“Brimstone and flames have never held such comfort.”
Art:Marshal of the Lost
by Andreas Zafiratos
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Marshal of the Lost is another one of the commanders from this set that I belive is being greatly overshadowed by the amazing Bone-Cairn Butcher
and bleive me I’m not trying to convince that Marshal is better than Butcher because it most certainly isn’t but it is a really fun option and a very cool commander for tokens. Tokens are always kind of in a weird place in Pauper EDH; they have a tough time because there are so many creature decks, and they just aren’t big enough. Marshal certainly answers that problem and does it like crazy, you can hit like an absolute truck in this deck. I had a total blast with this one, and it was one of my favorite and most fun decks to come out of Tarkir:Dragonstorm! Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Marshal of the Lost Big Swing Tokens!
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Why Marshal of the Lost?
Marshal of the Lost is a huge part of our deck and like a lot of decks in Pauper EDH is the main reason that our deck works, they are a the biggest source of damage in our deck and our enables our deck to go super wide and hit like an absolute truck, with them on the battlefield we not only have the benefits of a go-wide strategy but also have the huge damage output, while sadly we are in Orzhov and don’t have a ton of ways to give our creatures trample we do have quite a few ways to make them unblockable or close to unblockable like Aphotic Wisps
and Traitor's Clutch
which can help us guarantee a hit and ramp up the pressure on our opponents. Marshal of the Lost is a big part of our deck, and I try to keep them on the field as much as I possibly can.
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:
Baron Bertram Graywater
Record against Baron Bertram Graywater 4-0
A true token vs. token matchup, and we come out on top! While Baron does have more consistent and arguably better token production, they can’t hit nearly as hard as we can, which allows us to have the advantage overall in this matchup. I had almost no trouble with this one; they just lack the punch that we have, and that gives us more than enough advantage to take over the game and dominate against them.
Mowu, Loyal Companion
Record against Mowu, Loyal Companion 3-0
Our unblockable effects shine very well here. We do have to be careful of trample from them, but overall, this is a good matchup. Mono-green has almost no removal and really can’t do anything to stop us. Once we find our unblockable and get big, they really can’t do anything to stop us. This is a very good matchup overall. Bonus points if we can kill their commander; they really can’t do anything then.
Lorehold Apprentice
Record against Lorehold Apprentice 4-1
It’s a pretty good matchup for our deck. I had no real struggles in this one. I just killed their commander a lot and didn’t really care what they were doing. They often don’t have a great presence, and we are able to pretty much bully them in combat. Their pinging doesn’t really bother us, and by the time we get low, we typically are able to swing out and kill them at that point.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Dionus, Elvish Archdruid
Record against Dionus, Elvish Archdruid 1-3
A winnable but very tough matchup for our deck, they have so much mana production and can amass an insane board that can hit like a truck before we even knew what hit us, they are just considerably faster than us, they also go just as wide as we do for the most part and that makes the chump blocking gameplan quite hard to do in the long term, I had a lot of trouble with this one but if they stumble we can take over the game.
Stormcatch Mentor
Record against Stormcatch Mentor 0-3
We just have no recourse against a spellslinger deck, they do their thing and we are pretty much powerless to stop it, they typically have protection and ways to keep their commander on the field, the only strategy besides focusing on our own is to kill any of their creatures that could deal big damage but often time its just not enough, our deck is just not set up very well to beat this.
Juri, Master of the Revue
Record against Juri, Master of the Revue 0-4
We do have some protection for our commander and our creatures, but we have almost no way to protect against sacrifice, which makes this a very tough matchup. In my experience, any time we got close to building something, it was just a sac effect, a sac effect, and then a removal spell. It can be very hard to build a board against Juri. It’s a very rough matchup for our deck.
Strategy Overview:
Swing Big:
With our commander, we can be a lot more confident going into combat than most token decks; use this to your advantage and swing big and confidently as often as the combat situation looks advantageous.
Your tokens are resources, use them:
Chump blocking, double blocking, whatever you have to do to make the combat situation more advantageous for us. We do like to have a lot of tokens on the board, but with so many high-damage commanders in Pauper EDH, using our tokens whenever we need them is much better than dying with a full board.
Be selfish, focus on your game plan:
In the vast majority of matchups, we can pretty much ignore what our opponents are doing and start our setup for a huge swing and big damage. We do have some removal but are not super heavy on it, so I found that being selfish and focusing on us was one of the best ways for us to get a win.
