“I am drawn to those that I can share the struggle with.”
Art:Balduvian Berserker
by Cristi Balanescu
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
There is nothing I love more than underappreciated and underplayed commanders, and Balduvian Berserker is definitely one of them! With only one other deck on the internet, this card is greatly overshadowed, and in my opinion, it should not be. A strong commander who you can buff up regularly and has a Fling
effect on death allows us to build a deck that is strong and can output a ton of damage. We aren’t very aggressive as we typically spend the early turns building up our board and mana-ramping; we can absolutely crush opponents in the mid-late game. Balduvian Berserker is an interesting and different spin on mono-red and lets you play some really wacky and fun cards that are going to make your opponents question whats going on! This deck is called overwhelming power for a reason, as our commander allows us to pack a punch inside and outside of combat and uses all of our other creatures to make them bigger and better. This deck is so much fun, and I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something new within Pauper EDH. Without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Balduvian Berserker Overwhelming Power Pauper EDH!
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Why Balduvian Berserker?
Balduvian Berseker is the card that makes our deck work and is a huge part of our deck, being able to buff up our commander and swing hard, and if they die or face removal being able to have a Fling effect allows us to take out huge creatures or just deal damage directly to our opponetns and whittle them down, in our testing games I was able to hit opponents for fifteen damage off of our commander’s ability and I’m sure the number can go much higher than that, we have quite a bit of mana ramp in our deck so we typically don’t care if our commander dies because it’s just an additional fling effect that we can hit our opponents with.
Gameplan:
The game plan for our deck is quite straightforward. For an opening hand we like to have a couple lands, some early-game mana ramp like Ornithopter of Paradise
or Iron Myr
, and some pump spells/additional creatures to fuel our commander, we typically arent that selective about hands as the deck has quite a bit of redundancy that make most hands pretty decent for the deck.
As far as the overall gameplan goes, once we have a good hand, we typically like to start by ramping as much as we can with some of our early-game ramp and commit our commander to the board as soon as possible once we have our commander out and some other creatures, we just get aggressive and swing with our commander and use their enlist ability to make them big and then pump them up and hit hard. We don’t always go for a commander damage kill, but it can easily happen within this deck.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is Pauper EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, Pauper EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Gary Clone
Record against Gary Clone 3-0
I like this matchup a lot. The name of this matchup is typically speed, and we are a little bit faster and a lot more explosive than this deck; we can typically overwhelm them with damage pretty easily. This deck does a lot of the same things we do in the early-game but luckily we are much more explosive at the end of the preparation. This was a very good matchup for the deck.
Slimefoot, the Stowaway
Record against Slimefoot, the Stowaway 5-1
Slimefoot is a great matchup for our deck. We are typically much better than almost all of their creatures, and their commander dies to pretty much the only removal we have in Abrade
and Lightning Bolt
; we are also a lot more explosive than slimefoot. This is a favorable matchup but one that is possible to lose as we need to be very careful of the drain and gain from their commander, as they are able to gain a ton of life very quickly, which does not go well with our overall game plan. Slimefoot is a great matchup for our deck overall and one we typically don’t have a ton of trouble with.
Third Path Iconoclast
Record against Third Path Iconoclast 4-0
Third Path Iconoclast is a deck that focuses a lot on cantripping and filling up the board, luckily because of our commander we are quite strong against them in combat and can easily perform a commander-damage one-shot against them; this deck focuses really heavily on cantrips; and constant casting on spells so we avoid a lot of the counterspells many izzet decks run; most lists have some, but nothing like a typical control deck. This is another deck we just want to go fast and hit hard against.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Stormcatch Mentor
Record against Stormcatch Mentor 0-3
This is a rough one, while these decks are typically more combo-focused as opposed to control but we definitely struggle a lot against this deck because they don’t really care what we do. I had a game during testing where I was able to put the Stormcatch Mentor player to one-life and they combo’d off and killed the table. This is overall a very tough matchup that pretty much completely ignores us.
Hollow Marauder
Record against Hollow Marauder 1-4
Another very tough matchup for us. This deck focuses heavily on removal and keeping graveyard counts high, and they typically have a crazy amount of sacrifice effects through cards like Fleshbag Marauder
; this deck is set up to beat our deck and very often does not allow our commander to stay on the board, I had a very fast hand and steam-rolled them in one-game of testing so this matchup is absolutely winnable, just a little tough.
Invisible Stalker
Record against Invisible Stalker 0-4
This is an extremely rough matchup. We do have some single-target removal but it doesn’t work on their commander; they have a lot of buffs through equipment and enchantments and can hit that sweet sixteen number very easily; on top of that, some light control elements allow them to counter our key spells/commander, this is one of those matchups where we need to unite everyone else at the table to get the win. This is a very rough matchup for our deck.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
We have some awesome early-game mana ramp through cards like Manakin
, Hedron Crawler
, and Ornithopter of Paradise as well as some other very strong mana producers like Patron of the Arts
and Plundering Barbarian
all of these accomplish the same goal but can help us get to some of our huge end-game finishers like Ulamog's Crusher
and Eldrazi Devastator
these cards are great on their own but are also amazing cards to enlist with our commander and go for that sweet commander damage kill. We have some great early-game enlist targets as well, like Blistering Barrier
and Minecart Daredevil // Ride the Rails being able to buff our commander by four or five power on the fourth or fifth turn can put a ton of pressure on our opponents and force them to try to remove their commander or kill our creatures which is perfectly fine because we will throw all of that damage at our opponents face! Enlist is a great ability for the deck but is greatly helped by cards like Battle-Rattle Shaman
and Ironhoof Boar
which can make our commander even bigger and allow us to hit much harder.
