As with traditional Commander, Pauper Commander has its own competitive format in cPDH (Competitive Pauper Commander). And with it comes its own unique metagame. These decks are built with max optimization in mind. And a large bright side to them, they are significantly cheaper than cEDH decks. You sometimes have some expensive cards still, but decks usually don’t push too far over $100, unlike cEDH, where decks can easily reach the thousands.
This deck guide will go over Mahadi, Emporium Master. Rakdos has a lot of tools in the cPDH format, with some of the best removal you can run. If you love Control, Mahadi is a great choice of commander, and helps get around one of the biggest downsides of Rakdos (lack of good ramp options).
If you’re completely new to Pauper Commander, don’t worry, we have your back! You can check out our complete overview of Pauper Commander here.
Why Mahadi?
So, before we begin, we must ask the question: why play cPDH Mahadi? Let’s look at its effect. Mahadi, Emporium Master creates a Treasure token for every creature that died that turn at your end step. This allows you to use a ton of mass removal options to create a ton of Treasure tokens to hold for more interaction, or to ramp into your more expensive cards. Normally, one of Rakdos’ biggest weaknesses is its ramp options, especially in the limitations of Pauper Commander. However, Mahadi, Emporium Master is your own ramp engine, and it can back a lot of Treasure tokens. It’s why it’s a great Control tool, as it self-serves its own gameplan and rewards you for partaking in it.
The Ramp Package
You can’t always rely on your commander to ramp. Rakdos can be a very mana-intensive archetype, and even though your mana curve is very low in this deck, you still want some mana rocks to turbo out spells quicker. The deck is just a weaker Control deck without its commander, so the easier you can make it to cast Mahadi, the better.
There aren’t a ton of Ritual spells available in Pauper Commander, since they’re rarely ever printed at common, and many of them are a bit too costly in mana to be worth running. Rite of Flame and Dark Ritual both make more mana than they cost to cast, and since they only cost one mana, they let you jump ahead of your curve early on, and there’s never a bad time to draw them (assuming you have a spell you can cast with them). It’s not quite a ritual, but it serves the same purpose; Lotus Petal is essentially a free land drop you get to use once.
More permanent ramp options are your mana rocks. Arcane Signet, Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone, and Rakdos Signet all help to provide a permanent that can provide you with mana, all while only being two mana to cast. Chromatic Star is fixing that gives you a card draw, and Wizard's Rockets is the same, and lets you make all the mana you need for any specific color.
Draw Power
An important aspect of cPDH is draw power. Unlike regular cEDH, cPDH has way fewer tutor options. So, you have to rely on simply drawing the cards you need a lot of the time. Many of the draw spells require you to sacrifice a creature or an artifact, both of which your commander helps with. Mahadi makes Treasures you can sacrifice, or if you sacrifice a creature, that’s a trigger for Mahadi, Emporium Master.
You have the cycle of two mana cards that sacrifice a creature or artifact to draw cards with Costly Plunder, Deadly Dispute, Eviscerator's Insight, Fanatical Offering, and Reckoner's Bargain.
Similar effects include Demand Answers which lets you sacrifice an artifact or draw a card, and Grab the Prize which requires a discard but can deal some burn damage. You also have plenty of spells that need a creature sacrifice, including Corrupted Conviction, Nasty End, and Village Rites. The draw spells you don’t have to jump through hoops to cast are Night's Whisper and Faithless Looting.
Forced Sacrifice
The most important kind of cards in the deck are cards that force everyone to sacrifice a creature. With Mahadi, Emporium Master on the battlefield, assuming everyone has at least one creature, that’s four Treasure tokens from just one card. And if you play more than one, you can double the number of those Treasure tokens.
The ones attached to creatures are the best, as you can just sacrifice them instead of one more valuable. These include Accursed Marauder, Demon's Disciple, Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, and Abyssal Gatekeeper, though the last one has to be put into the graveyard to actually trigger.
This effect is also attached to some sorceries. These generally don’t apply to you, only your opponents with the exception of Innocent Blood. Extract a Confession is another mass sacrifice, with Myrkul's Edict potentially forcing everyone to sacrifice a creature, and at worse just makes one player sacrifice one. Cornered by Black Mages makes an opponent sacrifice a creature while giving you one you can use as sacrifice fodder yourself, or as a way to push burn damage. It’s a permanent, and Tithing Blade makes everyone sacrifice a creature, and can later be crafted with a creature to provide passive burn and lifegain.
Tutors
While cPDH is light on tutors, that doesn’t mean tutors are non-existent. Instead of more traditional ones, you’re instead utilizing cards with transmute, which let you discard them to get a card with their same mana value.
Dimir House Guard gets you a four-drop and Shred Memory nets you a two-drop. Goblin Matron may seem like a random include, but one of the main win conditions of the deck relies on specific Goblin cards for a combo, hence why it appears here. Likewise, the transmute cards can find other combo pieces or utilize pieces that are backup win-conditions.
Win Conditions
The deck comes packed with a few different win conditions. This is in the form of the deck’s main combo, or you can use other cards to push your advantage in order to burn everyone out of the game instead.
Main Combo: First Day of Class
This combo is simple. All you need is First Day of Class, any permanent that can sacrifice a creature for no cost, and a creature with persist. For this example, we’ll be using Putrid Goblin and Skirk Prospector. When you cast First Day of Class, it makes all creatures enter with a +1/+1 counter for the turn. When a creature with persist dies (Putrid Goblin), it comes back to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter so long as it didn’t have a counter on it. The -1/-1 and +1/+1 counter both cancel each other out, which let them come back to the battlefield when it dies every time. With your sacrifice outlet (Skirk Prospector in this case), sacrifice your card with persist and keep doing this to infinitely sacrifice a creature.
In doing this, you are able to make an infinite number of Treasure tokens with Mahadi, Emporium Master. If you used Skirk Prospector, this also makes you an infinite amount of red mana. With either Falkenrath Noble or Hissing Iguanar on the battlefield, this leads to infinite burn damage. If you have more life than everyone else, you can dump this infinite mana into Crypt Rats or
The Backup Plan: Burn, Baby, Burn
Sometimes, you’re going to lose access to your combo. Maybe your persist creatures got exiled, or you permanently lost access to First Day of Class. You have some ways to get it out from the graveyard, including Ardent Elementalist and Living Lightning. If you lost an important creature, Unearth and Witch's Cottage can get them back. However, if your key combo pieces get exiled, you’re out of luck and have to abandon your main win condition.
In cases like this, it’s time to pivot into the burn strategy. Luckily, the deck can actually pivot pretty well. Black Mage's Rod and Cornered by Black Mages both make it so noncreature spells burn everyone for 1, and with only 30 starting life, this can stack up very quickly. With how many tokens you make from your commander, Mirkwood Bats becomes a must-answer creature for your opponents, with Reckless Fireweaver a good backup. These effects stack too, so if you have both, you’re doubling up on all your burn damage to close games out quicker.
How To Play cPDH Mahadi
Now that you understand all the card choices, combos, and win conditions, now it’s time to go over how to actually fully pilot the deck. You usually want to get Mahadi, Emporium Master onto the battlefield as quickly as you can so you can start taking advantage of it. Be careful if you’re up against any Blue decks, as a counterspell can really set you back. You do have Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast to provide some cover, but you only have two counterspells in the entire deck. It might also get removed, so be wary.
While most of your removal spells are instant speed, don’t be afraid to cast them on your turn. With your commander, you can get refunded for the mana spent to cast them (to some degree). However, you still want to make sure you hold up some instant speed removal options to stop an opponent who might try and go for a combo on their turn. You’re playing a Control deck, so don’t go too crazy casting spells on your turn.
If your commander does get removed, you don’t always need to make it a priority to get it back out. It’s better to hold mana for your opponents late-game rather than to set yourself back up. This helps to make you more of a threat, and everyone second guess if their combo is safe. There are a lot of removal spells in the deck, so you’ll rarely find yourself without one.
Pros and Cons of cPDH Mahadi
Mahadi, Emporium Master is very good at controlling the game. With how much removal you have, you can cut off combos with ease. Since it self-ramps, you’re rarely hurting for mana. Not only that, the mana curve is incredibly low. This allows you to do a ton of things without doing too much mana paying. Its main combo is quite consistent once First Day of Class gets resolved. The passive burn damage the deck can do is its biggest strength. It doesn’t have to go all-in on a combo; the combo just makes it easier to close games. Otherwise, you just have to rely on the many ways to passively burn opponents. Luckily, there are no shortages of ways to dwindle down life totals.
Now, the downsides. The deck does have a moderately high reliance on its commander. While it can function without it, the deck becomes much weaker without Mahadi on the battlefield. You lose out on a lot of ramp without Mahadi, and it’s something the deck wants. After all, Control decks shine when you have excess mana. In addition, you don’t have many creatures yourself, so your battlefield is often wide-open, allowing attacks to get in for damage easily. So, you need to be careful with your removal spells, using them on either damaging threats or to cut an opponent off from their combo.
In Conclusion
cPDH Mahadi is a powerful Control option in the cPDH metagame. It puts a powerful engine in your commander zone, and takes advantage of the plethora of powerful removal options available in Pauper Commander. The deck has draw power, ramp, and burn, the three big traits every Control deck needs; it’s only missing counterspells.
Overall, the deck is very resilient, and outside of a potential turbo deck you might face, it has a rather good matchup spread against some of the most popular cPDH decks. While it does have its downsides, the upsides tend to outweigh them. So if you love Rakdos and Control decks, cPDH Mahadi is the best commander choice for you.
If you want to wind things down with a more casual deck, check out our casual Pauper Commander deck showcase over here for some decks built more for fun instead of optimization.
