“Shocks and Bolts, Bolts and Shocks”
Art:Jaya, Venerated Firemage
by Yongjae Choi
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Non-combat damage is truly the name of the game in this deck, Jaya is perfect for it and allows us to turn strong forms of noncombat damage into Shock
s and Lightning Bolt
being able to churn out damage like this allows us too put a ton of pressure on our opponents and be very strong against a ton of strategies. Being able to put pressure on combat decks without us going to combat allows us to have a great matchup against them. We also can have some pretty quick kills in this deck and are able to outpace a lot of slower decks in the format. I am super excited to showcase this deck! Without further aideu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Jaya, Venerated Firemage Burn!
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Why Jaya, Venerated Firemage?
Jaya is a huge part of our deck and a huge part of the reason that our deck works, Jaya is a huge damage dealer for our deck and that extra damage can really help out, especially with cards like Kessig Flamebreather
and Firebrand Archer
, being able to turn a one damage ping into a Shock is an amazing way to deal a ton of damage and put a lot of additional pressure on our opponents. Jaya is a little pricey, but typically, by the time she comes out, we have a decent ping and spellsling ready board established, allowing us to transition very nicely. Jaya is super awesome for the deck and should always be the turn-four cast.
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:
Craig Boone, Novac Guard
Record against Craig Boone, Novac Guard 3-0
I like this matchup a lot and find it to be quite favorable for our deck. Craig is a great commander, but with all of our creature removal, it’s pretty easy to kill them, and without them, we just non-combat them out of the game and take the game over completely.
Zada, Hedron Grinder
Record against Zada, Hedron Grinder 4-1
Zada is a powerhouse of a commander, but just like Craig Boone, if we keep them off the field there isn’t much they can do against us, against a Zada player, I always like to have some single-target removal and a board clear like Fiery Cannonade
when going up against Zada.
Ball Lightning
Record against Ball Lightning 4-0
This deck is quite similar to ours, and I like the matchup a lot, while their commander can be a threat, we have quite a bit of ways to deal with them at instant speed, and we are often just quicker than they are, continuously killing their commander shuts them down a lot, instant speed damage is necessary for this matchup, but we are not in short supply of that here!
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Vraska, Swarm's Eminence
Record against Vraska, Swarm’s Eminence 2-3
This is a very winnable but also very tough matchup, if we are strong early and can wipe out a lot of their early creatures this is a very easy win for the deck in the event we have a bad hand or they have a really good start this can be a hard matchup, they attack very well and can often grow bigger than our boosted spells.
Murmuring Mystic
Record against Murmuring Mystic 2-3
While we can easily deal with the birds that Murmuring Mystic produces, this is a very tough matchup, especially because we can rarely get our key pieces to resolve. They have a ton of countermagic and playing around that can be extremely tough, especially in mono-red,
Tor Wauki the Younger
Record against Tor Wauki the Younger 0-3
This mirror match is actually quite tough for us; they are a little bit better and also have access to the cards in Rakdos, which gives them a ton more options; we often struggle to keep our creatures on the board, which can really disrupt the overall gameplan. This is a rough one.
Strategy Overview:
Burn it down:
This is the primary goal of the deck and something we should always be doing some form of non-combat damage, while we have quite a few burn spells in our deck, I often like to hold them for our opponents creatures/commanders, and removing them is key because we don’t like to block all that much.
Don’t Fall Behind:
We have a bunch of great ways to not fall behind, especially against creature decks with cards like Fiery Cannonade and Sulfurous Blast
, allowing us to wipe the board of small creatures pretty much whenever we want!
Never stop dealing damage:
Our deck is designed to dishing out non-0comabt damage on pretty much every turn (except the first few), and being able to maintain that has never failed me, even in tough matchups; it’s amazing how much damage we can dish out quickly.
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 a decently high creature count for a spellslinger deck but they provide strong and sometimes redundant functions like Witty Roastmaster
, Molten Gatekeeper
being very similar to Impact Tremors
and with both of these on the field we can deal out a ridiculous amount of damage and put a ton of pressure on all of our opponents. We also have some cards that work well with all of these cards like Mogg War Marshal
which is a great token producer and a great way to trigger our damage and make some chump blockers I also love all of the other strong spellslinger damage dealers like Kessig Flamebreather, Guttersnipe
and Firebrand Archer which can rack up the damage quick. The biggest weakness of our creature package is that almost all of our creatures are extremely valuable, and we really don’t want any of them to die; they obviously will, but being able to keep at least a few damage dealers on the field at all times is a great way to win games. Since Jaya increases the damage of all of our stuff by one the damage can go especially crazy when we are essentially casting Shock everytime we trigger one of our creatures.
