Packing some Ramp (PDH) (EDH / Commander)

Pauper EDH is an alternative format that uses any uncommon creature as the commander, the 99 are commons.

This mono-green deck is built around Caller of the Pack, (CotP) a beast with the sweet ability Myriad. It's one of my favourite keywords and was followed up with the equally sweet keyword Encore.

CotP is part of a Myriad cycle along with; Broodbirth Viper, Herald of the Host, Warchief Giant and Banshee of the Dread Choir. All decent commanders in their own right.

So what's the best way of making CotP work? With a staggering mana cost of 7 and no built-in protection it's very likely to cost even more. That means ramp, ramp and a bit more ramp. Fortunately green is the colour to do it with!

A whopping quarter of the deck — lands excluded — is dedicated to ramp. Hopefully this means CotP comes out a turn or two earlier and ideally wiith haste, once it starts attacking it's a considerable clock that's tough to block. Since it's got Myriad you can pick an opponent to attack that's most likely to leave CotP alive, the copies are expendable.

The deck is built on the assumption CotP is removed often, if it isn't we're left with a lot of mana to spend. We can continue ramping to offset future commander tax or use our mana to cast buddies like Ivy Elemental, Timbermaw Larva, Territorial Scythecat and Slime Molding, which scale with our ramp. Alternatively there's Fin-Clade Fugitives, which much like our commander hits all opponents with its' encore ability. There's also the classic Greater Sandwurm & Ulamog's Crusher. Lastly I'll mention Bellowing Elk, Wirewood Savage and Ivy Lane Denizen, with our commander in play we're able to 'summon' creatures every turn with Myriad, making the elk indestructible, drawing with Savage and giving out counters with Denizen.

The latter is also part of a combo with Devoted Druid and Presence of Gond, which work fine on their on as ramp or a source of chump blockers. 2 parts of the combo are tutorable with Wirewood Herald.

Besides haste the deck also runs Broken Fall and Whispersilk Cloak for protection, you could run cards like Snakeskin Veil but I decided to omit them; with almost no source of card advantage one-time protection spells wasn't ideal. Similarly cards like Fortitude could be decent but I'd rather just run more ramp, to get CotP out earlier & pay for eventual commander tax. I might be wrong though!

Finally there's our removal. With such absurd ramp Universal Solvent and Scour from Existence are fine to run, Lignify is a classic. Nightshade Peddler isn't something you'd attack into and soulbonding a 8/6 trampler is pretty neat. Night Soil offers graveyard removal & chump blockers, Seal of Primordium is removal you can pre-play so you can act at instant speed without holding up mana. Ram Through offers removal and reach if you need to finish someone off.

Worth considering is the tron lands Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant and Urza's Tower with the three ways to tutor for them (that I'm aware of): Crop Rotation, Expedition Map and Reap and Sow. Feel free to try that out!

Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions!