Pauper EDH



Take It In Stride



Sludge Strider Primer





There are surprisingly few three-colored creatures in Magic. As such, we are very fortunate that Shards of Alara block has provided a nice selection of colorful creatures to act as Pauper Commanders. Our guest today is sure to appeal to Artifact lovers, Extort lovers (the mechanic, not the act of siphoning money), and especially Artifact and Extort lovers. Please put your hands / claws / assorted appendages together for… Sludge Strider!





Your Game is Mud

So we’ve got an Artifact Creature who loves Artifact ETB (“enter the battlefield”) and LTB (“leave the battlefield”). Luckily, most Artifacts are excellent at the former, but fewer have skill with the latter. It would be great if our Artifacts were ready-made with some method of sacrificing them. Let’s try some Gatherer-Fu and see what we can dig up (weak pun most definitely intended).



All six of the available Spellbombs are well worth our time. While not every ability will be useful in every game, (Nihil Spellbomb is meant to shut down graveyard mechanics, Flight Spellbomb is only useful if you have a well-sized creature to swing with), they all have the capability to draw you a card and keep your engine churning.



There are a handful of Artifacts that provide mana and sacrifice themselves, which have the added bonus of fixing our colors while moving us through the deck.



On the topic of mana, we have also three of the Cluestones from Dragon’s Maze. Given their relatively high cost, their primary use is as mana rocks, but they have the added flexibility of a sacrifice ability to draw a card / ping your opponent for one damage.





“Entrance is free. Donations are required.”







Syndic of Tithes art by Steve Prescott

This wonderful piece of flavor text from the above-pictured Syndic of Tithes leads us into the fact that our Sludge Strider Strategy (trademark pending [not really] ) plays very nicely with Extort, the mechanic for the black-white guild from Return to Ravnica block.



Here’s how Extort works: if that keyword is tacked onto a permanent you control, whenever you cast a spell, you may pay one mana (either white or black) to cause each opponent to lose one life; you then gain life equal to the life lost this way. Moreover, you may pay that cost once per permanent that you control with Extort.



With the sheer quantity of cheap Artifact spells we cast, we’ll have many opportunities to Extort. I would suggest using all six Common Extort creatures in our deck. Another reason that Extort may be helpful to us: EDH is often a multiplayer format, and unlike our Commander, Extort extends its life-siphoning to “each opponent” rather than “target opponent”.

On the topic of Extort: there are two cards that, when combined with each other and some Artifacts, have an effect similar to Extort, and those cards are Leonin Elder and Disciple of the Vault. I also suggest finding space for both of these very efficient Creatures.





Heavy Metal







Glassdust Hulk art by Franz Vohwinkel

Though we stand to gain a great deal of life– and consequently, cause a great of life loss– with Sludge Strider, it might be nice to add some Creatures that can cause significant damage on their own. A few suggestions spring to mind:

Our deck will consist primarily of Artifacts, which means our hand will (likely) consist primarily of Artifacts, which means that Arsenal Thresher could hit the board as a force to be reckoned with.

Glaze Fiend and Glassdust Hulk both get temporary boosts when Artifacts enter the battlefield under your control. Their variability makes them better-suited to explosive attacks, when you can drop your hand of Artifacts and go down swinging.





Token Affection





It’s a shame that there are so few Common methods of repeatably producing Artifact tokens. Our only real option is Golem Foundry, and for the same reasons that the aforementioned-creatures are powerful (read: we’re casting a lot of Artifact spells), Golem Foundry is a must-add in this deck.





Where Artifacts Go To Die

By now, our graveyard should be well-populated with Artifacts. And by “graveyard,” I mean “mind.” And by “Artifacts,” I mean “knowledge pertaining to the construction of a Sludge Strider deck.” One final suggestion before we part: take advantage of Blue to add card draw, and thus ensure that you don’t run out of steam when slinging innumerable Artifact spells. (In the future, I may dedicate article-space to Pauper EDH staples such as card draw.)

Until next time, happy planeswalking, everyone.





