Pauper Commander - Tormod and Ramirez

Ghost of Ramirez DePietro | Tormod, the Desecrator | Art by Grzegorz Rutkowski

Today we're trying building around a commander I thought was unsavable. I remember watching the spoilers when the original Commander Legends was coming out, and being acutely disappointed by Tormod's first ever character card, Tormod, the Desecrator.

Tormod's a fellow who's been referenced as far back as The Dark, with the iconic card Tormod's Crypt. Although he was never truly a relevant character, every player who'd every wanted to combat an obnoxious Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck knew him very well, thanks to that little artifact.

So yeah, it was pretty sad to see that his card sucked. I mean, seriously? The best they could come up with was a guy who makes a Zombie when a card leaves your graveyard? He barely even synergizes with his own Crypt, because exiling your entire graveyard at once nets you literally just a single 2/2. And it's tapped!

However, Tormod does have one redeeming quality: He has partner! Perhaps we can make up for his disappointing text box with some slightly less underwhelming abilities on the Ghost of Ramirez DePietro. All this spectral Pirate does is return cards that were discarded or milled, but hey, he takes them out of the graveyard and therefore synergizes with Tormod.

Aye Aye, Captain

Anyone can see that these two are a disappointing duo, but they do actually work nicely together. Ghost serves as an attacker and card advantage, while Tormod fills out the board pretty well. Plus, Tormod can be played the turn after Ghost is played, ready to make a Zombie as soon as Ramirez attacks and triggers.

Nothing spectacular, but Pauper decks win through consistency and card advantage, which this setup does provide. So let's give it a shot!

Churning Up a Storm

Ok, here's our engine. The Ghost of Ramirez DePietro attacks, deals combat damage, and returns a card that was discarded or milled that turn. Then, Tormod makes a tapped Zombie. The two things we need to do for this to work is ensure that Ramirez can go unblocked, and we have to discard or mill something.

Should be pretty easy!

In blue and black, evasion is trivial. I almost added a bunch of wings, and then I remembered, blue just has a million ways to make a creature 100% unblockable. Aqueous Form, Cloak of Mists, Security Bypass, yeah, this will be no problem. Protective Bubble and Whispersilk Cloak even give our commander shroud, practically guaranteeing that he's untouched for the whole game.

Fittingly, Thieves' Tools is also an effective option here, because our commander is quite small. But even if we can't scrounge up some form of evasion, our commander has his own, a clause preventing creatures with toughness three or greater from blocking. Not bad at all.

Into the (Ship) Graveyard

What most of our deck will be committed to is either discarding cards or triggering Tormod directly. There's a million ways for us to mill every single turn, starting with Chronic Flooding, Curse of the Bloody Tome, and Scion of Halaster. These enchantments are just incredible, giving us two or three options to choose from with Ramirez.

We're also going to play some instants and sorceries like Forbidden Alchemy to mill ourselves and draw some cards whenever we like. Simple but versatile utilities.

Then, we'll have a few smaller mill engines like Deranged Assistant, Ghoulcaller's Bell, Cathartic Adept, and Screeching Sliver. All very well priced, and very effective. We can even throw in a Vizier of Tumbling Sands to untap them and do it twice in a turn!

Speaking of untapping things, we also have some tappers that just exile from a graveyard. Merrow Bonegnawer and Relic of Progenitus skip the middle man and trigger Tormod with just a tap. We can combine these guys with all the mill machines to build an engine where we're dumping multiple cards a turn, returning the best of them with Ramirez, and exiling the rest to make a heap of Zombies and earn spectacular card advantage.

Hidden Treasure

That's the bulk of the deck, but there are some specific cards that we can abuse with the discard to create some pretty unique advantages. Take any card with transmute, for instance. They're tutors that we just so happen to be discarding, meaning we can return them with Ramirez. The same principle applies to cycling, where Lonely Sandbar becomes an extra draw or Lórien Revealed becomes a consistent land tutor.

And even when Ramirez isn't online, it's always a good deck building principle to have cards that you can pitch for something new.

Finally, some highlights of the deck. Coffin Purge is a piece of tech that can make three Zombies for just two black mana, exiling itself and two other cards. Great, but doing the same thing with Rotten Reunion will make five Zombies for just three mana! That's a horde in just one card.

Continuing the theme of Zombies, cycling Gempalm Polluter can be used to deal a sizeable amount of direct damage to any opponent. (Or yourself, if you wanted to.)

Finally, the crowing jewel is Tortured Existence. Any number of times, you can pay one black mana to make a tapped Zombie with Tormod. That's it. You need a creature in hand, and a creature in the graveyard, and then you can just swap them over and over to trigger your commander a million times. I swear, I've never seen that card used fairly, especially in Imotekh the Stormlord. My friend has traumatized me with that interaction way too many times.

Sharpening the Saber

We'll polish off the deck with the expected removal and counterspells: Unsummon, Snuff Out, Negate, whatever's necessary. Because this deck is about card advantage, and because it's in black and blue, it just naturally becomes a control deck. There's no way around it, I swear!

To counter this effect, we'll include some more synergistic, if less effective, removal to make it a tad bit nicer. Logic Knot is objectively worse than Counterspell, but significantly cooler, and does trigger our commander. Then, Perplex is a weird response, but like I mentioned before, its transmute ability makes it very valuable.

Tormod, the Desecrator and Ghost of Ramirez DePietro Pauper Commander Deck List

And that's it! I actually like this deck way more than I expected to. No, Ghost of Ramirez DePietro and Tormod, the Desecrator are not good commanders. They're severely underpowered, even as partners, and I still think Tormod's design is lame. But... The deck they incentivize you to make is very synergistic, and one of the best at making engines I've ever seen in Pauper.

There's a lot of moving parts, but everything in here has a purpose, and the deck plays very smoothly. That redeems these commanders in my eyes.

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