Next up in the color wheel series: Black!
April 25-26 Weekend in Review
I was not optimistic about the potential impact of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths in Pauper. After last weekend I was proven rather wrong as already 11 cards from the set have posted a Top 32 Challenge finish or gone 5-0 in the Pauper League. Considering the prevailing popular talking point about new sets is that they have nothing to offer Pauper, this is impressive. This number is bolstered by an update to an old fringe playable deck, which we will get to.
Saturday’s Challenge was more of the same. Flicker Tron took down three spots in the Top 8 and won the tournament. A Dimir Ponza deck made the Top 4 after sneaking into the elimination rounds. How did it win? It got matched up against an until-that-point undefeated Flicker Tron deck.
The wrinkle in the metagame emerged in the form of Cycling Songs. The abundance of one mana cards with Cycling in Ikoria has launched this deck into the competitive sphere. The goal is to fill your graveyard with creatures, cast a bunch of rituals to fuel a Reaping the Graves, get the cyclers back and do it all again to find a kill. Saturday’s version used either Consume Spirit or Haunting Misery as a spout with Drannith Stinger as a back up. Sunday’s Top 8 list went all in on the pinger.
There were three Songs decks reported in Sunday’s Challenge. One in the Top 8 and two in the Top 16. While Flicker Tron split the finals, winning 3 of the 4 Ikoria events to date, the real story was the emergence of Songs and the return of Izzet Blitz. Nivix Cyclops is back and put two players into the Top 8.
The lone Stompy deck in the field won eight matches in a row before falling in the semifinals. That’s impressive in isolation, but considering what is going on in the metagame at large it does not mean much. Instead, last weekend has indicated a fundamental shift in the texture of the Pauper metagame.
Months ago I described the Pauper metagame as one of extremes. At one end there are hyper aggressive linear decks (Affinity, Bogles, Burn) and at the other are decks with Prison style finishes (Familiars, Flicker Tron) that occupy the “control” slot in the meta. In the middle there was a scrum of decks that all played along a transactional axis of Magic – the various Delver and Monarch decks. The past few weeks have shown that while the ends of the spectrum have not changed, the scrum in the middle has seen some upheaval.
Midrange as we have known it in Pauper is dead.
Decks that have been traditionally associated with midrange – specifically the various white based Monarch decks – have all but been pushed out of the metagame. While Boros Bully makes use of Palace Sentinels it is far more aggressive than something like Monarch or the dead horse of Pauper Mono Black Control. These decks simply don’t do enough anymore.
An aside: When a free card every turn isn’t good enough to build a deck around, that may be a sign that something is wrong in the format.
Instead, Delver decks with their Mystic Sanctuary engines have moved into the midrange slot. While they appear to be aggro control builds, these decks now represent the midrange approach to the format. Despite many people bemoaning that Pauper is no longer Legacy Lite, it now resembles Legacy in its metagame composition.
- Hyper aggressive/combo decks at one extreme
- Stack control decks in the middle
- Control decks with lock elements at the other extreme
I am not here to pass judgement on what this means for the health of Pauper. Rather this is an observation that the way the Pauper metagame operates has experienced a fundamental shift. Plan accordingly.
Quarantine Commander: Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves
Commander has been a social outlet for me for quite some time. It was a way to take a night out and just jam some games. The last social thing I did was play a few games after weighing the options of going out in the final days before the New York City lock down.
Given all of this I needed to find another way to stay sane and decompress. Commander was such a huge part of that for me that losing it was way harder than I expected. So when a few of my friends posited playing games through Magic Online I jumped at the chance. One of them – Mike the Geologist – had been talking about the card rental service he uses. I decided to give it a go. I have had a great experience using ManaTraders (not sponsored) and if you are looking to get some silly games with friends online, I cannot recommend them enough.
Back to the Commander; Kendra Smith (aka TheMaverickGirl) is a streamer and agreed to host our Wednesday night game on her channel. The game include Kendra, Mike the Geologist, and Mike from the Pauper Cube. Once the replay is up you can listen to everyone cringe as I compare the original art of Mana Crypt to part of the human body. Which part? Well, I’ll leave that to you to decide.
I wanted to play a deck that I had considered putting together in paper but wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to invest in the physical cards. The deck is Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves.
I have a thing for permanents entering the battlefield in ways other than being cast. Tolsimir lets me create tokens and generate value, but it shines when you can make other tokens that trigger his ability. It also let me run one of my all-time favorite Commander cards in Kessig Cagebreakers. Cagebreakers just speaks to part of my Golgari soul. It wants you to have creatures in the graveyard and then it helps to make a giant army. If I ever build this deck in paper it will be because of that card. And hey, it also can be a kick in the teeth when Tolsimir is out.