Instants:
Our instant package is where one-shots are made off with cards like Temur Battle Rage
and Uncaged Fury
, both being amazing examples of strong ways to commander damage kill our opponents. We have some other amazing offensive spells like Raking Claws
and Run Amok
, which are both great ways to maximize our damage. One of my favorite cards in our instant package is Blood Frenzy
, which is a great buff for our commander and if our opponent still has a little health left we can whittle them down at the next end step or use another amazing card in Fling which is another great way to kill our opponents. Fling is definitely one of the most interesting cards in our deck, our commander having a Fling effect on them allows us to “double-dip” and thus produce double-damage from casting Fling; Fling is a card I hold in very high regard within this deck and is extremely strong and can easily kill an opponent.
Sorceries:
I love Price of Loyalty
and Act of Treason
because they are amazing in two different ways within our deck, being able to steal an opponents creature and get them out of our way and enlist them to our commander is a true powerhouse for only three mana, both of these cards are great and I typically like to wait till an opponent goes all in on a creature or drops a huge Eldrazi, these are both amazing pieces for the deck. The bangers keep on coming within our sorcery package with cards like Cosmotronic Wave
and Coronation of Chaos
. These are both decently cheap and can clear the way for our commander by taking away the best creatures our opponents have from combat; Cosmotronic Wave is especially strong against token strategies since we can often wipe out some of their tokens. Crash Through
and Rile
are both amazing ways to give our commander and cantrip a card, these cards are both quite strong for only one mana and can be a great way to finish the game.
Artifacts:
We can’t talk about our artifacts without first mentioning the huge train in Aradara Express
, which is an amazing card to use our commander’s list ability on, and because of how the deck is built, crew four can easily be accomplished by just one of our creatures allowing us to buff our commander up huge and have strong additional attackers/blockers. Beyond the huge train, our artifact package is filled with mana rocks; all of these are great in any hand and help us speed out our commander as well as our bigger creatures; some provide additional card draw like Commander's Sphere
and Mind Stone
. All of these mana rocks are great and cheap ways to accelerate the overall gameplan and we are always looking for one or two in an opening hand.
Enchantments:
Zektar Shrine Expedition
is one of the coolest and wackiest cards in the deck, and I just love playing this card; being able to make a 7/1 super early allows us to make our commander absolutely huge and hit like a truck, Zektar is such a weird and different card that feels like it was made for this deck. Another card that is great for the deck is Tavern Brawler
, which can make our commander a lot bigger; while there are definitely some whiffs in the deck, there can be some super huge hits that buff our commander by five or six power which can make a huge difference especially if we have given our commander trample, Tavern Brawler is a super sweet card and a card that greatly accelerates the gameplan. Beyond that, we have some additional buffs for our commander, like Granite Grip
and Claws of Valakut
, which are effectively the same card, but the effects stack very nicely together and can easily one-shot an opponent even if our commander just dies.
Land Base:
Our landbase isn’t very interesting, but there are a couple of cards I want to highlight, like Evolving Wilds
and Terramorphic Expanse
, which are both great ways to trigger an early Zektar Shrine Expedition which is perfect for our commander and can allow us to do a ton of damage. We also have Escape Tunnel
, which is a perfect way to make our commander unblockable before we use their enlist ability. I also love both Cave of Temptation
and Captivating Cave
, which are both great ways to make our commander bigger and allow the one-shot to happen much easier. Our landbase is strong for the deck. We are in mono-red, so it mostly consists of mountains, which is perfectly fine; the non-basics we have do provide utility as well as card draw, but the deck will function well without them ever being played throughout the game.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We can hit very hard and easily one-shot an opponent.
- Since we have quite a bit of mana-ramp within the deck we can easily re-cast and thusly re-trigger our commanders ability.
- If we can’t cast our commander, we do have additional finishers like Ulamog's Crusher
and Eldrazi Devastator, which we can easily ramp out as well!
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We don’t have a ton of ways to deal with opponent’s creatures outside of combat.
- Control decks can pose us a threat as they typically just wont let our commander resolve, making the gameplan much slower.
- We are very much a glass-cannon deck. We can have super swingy and awesome games, but some games can be tough against high removal/control opponents.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this deck tech; if you are looking for something new, I would definitely recommend Balduvian Berseker; the deck is very cheap and just a blast to pilot; it is also perfect for players of all skill levels. If you have any other commanders who are very underrated and have a low deck count, send them our way. We’d love to check them out! Thanks for reading to the end and for all of your support!