Snaky and Broodable (PDH) (EDH / Commander)

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

This mono-blue deck is built around Broodbirth Viper, a snek with the sweet ability Myriad. It's one of my favourite keywords and was followed up with the equally sweet keyword Encore.

Broodbirth is part of a Myriad cycle along with; Banshee of the Dread Choir, Herald of the Host, Warchief Giant and Caller of the Pack. They all have potential as commanders, Brood being the toughest to build around.

I spent a long time struggling to make Broodbirth work. To make the myriad and combat damage trigger work I explored Unsummon-tribal, Frost Breath-tribal and various ways of giving the copies flying (Dreamtail Heron being the best). I ended up with a mashed up combination of the best of each.

The idea is we get Brood out as quickly as we can and then open up the way for the myriad copies to either hit face or make trades. So we bounce / lock down creatures that can easily block our copies with cards like Unsummon, Bind the Monster, Run Away Together etc.

Alternatively we can give the copies flying by mutating Dreamtail Heron onto our commander or use Leap / Shadow Rift / Wingcrafter / Zephyr Charge / Cycle Windcaller Aven / Sacrifice Crown of Ascension. It might not be worthwile packing so much evasion when we're bouncing / tapping down anyway and trading a copy for an actual creature seems worthwhile.

To protect Brood there's Neurok Stealthsuit / Whispersilk Cloak and a suite of counterspells like Intervene, Arcane Denial, Dispersal Shield, Deprive and more. The latter can sort of be looped by returning Mystic Sanctuary to our hand and replaying it as our land. It slows down the manabase but is good in the late-game.

Three 3/3's is not much of a clock. You could go for a combo win with for example Ghostly Flicker - Archaeomancer - Peregrine Drake but I'm frankly tired of that wincon so I went with a few flying beaters. Slower, grindier and unreliable but preferable to me, feel free to run whatever you feel like! It is definitely the main weakness of the deck though, I'd appreciate input.

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