I also have a soft spot for the fight mechanic. I have long thought about building a mono red fight deck around Tahngarth, Talruum Hero (and might just do that one night on MTGO) but Tolsimir makes it so much easier. I never got to pull it off in game, but I would have loved attacking with Cagebreakers while my Commander was on the battlefield with a Bow of Nylea out.
I’m not very nice.
The last thing I loved about this deck was how it let me run one of my favorite triumvirates of cards. Cryptolith Rite, Druid’s Repository, and Throne of the God-Pharaoh all work together with a token strategy. They encourage attacking and generate mana, giving you the tools to make more tokens. And when it’s all said and done you get to hit every opponent with the Throne. Mike the Geologist talked about Nature’s Will as a compliment to Repository and it is something to consider.
So if you’re looking for a goofy deck that is relatively cheap on Magic Online, you could do worse than my Tolsimir deck. Because who doesn’t love dogs?
The Colors of Pauper: Blue
Here’s my look at the pillars of blue in Pauper.
April 18-19 Pauper Weekend in Review
The weekend of April 18-19 was the first weekend under the new Magic Online model where each format receives two Challenges per weekend. I wrote about what the format looked like before the release of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths on ChannelFireball and last weekend gave me a chance to see if my predictions were anywhere close to the mark.
First up was Saturday’s Challenge. A six round affair, it would help to test the hypothesis that the Sunday events were biased towards Americans and created a stagnant metagame that looked the same week to week. Despite there being 14 archetypes in the Top 32, the top of the metagame was largely familiar.
Boros Bully and Flicker Tron were the two most popular archetypes, each with five copies in the Top 32. Bully performed better with a Win+ of 4 compared to Flicker Tron’s Win+ of 3. Affinity won the tournament but both of its Win+ points came on the back of 4-2 records – it sneaked into the Top 8 and took out Bogles and two copies of Boros Monarch on its way to the victory.
There is not a lot to suss out from one event. Two Ikoria cards made their debut: Of One Mind and Ram Through. Other than that, however, it was business as usual.
Sunday’s challenge went seven rounds and the winner – on Flicker Tron – went the distance. Heisen01 didn’t drop a match. We went from 7 different archetypes in the Top 8 on Saturday to 5 on Sunday, with four of those being the same. On the weekend, Boros Bully took down 25% of the Top 8 slots and so did Flicker Tron. Flicker Tron took down a significant amount of Win+ points as well, showing off exactly why it is number one in my current Power Rankings. Also of note – Suffocating Fumes made an appearance in the maindeck of the Top 8 Dimir Delver.
So where does the format go from here? Flicker Tron and Boros Bully are the decks to beat and aside from Suffocating Fumes, there isn’t much in Ikoria that can attack either of the top dogs. Flicker Tron remains the deck to beat. Despite the fact that Boros Bully is a more popular deck, it performs about a win behind Flicker Tron.
Memory Leak is a card I am excited about but you need to be able to cast it quickly. It might be time to pair Llanowar Elves with Swamps, but that is going to lead to some awkward openings. How do you plan to approach the top of the metagame?
My Ikoria Review is Now Live!
My set review of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths is now live on ChannelFireball!
April 7 Pauper Super Qualifier Breakdown
Due to a parsing error we do not have the results of the April 5th Pauper Challenge. That’s fine because there was a Super Qualifier on April 7th. And while the format will not be getting a Showcase Weekend during the next Magic Online premier play season, there will be twice as many Challenges taking place.
An aside on this change: It’s fine. Pauper and Vintage have die-hard communities and both should have a chance to earn their way up the premier play ladder. Given the current structure, it makes more sense to rotate through formats than attempt to add another segment to the structure.
While we do not have the April 5th decklists it has been reported that Flicker Tron won. It also won on April 7th. After a few weeks on the decline it appears that there is a surge in its popularity once again. That doesn’t come without controversy.
Posts like this come up often from people who are new to the format. The issue that arises is this: Flicker Tron and Familiars can take a long time to end the game (after they have effectively won). The nature of Magic Online is that the clock can cause a player who has locked up the game to lose.
To be honest, I used to be one of those “clock you” players. I had the mindset that you, my opponent, needed to beat me. After reading posts from players with physical issues that make iterating combos painful, I decided that I had been a dick for no reason now my baseline is if the game is lost, I’m going to scoop.
That doesn’t mean that I find these Flicker loops are any more fun to play against, and I still believe that the long-term health of the format depends on these being answered either by new cards or aggressive bans.
