“So I’m sitting here with ghosts again.”
Art:Inkfathom Witch
by Larry MacDougall
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Combat is one of the most complicated and nuanced pieces of the game; decisions and when to go to combat is often a debated decision for a player; if you struggle with those decisions or just like very easy combat, then this is most certainly the deck for you! Nearly every single creature in our deck is unblockable or features an evasive keyword like Horsemanship or Flying; because of this, we are able to chip in for damage pretty consistently and whittle down our opponents, Pauper EDH can be a slow format, but since it’s not that slow we also have our commander who is the main feature of our deck and allows us to bring a ton of damage, combine that with some great removal and recursion/protection for our board and you have a deck that can easily take over combat. This deck is a whole lot of Dimir shenanigans! Without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Inkfathom Witch Unblockable!
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Why Inkfathom Witch?
Inkfathom Witch is the reason our deck works and allows us to maximize our damage and actually put a lot of pressure on our opponents; naturally, this makes them quite a removal magnet, which is why we are running cards like Feign Death
and Kaya's Ghostform
to bring them back. Our commander’s ability is a little pricey, but we have a very low overall mana cost, with almost all of the creatures in our deck costing only one or two mana; this also allows us to hold up the mana for counterspells in case our opponents try to take out our commander or any of our important creatures.
Gameplan:
The game plan for the deck is very simple; for a starting hand, we can pretty much take anything with a couple of creatures, some protection, and lands. This deck has an extremely low mana-curve throughout it so we are able to pretty much keep any hand that is just ok. Once we have our unlockables out we chip in as much as we can before we get our commander out and start doing some real damage, the crux of this gameplan is to be kind of selfish and protect our board while building it up and swinging hard with our commander.
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:
Murmuring Mystic
Record against Murmuring Mystic 3-0
This is a good matchup for us; while Murmuring Mystic decks typically have a decent amount of counterspells, we have a decent amount as well, and as long as we can resolve our commander, there isn’t much they can do to get them off the field as we unblockable them down and continue to hit hard. I like this matchup a lot, it does shutdown some of our flying creatures but with our commander and plenty of unblockable creatures this is a great matchup.
Trelasarra, Moon Dancer
Record against Trelasarra, Moon Dancer 4-0
Trelasarra does a lot of things well. They get pretty big, and they gain a ton of life, but all of this does not make them stack up well against us; the early-game damage from our unblockable creatures allows us to chip in and remove some of that additional life gain and once our commander is out we can take out absolutely huge chunks of their health. I like this matchup a lot, and since they are in Selesnya, they can struggle to remove our creatures or fight through our counterspells.
Mr. Orfeo, the Boulder
Record against Mr. Orfeo, the Boulder 3-0
Mr.Orfeo is a very strong deck and can dish out a ton of damage, but they struggle to fight against our counterspells, so if we save them for Mr.Orfeo, their deck cant do what it wants to do and struggles to do a ton of damage, as long as we keep their commander off of the board and keep on hitting them hard we can easily win this matchup.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Tor Wauki the Younger
Record against Tor Wauki the Younger 0-5
This is an extremely rough one, and one I continued to try and beat, but Tor Wauki is just set up to beat our deck since we have very low toughness creatures, their commander and a lot of cards in their deck can absolutely devastate our board and not allow us to keep any creatures on our board. This is an extremely rough one, and this deck is just perfect against us.
Satyr Enchanter
Record against Satyr Enchanter 1-3
This is a very interesting matchup; Enchanter can have some very fast games with amazing damage output and those games can be very bad for us; they have so many amazing enchantments and when they get some of the best like Predatory Hunger
or Elephant Guide
and Armadillo Cloak
can make this matchup very hard for us. This deck is a tough matchup but is certainly winnable.
Zada, Hedron Grinder
Record against Zada, Hedron Grinder 0-2
Our deck can be quite fast but we are not Zada fast, this deck can be very overwhelming for us and makes this a very tough matchup. Zada can cantrip like crazy, and while we can get in some early-game damage, they are often going off when we get our commander out; countering their commander certainly helps, but it can be tough on low mana. This is a very tough matchup for the 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:
To start off, I absolutely have to mention Wei Scout
, Wu Light Cavalry
and Wu Scout
which are all of the cards in our deck that have horsemanship, or basically unblockable, Horsemanship is such a wacky and fun mechanic and not only does it fit perfectly within this deck these cards are just pure classics, I love including wacky and weird cards within the deck. One-mana really is the name of the game here with a ton of strong one-mana un-blockables like Triton Shorestalker
, Slither Blade
and Changeling Outcast
which are great ways to get our gameplan going super early and hopefully deal two or three damage before our commander comes out. While not unblockable we do have some strong evasive utility creatures like Spiketail Hatchling
and Stormscape Familiar
. Which provide so much value for the deck, being able to reduce the cost of all of our black spells can help quite a bit for preserving our mana and thus our protection, and being able to force an opponent to pay extra for a spell can stop them from casting it or catch them by surprise if they don’t know what hatchling does.
