If you've been reading my articles or have seen me talk about Magic on social media over the last several years, you probably know me primarily for two things: Pauper and Commander. I talk from time to time about other formats, news, and smother it all in a good heaping dose of nostalgic goodness; but, for the most part, it's those two topics people know me for best. Even people who follow me on social media for stuff like video games that don't really follow Magic very much know that my focus tends to be on those two topics. Well today, I figured, hey: why not both?

For today's article I want to bring together the best of both worlds and cover a bit of Pauper Commander. It's a format I haven't dabbled in very much, but have always had a strong interest to do so as well as a large number of commons to work from. It works exactly the way you might think it does: one uncommon creature for your commander and the rest of your deck can only be made up of commons. The original way to do this was to use any uncommon creature due to a lack of uncommon legends, however, we've seen so many more legendary creatures at uncommon that some groups prefer to use legends when playing the format. For the sake of compatibility with non-Pauper Commander, any Pauper Commander articles I cover will indeed feature an uncommon legend as the commander. The only other note to make is that for multiplayer games, the cards Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study are banned, though as always, rule zero is there for those who want to play with them.

With all of that out of the way, let's look at what we're talking about today!

To get us started in the realm of Pauper Commander, I thought it would be a great opportunity to cover a creature type competitive Pauper players will be no stranger to: Faeries. Going back through time looking at 60-card constructed lists, you'll find decks constantly repping a package of cards like Spellstutter Sprite, Faerie Miscreant, and more recently Faerie Seer. These cards make up the backbone of the multiple Faeries builds that typically make up the top tiers of the metagame, and as such, it seems like a great place to start here.

Obyra, Dreaming Duelist is a new uncommon from Wilds of Eldraine that works incredibly well alongside these faeries and many others as well. A common way to play faeries is to bounce them back to your hand using ninjas and spells like Snap. In a deck like this, such a move can mean dishing out tons of damage without even sending any faeries into the red zone for attacks. Let's have a look at a list and see how it all comes together!

Obyra Faeries | Pauper Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Obyra, Dreaming Duelist

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Azure Fleet Admiral
• 1 Barrow Naughty
• 1 Briarberry Cohort
• 1 Changeling Outcast
• 1 Cloud of Faeries
• 1 Coralhelm Guide
• 1 Dimir Guildmage
• 1 Dream Thief
• 1 Dreamspoiler Witches
• 1 Faerie Invaders
• 1 Faerie Macabre
• 1 Faerie Seer
• 1 Fencer Clique
• 1 Latchkey Faerie
• 1 Mocking Sprite
• 1 Moon-Circuit Hacker
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Murmuring Mystic
• 1 Ninja of the Deep Hours
• 1 Obyra's Attendants
• 1 Pestermite
• 1 Shipwreck Dowser
• 1 Spellstutter Sprite
• 1 Stingblade Assassin
• 1 Thieving Sprite
• 1 Thorn of the Black Rose
• 1 Thornwind Faeries
• 1 Tome Raider
• 1 Weatherseed Faeries
• 1 Winter Eladrin

• Instants (12)
• 1 Cast Down
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Displace
• 1 Doom Blade
• 1 Exclude
• 1 Ghostly Flicker
• 1 Gush
• 1 Into the Roil
• 1 Meeting of Minds
• 1 Negate
• 1 Snap
• 1 Spell Stutter

• Sorceries (10)
• 1 Faerie Trickery
• 1 Distant Melody
• 1 Feed the Swarm
• 1 Into the Fae Court
• 1 Lorien Revealed
• 1 Phyrexian Espionage
• 1 Ponder
• 1 Preordain
• 1 Sign in Blood
• 1 Winged Words

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Ill-Gotten Inheritance
• 1 Oubliette
• 1 Stab Wound

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Charcoal Diamond
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Relic of Progenitus
• 1 Sky Diamond

• Lands (37)
• 13 Island
• 5 Swamp
• 1 Ash Barrens
• 1 Barren Moor
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cave of Temptation
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Contaminated Aquifer
• 1 Desert of the Glorified
• 1 Desert of the Mindful
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Dismal Backwater
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Halimar Depths
• 1 Ice Tunnel
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Mortuary Mire
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Opal Palace
• 1 Path of Ancestry
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

Buy This Deck Export text format

Naturally, when it came to this deck, the first thing I looked at was Faeries. While the quality at common probably isn't going to be as potent as the new Faeries preconstructed deck Fae Dominon, the selection here is still pretty good. In fact, you have 21 creatures with that type in your deck - enough to make even Denzel Crocker start frothing at the mouth. Some are fairly simple at their base level, like the French vanilla Faerie Invaders or Weatherseed Faeries offering some small protection against Red. There's even Fencer Clique, which looks tremendously innocuous on its own, until you pair it with Obyra for repeated damage dealing.

