“Popo. I’ve been wondering…”
Art:Veteran Ice Climber
by Néstor Ossandón Leal
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Veteran Ice Climber is another weird and wacky commander from Tarkir: Dragonstorm, as someone who is just plain addicted to building wacky and weird decks, my spidey senses were truly tingling with this one! As someone who has been a longtime fan of Invisible Stalker
I was truly excited for this card, while we arent a mill deck for the most part we do have some support and for the most part we use that trigger to mill the best cards our opponents have, there isn’t a ton of decks that have a lot of recursion in the format so that mill can be quite ddevasting for our opponents. This is definitely a casual deck and arguably not as strong as Stalker, since opponents can remove it, but it truly ramps the fun factor up to ten and is one of my favorite casual decks I’ve built in quite a while. Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Veteran Ice Climber Voltron Mill!
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Why Veteran Ice Climber?
Veteran Ice Climber is the whole thing our deck is trying to do; they are the entire deck in a lot of ways, they are a main damage dealer, and the main way that we interact with our opponents. In colors that don’t have a lot of recursion, our commander making them mill can be really strong for us. On top of that, commander damage kills are really easy to achieve in this deck. It’s super easy for us to deal damage since our opponents can never block. Veteran Ice Climber gets targeted quite a bit because they are pretty much the whole thing in our deck. We do have a bunch of cheap ways to protect them, but overall, control decks are going to spend a lot of their resources trying to stop us.
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:
Metastatic Evangel
Record against Metastatic Evangel 3-0
Our counterspells work very well within this matchup since they really cant do anything to stop us from countering their stuff, in this matchup they can get pretty big in testing by the time they were about to get big we were swinging for lethal commander damage, our mill can also really hurt them since they have very little recursion.
Sonic Shrieker
Record against Sonic Shrieker 4-1
Sonic Shrieker is a pretty slow matchup and that works very well for us, we love decks that also love to go slow since it allows us to build up our board and commander pretty well, they do pack quite a bit of removal in this deck so i would definitely recommend keeping some cheap counters in case they try to contest our commander.
Mountain Goat
Record against Mountain Goat 3-0
We are pretty much running a very similar game plan in different colors. At the same time, they have a lot more removal and are a little bit faster. We are better because they don’t have a lot of recursion, and if we mill a lot of their good cards, we have a huge advantage. In testing, I didn’t have a ton of trouble with this matchup.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 0-3
Aggressive decks are just a big problem for us. While we do have a few support creatures in the deck, we almost never want to block with them. Overall, we don’t have a super strong board presence outside of our commander. Sadly, Arabella is just really fast for our deck and can dish out a lot of damage very quickly. I had no success in this matchup.
Zada, Hedron Grinder
Record against Zada, Hedron Grinder 0-4
I never realized how fast this deck can go until I played this which is a considerably slower deck, this is a really rough one for our deck, countering their commander can slow them down and i was able to successfully do that a couple times in the testing games but was not able to pull off a win overall, this is a bad matchup and you definitely help from your opponents to get this one done.
Aegar, the Freezing Flame
Record against Aegar, the Freezing Flame 1-3
Aegar is a pretty strong spellslinger deck with a really big board presence by mid-game, which is one of our biggest struggles against them. I was able to pull off a win, but they stumbled, and I got lucky. Commander damage kill as quick as we can, and countering all of their best stuff is our only true path to victory here. Even though we got a win here, I definitely wouldn’t say this was a favorable matchup.
Strategy Overview:
Swing big and swing early:
Even if we don’t have a ton of equipment, out swinging with our commander every turn is pretty much the best idea. Even if we only mill one or two cards, it’s still great to remove cards from our opponents’ decks. Since our commander is decently stat-ed, it’s also better to attack and block as much as we can.
Protect your commander at all costs:
Our opponents will realize pretty quickly that our commander is the best part of our deck and also our main damage dealer. Because of that, holding up counterspells if we think that our opponents are going to mess with us is the best way for us to keep the game plan going.
Card advantage is the key:
We have quite a bit of draw in the deck and some awesome draw that works well with our artifacts like Reverse Engineer
and Thoughtcast
are both great ways to keep our hand full and keep our protection and counterspells at the ready, since our commander is targeted so often having a ton of card advantage is very good.
