Welcome back to Treasured Finds, a place to appreciate sacrifice in Commander
I have a confession to make: I’m a griefer. Given my druthers my preferred style of play is to drag out the game and put the screws to my opponent(s). I grew up in an era where breaking “negative” symmetry was a viable path to victory. This can be seen in one of my favorite cards of all time: Grave Pact. In a two player game this is merely annoying but extrapolate it to a game with four people and this card becomes an absolute house.
It also is not the kind of card everyone wants to play against.
Part of any good pregame discussion is understanding the kind of game people want to be playing. Grave Pact can absolutely wreck certain strategies and if the goal of Commander is to play the game then you want everyone to be able to play. But what does this mean when your preferred play style can, in many ways, make the game miserable for everyone else at the table?
What does it mean to be a griefer? For me it is part of playing symmetrical effects but it is also about turning a downside into an upside. Look at Bottomless Pit – this card says that everyone has to discard at random, but if you build your deck to take advantage of this “downside” with cards like The Raven Man and Bone Miser allows you to break the symmetry. That’s part of the allure of this style of play – it is the deckbuilding challenge in turning something bad on its ear.
There is something to be said for running answers. This is not the usual refrain of “run more removal” but rather at any table there can be a reasonable expectation that someone will have a board wipe or graveyard hate or some other piece of interaction in their deck to handle whatever the threat might be. At the same time cards with such asymmetrical impact as Grave Pact can often generate an overwhelming amount of value before being handled which can leave it all over except for the actual winning.
All this taken together that is all well and good for me as the grifer. But Commander is not solitaire so that leaves two options.
The first is to put out the call for other folks who are okay with this style of play. High power, no holds barred but a step below competitive Commander is my idealized style of play a majority of the time. And I hope one day I can find a group where this type of game doesn’t require a pregame discussion. But these days a lot of the games I play are in my friendly local game store with a wide array of opponents.
So that means moderating myself. In it of itself this is not a bad thing. Showing restraint and consideration for the group experience is not only being a good opponent and partner, but it’s also a good way to be a human. And now we get back to the card at he top of this post.
Ruthless Deathfang is no Grave Pact. It is not a global effect and as such can be used to help play in the political realm. It also does not trigger off of any creature death but rather exclusively on sacrifice. The result is a card that provides a reasonable approximation of my desired play style while not being overly oppressive. It also adds another wrinkle to the restriction which can easily be overcome with sacrifice outlets or other cards that force you to send things to the graveyard in a way that would set the ‘Fang off. As for me, I’m excited to give Ruthless Deathfang a try in my Araumi of the Dead Tide deck.
You can see my current, pre-Deathfang list here. Encore forces a sacrifice which gives me plenty of opportunity to point the Ruthlessness at different players. If the Dragon ever hits the bin I get to bring back three* copies which can potentially yield nine Edicts. And I think that’s just nifty.
Commander is a collective experience and even though I like making my opponent’s miserable I want them to enjoy the game. As long as I’m playing in an open setting it means I have to do a good amount of self-moderating, even if it means running an objectively less powerful card for the sake of the game. Until next time, may you only have good grief.
I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.
Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I now have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one time contribution.
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I use a few different metrics when looking at the Top 32 metagame. The first is just Raw Volume. The second is Win+, which takes the sum of all wins at X-2 or better in the Swiss and assigns a score; Win+ is helpful in measuring a deck’s Swiss round performance. K-Wins takes all of a deck’s wins and subtracts its losses, Top 8 inclusive; this helps to give a measure of overall performance. The final pair is call Meta Score and Meta Score Above Replacement, which takes the average of Win+ and K-Win to try and position an archetype against its field. This number helps to provide the most robust image of a deck’s performance.
