The Drake Equation [PDH]

[Oversoul]

Iridescent Drake is one of my favorite cards. So when I got into Pauper EDH, I knew I had to build a deck helmed by this thing. Mono-blue auras don't pack much of a punch at common, but the core gameplan here is to set up Iridescent Drake + False Demise + Ashnod's Altar and sink that infinite mana into stuff. The rest of the deck is just there to help pave the way for that eventuality.

Commander:
1 Iridescent Drake

1 Aarakocra Sneak
1 Abjure
1 Aether Tradewinds
1 Arcane Denial
1 Arcane Signet
1 Archaeomancer
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Aura Finesse
1 Blink of an Eye
1 Boomerang
1 Brainstorm
1 Candlekeep Sage
1 Capsize
1 Careful Study
1 Cartouche of Knowledge
1 Cloud of Faeries
1 Contempt
1 Deep Analysis
1 Dreamscape Artist
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 Eel Umbra
1 Enchantment Alteration
1 Evanescent Intellect
1 Fall from Favor
1 False Demise
1 Fate Foretold
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Frantic Search
1 Gaseous Form
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Impulse
1 Infiltrator's Magemark
31 Island
1 Lat-Nam's Legacy
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Lórien Revealed
1 Mind Stone
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Mulldrifter
1 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Ornithopter of Paradise
1 Peregrine Drake
1 Ponder
1 Rousing Read
1 Run Away Together
1 Sage's Row Denizen
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Shrieking Drake
1 Shrine Steward
1 Silver Myr
1 Sky Diamond
1 Snap
1 Stasis Cell
1 Step Through
1 Thassa's Devourer
1 Think Twice
1 Third Path Savant
1 Thirst for Meaning
1 Tocasia's Dig Site
1 Traveler's Cloak
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Tymora's Invoker
1 Unsummon
1 Vanishing
1 Vedalken Aethermage
1 Void Snare
1 Volrath's Curse
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 You Find the Villains' Lair

 

[Oversoul]

Other than the Wombat deck ,this is the one that needs the most adjustment. My Iridescent Drake deck got stuck in its first game because most of my tools to control problem creatures were auras, and I was facing an opponent with Neurok Stealthsuit. Even though he expended resources taking down our other opponent, I was pretty much stuck for a while. Eventually I drew Ashnod's Altar and managed to sac my Shrine Steward (enchanted with False Demise) and Iridescent Drake to get False Demise on the commander and generate infinite colorless mana. I got to durdle for one turn with infinite colorless mana as I dug for answers before running out of blue. Then he attacked me for the win. The infinite combo is extremely powerful here, but the rest of the deck is rather slow and might need tweaking.

 

[Oversoul]

Streamlining this...

-1 Aaracokra Sneak
-1 Eel Umbra
-1 Evanescent Intellect
-1 Fall from Favor
-1 Infiltrator's Magemark
-1 Stasis Cell
-1 Void Snare
+1 Compulsive Research
+1 Ghostly Flicker
+1 High Tide
+1 Ideas Unbound
+1 Merchant Scroll
+1 Mnemonic Wall
+1 Salvager of Secrets

 

[Oversoul]

Tested this list some more. Anxious to try to slot in Dizzy Spell and Displace before I play it again (should be able to play it again tomorrow). But it feels a lot better. The High Tide lines actually complement the main combo instead of just splitting my focus.

Volrath's Curse took me down quite the rabbit hole, but I think I'll create a separate thread for that.

 

[Oversoul]

This was the deck I'd put the most work into recently, and the revisions paid off. Last night, despite overlooking a Suture Priest initially, I set up the Peregrine Drake + Archaeomancer + Displace combo to make blue mana. After two loops, I cast Aether Tradewinds to get Suture Priets off the table. With 8 life left, I used the infinite loop for blue mana, transmuted Drift of Phantasms into Sage's Row Denizen, and milled my opponents out.

The infinite combo was, of course, panned. Since this deck is somewhat unreliable and its default win condition is an infinite combo, I might retire it soon, for the moment. My opponents would be bored facing this one on a regular basis. As much as I love Iridescent Drake, there's no need to try to shift this group into an infinite combo meta. I have other blue decks I can build instead.

 

[Oversoul]

We only had three players on Wednesday night and got three games in. Each player got to walk away with one win though, so that's cool.

First game I played The Drake Equation. Eric tried to simultaneously put pressure on both Casey and myself, so Casey was using his new slivers deck mostly against Eric. I drew enough cards to set up Iridescent Drake + False Demise, which let me save some life by blocking. Before Eric could kill me, I set up a combo with High Tide, Mnemonic Wall, High Tide again, Unsummon on Mnemonic Wall, Mnemonic Wall again, High Tide again, Snap, Mnemonic Wall again, High Tide again, Frantic Search, Step Through, Mnemonic Wall again, Snap again, looping Snap + Mnemonnic Wall for infinite blue mana, followed by looping Step Through + Mnemonic Wall + Iridescent Drake + Rousing Read to draw through my library and set up a win. Eric had picked this deck at random at the start of the game.

Once I won, I quipped something like, "Well, that was that deck's game for July. Time to put it back in the box and not touch it again until September." But yeah, it got us talking about how cool Iridescent Drake is, but how the constraints of this format make it where it kinda needs the most stereotypical High Tide combo package in order for it to be consistent.