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:
Anointer Priest
is not only a cheap creature that comes down early and allows us to up our creature count for our commander they are also one of the best defenses that we have against aggressive strategies, being able to gain us a ton of life and make aggressive strategies be unable to kill us or at the very least make it quite hard to do. We also have Suture Priest
, which helps us gain life and can punish our opponents from playing a lot of creatures, absolutely perfect for a token deck mirror match. We have some other awesome token payoffs like Crusader of Odric
, which can also get quite big and provides a very nice attacker/blocker for our deck. Mirkwood Bats
and Nadier's Nightblade
are pretty much auto includes for our deck and provide a nice way to deal damage even if we can’t hit our opponents in combat. Changeling Outcast
and Tormented Soul
these are both very nice ways for us to hit with our commanders trigger and playing these early can set us up for some very easy big damage hits, both of these are amazing cards for the deck and while it can be a disadvantage that they cant block in the early-game they certainly make up for it by being able to dish out a ton of damage. While we are pretty good at attacking/blocking, our creature package is also quite good at other things, like being able to draw cards with creatures like Spark Reaper
, which is an amazing draw outlet for the deck and provides some needed card draw during those late turns.
Instants:
Aphotic Wisps and Traitor's Clutch are two of my favorite cards in the deck because they allow us to hit with our buffed up creature against a wide variety of decks allowing us to be extremely strong and hit like a truck, both of these cards allow us to get some really quick kills on opponents, while its certainly not combo deck fast it is pretty fast for a combat deck. Harsh Sustenance
is by far one of my favorite instants we have access to this card is just insane, we can easily kill opponents with this and it only costs three mana, its also a great card to use right before a board wipe or if you know a combat is about to go bad for you. Safe Passage
is another very good card we have access to if we think a combat might not be great or an opponent plays a spell during combat that turns it on its end. Beyond that, most of our instant package is removal with cards like Snuff Out
and Generous Gift
being great ways for us to take out opponents’ threats.
Sorceries:
Pretty much our entire sorcery package is nothing but token production with the exception being cards like Silverflame Ritual
this is one of my favorites because it prevents black control decks from devastating our whole board by running cards that give opponents creatures -1/-1 while these are not super prevalent I got burned by them in testing and Silverflame Ritual can also be used aggressively for some big damage, a true two-fold card for our deck. We also have some great card draws like Read the Bones
, Night's Whisper
, and Sign in Blood
, just some great card draws for our deck. Onto our token production, I won’t go through it all as it all pretty much does the same stuff, but we do have some unique ones like Battle Screech
, which is insanely easy to flashback, and Call to the Feast
, which produces lifelink tokens, which can help against aggressive strategies.
Artifacts:
Since our commander allows us to have one creature get really big we have some cards that assist with making that damage even crazier like Whispersilk Cloak
which guanteress us a hit, it is worth noting that when you drop the cloak on the field your opponents may put everything they have in coming after you. We also have Brass Knuckles
, giving our creature with insane stats Double Strike, just truly feels like the natural progression of things and is also another great way to deal a lot of damage. We round out our aggressive artifacts with Wedding Invitation
and Greatsword of Tyr
which are both amazing artifacts for the deck, Greatsword especially since we are able to buff up our creature permanently and tapping down an opponents creature can really throw them off in combat.
Enchantments:
We have a really small enchantment package but they help a lot with the overall gameplan especially Fanatical Devotion
which can help save all of our good creatures and use tokens to save them, sadly we don’t have much protection against enchantment removal but overall this card is cheap and can really save us against removal heavy decks. If we are playing against aggressive creature strategies, I am a really big fan of Omen of the Sun
, which provides token production and life, which can go a long way against an aggressive red deck. Oubliette
rounds out our enchantment package and is just amazing for our deck, a great piece of removal to have access to. I love it especially against Voltron strategies, as we are able to take away their equipment and enchantments as well, just a great piece of removal.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We can swing big pretty early on into the game, if an opponent isn’t heavy into combat or swings out, we can deal a ridiculous amount of damage.
- We are pretty good against aggressive strategies since we have a decent amount of creatures in the early game.
- Decks that play slow can take a lot of additional damage from us, even without our commander, we can go quite wide and hit for a lot of damage.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- The deck can take quite a while to kill if we don’t have our commander out.
- Because of that, our commander is targeted quite often, and while we do have some protection, it can be quite tough to keep them on the board.
- Control decks and specifically black control decks that run effects that give -1/-1 counters can be insanely tough matchups since they can take out all of our creatures very quickly, we are running cards like Silverflame Ritual
to stop that from happening but it can still be devastating.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this one, Marshal of the Lost is a really cool card and a very interesting take within the token strategy, we can hit like an absolute truck in this deck and being able to big swing removes one of the biggest problems that a large majority of token dekcs have which is struggling to finish. I had an absolute blast with this one, and it has made it into our weekly rotation! Stay tuned and tap in!