pie chart

PDH Stormchaser Drake

Pauper EDH* Mono-Blue

Zulnut

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Drake Draw 2 (0,1cmc) (14)

Drake Draw 2 (2cmc) (7)

Typical Blue Tutor Suite (6)

Drake draw 1 (4)

Interaction (14)

Drake Protection (1cmc) (7)

Drake Protection (2cmc) (5)

Back-up Plan (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: Stormchaser Drake

Raw Draw (9)

Typical Blue Combo Cards (6)

Land (25)

Sideboard

Stickers (10)

Maybeboard

Interaction (14)

Peek (so we know if we need to hold up countermagic or protection before our turn begins?) (3)

Storm? (2)

Bad Ghostly Flicker (1)

Bad Drake Draws (6)

Play Helix Combo? Just play helix and knack? (6)

Bad Essence Flux (4)

Wheel (2)

Protection (1)

Brick your commander (6)

Make creature not small (5)

Bad Archaeomancers (4)

Unique Considerig (3)

Introduction

Stormchaser Drake is an underrated PDH commander. It facilitates extreme amounts of draw for very little mana. Anything you cast that targets the drake is now a cantrip, but more importantly any draw-one card for one mana targetting the drake now draws two. There are not many ways in blue to make the drake a lethal threat, though it is possible thanks to the commander damage rules, so we run a few pieces intended to kill someone with damage. We can also become relatively controlling until we can combo with High Tide + Archaeomancer + re-cast High Tide + Snap for infinite mana, or High Tide + a land untapping creature + Archaeomancer + Ghostly Flicker. **The deck might need another combo on account of how the snap line can wiff and the density of combo pieces is not great, or maybe some of the bad drake draw cards need to go, I'm not sure. **

I think I’m going to remove a lot of the two-mana protection spells. Playing voltron means needing a way to counter an Accursed Marauder, or I should play more creatures. Academy Wall and Windrider Wizard come to mind.

Opportunity Cost

If you've played PDH a lot you're probably questioning: "is this better than Third Path Iconoclast or Scholar of the Ages", and the answer is "probably not." TPI has blockers and an aggro plan in the tokens it creates, not to mention the free spells and the incredibly greedy big spells you can play because you can block. Scholar has the benefit of being more consistent, and incapable of wiffing assuming the opponent can't interact. Stormchaser Drake can wiff when going for combo. On top of that, neither Scholar or TPI need their commander to be in play to get card advantage, so they are a lot less vulnerable to sorcery-speed removal. Our back-up plan is Voltron beat-down, which in mono-blue is hard and Horrid Shadowspinner does much better while still being blue. Still, the drake draws more cards than either combo commander and needs no fixing, which is not nothing. There might be something here.

Lands

Because our curve is insanely low, we can play as few as 25 lands (56% chance of 2 land hand, and between 56%-63% chance of hitting our turn 3 land drop assuming our commander isn't removed, and we draw a 1-mana draw spell) though this is quite risky. Playing 29 lands is much more reasonable, since it gives us above average odds (52%) of hitting our third land by turn two before we play any draw spells so we can make a more informed decision on when to cast our commander, but it also increases the odds we draw lands instead of spells later in the game. We get a free mulligan, and we can absolutely afford to take one or two extra mulligans, so I think going for 25 is better at the moment.

Stickers

Why stickers: Some of the sticker cards are absolutely bonkers in this deck, and despite what tappedout says the sticker cards are legal in PDH despite not being legal in pauper. Unfortunately, there is only one card (Command Performance) that effectively grabs stickers in blue, so if you want to cut that card and all the sticker sheets, I wouldn't blame you. I do think it's an insanely strong card though.

How stickers work: You make a side-deck (a sticker-board if you will) of 10 sticker sheet cards and at the start of the game randomly select 3 of the 10 to have access to. You can use those stickers by spending tickets any time a card in your main deck tells you to put a sticker on a card. The remaining 7 sticker sheets are not accessible for the rest of the game. If you resolve placing a sticker on a permanent that sticker remains on that card for as long as it remains in a revealed zone (i.e. on the battlefield, in the command zone, in the graveyard, in exile). If the permanent leaves a revealed zone, the sticker goes back to the sheet it came from and can be re-used.

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