Lost Caverns of Ixalan has arrived and this past weekend Pauper got its first look at the new cards in a Challenge setting. Over in Italy, Paupergeddon Rome 2023 had 520 competitors on the first day. According to reports, various builds of red were the most popular archetype on Day One and Day Two but Black Gardens was the most popular deck in the Top 8 with three copies while Jeskai Glitters won the day. Once I get my hands on the official results I may have more to say on one of the most important tabletop Pauper tournaments of the year.
But what about Magic Online? There the metagame looks largely the same with Kuldotha Red starting the season as the most popular archetype in the Top 32. This makes sense as Kuldotha Red remains the clock of the format and it buoyed by Goblin Tomb-Raider. Traditionally aggressive strategies perform well in the earlier parts of a format cycle while players are still figuring out what new wrinkles there are to the meta. And while the second trip to Ixalan may not have the same impact as our relatively recent return to Kamigawa, things are certainly shifting.
Orzhov Glitter made it to the Top 8 on Saturday and had two additional appearances in the Top 32 on Sunday. The shell blends a Kor Skyfisher engine with All That Glitters Affinity, all charged up with Tithing Blade. Tithing Blade may come to define the next few weeks as it is both an effecient removal spell that can be rebought with Skyfisher and friends while also converting itself into a slow win condition. The fact that it also fuels Affinity and can be fed to Deadly Dispute gives this edict an edge over its in-slot competitors. From experience I can tell you that crafting two of these into a Consuming Sepulcher can buy you plenty of time and slowly soften up the opponent.
Supporting Tithing Blade in non-aggressive shells is similar to supporting Chainer’s Edict – making sure there are enough other removal spells to clean up what’s left behind. Where this is spot removal or sweepers, the Blade cannot get it done all on its lonesome. At the same time the Sepulcher cannot be a lone win condition given how prevalent artifact hate is in sideboard, which means it might be best paired with either the Initiative or Guardian of the Guildpact.
Beating Tithing Blade means going wide. Getting around single creature removal means running tokens or flooding the board in other ways, but that can play into a potential board wipe. Murmuring Mystic again appears as a linchpin in the format as a way to fight against Blade on all axes. At the same time a deck can ignore Blade and dominate the end game – Tron or Familiars anyone? – can render this card inert.
The immediate future may just see an increased polarization of the format. With Red and Glitter decks continuing to have a hold on the early turns of the game and other strategies trying to stall things out until their own action plans come online. Forcing the format towards its outliers could put stress on decks that seek to occupy the middle ground such as CawGate and Dimir Faeries. Of course both of these strategies can adapt to various environments so I would not count them out. That being said in the interim I would be doing my best to leverage Tithing Blade and looking to maximize the value I could extract from the newest option.
I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.
Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I now have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one time contribution.
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Lost Caverns of Ixalan has arrived on Magic Online and with it we get our first set of Pauper League results that could potentially include new cards. And while there are a lot of interesting decks nestled in those 37 trophy runs (including two Breathless Knights decks and a WonderWalls variant Faultgrinder main), I wanted to focus on builds that featured something from the latest release.
Listen, we all knew this would happen. Kuldotha Red is not going anywhere and Goblin Tomb Raider provides another aggressive one drop for these builds. Here it appears to replace Goblin Blast-Runner which makes some amount of sense. Blast-Runner might have the upside of crashing in for three damage but it also can be stranded as a one power attacker turn after turn if you run out of sacrifice fodder. Tomb Raider is more likely to provide a consistent two points of damage given the 12 potential artifacts in the deck. That being said I think there are better shells for the newest addition that add more artifacts to the mix, but this is a great place to start.
Listen, we all knew this would happen. Someone was going to pair Kor Skyfisher with Tithing Blade. This build is an obvious place to start but, as with above, I think there is room for improvement. Glint Hawk feels risky here without additional artifact lands and once that shift is made adding more Ichor Wellspring type cards and potentially Deadly Dispute also follows suit. That build definitely takes a slower approach but this one tries to split the difference between a value oriented build and a deck seeking to grind the opponent out. While straddling the line might make sense for midrange strategies I think leaning into either side would only strengthen this concept.
