Whisper, Blood Liturgist

When I was writing for GatheringMagic (now CoolStuffInc.com) At that time I was writing Pauper content for another website and my friend - Adam Styborksi - had recruited me to write some articles about Cube. Eventually The Stybs got me to write a few pieces about Commander (fun fact: my first ever preview card article was Commander focused) but eventually I stopped writing words considering the century. 

I'm a big proponent of only writing when you have something interesting to say. Over time I found that I wasn't creating any Commander content that mattered. Nothing about anything I produced felt impactful.

This stems from how I view Commander. To me it is an intensely personal experience. Sure, I like winning games but I also enjoy being able to play some of my favorite cards and do strange things. Heck, one of my favorite decks is Hakim, Loreweaver Voltron. There is something absolutely primal about winning with a pile that is yours (and being blunt this is something I cannot get out of Pauper). 

Let's get back to something I just said: I like winning games. 

I'm also terrible at it.

I struggle mightily between wanting to end games of Commmander while avoiding the dreaded "unfun". Fun is so subjective but to me it comes down to this: I don't want to win a way I would hate losing. There's more to this, of course. Is Mike-Trike fun? Maybe. Is Mikeaus, the Unhallowed your Commander? Can your deck win other ways? Is this what your deck is designed to do over and over again? 

There is no hard and fast rule here; it's about emotion. And emotions are fickle so what feels fine one night can leave me packing up my cards early the next week. And as much as I hate losing to some combos there are others I absolutely admire for their audacity, like Marchesa and Jokulhaups. 

All this is a roundabout way of saying I've built a combo deck that I love and hits so many of the things I love to do in Commander. It features a card that, when it was spoiled, had me saying that this was designed just for me. It is black and has a drawback I want to desperately turn into an advantage. It's underpowered. It fosters graveyard shenanigans. 

When discussing the archetype that would come to be known as Aristocrats Sam Black - the driving force behind Tom Martell's Pro Tour Gatecrash winning deck - said that sacrificing a creature is one of the best things you can do in Magic. It makes sense. If you have played a creature that you want to sacrifice, there's a good chance you have already gotten some amount of value out of it and are about to generate more by sending it to the graveyard. Whisper, Blood Liturgist gives you two for the price of one - you bin two creatures to get one back. 

Like I said, I love underpowered cards.

But Whisper has so much potential. In blue you could pair her with Intruder Alarm and any black creature that creates tokens to generate an unbound loop. And you could do that. Or you can do what I did and pair her with Thornbite Staff. Now Whisper can get two untap triggers per iteration which gives you one in the bank if something goes wrong. 

Let's get to the list and then I can talk about some of the combos.

Creatures

Abhorrent Overlord

Apprentice Necromancer

Archfiend of Despair

Bloodghast

Blood Artist

Butcher of Malakir

Crypt Ghast

Demon of Dark Schemes

Falkenrath Noble

Grave Titan

Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Grim Haruspex

Harvester of Souls

Hell's Caretaker

Massacre Wurm

Midnight Reaper

Nether Traitor

Overseer of the Damned

Pawn of Ulamog

Pitiless Plunderer

Reassembling Skeleton

Rune-Scarred Demon

Sengir Autocrat

Sepulchral Primordial

Skeletal Vampire

Tenacious Dead

Vindictive Vampire

Zulaport Cutthroat

Sifter of Skulls

Smothering Abomination

Krav, the Unredeemed

Sidisi, Undead Vizier

Arcbound Reclaimer

Meteor Golem

My Battlesphere

Solemn Simulacrum

Workhorse

Instants

Corpse Dance

Imp's Mischief

Mausoleum Secrets

Sorceries

Buried Alive

Decree of Pain

Demonic Tutor

Exsanguinate

Life's Finale

Torment of Hailfire

Toxic Deluge

Artifacts

Ashnod's Altar

Crucible of Worlds

Expedition Map

Jet Medallion

Sol Ring

Trading Post

Illusionist's Bracers

Lightning Greaves

Nim Deathmantle

Skullclamp

Swiftfoot Boots

Thornbite Staff

Enchantments

Contamination

Dictate of Erebos

Grace Pact

Strands of Night

Lands

26 Swamp

Bojuka Bog

Buried Ruin

Cabal Coffers

Cabal Stronghold

High Market

Sequestered Stash

Winding Canyons

Inventors' Fair

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Whisper is absolutely a combo deck, but it's really multiple combo decks. You do need Whisper and Staff out for the deck to sing, which is why we have so many cards dedicated to finding and recurring artifacts. Hell's Caretaker is a bit of redundancy for Whisper but is nowhere near as powerful thanks to the timing restriction. Strands of Night provides some protection for the Commander and just so happens to work nicely with Crucible of Worlds. 

So what are the loops? Once you have Whisper equipped with Staff, you want any of your token producers in play. Then you sacrifice them to get something back, untap, and repeat. The spouts are numerous. Have Sifter, Pawn, or Plunderer in play? You just made enough mana to make everyone hate you with an X spell. Or maybe you could loop enough time to make one of your Blood Artists lethal. You can also just bring back Gary over and over, making everyone relive Theros Standard. 

Whisper is not going to become my go to deck. While it is powerful and has multiple avenues to victory, I am definitely going to reserve it for spikier pods. And that's fine. Sometimes you need a deck that can just win the freaking game.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper, but I want to bring you Commander content as well! If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

From Scorpions to Skeletons

On -1/-1 Counters in Commander

When I first saw The Scorpion God I knew I had to build a deck around it. It was a big enough Commander to be a threat on its own, it drew cards, and it did one of my favorite things in all of Magic - it got itself back from the graveyard. 

