Author Archives: Alex Ullman

September 19-20 Weekend in Review…Again

So yesterday when I released my breakdown of last weekend, I missed an event. I had completely forgotten there was a Pauper PTQ on Magic Online and as such I did not factor the results into my spreadsheet. Well, we’re going to remedy that today. To refresh our collective memory, let’s look at the resultsContinue reading “September 19-20 Weekend in Review…Again”

September 19-20 Pauper Weekend in Review

Zendikar Rising is here and thus a new season of data tracking can begin. The latest set has some powerful options and three different cards (Cleansing Wildfire, Spare Supplies, Tuktuk Rubblefort) have already found their way into Top 8 lists. I do not expect these to be the last cards from Zendikar Rising to haveContinue reading “September 19-20 Pauper Weekend in Review”

Breaking Down the Break Downs

Hello again everyone. I’m back after a week to recuperate and reflect. Seeing as my Double Masters Power Rankings will be live today on ChannelFireball, I wanted to do something a little different today. I want to talk about the metrics I use to examine Pauper metagame health. My metagame analysis focuses on the TopContinue reading “Breaking Down the Break Downs”

Center Stage: Cleansing Wildfire

Before I go any further I want to give you a heads up: here there be spoilers for Zendikar Rising. If you don’t want to learn any cards in the set ahead of time, just click out of this page and you’ll be none the wiser. Is the coast clear? Good. It’s not a secretContinue reading “Center Stage: Cleansing Wildfire”

Looking at Lists: Retriever Affinity

So maybe I got this one wrong. In the month since I wrote that article, Myr Retriever has done little in the way of Pauper results. It isn’t that players haven’t tried to make it work or that the combo is bad. Rather, the format is hostile to a dedicated combo deck that relies onContinue reading “Looking at Lists: Retriever Affinity”

August 29-30 Pauper Weekend in Review

After a week where Challenge results didn’t populate due to back end error, we are back! Both August 29 and August 30 played host to six around affairs. We also now have 8 challenge results and, well, would you look at that? We’re standing on the precipice of yet another new release. While Zendikar RisingContinue reading “August 29-30 Pauper Weekend in Review”

Responding to Constructed Resources

The seventh episode of Constructed Resources discussed how to beat control decks. I encourage you all to give it a listen as it provides valuable insight and, being real, it’s on a website where I write. In the episode, Luis Scott-Vargas and Andrew Baeckstrom discuss methods for disrupting and defeating control decks. Given that theContinue reading “Responding to Constructed Resources”

Looking at Lists: Bone Picker Dimir

I want to talk a little bit about Delver of Secrets. Delver exerts a unique pressure on Pauper in that when left unanswered it can absolutely take over the game. When a turn one Delver flips it changes to entire texture of battle. Pauper in many ways is a format of Magic‘s fundamentals (taken toContinue reading “Looking at Lists: Bone Picker Dimir”