Okay this one was unexpected. River Herald Scout was not on my “might see play in Familiars” Bingo card. Given the pilot this looks more like an experiment in whether or not the new card can replace Sea Gate Oracle rather than a strict upgrade. Scout has the advantage of binning key cards while leaving behind a solid, if unimpressive, set of stats. All in all this is a case where I do not expect the newest addition to last but then again I am far from a Familiars expert.
I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.
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Last week I wrote this with the intent of turning it into a script for a video. In the intervening days I attended a professional development conference for my career and the keynote address gave me a lot to think about. Namely, writing brings me joy and I’m not sure that moving to another medium is for me. But I really like what I had to say so I’m sharing it here. If you like this, let me know; if you think this would make a good bite sized video let me know even louder. But for now, I hope you read and enjoy.
Hello everyone,
My name is Alex Ullman and this is Treasured Finds – a place where we can appreciate Commander decks that really like it when things hit the graveyard. Now you might know me better from my articles on the Pauper format and my work on the Pauper Format Panel and while I do love Pauper, I also have been an avid Commander player for more than a decade. The other day StarCityGames tweeted out a question – What is the Best Aristocrat Commander?
And I had so many opinions on the matter that I decided to make this here video.
Generally speaking an Aristocrat strategy in Commander is based around sacrificing creatures in a way that damages your opponents through cards like Zulaport Cutthroat. The name might sound odd but it comes from a Standard deck that broke out at Pro Tour Gatecrash in 2013. The deck would sacrifice creatures to Cartel Aristocrat and Falkenrath Aristocrat to leverage attacks and over time the name came to incorporate decks that would kill with Blood Artist. The name stuck even if many of the free sacrifice outlets that see play no longer bear the name.
Aristocrat strategies in Commander need three key components to function. First they need a sacrifice outlet so they can play god and dictate when and how things are going to die. Second, they need material to feed to the sacrifice outlet, for they are a vengeful god. Finally, they need a spout or a way to convert all these dying creatures into victory. Some cards, like Goblin Bombardment or Altar of Dementia, combine two pieces of the puzzle into one for the world’s goriest you got chocolate in my peanut butter moment.
Back to the question at hand – what is the best option for heading up an Aristocrat deck? The reality is it, like with so many things in Magic and growing old, depends. Just like there is no one way to play Commander there is no one real way to build an Aristocrat deck. The commander you choose is going to be heavily dependent on the kind of experience you want to have and the kind of game you want to bring to the table. To me there are four main kinds of Aristocrat Commanders and each bring their own unique spin on the archetype while also influencing deck construction. They are Spouts, Fodder, Sacrifice Engines, and Spout Engines.
Let’s start with the most obvious – the Spouts. These are your so-called Blood Artists in the Command Zone. They are part of your primary win condition and allow you to start going to town on the table once have assembled enough fuel and a sacrifice outlet. While you may want to cast these cards early to start applying pressure they often double as a win condition, so holding them back until it is time to go for it can make sense. Putting a card like Judith, the Scourge Diva in the Command Zone before a game sends a very clear message – my creatures are going to die and you’re going to suffer for it – so it could be beneficial to assume a non-threatening posture until you can enter the victory formation.
What does that look like? It could mean letting the other players whittle each other down until you can easily take them out or go after the other strongest player at the table, leaving yourself depleted and presenting a less scary board state, opting to let the other two players deal with each other until you have once again amassed enough resources to, once again, go for it.
Fodder Commanders provide the sacrificial offerings. These Commanders do not necessarily scream “Aristocrats” but instead often masquerade as token strategies, albeit one that signal that things are going to be hitting the bin. These Commanders also need a sacrifice outlet to get going and while they can win through attacking with the army they spit out, they can make use of a Zulaport Cutthroat to end things in a flurry of corpses.
