This post is coming almost a week late. I could say it was because my toddler’s day care was closed and I was chasing him around several playgrounds (which is true) or because I was preparing for a visit from my in-laws (also true). But that’s only part of the truth.
Put simply, Pauper is not fun for me right now. I am not enjoying the games and I’m not enjoying the metagame as an observer. The June 26 and June 27 Challenges did not do much to change my opinion. Through the first four weeks of Strixhaven season there were 16 decks that made up at least 2% of the Top 32 metagame. Through the same time period in Modern Horizons 2 there are 9.
Pauper is a three deck metagame. Affinity is the most popular with nearly 29% of the Top 32 metagame and almost 30% of all Top 8s. Squirrel Storm and the two main Dimir Variants are around 19% of the Top 32 metagame and the archetypes each have 15 Top 8s (around 23% of all Top 8s). So we’re looking at these decks taking up 67% of the Top 32 metagame and almost 77% of all Top 8s.
We’re a month in. It’s safe to say that this experiment is not working.
On Tuesday, July 6th at 3pm Eastern, Gavin Verhey will be stopping by the MTGPauper Discord to answer some questions. People have already started posting some queries and you can bet that Storm and Affinity are on everyone’s mind.
NerdtotheCore 