Instants:
We have a decent amount of removal, which is pretty much expected for our deck; we aren’t super heavy on removal as we are more focused on our gameplan than our opponents, but being able to take out huge or super problematic creatures can keep us alive for much longer, speaking of keeping us alive we also have Darkness
. Darkness is extremely effective against a ton of strategies within the format, but especially Voltron strategies since they love to one-shot opponents, and being able to prevent that damage can keep us alive, and since our deck is capable of outputting a ton of damage we are easily able to swing back and end games, sometimes one extra combat is all we need to get a win. We have quite a few counterspells that can help us stump our opponents and, more importantly, protect our board. One of my favorite cards in the deck is Foul-Tongue Shriek
, which is a great way to hurt an opponent and give us a huge-life swing. Since we have so many creatures that populate the early game, we can easily get up to ten or fifteen creatures before we cast this and cause a huge gain and drain swing, which can be very hard for opponents to recover from.
Sorceries:
Gaze of Pain
is such a cool card! This is one of the most unique and interesting cards within our deck and works just so well. Being able to have our unblockable creatures not deal any damage and instead target a creature allows us to take out even the biggest creatures our opponents have to offer; when we have a decently full board, we can get the number extremely high since we have so many unblockable/evasive creatures. We also have Feed the Swarm
, which is a strong piece of enchantment removal perfect for all of the Armadillo Cloaks that are floating around the format but can be strong against pretty much anything, I do like to be careful when I use this since we don’t have any other removal that is for enchantments, we do have counterspells but not a ton of enchantment removal overall. Beyond that, our sorcery package consists of strong and cheap sources of card draw; since our deck has a very low overall mana curve, being able to refill our hand and consistently draw allows us to keep finding protection and filling the board. A lot of our card draw is one and two mana, this is great because even on turns where we commit permanents to the board, we are still able to draw up and keep our hand full for the next turn.
Artifacts:
We have a very uninteresting artifact package since it consists of only mana rocks; while they aren’t very fun to talk about, our mana rocks serve an important purpose: They allow us to hold up counterspells and provide additional protection for our creatures, activate our commander’s ability, and cast other spells and creatures on our turn. I typically like to look for at least one mana rock in an opening hand. Being able to cast something like Dispel
off of a mana rock allows us to be ready and resilient and have an extra leg-up on our opponent!
Enchantments:
Helm of the Ghastlord
is a super strong card for the deck and almost always goes on our commander since we can get an additional unblockable buff, and the draw and discard we get from it can be a great way to continue finding protection as well as more offensive cards for the deck. Helm of the Ghastlord works perfectly with the overall game plan of the deck. I’ve talked about our commanders a ton since they are a huge part of our deck, but there are certainly some downsides to this. For one, our commander is a huge removal magnet and gets targeted pretty quickly after they are on the field, because of this we are running Kaya's Ghostform which is a great way to keep our commander on the board in the face of removal. We have black in our deck, so we absolutely had to include Oubliette
, which is a great way to remove a pesky commander or a combo creature for our opponent against colors that don’t have a lot of enchantment removal like white this can be a true slam-dunk and a great way to take that creature out of the game.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We can chip in for damage quite consistently, allowing us to weaken our opponents before we go for our big swing.
- We have an awesome amount of card draw, and combining that with our low overall cost, we are easily able to dump our hand and refill it quite quickly.
- Combat is a no-brainer on pretty much every turn since almost all of our cards are unblockable, and the ones that aren’t are evasive.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We have very low-health creatures, so cards that give -1/-1 or deal one-damage to each creature are powerful against us.
- We are very reliant on our commanders, and without them, we don’t do a ton.
- We can struggle greatly against decks that target the board and have a ton of creature hate.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
I hope you all enjoyed this one as much as I did! This deck is weird, wacky, and just a tad odd, but it is a lot of fun to play and a very interesting build. A whole deck of unblockable with a ton of upside just makes for a lot of fun. This deck is one I originally did not like when I was theory crafting it, but after a ton of games, it brings a unique and different element to combat and the format as a whole, and I always love doing wacky and weird things. Thanks for reading to the end and for all of your support!