Instants:
Since we have a decently high creature count and token producers, we can get a ton of value of cards like Battle Hymn
whether we use it to cast a huge Rolling Thunder
or use it to simply dump out our hand it’s a great way to get a ton of extra mana as needed if we draw it early it can also be great to cast Thunderous Wrath
with ease!. Since we almost always have Jaya on the field, we can take full advantage of cards like Sulfurous Blast and Fiery Cannonade. With these both doing three damage, we can take out a ton of commanders and creatures and really hurt creature-focused decks. Since Planeswalkers are legal for this month they are floating around quite a bit in the format, which is why we are packing Volcanic Spite
and Heated Debate
while both of these can target creatures being able to target Planeswalkers can be very strong, there isn’t a ton of planeswalker hate within the format so having access to some strong and cheap ones is a great asset for the deck. Rounding out our instant package is Unexpected Windfall
and Big Score
which are nice ways to get some card draw and mana production two things that are great assets for mono-red.
Sorceries:
Our sorcery package provides quite a bit of utility for our deck, especially cheap cards like End the Festivities
as well as Scouring Sands
which can absolutely devastate aggressive decks or token decks, and get even crazier when we have Jaya out on the field. We produce a ton of tokens to trigger some of our best cards like Impact Tremors and Raid Bombardment
. Cards like Hordeling Outburst
and Dragon Fodder
are great ways to help establish our board and get some additional non-combat damage in. I especially like Goblin War Party
the buff can be nice if an opportunity arises and we want to swing at our opponents. Since our opponents often have good creatures, if we do need to go to combat, we can take advantage of Wrangle
and Act of Treason
to steal an opponent’s creature and temporarily recruit them to our side and hit our opponents with them, sometimes for additional damage I love stealing an opponents creatures and just hitting them with it!
Artifacts:
Our artifact package is wholly uninteresting; we do have Spare Supplies
as a cheap and quick source of supplemental card draw; besides that, its all mana rocks, while these certainly help us ramp out Jaya and the overall gameplan they aren’t very interesting to talk about!
Enchantments:
I’ve talked about them previously within the article, but Impact Tremors and Raid Bombardment are arguably the two best cards in our deck; they provide so much damage and just work perfectly with Jaya I and the deck overall. Both of these typically draw a lot of attention and heat from your opponents, so I always like to be ready and have a plan. We don’t have any protection for our enchantments, and we don’t have any recursion either, so playing these on the right turn is key. Sometimes, it’s better to wait till you have more mana to play out one of these; if you play it on turn two or three and opponents have enchantment removal, you better believe it’s coming your way. Glassworks // Shattered Yard is another sweet card for the deck, one big burst of damage and consistent damage which can turn into a Shock
on pretty much every turn is really awesome.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We are amazing against combat-focused decks, as we can burn them down and not really care what they do.
- Our removal positions us well against creature-based decks as well; being able to deal two or three damage to our opponent’s entire board can devastate aggressive or token-focused strategies.
- We can kill opponents fairly quickly; in testing, I was able to take out opponents as early as turn six, which is quite quick for Pauper EDH; while this deck certainly isn’t CPDH, it is quite quick.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We are quite weak to single-target removal and have a lot of trouble keeping our creatures and enchantments on the field against a removal-heavy deck.
- Control decks can be rough for us as we struggle to resolve cards like Guttersnipe
or Impact Tremors, we do have both Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast but these are two cards in a hundred yard deck so not something we always have access too. - Jaya needs to be on the field, without them, our spells don’t hit the same, she can be hard to keep on the field.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this deck; I thought it was a fun and interesting take on a “pingers” / non-combat damage strategy. Non-combat damage really is a ton of fun to dish out and makes this deck quite enjoyable; I love spell-slinging and whittling down my opponents. Stay Tuned and Tap IN!