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 really low creature count but all of our creatures provide a nice bit of support and utility for our deck, I am a big fan of Renowned Weaponsmith
and Sage of the Unknowable
which are strong mana dorks for the deck and allow us to ramp out our artifacts which can be really good to get the mill going early. We also have both Foundry Inspector
and Etherium Sculptor
, which reduces the costs of a large majority of our deck, which is obviously amazing and helps us speed out our gameplan. Since we have so many artifacts, we can almost always play Frogmite
and Myr Enforcer
, which I mostly use as blockers for our deck, and they can help a ton, especially against aggressive strategies, since we are able to play both of these out pretty early. By far my favorite creature in our deck is Merfolk Thaumaturgist
it can be really good in Voltron mirror matches since they often have far more attack than toughness and we can also use it offensively since we have quite a bit of equipment in our deck that gives toughness, this is just a great asset for our deck
Instants:
We continue the overall mill gameplan in our instant package with strong spells that also mill like Didn't Say Please
, Countermand
, and Thought Collapse
, which are all pretty efficient counterspells and also give us additional mill on our opponents, which can really make their deck thin. Of course, it is random what we mill, but it can impact and slow down their game plan, no matter what we mill. We also have some more traditional counterspells like Counterspell
, Arcane Denial
as well as Negate
and Dispel
, which are all really good ways to protect our commander and keep our overall game plan going. We also have Turn Aside
, which is a super cheap way to protect our commander. It can be hard to hold up two or three mana, but holding up one mana on a turn is very easy.
Sorceries:
The Cipher cards in our deck are just truly amazing, since our commander guarantees a hit every time they attack we can constantly get the benefits, being able to utilize cards like Hands of Binding
, Hidden Strings
and Last Thoughts
over and over again is just insanely good and allows us to get so much more utility and usefulness out of our commanders attack. Stealth Mission
is a nice and cheap buff that can help us get the mill bigger in the early game and also accelerate the commander damage game plan. Beyond that, our sorcery package is full of card draw like Lórien Revealed
, Reverse Engineer, and Thoughtcast. These are all awesome ways to maintain a full hand.
Artifacts:
Since we use our commander to block a lot, I am a big fan of artifacts that buff up their health, it also synergizes really well with cards like Golem-Skin Gauntlets
which is one of the best damage dealing artifacts we have, Accorder's Shield
, Cathar's Shield
, and Slagwurm Armor
are great ways for us to buff up our commanders health and make them a much better blocker! While we do love our commander blocking, we care a lot more about buffing up their attack and doing big damage and we are easily able to do that with cards like Amorphous Axe
, Darksteel Axe
, and Bonesplitter
all of these are quite cheap and allow us to get the damage and the mill going quite early. Brass Knuckles
is another card that is so good in this deck, it can allow commander damage kills really easily, and while the second copy isn’t super great, it can still be useful on creatures like Myr Enforcer. Vulshok Gauntlets
is a card I am a huge fan of because are commander has vigilance and we get the benefit of all of the buff with none of the drawback, a very strong card for the deck.
Enchantments:
We do have some controlling elements in our enchantment package with cards like Witness Protection
, Fall from Favor
, and Kasmina's Transmutation
are all great ways to deal with commanders or any deck that cares a lot about a specific creature or commander, these are also cheap removal if an opponent starts buffing up and getting a huge creature, just great defensive assets for the deck! We do have a few more mill elements in our enchantment package with cards like Jace's Erasure
and Curse of the Bloody Tome
being able to further mill our opponents and really thin out their deck, while mill is never the primary gameplan for the deck, it is nice to remove advantage from our opponents. I typically like to use Chronic Flooding
on the most aggressive player since they tend to be tapping all or most of their lands every turn. We round out our enchantment package with some buffs for our commander like Arcane Flight
, Ophidian Eye
, and One With the Wind
, which are just cheap and extra buffs for the deck and help us increase the power of our commander and draw more cards, a true win-win for not much mana investment.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We can really ruin opponents who don’t have a lot of recursion since we can mill a large majority of their deck.
- Commander damage kills are pretty easy in this deck since our commander can’t be blocked.
- We have many control elements that allow us to control the game and shape it to our pace.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We are extremely reliant on our commander.
- We have very little creatures aggressive decks can beat up on us.
- We can be pretty weak to artifact removal.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I had a lot of fun with this card as someone who has been piloting Invisible Stalker for quite a long time, getting invisible stalker with mill and vigilance feels pretty good and is a fun way to disrupt opponents gameplans and really shake the game up, there is also a lot of really good artifact support in mono-blue to support this overall gameplan, this is definitely a casual deck but one I had a ton of fun piloting. Stay tuned and tap in!