Elenda, the Dusk Rose is a great example of a Fodder Commander. Not only does she actively want things to die, when she meets her potentially timely end there’s an entire horde of tokens left in her wake. The result is a lot of meat to send to the Altar of Dementia and end the game in short order.
The first of our two Engine classifications, we have Sacrifice Commanders. These are Commanders that have the ability to sacrifice other creatures – shocking twist, I know. They often come out after the rest of the pieces are assembled and start things moving towards their inevitable end. Sacrifice outlets are one of the most important pieces of an Aristocrats strategy as they give their pilot control over when things die instead of having to leave it up to silly things like combat or opposing removal. The best of these have unbound sacrifice, meaning they come with no cost or timing restriction. Varolz, the Scar Striped can be rather unassuming but once it hits the board alongside a Blood Artist you know things are about to go down.
The last variety of Aristocrat Commander are the Spout Engines. These are Commanders that benefit from other creatures being sacrificed in some way. Elenda, the Dusk Rose is one such Commander (foreshadowing) but so is Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest. Mazirek doesn’t take an active role in any part of the Aristocrats engine but benefits from it all the same (and in this case, spreads that benefit far and wide). Juri, Master of the Revue is another Commander in this vein as it likes watching other things die and at the end of their time can potentially take someone out as well.
But what about Elenda? There are a ton of Commanders available that, like Altar of Dementia and Goblin Bombardment, fit multiple roles. Elenda is not only a Fodder Commander but she also is a Spout Engine. Slimefoot, the Stowaway brings friends to the dead man’s party while also serving as a Spout. One of my old favorites, Teysa, Orzhov Scion combines a limited sacrifice outlet with the potential to generate tokens. Each of these have different benefits and reward different play patterns. It’s one reason why my collection tends to have several Aristocrat decks at any one time – even if the mechanics are similar they provide a variety of experiences and make use of different cards to accomplish their goals.
So what is the best Aristocrat Commander? You tell me. Sound off below about which one you think is best. Don’t forget to like comment subscribe. If you like this sort of content and want to see more of it you can sign up for my Patreon and you can tell me why I’m wrong about all of this.
Thank you for watching Treasured Finds, I’ll see you next time we go Gravedigging.
I use a few different metrics when looking at the Top 32 metagame. The first is just Raw Volume. The second is Win+, which takes the sum of all wins at X-2 or better in the Swiss and assigns a score; Win+ is helpful in measuring a deck’s Swiss round performance. K-Wins takes all of a deck’s wins and subtracts its losses, Top 8 inclusive; this helps to give a measure of overall performance. The final pair is call Meta Score and Meta Score Above Replacement, which takes the average of Win+ and K-Win to try and position an archetype against its field. This number helps to provide the most robust image of a deck’s performance.
It’s over. After ten weeks the Wilds of Eldraine cycle has officially come to a close. What began with worries about red has ended with players seemingly happy about the state of the Pauper metagame. As we ready ourselves for the journey to the Lost Caverns of Ixalan it might benefit discussion to take a step back and look at why things seem “better” now.
I am putting that word in quotation marks because while both red and Affinity decks have taken a step back, what has filled the gap isn’t necessarily healthier but rather more familiar. The return of Dimir Faeries a few weeks ago has seen Pauper revert to a something resembling a prior state where decks leveraging powerful blue spells sat atop the metagame. In it of itself this shift is neither good nor bad, but rather represents a change. For a good stretch of time the format was largely defined by its most assertive decks and now something at the other end of the temporal spectrum is setting the tone.
The difference, to me, is that the decks at the top feel like they should be there because for many years in Pauper those are the decks that have been there. Part of the discomfort with red’s success was in part due to the fact that it was doing things with which the color previously struggled. When Affinity was at the top of the metagame it felt unbeatable due to the resilience of its core shell. Dimir Faeries is not as impervious as Affinity or aberrant as red and so its recent climb has felt familiar.
To be clear I think the metagame shifting is a good thing. Old decks coming back with new strategies and tools to fight the current battles demonstrates that the cards available in Pauper can handle a wide swath of what is out there. At the same time I have to take pause when I see folks effusively praising the way things are currently. It is not that the current state of the format is bad but rather one set of issues have been traded for another.
The issues before are well known – the assertive decks made it very difficult to for slower strategies to get their feet under them and mount a defense. Those decks are still out there but other builds have adapted and have started to skew their maindeck in addition to dedicating several sideboard slots to the beatdown. Because of this decks, like Dimir Faeries, which can take advantage of the skew have come to prominence. This is something that, in other formats, might take place over weeks. In Pauper this process has taken more than a quarter of a year.
Where does this leave things going into Lost Caverns of Ixalan? The top decks at the end of Wilds of Eldraine season, taking into account all ten weeks, are (in order) Blue Terror, CawGate, Kuldotha Red, Glitter Affinity and then Dimir Faeries. If you isolate the last two weeks of the season the top tier is Dimir Faeries, Blue Terror, Dimir Terror, CawGate, and Grixis Affinity. Counterspell looks to be a major factor in the early part of the next cycle and with Map tokens running around being able to take down a 6/6 creature is going to be vital to success. As a result you do not want to fold to a single removal spell and you want to have a low enough curve to be able to deploy multiple threats in the face of countermagic.
What are you looking to run in Lost Caverns of Ixalan season? What cards have caught your eye and which ones are you eager to test out once the format hits the digital shelves?
I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.
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The Lost Caverns of Ixalan release is still a few days away on Magic Online so in the interim lets dive into the latest Pauper League results.
Okay so there’s a lot going on here, but at its core this is a Kor Skyfisher value deck based around enchantments. While this build lacks the artifact synergies of more established builds it does get to leverage Spirited Companion and force multipliers like Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters. The deck also has a sideways win condition in Grim Guardian. I am not sure how real this deck is but it certainly provides something new to explore.
Rakdos Wildfire is not a new strategy but it is one that has not been seen in quite some time. This build is leaning hard into the life gain elements by running the full suite of Vampire Sovereign and a pair of Bleak Coven Vampires. This build also is running a pair of sweepers main and plenty of removal, but I would love to see a more robust win condition outside of trying to Siege Rhino the opponent.
Scam in every format? While Pauper lacks the pitch elementals you can still cast Dark Ritual, cycle a giant monster, and then Exhume it back on turn one. This build also has outs to a first turn Monarch Emblem and turn two Initiative. I am a big fan of Exhume strategies and am hopeful there’s a way that this one can find some firm footing in the metagame.
I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.
Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I now have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one time contribution.
Looking for another way to support my work? Click here for my TCGPlayer affiliate link. Any purchases through the link let the folks there know you like my content!
I use a few different metrics when looking at the Top 32 metagame. The first is just Raw Volume. The second is Win+, which takes the sum of all wins at X-2 or better in the Swiss and assigns a score; Win+ is helpful in measuring a deck’s Swiss round performance. K-Wins takes all of a deck’s wins and subtracts its losses, Top 8 inclusive; this helps to give a measure of overall performance. The final pair is call Meta Score and Meta Score Above Replacement, which takes the average of Win+ and K-Win to try and position an archetype against its field. This number helps to provide the most robust image of a deck’s performance.
Sometimes it can be hard to write about Pauper at this point in its life cycle. With a new set on the horizon it is exciting to look forward and consider what might be, as opposed to looking back and potentially bemoan what is. But that would be a disservice to what is happening in the final weeks of Wilds of Eldraine season.
Blue is ascending. Over the past month decks such as CawGate, Blue Terror, and Dimir Faeries have battled for the top spot in the metagame. Considering that for many months the top decks were either Kuldotha Red or some Affinity variant, this shift seems almost sudden and yet comfortable. Faeries, specifically, has been one of the top decks in Pauper for quite some time. Whether they are mono blue, Izzet, or Dimir, Spellstutter Sprite decks have been a staple of Pauper and their absence over the past several months has been felt.
