December 22 Pauper Challenge Breakdown

The December 22 Pauper Challenge was a return to form in that it was 7 rounds rather than 6. Flicker Tron continued its downward trend in popularity while two old favorites cemented themselves as players to start 2020.

Boros Bully, Boros Monarch, and Izzet Faeries each took home two slots in the Top 8. The recent run of Bully decks have moved back to at least a pair of Palace Sentinels, giving them a sheen on Monarch. They remain two distinct archetypes, with Bully leveraging more aggressive creatures and Monarch favoring burn-based-reach, but there is definitely overlap. Meanwhile Izzet Faeries has surged in the standings thanks to Mystic Sanctuary. The ability to regrow any instant or sorcery, for free, is huge. Combine this with Deprive or Mystic Sanctuary and you have the backbone of a deck as long as the land remains legal.

Tron was not absent. Two copies made the Top 32 – with one inside the Top 8. Another Flicker based list made Top 8 as well, also leveraging Mystic Sanctuary for Archaeomancer redundancy. The result is that as 2019 closes the Pauper metagame has a clearly defined top tier of what works – Monarch, Sanctuary, and Tron.

Top 10 archetypes by volume, minimum 6 appearances

While Flicker Tron decks may have been largely absent the past two weeks they remain one of the best performing macro-archetypes over the Throne of Eldraine season. To date the second best performing deck is Izzet Faeries, but it still has less than 10% of Top 32 volume.

Considering how good both Bully and Faeries have been as of late, it would follow that cards like Aerial Volley and Scattershot Archer earn more slots in sideboards. Incidental graveyard hate also can come in handy against cards like Sanctuary and Battle Screech, although outside of Faerie Macabre you are hard pressed to find one that works against all the top decks.

Still, the meta does appear to be settling into a healthier spot than a few weeks ago. The lack of an aggressive green deck is concerning but considering Stompy exists, it probably will pop up again soon.

December 15th Pauper Challenge Breakdown

The year is winding down and Theros Beyond Death spoilers have started appear. But there is still Magic to be played in 2019. The December 15th Pauper Challenge may go down as the event that got me to change my tune about Tron. It is not that the deck underperformed but rather the metagame, finally, may be shifting to accommodate the presence of the archetype.

The presence of Boros Bully at the top of the Challenge shouldn’t be a shock – the deck has been a consistently good performer for quite some time. Izzet Faeries, however, has quickly risen in the power rankings. Moving away from Delver of Secrets, the deck now takes on the veneer of a control deck while leveraging powerful card filtering and the strength of Mystic Sanctuary. The deck has evolved to a point where Deprive isn’t necessary thanks to Tragic Lesson replacing Accumulated Knowledge. The ability to keep cards flowing in the mid-to-late game is key in helping to keep endgame decks like Tron and Boros Monarch in check.

I’d go as far as to say that Izzet Faeries is the second best archetype at the moment. Despite making up a relatively small portion of the winner’s metagame, the deck has some impressive stats, accounting for over 10% of weighted volume – that’s better than both Boros Monarch and Stompy with fewer Top 32 finishes under its belt.

If I wanted to succeed next week I would do everything I could to avoid leaning on the graveyard. It is not that the option is bad – far from it – but rather with Mystic Sanctuary joining Ghostly Flicker as a cheap piece that does its best work from the bin. If you absolute have to go grave digging, run Nihil Spellbomb over Relic of Progenitus as a way to pressure your opponent’s resources without damaging your own.

Stompy seems to be a reasonable choice moving forward, but I wouldn’t sleep on Mono Black Control if only because it looks like Cuombajj Witches might be a reasonable card again.

December 9th Pauper Challenge Breakdown

We had to wait a few days for the December 9th Challenge results to be made available. Once they were, it was the second time in the past three weeks that Tron was underrepresented. The week when Tron was present was for the Playoff. So what’s the story?

Tron made a total of four appearances on Sunday, making one Top 8 appearance and finishing just outside the elimination rounds in 9th. The format was relatively hostile to Tron with an abundance of Burn decks. It is not that Burn is a bad matchup for Tron, but rather given enough players hurling Lightning Bolt, it shrinks the collective number of turns for Tron to find their key interactive pieces in the matchup. It’s the Dredge principle – if enough people pack hate, the deck could falter. Looking into the player gathered data of the event, that wasn’t the case. There were 5 total Tron decks in the Challenge and three of theme had a 4-2 record.

Delver won the event on Saturday. In a total of three Top 32 appearances this season, Delver has two Top 8s and a win. The deck has new life thanks to Mystic Sanctuary. The ability to achieve a soft lock with Sanctuary and Deprive, or to loop the land with Tragic Lesson, is a potent tool in the aggro-control decks repertoire. This build is less aggressive than the versions that were popular earlier in the season – gone are the copies of Mutagenic Growth – and so are the copies of Accumulated Knowledge. It seems that Tragic Lesson and Mystic Sanctuary are just that good together. Still, a copy or two of Think Twice couldn’t hurt.

