“And your faces and our places and your names.”
Art:Dionus, Elvish Archdruid
by BODAX
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Dionus is a very strong commander and one of the best elfball commanders we’ve had in a very long time, this card is absolutely perfect for the elf archetype and works extremely well with a creature type filled to the brim with mana dorks and a ton of different ways to tap our creatures with cards like Birchlore Rangers
, being able to consistently grow our board and trigger our commander across all of our creatures allows us to have a huge board and swing out and end the game very quickly.
The Deck:
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Dionus, Elvish Archdruid Elfball!
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Why Dionus, Elvish Archdruid?
Dionus is a huge part of our deck and as soon as we hit four mana is the first creature that we cast, being able to cast our commander early is another huge strength of our deck. Dionus can be a little tough to keep on the board as opponents typically target them an absolute ton but other than that they are very strong and if they are allowed to be on the board for only a few turns it can get out of hand very quickly and be extremely strong. Dionus is a huge part of our deck and a card we want on the board as often as possible.
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:
Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward
& Cloakwood Hermit
Record against Abdel / Hermit 6-0
This is a very strong matchup for our deck. While they can often overwhelm the board with tokens, our creatures are almost always just bigger, and our big swings are considerably bigger. While they can produce a lot and go wide on us, it can be quite difficult since we are running forty-two creatures. This matchup just requires us to swing hard once our creatures start to get big, and we should have no problems.
Osseous Sticktwister
Record against Osseous Sticktwister 4-1
With how many creatures we amass on the board, Osseous’s ability really doesn’t affect us all that much, this matchup is pretty favorable and just requires us to stick to our core gameplan. We do need to be weary as they have a ton of removal and not having protection for our commander or another key creature can absolutely lead to a loss but overall this is a good matchup for the deck.
Shivan Dragon
Record against Shivan Dragon 5-2
Brand new to the format this card dishes out some pretty big damage and has a deck focused on a ton of mana, not unlike our deck, we are much quicker than them and if we have a fast hand we can easily just kill them in combat with no issues, they can snowball quite quickly as well but overall this is a great matchup for the deck.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 0-4
Arabella is a very tough matchup for our deck, while our creatures are often bigger and better than them on the ground the trigger from their commander can be absolutely devastating for our deck, this is a very tough matchup and combine that with the decent amount of removal they have and this can be a very rough matchup overall.
Shao Jun
Record against Shao Jun 1-3
Bounce effects and a ton of pings make this matchup quite tough for us, while they don’t affect our creatures they can bounce our commander quite a bit since they are in Izzet which really hurts our overall gameplan. The only game I won against them was because I had a Wellwisher
my opponent didn’t have an answer for which made it so they couldn’t do much to my overall life total and from there just swung out. While this matchup is winnable I would not say its favorable.
Killian, Ink Duelist
Record against Killian, Ink Duelist 0-5
Killian is a very rough matchup, they just have so much removal and cast it so efficiently that its very hard for us to keep our creatures on the board or really get the gameplan going, this is a horrific matchup for the deck, and without the help of the others at the table is just extremely rough.
Strategy Overview:
Speed:
Keeping a hand with one or two mana dorks can help us speed out our commander and keep the counters coming, leading to lightning-fast victories.
Protection:
Protecting our commander and key creatures is paramount to getting a win, being able to surprise opponents with cards like Avoid Fate
and Tamiyo's Safekeeping
can really catch your opponents off guard and keep our commander on the field which is very important for the overall gameplan.
Tapping them down:
Because of our commander, we want to be tapping our creatures down as often as we possibly can, luckily for us we have so many mana dorks and creatures that tap that we can not only make them better in combat but are able to use them to ramp out some of our bigger creatures like Elvish Aberration
.
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 so many awesome creatures in this deck, I won’t drone on and talk about how good mana dorks are in this deck but we are running pretty much everyone that we have available! Let’s go over some of the coolest cards in the deck! Starting off with Deepwood Denizen
which is a consistent source of card draw for the deck often only costing one-mana to activate and is also a very strong attacker/blocker if we can’t afford their ability yet. Elvish Herder
is another extremely strong elf allowing us to fight through even the toughest boards and guarantee some damage. On top of all of our other buffs adding on Timberwatch Elf
and trample gives us a crazy damage output and can easily eliminate opponents in just a few turns. While many of our elves are small and get bigger we have some that start off huge, which can make a very big difference when we go to combat like Fin-Clade Fugitives
and Elvish Aberration. It may come as a surprise but we do have a couple of non-elfs like Nyxborn Hydra
which is super cheap and can provide an insane buff, the only real downside to this card is that it will die to enchantment removal and with cards like All That Glitters
being popular in the format that can get a little tough. Adaptive Sporesinger
is one of our other non-elfs and at pretty much any stage of the game the proliferate is quite strong, more damage is something we will never say no to!