So how did they return?
Over the course of the past several weeks CawGate began to position itself as an answer the the metagame. It had the tools to keep red decks in check and the ability to get around the large threats of Terror. At its core, however, the deck remains a blue-white midrange strategy. It relies on a light suite of interaction to stop key spells from the opponent and leverages its creature base to provide a form of virtual card advantage. You can’t counter the Embalm of Sacred Cat easily and eventually Basilisk Gate will force the opponent to either throw blockers in the way or lose all their life points. CawGate was able to position itself to go over the aggro decks and around the control decks.
Dimir Faeries eats this sort of midrange deck for lunch. The deck has access to better removal and more stack interaction. It can also play a “flash” game with Spellstutter Sprite coming down to leverage card flow on the next turn from one of its two Ninja so it can leave more mana open on its turns while CawGate runs a bevy of lands that enter the battlefield tapped and has to operate largely at sorcery speed. If CawGate goes over aggressive strategies and sidesteps control, Dimir Faeries sidesteps CawGate.
Traditionally, Boros strategies have been able to sidestep Dimir Faeries. Going wide with flyers such as Kor Skyfisher or Battle Screech tokens has been a solid counter to Faeries. I am not sure if that is the case any longer thanks to the addition of Murmuring Mystic, which can gum up the air just as easily as it clogs the ground. Instead decks may have to look for persistent forms of damage in the vein of Makeshift Munitions to try and keep the fair folk grounded. We have already seen black based midrange decks move back to Cuombajj Witches as an “answer” to tiny flying creatures.
Beating Dimir Faeries is not as simple as just answering their threats. Given the options at the deck’s disposal many strategies are unable to beat them card for card. Between Ninjas, the Monarch, hand scultping, and now Lorien Revealed it is incredibly difficult to out card Faeries using individual pieces of cardboard. Munitions and Witches are cards that stick around and provide virtual card advantage – that is they can render multiple opposing cards less useful by their mere presence. The goal here, then, is to find cards such as these and maneuver the game to a position where they can take over.
The other option is to go wide in a way that Faeries might struggle to stop. Traditionally Elves was well suited to this endeavor. While the deck has not picked up that many new toys it can still vomit out a veritable army thanks to Quirion Ranger and Priest of Titania. While a single Suffocating Fumes is unlikely to quash an elvish uprising, Arms of Hadar makes things more challenging.
As for next week? I would look for an Izzet deck that can not only leverage Murmuring Mystic and Makeshift Munitions, but also find a way to make another new sweeper – Sulfurous Blast – work. It should not be too hard considering the number of five toughness monsters available to blue these days.
I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.
Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I now have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one time contribution.
Looking for another way to support my work? Click here for my TCGPlayer affiliate link. Any purchases through the link let the folks there know you like my content!
I use a few different metrics when looking at the Top 32 metagame. The first is just Raw Volume. The second is Win+, which takes the sum of all wins at X-2 or better in the Swiss and assigns a score; Win+ is helpful in measuring a deck’s Swiss round performance. K-Wins takes all of a deck’s wins and subtracts its losses, Top 8 inclusive; this helps to give a measure of overall performance. The final pair is call Meta Score and Meta Score Above Replacement, which takes the average of Win+ and K-Win to try and position an archetype against its field. This number helps to provide the most robust image of a deck’s performance.
Okay folks, before I dive in to today’s post I highly (highly) encourage you to read this post from two weeks ago that goes into a bit more detail about the different metrics I use in examining the Pauper metagame.
Last weekend saw three events on the Magic Online Pauper calendar. Not only were there the regularly scheduled Saturday and Sunday Challenges, but there was also a Pauper Qualifier on Saturday. While I pay attention to every Challenge, Showcases and Qualifiers tend to provide some more robust data. This is because these tournaments tend to have more rounds than a typical challenge which helps to reduce the impact of variance on results. These events also attract a larger audience than the typical Pauper Challenge which can mitigate some of the accepted conventional wisdom in the format. So when an event of this nature has eight different blue decks in the Top 8, and another four in the Top 16, I sit up and take notice.
I don’t want to get too much deeper into this post without getting to the main point, so here it is: blue is back in a big way. While a massive amount of the discourse over the past few months has been about the various red decks packing Monastery Swiftspear, the story of Wilds of Eldraine season to this point has been the steady climb of CawGate and now, the return of Dimir Faeries.
But that’s the end result. Let’s take a look at what has gone on as of late. I think it’s important to start with Kuldoltha Red. This deck has 80 total appearances thus far this season with an impressive 18 Top 8s and two wins. It held a health 1.19 adjusted Meta Score Above replacement for the first four weeks before plummeting to a 0.01 in the second four weeks. It’s aMSAR on the season sits at 0.82.
When I talk about Kuldotha Red I am specifically referring to decks that run Kuldotha Rebirth. Some of these decks are lower to the ground, sticking with one drops while others have incorporated Name Sticker Goblin to their gameplan.
These, a decks like them, have provided a consistent clock to Pauper for months. They hit the board early and can apply pressure while reloading in the middle stages of the game thanks to red’s new suite of card “draw”. Despite their popularity and the amount of digital ink spent on dissecting these builds they have somewhat under performed, especially in Challenges.
So what gives?
The vast majority of online Pauper play takes place in Leagues – five round non-sequential event that have scaling rewards for three, four, and five wins. Leagues are a great way to get in reps with a deck but also a great way to grind for more prizes. If the goal is to play as many leagues as possible to garner the more reward, then red decks make sense since they can breeze through a league and have draws that Just Win. This in turn can impact the way people feel about the format at large, especially if they are running into red deck after red deck in a league. Given that Leagues are one of the best ways to practice a deck for the Challenges it also means that many players come to these tournaments expected red, which in turn has placed increased importance on Blue Elemental Blast and Hydroblast.
This is a very important piece I do not want to get lost: the rise of blue makes sense given the incentive structure of leagues and the nature of red decks. As blue has the best answers to red, the question becomes what is the best blue deck to run.
The answer, it seems, is CawGate. This flexible midrange strategy has been the best performing archetype over the past two months. It has 31 Top 8 finishes in 60 total appearances, with a trio of wins as well. It is the best performing deck in the Swiss rounds, and the best performing deck taking Swiss rounds and the Top 8 into consideration. It has an aMSAR of 1.54 for the entire season (0.44 for the first four weeks; 1.73 for the second four weeks) which is the best mark amongst all decks.
There’s a lot to like about these decks. Sacred Cat and Basilisk Gate can undo several turns of attacking after Prismatic Strands helps you stabilize. The game will eventually end with a flyer or Guardian of the Guildpact that has passed through the Gate. The mana base makes it easy to splash important off color cards (one of the Top 8 decks from the qualifier leaned into green for Centaur Healer, for example) and the result is a deck that can be tuned for a wide variety of metagames.
Is CawGate as good as the numbers indicate? Thus far this season the answer is yes. The deck has enough tools to get it over the finish line and the right mix of interaction to keep pace against the wide gamut of archetypes that can get thrown at it. The mana base also allows it to pack anti-blue cards that other blue decks cannot support.