On the punchier side of things, Spellstutter Sprite, as mentioned at the top of the article, makes for a great way to counter spells based on the number of Faeries you control. It's so iconic, in fact, that it inspired the new card Spell Stutter, which naturally is also included in this list. Mocking Sprite makes your utility spells cheaper and while you can't quite do much by way of infinite shenanigans with it, Pestermite is still a solid little creature that helps set you up for success in combat. Winter Eladrin can actually bounce creatures and the likes of Thornwood Faeries and Dreamspoiler Witches pick off your opponents' boards no problem.

The rest of the creature package is largely filled out by some more utility-focused creatures. There's the obligatory copies of both Ninja of the Deep Hours and Moon-Circuit Hacker for that extra Pauper flavor. Similarly, Archaeomancer and Shipwreck Dowser allow you to set up for some Flicker silliness, which can net you lots of damage with the help of Obyra. This works by casting Ghostly Flicker or Displace on either of those two creatures and a Faerie, which gets you the flicker spell back and pings your opponents from the Faerie hitting the board. Mulldrifter draws you cards as a one-shot - also working well with flicker effects - or you can get them over and over using the Monarch, courtesy of Azure Fleet Admiral and Thorn of the Black Rose. To help protect it, use Murmuring Mystic's flying army in a can to help avoid your opponents' attacks.

One thing keen eyed Pauper players might notice here in this list is the presence of a couple noteworthy cards. The reason they're noteworthy is simple: they're banned in 60-card Constructed. In 100-card singleton Commander, though? Fair game! This includes the powerful Cloud of Faeries which can help set you up with powerful flicker plays - especially if you have a Dimir Aqueduct on the board. Gush is a tremendously efficient draw spell that's far less potent in multiplayer settings, though remains a powerful card all the same. Free draws are still free draws. You can even pick up copies of Mystic Sanctuary with it, allowing you even more opportunities for card draw silliness!

Not everything needs to be ban-worthy to make it into a list like this. In fact, sometimes all you really need are a few good role players. Counter magic? There's plenty of that thanks to Negate, Exclude, the on-theme Faerie Trickery, and of course good old Counterspell. Removal is no slouch either, featuring accessible powerhouses like Cast Down, Doom Blade, and even Stab Wound to really stick it to your opponents. There's no shortage of draw spells either, ranging from the small cantrips like Ponder and Preordain to bigger ones like Winged Words, Meeting of Minds, and Into the Fae Court. If you really want to go all out on your draws, though, cast a copy of Distant Melody and really go to town. Finally, to add a little extra chip damage into the mix, Ill-Gotten Inheritance can prove to be an absolute house in long games and makes Obyra all the more potent in the process.

Last but not least, the one thing I was pleasantly surprised at when making this list was the mana. There's no shortage of duals in the format now, and while they all enter tapped, so will all your opponents. That makes things on fairly even footing and you'll have a decent game. What surprised me even more, though, were the number of decent mana rocks at common! Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet, the Diamonds, Mind Stone - and that's just what I included! At one point I also looked at cards like Everflowing Chalice, Fellwar Stone, and Commander's Sphere, though you can also look at the Lockets from Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance as decent options too. You might not have Sol Ring in Pauper Commander, but that doesn't mean you're going to have a tough time getting your fixing down.

What you ultimately end up with is a simple yet fun deck to pick up and play. There's a lot of interaction points, yet easy enough to understand on a base level that you could hand it to a newer player and they'd probably have a good time. Best of all, it's a good and affordable entry point for someone looking to see what Commander's all about, running only about $60 total. Many of the cards here also work to upgrade easily into a true Commander list, though I'd also recommend looking into the new Fae Dominion preconstructed deck if you were to go that route. Having both, however, is never going to be an unwelcome proposition.

It's been good fun to try my hand at a different form of Commander for a change and spice things up a little bit in the process. I'll be running two more of these in the next couple weeks. Let me know through the various social media outlets if you like this and are interested in seeing more like it! Until then, try your own Pauper Commander decks out at your next local Commander night, and have a great time when you do.

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal