card draw in the form of kruphix' insight and a way of handling several threats with protective sphere. The deck consists of 11 removal 4 card for card draw (usually draw 3), 4 cantrips, 4 tutors and 4 additional ways to remove enchantments and artifacts in the main. Furthermore, I am playing 6 cards that gain me life over the course of the game and 10 lands that give me life by entering the battlefield.
Handling creature threats
Generally, for handling standard creatures I can unse my pacifism auras or the protective sphere. At the beginnin of the game I have to use more auras because In the early and the mid game I have to accelerate and adjust my mana to efficiently use the protective sphere. Problematic are swarm strategies or decks that are very fast in deploying a lots of threats. For these decks I play many cards in the sideboard like kirtar's desire, echoing decay and pestilence. Following, I will adress some special threats separately:
Hexproof creatures - my auras don't work here. But protective sphere does. Until I can deploy it, I have to use quiet disrepair to destroy important auras.
Vehicles - as it was mensioned before they are quite annoying as my auras work on sorcery speed. But I have mainboard answers to them in my main in the form of quiet disrepair. Also faith fetters and oblivion ring can stop a vehicle.
Guardian of the guildpact - I wonder if I even need to handle this creature as by itself it is not very impressive by itself. In the main I have 1 pillory that I can search for with 4 tutors. Alternatively I could include plumes of peace or curse of chains. Unless I really have problems with handling it I might try to gain more life than it can do damage.
Artifact creatures - I wanted to mension that in this matchup I have additional removal in the form of quiet disrepair. It is really slow though.
Handling noncreature threats
Generrally, the deck can handle noncreature permanents quite well. Oblivion ring and quiet disrepair can handle everything that is based on an enchantment or an artifact. Damage from instants and sorceries such as rolling thunder or a lightning bolt can be handled with protective sphere.
The mana base
The mana base is an important part of the strategy as it needs not only to support the mana requirements for my spells but also all 5 colors of protective sphere to catch dangerous threats that can't be handled with an pacifism effect in time.
I understand the merits of a mana base as curby suggerst it but I think it is better suited for a domain/zoo-style deck. I think running ash barrens and basics reduces the effectiveness of protective sphere.
At the moment I have the following amount of colored sources for each color:
Green: 25 (17 lands 8 enchantments)
White: 16 (8 lands 8 enchantments)
Black: 10 ( 2 lands 8 enchantments)
Red: 12 (4 lands 8 enchantments)
Blue: 8 (enchantments)
I counted the number of ways how I can produce a certain color provided I can cast my color fixing enchantmentsfor protective sphere. The most sources I have for green because my colorfix is green. The second most is white because my auras are mostly white. It seems i made a mistake by prioritizing red over black. I have to change the numbers there to support pestilence. If I would use ash barrens I could not facilitate protective sphere in the same way. Would you recommend rhystic circle as an alternative? I think that my ramp is not strong enough to effectively use the rhystic circle.
Today I present to you my enchantress brew.
4 Kruphix's Insight
Land
4 Blossoming Sands
2 Jungle Hollow
9 Forest
2 Rugged Highlands
2 Plains
2 Wind-Scarred Crag
2 Recumbent Bliss
1 Hobble
3 Journey to Nowhere
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Protective Sphere
3 Fertile Ground
4 Quiet Disrepair
1 Trace of Abundance
4 Abundant Growth
3 Curse of the Pierced Heart
1 Faith's Fetters
1 Pillory of the Sleepless
2 Auramancer
4 Heliod's Pilgrim
This deck aims to stop the opponents creatures with enchantments while he is slowly loosing life points from the curse. I built this deck in paper and only played it once since then against a casual azorius deck from old ravnica. The game took forever and was decided by me loosing and my opponent only having 3 cards in his library. That game was epic and a constant struggle forth and back. Actually exactly how I like some games from time to time. Against other pauper decks I estimate my matchups against aggro in general fairly positive. I guess my worst matchups are MUC, delver and combo in general.
My sideboard allows me to surprise my opponent with armadillo cloak and ancestral mast whisch help me to end the game quickly if needed to be. As I also expected swarm decks to be problematic I added some sweepers. The curse of the bloody tome comes in against decks that gain more life than my curses can handle. I am pretty sure that hexproof should be a positive matchup because I can lock their attackers out of the game with protective sphere.
By checking my deck and the sideboard you can see that I am still trying different options. I would like to get some feedback on my choices or suggestions for other cards. What do you think of the deck?
I have some questions about your game plan:
- how long does it take to set up your lock?
- with the lock you try to win the late game by leaving them with only lands on top. Right?
You mentioned some cards to mill you opponent blindly . This only helps you game plan if you can see their library.
As far as I can see you can only do that with the witch. I see that you have many ways to get the witch
From almost anywhere I imagine that it must be quite difficult to set it up in time before your opponent
gets you first. How often did you play the deck jet?
I am also playing around with the idea of a deck that tries to control the opponents top deck.
The deck can be found here:
Can you let us know how the deck worked out for you and how your matchups were?
Thanks for sharing your idea!