The numbers on Dimir Faeries are not nearly as impressive as those in the other two decks discussed today. It only has 21 appearances with eight Top 8 finishes and two wins. It had a -0.20 aMSAR for the first four weeks, countervailed with a 0.62 score for the second four weeks for a 0.30 overall score. But if CawGate is the best deck for the season, Dimir Faeries may be the best deck for this moment. Traditionally Dimir Faeries is the midrange control deck that preys on other blue decks. As people go lean on their counterspells with cards like Dispel and Spell Pierce, Spellstutter Sprite shines bright as a way to win stack battles. Dimir Faeries also has several ways to keep cards flowing between Ninjas and the Monarch and enough removal to keep opposing threats off the board. The strategy has only been back in force for two weeks but given how well it has performed in that time (weekly aMSARs of 2.26 and 0.88) I fully expect it to keep putting up numbers.
Blue Terror is right behind CawGate in terms of seasonal aMSAR (1.5). With 19 total Top 8 finishes and four wins in 69 total appearances the deck has been a consistent force at the top of the metagame since Cryptic Serpent made its way to common. The deck is lean and has minimal flex slots. Even then, the build above has found the way to be relevant in the ascending control meta with Murmuring Mystic. Mystic has the ability to completely take over control mirrors thanks to its ability to churn out threats. As the number of control decks in the meta rise I anticipate Mystic will be one of the defining cards of the final two weeks of Wilds of Eldraine season.
What do I mean about an ascending control meta? As mentioned previously the prevailing conversation in Pauper as of late has centered on the strength of red decks and how they have forced blue decks to play a bevy of Blasts. Other decks have risen up around these two focal points, including a surge in Golgari Moment’s Peace decks that seek to drawn the game out as long as possible.
These strategies have been marginally successful to this point in part for their ability to take down red decks but also provide enough interaction to stymie the Terror builds and other aggressive strategies like Glitter Affinity, Bogles, or Heroic. But these decks are not able to play control the same way against Faeries since they can simply pick their spots with countermagic for maximium impact. Dimir Faeries, for example, lines up rather well against the above list.
The control decks have reached a point where they can not only reasonably handle the red decks, but they can also deal with the decks that have come to beat up on aggro. In many ways this is a typical Pauper development, with Faeries rising to the top. It is entirely possible that in a few weeks time we will see the return of Boros to the metagame, or perhaps Orzhov Ephemerate will rise up again.
Now when we talk about the format we cannot start with the primacy of Swiftspear. It is easy to point at the results from this weekend and say that blue rose to the top due to its ability to handle red. At the same time, they also had to handle the non-red decks and other blue decks, all while hampered by the dead weight of between four and eight sideboard cards.
How can you approach this metagame? Faeries decks are traditionally week against “go wide” white strategies but these decks have been a step behind in recent weeks. It is not that they have gotten worse but the other decks have gotten lower to the ground and tapping out for Battle Screech isn’t nearly as daunting if the blue deck has its own flying army at its disposal. It could be Electrickery‘s time to shine once again which could translate to a boon for traditional Boros Bully.
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I love what this deck is trying to do. Ichor Drinker might not be Sacred Cat but it passes through Basilisk Gate nearly as well (while also being immune to Snuff Out on the front half). Stitch it together with a light Food engine (would Candy Trail be better than Golden Egg here?) and you have a recipe for a deck I am sure to test out and somehow make worse.
I am very high on damage prevention effects at the moment and this Golgari Fog deck is pretty neat. The deck is light on win condition, leaning on Crypt Rats in a big way, as well as a single Mirkwood Bats to turn all those Heap Gate Treasures into damage. As much as I love the idea behind this deck I doubt that I have the patience to play this one but if you do, more power to you for sure.
This list, from my Pauper Format Panel colleague, is another take on the Golgari stall strategy. We see copies of Moment’s Peace again and tons of ways to gain life, including Fangren Marauder. This, however, feels like a deck that could benefit from Heap Gate and the excess Treasures it creates because the one of the few things better than making a Treasure is gaining five life off of sacrificing it.
I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.
Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I now have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one time contribution.
Looking for another way to support my work? Click here for my TCGPlayer affiliate link. Any purchases through the link let the folks there know you like my content!
NerdtotheCore 
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