I set about working on a deck that was part -1/-1 counters, part discard themed. With Archfiend of Ifnir I wanted to leverage cards like Tortured Existence and Nihilistic Glee as engines. As if The Scorpion God was not an engine unto itself. Regardless, I liked the idea of discarding for value and it appeared to be on theme with the Raise Dead clause on my Commander of choice. 

In the planning phase I ran into a small problem - a way to put the activated ability of The Scorpion God into overdrive. This involved making an unbound amount of mana and jumping through hoops with cards like Marsh Flitter, Phyrexian Altar, Ashnod’s Altar, and Nim Deathmantle. Despite the number of cards to get my mana going it still seemed worth it so I put the 100 together and took it to my local game store. It won its first outing, using Nim Deathmantle and Ashnod’s Altar with Puppeteer Clique to constantly rebuy Spore Frog out of a green player’s graveyard until I could steal a Blood Artist and drain everyone out of the game. 

I played the deck a few more times after that but it ceased feeling exciting - or even good. 

What happened? The deck was ploddingly slow. The Scorpion God is a five mana creature that then requires three mana to do anything. To set up a victory formation took a ton of time and a Rube Goldbergian level of pieces. I think in Commander it’s possible to succeed if you want to take either of these paths, but selecting them both means running countermeasures a la Counterspells - a decidedly blue specialty.

The Scorpion God sat on my shelf, unused, for quite some time. I kept thinking about ways to rebuild a -1/-1 counter deck but wanted to avoid Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons. I already had two black-green Commander decks and really did not want to add another. 

Also, I like being weird.

I’ve been playing Magic since 1994 and in that time I have had experience with plenty of cards. I tend to gravitate towards older Commanders that people may not have seen or are narrow in application. Part of this is nostalgia - I love playing with old cards that do things slightly differently. Another part of it is that I really, I mean really, enjoy it when my opponent’s have to read my cards multiple times to understand what the heck is going on. So this led me to Skeleton Ship.

Skeleton Ship is not what one would call a good card. It is a five mana 0/3 that requires you to control an Island. It does not do anything when it hits the battlefield, instead needing to survive an entire turn cycle before mattering. The low profile can be a benefit if playing in a pod where the average power level of the Commanders are, in a word, higher. 

Still, Skeleton Ship doesn’t require you to attack, not does it require any additional mana investment. Instead all you need to do is tap it to get your -1/-1 counter. And here is where blue shines in comparison to red. First, blue has access to multiple Proliferate effects - from Viral Drake to Tezzeret’s Gambit to Inexorable Tide - so one counter never stays one for long. Blue also gives the deck access to countermagic and card draw. As mentioned before, my -1/-1 counter deck needed time to set up and these defensive measures help to buy that time.

Blue also gives the deck access to Fatestitcher effects. While Magewright’s Stone and

Umbral Mantle are good, being able to use Thassa’s Ire can turn extra mana into more dead things - which goes very nicely with Demon of Dark Schemes and Necroskitter. The un/tap theme also helps the deck with one of its few unbound combos thanks to Nest of Scarabs and Intruder Alarm.

I haven’t had a chance to take the deck out for a spin but I’ll be putting up a decklist later today. In the meanwhile I want to know: what ostensibly “worse” Commander do you run and why?






So the decklist took a little longer to get up than I expected, but here you go!

Commander
Skeleton Ship

Lands
9 Island
6 Swamp
Bad River
Bojuka Bog
Cabal Coffers
Choked Estuary
Darkslick Shores
Desert of the Glorified
Desert of the Mindful
Dimir Aqueduct
Dimir Guildgate
Dismal Backwater
Dreadship Reef
Ifnir Deadlands
Jwar Isle Refuge
Memorial to Folly
Salt Marsh
Submerged Boneyard
Tainted Isle
Temple of Deceit
Underground River

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Watery Grave

Planeswalkers
Liliana, Death Wielder

Creatures
Aphetto Alchemist
Captain of the Mists
Carnifex Demon
Deadeye Tracker
Demon of Dark Schemes
Draining Whelk
Enclave Cryptologist
Fatestitcher
Graveblade Marauder
Harvester of Souls
Massacre Wurm
Midnight Banshee
Necroskitter
Puppeteer Clique
Sidisi, Undead Vizier
Sepulchral Primordial
Thief of Sanity
Thrummingbird
Tideforce Elemental
Viral Drake
Core Prowler
Grim Poppet
Mindless Automaton
Solemn Simulacrum

Instants
Counterspell
Dismiss
Exclude
Fuel for the Cause
Soul Manipulation
Vraska's Contempt

Sorceries
Beacon of Unrest
Black Sun's Zenith
Liliana's Influence
Spread the Sickness
Tezzeret's Gambit
Toxic Deluge

Artifacts
Astral Cornucopia
Cauldron of Souls
Contagion Clasp
Contagion Engine
Dimir Signet
Everflowing Chalice
Magewright's Stone
Mimic Vat
Sol Ring
Spawning Pit
Trigon of Corruption
Trigon of Thought
Illusionist's Bracers
Skullclamp
Swiftfoot Boots
Thornbite Staff
Umbral Mantle

Enchantments

Black Market
Blowfly Infestation
Crumbling Ashes
Grave Betrayal
Inexorable Tide
Intruder Alarm
Nest of Scarabs
Shadows of the Past
Thassa's Ire

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper, but I want to bring you Commander content as well! If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!