So what is the state of things? Tron is on decline for the moment but it is still the best deck this season by a pretty decent clip. Comparing its Top 32 volume to its percentage of Wins above X-2, Tron is outperforming its weight to the tune of just over 5%.

You’ll notice Delver is absent from this chart. It has failed to make the 2% volume threshold of the season; the cut off is 4 appearances, which Teachings just hits. That 5% mark is important because when asked previously I have stated that the 5% delta between Volume and Weighted Volume is where I would expect the best decks to fall. And considering there are several other decks with a positive delta, this is a good sign.

So then why did some jackass go and write this article?

Simply put, I wrote that article and submitted it in the wake of the Playoff, where a quarter of the Top 16 decks were Tron. It was coming on the heels of several weeks of Tron being a dominant force and one I perceived to be stifling the format’s health. Here is a chart from one month ago.

That’s quite a difference. So if the chart above is correct, Tron could be a problem. If the chart the includes the December 9th Challenge is correct, Tron is likely safe. And that is where Wizards of the Coast matters. They have the matchup data and can look to see if Tron has an unhealthy win rate.

Do I believe the December 9th data is influenced by Tron pilots taking a break? Yes. Do I believe the metagame has adjusted to Tron and is finding ways to fight the deck? Yes. But all of this does not matter because on December 16th we’re going to have a better answer as to what type of format Wizards wants for Pauper.

Explorations in Ramp

Growth Spiral was a card I initially wrote off. I figured that if the effect was good enough that Explore would see more play. Combine this with the lack of powerful utility lands in Pauper, the prevalence of Tron, and the lack of anything good to do at the top end and I set the card on the back burner.

Enter Standard. Specifically Throne of Eldraine Standard after the most recent wave of bans. I watched a number of Simic Flash/Ramp decks perform well and wondered if something similar could work in Pauper. There is a ton of power in leaving up mana in a blue deck, so much so that Pro Tour Champion Mike Hron never cast a creature into 2U for fear of Exclude even though the card didn’t exist in Time Spiral Limited.

So I put together this list and it performed adequately. A 3-2 finish is enough to keep me interested in a concept for a few league runs. The next time through I ran into Stompy twice and quickly entered the three loss bracket. I went back to the drawing board and added Moment’s Peace to the main.

Of course thinking about the deck today I realize that it’s probably just correct to add a Mountain, move to Brainstorm and Ash Barrens, and go in on Swirling Sandstorm. Which, to be honest, sounds sweet.

The goal of this deck is to operate on your opponent’s end-step and exhaust them of resources a la the old Snow-Go deck. Unlike that deck, I do not want to lean too heavily on one-for-one removal. As Tron has shown, trying to remove threats individually is not as good as simply buying time. With endgame threats like Havenwood Wurm, Ulamog’s Crusher, and potentially Skittering Crustacean, I am interested to see how Temur Ramp performs moving forward.

December 1st Pauper Playoff

The final Pauper Playoff for 2019 took place on December 1st and Elves won the day. C_is_fore_cookie is a master of the archetype and went through Izzet Faeries, Azorius Familairs, and Flicker Tron on their way to the winner’s circle.

There are some notable omissions in this list – Nettle Sentinel for one – as well as relying on Viridian Longbow rather than Harsh Sustenance to get the job done against Moment’s Peace and Stonehorn Dignitary. Cookie also upped the land count to a whopping 14 and came prepared to defend their army with Hydroblast for sweepers, Spidersilk Armor for sweepers, and Wrap in Vigor for Sweepers. Cookie also opted to eschew Winding Way in favor of four Lead the Stampede and four Distant Melody, possibly in deference to their creature-less sideboard.

The rest of the Top 16 broke down along fairly standard lines. Tron was the most popular archetype, while it was slightly less successful than Boros Monarch (which had the lone 7-0 record). That Boros Monarch list also omitted Alchemist’s Vial entirely for other artifacts and added a copy of Gurmag Angler as a way to close out games.

After a week with almost no Tron in the Top 32, four copies made it to the Top 16, split between Top 8 and Top 16. Clearly the deck is still good, as when the stakes were higher it came out of hiding. And while Elves did win the day it remains a vulnerable strategy.

Moving into this weekend, I would be looking to beat both Boros Monarch and Tron. Considering that Affinity has a fine matchup with both I would also be looking for a way to combat the machine. No questions asked removal like Doom Blade look good at the moment if and only if you can back it up with a reasonable clock.