Instants:
We love swinging big and hitting hard so cards like Might of the Masses
and Aspect of Hydra
allow us to maximize our damage output and put a ton of pressure on your opponent, most opponents will also be shocked to see mono-green casting a spell before damage so the element of surprise is kind of cool as well. If our opponents are hitting hard and swinging often just like we do I love to surprise them with Luminescent Rain
which can gain a crazy amount of life and easily take a combat that would kill us and allow us to survive with a substantial amount of health. As mentioned previously we of course have some protection against the litany of single-target removal in the format like Avoid Fate and Tamiyo's Safekeeping, I typically only use these to protect my commander as they generate the most heat but this is of course situation dependent.
Sorceries:
One of the best sorceries in the deck is You Meet in a Tavern
if we have it early we can use it for additional creature selection which can help quite a bit if we have a bad hand or are looking for a bomb of a creature, however, its primary use in the deck is to give all of our creatures +2/+2 and allow us to go wide and hit like an absolute truck, this card is multi-faceted but in my testing games I found it best to use as a finisher. Since our commander gives a ton of counters to our elves, I have included sorceries that help proliferate like Smell Fear
making our creatures bigger and taking out our opponents is pretty much the closest thing we get to removal in green and this card is great at pretty much any stage of the game. Mobilize
is another sorcery that I enjoy an absolute ton it works super well with our commander and after we tap all of our creatures down again being able to untap them for combat is quite strong.
Artifacts:
Since we don’t have a ton of ways to draw cards within the deck we have both Spare Supplies
and Wedding Invitation
which are both cheap sources of card draw, I especially love Wedding Invitation because the unblockable can easily help us finish off an opponent. Last but certainly not least we have Colossal Dreadmask
which is a very strong card in most decks but since we can ramp out a turn six spell multiple turns early this can help us dominate combat in the early-mid game.
Enchantments:
Elvish Guidance
is one of the coolest cards in the deck, it is essentially a Gaea's Cradle
for our deck since we pretty much only have elves with a few exceptions. Being able to produce a ton of mana can help a ton with mana dumps like Spectral Hunt-Caller
and Nyxborn Hydra which can both be amazing ways to end games quickly. I am also a huge fan of Master Chef
especially in mono-green decks but in this deck it is a true powerhouse and works very well with all of the creatures we have entering and can when combined with our commander can help us get out of hand very quickly. Rancor
and Fists of Ironwood
are both great cheap ways to give our creatures trample which can help a ton when they are all buffed up and we want to deal big damage.
Land Base:
We don’t really have any lands that are super notable, I just wanted to highlight how low our land count is, we are only running twenty-six which is quite low but because of all of our mana-producing creatures we can safely run a really low count and keeping a hand with one or two lands and a mana dork is easily doable in this deck, the only thing about running a low-land count is that we cant consistently draw lands so keeping a risky one-lander is almost never better than a stronger five or six.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We can amass a board that gets huge pretty quickly.
- We have amazing mana production and can easily ramp out huge creatures/spells multiple turns early.
- We have quite a bit of protection for our creatures, as well as some removal for opponents like Ram Through
.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We are very commander-focused, while we do have protection to keep them on the board, they get targeted an absolute ton.
- Before we get our commander out and established we are very weak against cards like Evincar's Justice which can really shut down our gameplan.
- We are light on card draw and with the speed we dump out our hand we need to rely on cards like Lead the Stampede to maintain our hand and get the creatures we want.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! This deck is a blast and honestly, I can’t believe how many amazing commanders were added through Foundations and Jumpstart! These commanders are awesome and have the ability to shake up the format, which is always nice, Dionus specifically is one of the best elfball commanders that the format has ever seen and provides huge swings of power and a ton of mana production, which is truly perfect for any green player. Stay tuned as we have a lot of Jumpstart and Foundations decks coming. Tap in!