Pauper Commander - Fungus and Toughness
A Pet Card
Korozda Guildmage is a card that I've slowly been cutting from my decks. It's been a pet card of mine for a long time due to my love of Saprolings and that fantastic art. The Insect/fungus theme of the Golgari is so cool to see, and the art of the Guildmage displays it with grandeur. Problem is, none of those things make it a good card. I've tried running it in my Voltron decks, in the hope that intimidate will matter. It usually doesn't, and even when it does, three mana is far too much to pay. I've tried running it in some token decks, but those decks don't really run cards with high toughness, so, as sad as it is, my copies are sitting around in the bulk bin.
But, I happen to know a format that cares deeply about bulk bin cards. It's called Pauper EDH, and because Korozda Guildmage is an uncommon creature, it's a legal commander in the format. If we build the deck around the Guildmage, I think it might finally have a home.
Making a Bad Card Good
Where to start? Korozda Guildmage's most powerful ability is definitely the second, which allows us to pay four mana and transform one of our creatures into a bunch of Saprolings. First thing of note, tokens lead us into a lot of potential strategies, and Saprolings have a few special cards that care about them. Second thing, the Guildmage cares about toughness. The more toughness we have, the more Saprolings we get.
Big Backsides
So let's start with big butts. We can lean into a bit of a Walls theme and build up our defense, making ourselves untouchable until the later parts of the game. We'll have a lot of creatures with defender, and there's not much we can do to improve them, given that there are no Arcades, the Strategist effects in Pauper. However, we can transform our Walls into Saprolings, then use them offensively in the late game, so there's no great loss in having to play a bunch of defenders.
The best Wall we have is Shield Sphere, a spectacular six toughness for no mana. We lose a bit of that toughness if it blocks, but still, it's a great deal. Most other Walls are pretty basic, just vanilla creatures, like Steel Wall. We get a few extra abilities here and there, like on Barrier of Bones and Wall of Roots, but it's not really something we care about. All we want is the most possible toughness for the least mana.
There are some tough creatures that aren't Walls as well. Spiders are known for having large abdomens and reach, which shows up on nearly every single Spider card. If we want a blocker, there's no better creature than Watcher in the Web, which can do the job of seven. Elephants are also quite hard to kill, as is seen in Rotting Mastodon. The biggest one we've got, however, is a Soldier, Unhallowed Phalanx, with a colossal 13 toughness. It enters tapped, but its purpose isn't to be a good creature. Its purpose is to transform into 13 Saprolings.
Sapping Our Opponents' Life Totals
Next part of the deck: what to do with all these Saprolings. As many as we're making, they won't win the game on their own. Firstly, we can get a bunch of enter-the-battlefield triggers. We can take advantage of this with cards as simple as Essence Warden and Snarling Gorehound, granting us large amounts of extra life and card advantage, but the best card to take advantage of all these bodies entering has to be Ivy Lane Denizen, which just makes things big, ready to be sacrificed for more Saprolings.
Of course, large amounts of 1/1s are doomed to die, so we'll make sure to be ready for that. Deathgreeter is the death trigger equivalent of Essence Warden, gaining us loads of life. Its bigger brothers, Falkenrath Noble and Nadier's Nightblade, will drain our opponents on every death as well as gain us life. Voracious Vermin is another card that gets bigger and bigger as we make and lose Saprolings, and it can eventually be another source of food for the horde. Perhaps to the detriment of these cards, I didn't include many ways to sacrifice the Saprolings, like in other decks, but doubt that they'll have a hard time biting the dust, given that we're not running any ways to buff them up.
My favorite little payoffs have to be the ones that specifically care about Saprolings. Deathspore Thallid and Thallid Shell-Dweller are part of a strange group of cards, the Thallids, that were never very good. I'm really hoping that Wizards will choose to give some support to fungi because, in concept, they're such an interesting creature type with a lot of design space. Unfortunately, most of them just aren't that good, leaving the creature type in a state of ineptitude. The two I mentioned are barely playable, the former providing removal and the latter simply having a lot of toughness, but I wish I could've included more.
Extra Bits
We've got our engine and payoff, so to finish this deck, we just need the interaction. I'm including a few of the "Fake Your Own Death" cards that can let us sacrifice some big creatures over and over again and protect some key pieces. In case these cards don't arrive at the right time, we've got Morbid Plunder and Macabre Waltz to get back some good creatures. Then, to get all these cards, we need some card draw, so in go Sign in Blood and all its friends.
Removal is always needed, and Golgari has some of the best in the format. Nature's Claim and Broken Bond are fantastic ways to deal with unwanted artifacts and enchantments. Feed the Swarm and Go for the Throat can take care of all those pesky creatures. Nothing special, just what's necessary.
That's the deck, and while this experiment has been fun, I can't say it's been a success. Korozda Guildmage, despite having a deck built around it, still isn't very good. Three mana is still way too much to pay for intimidation, and four mana to make what is usually only five or six Saprolings isn't all that great either. However, it does fulfill my desire to make a deck with a bunch of odd cards that's at least interesting to play, so the deck's not a complete failure. But if you're looking to play a bunch of Walls, or a bunch of Saprolings, there are better ways to do both. What's your opinion of a deck built around a pet card?
