The Format Proxies Were Made For

Pauper EDH (PDH) is Commander with one beautiful restriction: the 99 must be commons, led by an uncommon legendary creature as your commander. That single rule flattens the power level, kills the price ceiling, and makes brewing feel weightless. Since the whole point is cheap, low-stakes fun, proxying erases the only friction left.

Why It Rules

  • Power parity. Without rares and mythics, games come down to play skill and how well you built your engine out of cheap pieces.
  • Surprising depth. Every archetype (aristocrats, spellslinger, tokens, voltron) exists at common. The puzzle is real.
  • The perfect gateway. New players aren't scared off by price, and veterans get a fresh constraint to solve.
  • Brew freely. When every card is a common, there's no cost to trying the weird idea.

A Great First Commander: Syr Konrad, the Grim

Syr Konrad, the Grim is an ideal PDH commander, an uncommon mono-black engine that turns death and mill into direct damage. Whenever a creature dies, hits a graveyard, or leaves your graveyard, Konrad pings each opponent for 1, and he can mill on demand for extra triggers. Build a commons shell of self-mill, sac fodder, and recursion, and Konrad drains the table while you grind value out of a pile of cheap spells.

The Engine, Turn by Turn

Turns 1-3: play cheap creatures and a self-mill enabler (Stitcher's Supplier or Crow of Dark Tidings) to start stocking the yard before Konrad arrives.

Turn 4+: land Konrad. Now every death (yours or theirs) and every mill pings the table. Sacrifice creatures to Village Rites or Altar's Reap for cards and Konrad triggers; recur them with Unearth or Gravedigger to run the loop again.

Closing: Gray Merchant of Asphodel (a common) drains for your devotion, and Konrad's accumulated pings add up fast across a sacrifice-heavy turn.

The PDH brewing trick: pick a commander whose ability rewards a cheap, repeatable action, like death, mill, draw, or landfall. Commons can fuel those all day, so the engine runs without a single expensive payoff.

Opening Hands & Mulligans

  • Snap-keep: a self-mill enabler + a sac outlet + lands.
  • Keep: cheap creatures and a way to draw, like Sign in Blood.
  • Mulligan: all top-end, no early plays. PDH games reward curving out.

Matchups & Threats

  • Other PDH decks are your meta, and Konrad's reach over the whole table is a strong closer in grindy commons games.
  • Graveyard interaction is rarer at common, which makes your recursion plan reliable.

Common Mistakes

  • Forgetting the commons rule for the 99. Only the commander is uncommon. Double-check printings before strict PDH tables.
  • Hoarding fodder. Konrad wants creatures dying. Feed your sac outlets constantly.

Where to Find Lists

EDHREC has a PDH filter, and Moxfield has plenty of commons-only lists to copy and tweak. Start from one, swap in commons you like, and proxy the result.