Boros Bully is supposed to beat Tron. It’s supposed to be aggressive enough to get under the Stonehorn lock. There were three Bully lists in the Top 8 and they all lost to the same player – Kasa on their version of Flicker Tron.
No Moment’s Peace, no Pulse of Murasa. Instead Kasa included a maindeck copy of Lone Missionary as a life total buffer while leaning on Reaping the Graves to regrow threats. Prismatic Strands makes an appearance. If you thought Strands was annoying thanks to Flashback, it gets worse when you can get it back with Mnemonic Wall.
Moving into this weekend, it would be foolish to no prepare for both Tron and Bully. Boros Bully was nearly a third of the Top 32 and the deck didn’t get worse. At the same time, I wouldn’t say it is a good choice. If Tron decks are packing this many defensive measures, prolonging the game as long as possible, then a better angle of attack might be running an aggressive Delver deck. These builds have been at the fringes of the top tier all season but have yet to punch through in a meaningful way. That being said, the ability to say no with a Counterspell remains excellent.
The pillars haven’t moved much. You can Tron, you can Mystic Sanctuary, or you can be Boros. If I were playing this weekend I would look into a blue-black Mystic Sanctuary deck, potentially with maindeck Shrivel or Echoing Decay. Delver decks are enticing but I think playing a more midrange game is better suited, especially if it gives you access to the tools needed to beat up on Flicker Tron. Nihil Spellbomb is a cantrip afterall.
The Pauper Week in Review – March 29-April 3
Is anyone else feeling the effects of cabin fever?
I know I am.
I’m having these incredibly vivid dreams that are directly influence by the current events. Not to share too much, but I had a dream that someone came to my apartment to let me know my mother’s mother had died of COVID-19 and then went to shake my hand in condolences. Right after I shot the suit a nasty glare I woke up and worried about my father’s mother, who is currently in a nursing home in Long Island.
My mother’s mother died in 2008.
It’s okay to feel things right now, and it’s important to be distracted by the things that interest us as we try to find a new center in an ever changing world. The bounty of Pauper results from this past week has been a much need opiate to take my mind off of the search a suitable face covering (thank you runner’s balaclava) and worrying about my two-year old son and the long lasting impact of him not being around his friends for the foreseeable future.
I’m sharing this as catharsis but also to let you know that it’s okay to feel so many things all at once.
The March 29th Challenge gave us Flicker Tron’s first victory since January 19th. Despite racking up more Top 8 finishes than any other archetype this season the deck has regressed to the mean. While a top contender and a format defining archetype, it is not the unassailable titan it was during Throne of Eldraine season.
Let’s get into the numbers for a bit. I assign every deck that goes X-2 or better a score based on performance. An X-2 record is one point, X-1 is two, and X-0 is three. I then take the sum of this score (labeled as Win+ in my documents) and figure out each archetype’s weighted volume as it relates to actual volume. During Throne of Eldraine season, Flicker Tron lapped the field with a delta of 6.99%. Only two other decks with more than 10 appearances had a positive delta (1.21% and 0.11%). This season Flicker Tron’s delta currently sits at 2.5%. There are five decks with positive deltas and at least 10 appearances (inclusive of the April 1st Super Qualifier, which we’ll get to in a minute).
That’s eight different archetypes in the Top 8. The two rising stars in this group are Dimir Delver and Azorius Familairs. Neither of these decks are new but they have been performing well this season. Both are Mystic Sanctuary decks but go about using that card rather differently. Dimir Delver uses Sanctuary in combination with Deprive and Tragic Lesson to put a lock on the end-game card advantage war. Familiars loops Ghostly Flicker through the land to get enough Sage’s Row Denizen triggers to end the game.
In advance of the April 1st Super Qualifier I tweeted that I would play either Heroic or a Boros Monarch with access to Standard Bearer. The top two spots – and the Players Tour qualifications – went to Boros decks with Palace Sentinels but they were both the aggressive Bully variant. And nary a Flagbearer to be found.
Again we see a variety of decks in the Top 8 – 7 archetypes this time – but there were three Mystic Sanctuary decks. Affinity continued to have an solid if unremarkable season, while Burn keeps putting up Top 8s despite having a high fail rate for finishing outside the elimination rounds.
So where does this leave the format as we move towards the release of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths? Ghostly Flicker continues to be a format defining card but it is hardly the limiting factor it had been in the past. Mystic Sanctuary decks are picking up steam but the best build varies from week to week. The next set looks poised to shake things up if only because the new keyword – Mutate – looks to give Pauper access to slightly different go-tall strategies.
