“Every night, we dress in sheep’s clothing.”
Art:Arlinn, Voice of the Pack
by Ryan Pancoast
Planeswalkers legalized by PDH RC for Jan 2025; you can find more info here. (https://www.reddit.com/r/PauperEDH/comments/1gbvtcg/big_announcement_for_january_breaktherulesmonth/)
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Arlinn, Voice of the Pack is the second planeswalker we are covering, and wow, what a card! While it does cost six mana, we can offset that by having an absolute ton of ramp, both spell-based and creature-based. We are also boasting a large creature package filled to the brim with pretty much all wolves with a few helpful toolbox and support cards that allow us to be very strong in combat and dominate our opponents. This deck provides a ton of typal synergies and just some classic mono-green fun! There is so much support for werewolves at common, and I’m very excited to showcase this deck today! Without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Angrath, Captain of Chaos Army Aggro!
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Why Arlinn Voice of the Pack?
Arlinn is a huge part of our deck; while they do have a high mana cost at six mana, we rarely have to wait till turn six to cast Arlinn as our deck is packed to the brim with ramp, its also great being able to buff almost all of the creatures in our deck, Arlinn’s second ability is a pretty easy way to get a 3/3 on the board and that can be pretty strong and having extra attackers is something we will never complain about. Arlinn is a huge part of this deck, and when I hit six mana, no matter what turn it is, I typically slam them on the table to help further the overall game plan.
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 their 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:
Displaced Dinosaurs
Record against Displaced Dinosaurs 5-3
Displaced Dinosaur is quite the scary commander, but I actually found this matchup to be quite favorable for our deck; we are often quicker and can establish a board before them, with the help of counters I typically hold and focus all the removal I can get on their commander, and then just swing out for the win. Without their commander, this deck really doesn’t do too much. This matchup is absolutely loseable, but I found it went pretty favorably for us in testing.
Saber Ants
Record against Saber Ants 3-0
This is a very advantageous matchup for our deck; while this deck produces a ton of tokens and can have a decent board presence, it is quite nice being able to simply trample through this deck and just outmuscle them in combat once we start getting buffs like Master Chef
and Arlinn out there’s not a ton they can do.
Captain Storm, Cosmium Raider
Record against Captain Storm, Cosmium Raider 4-0
I like this matchup a lot; in many ways, our decks are doing the same thing, but we still have the advantage through our mana ramp and being able to amass a better board much quicker. Cards like Master Chef work wonders in this matchup and our creatures having better starting stats allows us to control combat in this game and overall make it easily winnable and favorable.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Juri, Master of the Revue
Record against Juri, Master of the Revue 0-3
It’s just a terrible matchup for our deck; while we do have some removal through our Fight cards like Smell Fear
, it’s not enough to stop a lot of their creatures since quite a few have ETB sacrifice effects. In this matchup, it can be extremely tough to maintain a big board, and swinging is hard, too. This deck is just amazing against us.
Corpsejack Menace
Record against Corpsejack Menace 2-4
This is an extremely difficult matchup; if Corpsejack Menace is on the board for more than a few turns, it gets out of hand very quickly and is hard to stop. They snowball so fast, and while we have a strong presence in combat, we still really struggle with this deck. This matchup is winnable if you and your table-mates keep Corpsejack off the battlefield. It’s usually a squash match with us just running them over, but it can be quite hard to do.
Syr Konrad, the Grim
Record against Syr Konrad, the Grim 0-4
This is another matchup that we struggle a ton against. Their commander is extremely powerful, and we don’t have enough ways to stop them. Combine that with a graveyard-focused deck with a lot of sacrifice effects and quite a suite of removal, and this is overall a very rough time.
Strategy Overview:
Establish your board early:
We have quite a few small early-game werewolves that can help get the ball rolling on establishing our board, like Hinterland Logger // Timber Shredder
, which is very easy to flip on the first few turns and can be a great source of early-game damage. We also have cards like Scorned Villager // Moonscarred Werewolf
, which is a great early-game piece of ramp and is also easy to flip, which helps accelerate the gameplan by a lot. Even if we don’t attack, we want a board presence in the early game.
Threat Assessment and Using Your Removal Wisely:
We are not running a ton of removal, so using it for the best threat at the time or to further the overall game plan is key to being successful with this deck. Holding removal is almost always pretty good as the game progresses, as the threats get worse and worse.
Constant Combat:
We are a combat deck through and through; attacking when possible is pretty much the name of the game; we want to keep our opponent’s life totally threatened at pretty much all times.
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:
The early game is quite important for the deck. We want to commit some cheap mana dorks like Elvish Mystic
or Llanowar Elves
so we can get the ball rolling and get closer to Arlinn. We do have some small transform werewolves for the early game like Hinterland Logger // Timber Shredder and Villagers of Estwald // Howlpack of Estwald
, which are both quite easy to flip in the early turns and can give us quite an advantage in combat. Flipping them early allows us to take advantage of cards like Ilysian Caryatid
as well which can really accelerate our mana ramp. Once we hit the mid-late game, the gameplan is extremely simple; pretty much all we want to do is play our wolves, get buffed from Arlinn, and swing for the fences; this deck is definitely very simple but a fun focus on a cool creature type. I’m also a huge fan of Urban Daggertooth
, which is a great way to make our board get out of hand; just a few turns of this blocking can make our board a very threatening state.
Instants:
Moonmist
is an insane card in this deck we have quite a few transform wolves in the deck, and in the mid-late game it can be very hard for them to flip, it’s quite rare to have nobody cast a spell in the mid-late game, while we do have some we can flip early Moonmist is an amazing way to flip our board and hit like a truck in combat. We also have Waxing Moon
, which is another very strong card, flipping a werewolf at instant speed and forcing an opponent into a bad combat and giving your creatures trample is a crazy rate for just two mana, Waxing Moon is extremely effective both offensively and defensively and is one of the best toolbox cards we have. Since we are a combat deck and Pauper EDH is filled with removal we do have some cheap ways to protect our creatures with the best being Wrap in Vigor
, which can be a great response to a really bad combat or mass removal spell, in testing I found you can easily get your opponent to overextend and expend resources to kill your board and for only two mana you can get your whole board back. We also have Tamiyo's Safekeeping
and Snakeskin Veil
; Snakeskin Veil is especially good because we are able to synergize with our overall strategy and give that creature a counter.
Sorceries:
You Meet in a Tavern
is an awesome way to end the game and one of the easiest ways to do it, with a decent board and this card, you can easily run-over one or two opponents, it also provides a good amount of creature selection which can be strong in the early-game, although in my testing I only used it when I was super far behind and if I’m doing ok in the game, I think its best to hold until you are ready to finish the game. We have quite a few ways to make our creatures bigger and better and the best is likely Soul's Might
, this card is a powerhouse and can absolutely change the game, especially if the creature we are targeting has trample. One of the things that is quite uncommon in mono-green is good artifact/enchantment removal, its just not something the identity is good at doing but we have both Return to Nature
and Root Out
, in a format filled a ton with very strong artifacts/enchantments these are absolutely assets for the deck.
Artifacts:
We have a ton of rocks to help us ramp out Arlinn and some of our bigger wolves, but we have a lot of support within our artifacts like Spare Supplies
and Letter of Acceptance
which are mostly used for card draw but provide a lot of tempo and early-game utility. By far, the most impactful artifact is Armory of Iroas
, which synergizes perfectly with our deck and, when placed down early, can get out of hand very quickly; this is a very high-value card for the deck.
Enchantments:
We have a pretty big enchantment package within this deck, Mono-Green doesn’t have a ton of card draw or general extra support, so being able to have cards like Bequeathal
at our disposal allows us to act a little outside of our color identity and get some extra support for the gameplan. One of the biggest weaknesses of our color identity is dealing with flyers, if a deck is heavy on flyers for the most part we get beat down a ton, luckily we have Spidersilk Armor
which is a great way to nullify the effectiveness of flyers against us and the toughness buff helps us overall in combat. Talking about support, we have Grafted Growth
and Wild Growth
, which are great early game pieces and cards I always prioritize when they are in your starting hand, a low land count hand with a Wild Growth is typically a very strong hand. I especially like the counter from Grafted Growth, and with our early-game creatures, that counter can help us dominate the early-game.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We are pretty strong in combat; our commander and cards like Master Chef
only make us better. - Even though we are mono-green, we have packed quite a bit of card draw, allowing us to fill our hand as needed.
- We are filled to the brim with ramp, and even though our commander costs six, we can easily cast them a few turns early, which can really help with creature production and buffing up our board.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- The matchup against control decks can be very tough. We struggle when they counter our important spells and keep our commander and our best creatures off of the board.
- If a deck is heavy on flyers, we can struggle against them quite a bit. We are running Spidersilk Armor, which nullifies that problem, but there is no guarantee we will get that.
- We don’t have a ton of protection for our creatures, and sacrifice or removal heavy-themed strategies can be a tough matchup for us.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoy this deck, during our testing phase this was one of the most popular decks, while it does have some very tough matchups it’s a really fun and flavorful deck, I would agree that this has rough matchups against a lot of popular strategies but is a perfect deck for a table made for fun. Stay tuned for the rest of the Planeswalkers!