An Intro to Pauper Commander

Hello readers,

Previously I have talked about less played but fun formats such as Oathbreaker. Today I will be covering the Pauper Commander format, also known as PEDH.

This format is similar to Commander being 100 card singleton in regards to deckbuilding, with the difference that every card but the commander must have been printed at common rarity. The commander can be any creature that has been printed at Uncommon, regardless of whether or not it is legendary. Personally I like to pick a legendary creature so that I can play my deck in regular commander. Surprisingly, I have been able to win against some regular commander decks with my PEDH deck, which goes to show pauper does not mean a lack of power even if it is a restriction.

I enjoy PEDH because of the creativity bred by restriction, and also the resulting budget friendly decks you can build. Using any uncommon creature as a commander also opens up many options not available in regular Commander.

I have built a deck based on Queza, Augur of Agonies. The plan is to draw a lot of cards and drain my opponent’s life. I also have a beatdown plan with Empyrial Armor to buff my commander by the number of cards in my hand, and give it evasion with auras for a commander damage kill.

Some good choices for Pauper EDH include Gretchen Titchwillow for a combo twist on Simic ramp and draw and Abdel Gorion for a blink deck. You can choose an Uncommon creature, or a legendary one if you want your deck to still be legal in regular Commander.

Pauper Commander includes a lot of variety of commanders to choose from. I enjoy the budget deckbuilding aspect of the format, as well as the fact that I am forced to be creative because of the pauper deckbuilding restriction. I am happy with the deck I built and I intend to build more PEDH decks and find more people at my local store to play with.

Thanks for reading and see you next time

David