This is the top of the Pauper metagame at the current moment. The threshold for making it here is around 2% of total volume, or 8 appearances. Even if you lump these into macro archetypes, there still appears to be diversity.
- Mystic Sanctuary tempo – 25.79% of the winner’s metagame
- Flicker Tron – 16.04%
- Boros – 13.52%
- Affinity – 10.38%
- Stompy – 8.18%
- Burn – 5.97%
- Elves – 5.35%
- Azorius Familiars – 2.52%
- Bogles – 2.52%
If you want to come for the top of the metagame, you need a plan for the following:
- Graveyard based engines
- A large army of small flyers
- A smaller army of bigger threats
That doesn’t take into account the explosive starts of Affinity and Elves. But this is a good start.
What would I play into this weekend? Something like this:
Pestilence is a very good card at the moment and this deck is a solid shell for the enchantment. While I would want access to some number of Monarch in the 75, having access to the Grim Harvest engine is a decent approximation that also gets around having your crown stolen. HeWhoisintheWater has been playing this style of deck for quite some time and I trust them when it comes to Orzhov Pestilence builds.
March 22nd Pauper Challenge Breakdown
As America joins many other countries to practice social distancing, the online options for Magic are booming. There were over 90 players in the March 22nd Pauper Challenge. While plenty of regulars showed up on Sunday there was also an influx of new blood. As has been the case many times this season, new blood provides a fresh look at the metagame.
There was one 7-0 player – the lone Top 8 for Flicker Tron – this week. Despite a recent run of tough luck, Flicker Tron still had three players in the finish with an X-2 or better record. Stompy had a breakout event with three Top 8 appearances. There were a dearth of black based control decks – no Mono-Black Control; no Pestilence decks – and a distinct lack of Izzet Mystic Sanctuary decks. Instead we see an abundance of Dimir decks including this take on Dimir Control:
Unlike Dimir Delver, this deck is all in on the Gurmag Angler plan. It isn’t trying to play a Legacy style tempo game and instead wants to trade early to fuel Angler, only to establish the late game advantage engine of Mystic Sanctuary and Tragic Lesson. Merchant Scroll is a card that appeared in recent Italian builds of Tribe Combo and finds a home here in the Italian version of Dimir Control, acting as an additional copy of every blue spell in the deck.
What about the metgame at large? Here is every deck with at least 6 appearances -around 2% of the metagame by volume.
There are some top performing decks missing from this list. Two decks with wins – Heroic and Azorius Familiars – only have four appearances overall. On top of that there are four other decks with Top 8 appearances – Jeskai AtogShift, Mardu Monarch (think Boros Monarch but with Terminate and Chainer’s Edict), Corrupt Control, and Pestilence Control. That being said, the metagame presented above represents 83.75% of all Top 32 lists and 93% of all Top 8s. For those of you just getting into Pauper, this is a decent approximation of your gauntlet.
The surge of Stompy means that next week you’re likely to see an uptick in Boros Monarch and other decks that can support Standard Bearer. Tron decks could also have a resurgence since they can beat Boros and Fog out Stompy. So if I were looking at beating those, I would look at a Mystic Sanctuary deck that ran an abundance of cheap removal. I’d likely look at red over black since Lightning Bolt is better at getting people dead than Agony Warp.
March 15th Pauper Challenge Breakdown
The March 15th Pauper Challenge continued to showcase the slow decline of Flicker Tron. The titan of the format has been in a controlled fall for the past few weeks and while it is still a major player in the format it isn’t the behemoth that it was during Throne of Eldraine season.
There is a lot to take away from the Top 32. While two Flicker Tron decks did make the Top 8 they did not dominate the Top 16. And there were seven different archetypes in the Top 8, putting the format’s diversity in the spotlight.
The Top 8 also has some stories to tell. Delver went 7-0, but it was the only Delver deck to place in the Top 16. Burn made it to the Top 8 again, despite underperforming in aggregate. Dimir Delver has emerged as the new top dog, despite not winning a challenge this season. And Heroic won the dang thing.
The biggest thing about this list is the lack of Karametra’s Blessing. Heralded as a staple in the post-Theros Beyond Death world, the card is completely absent from Oscar_Franco’s winning build. Instead we see two copies of Mana Tithe and the addition of multiple Auras. Oscar_Franco also dropped down to 16 lands, leaning entirely on Defiant Strike to see more cards. This build looks less like Heroic and more like Mono-White Bogles considering the low threat count.
Flicker Tron is holding just over one-fifth of all Top 8 slots, but it’s underperforming compared to last season. The Delta of Weighted Volume to Actual was closer to 7% in Throne of Eldraine. Here – it’s less than half that. In fact, the skew for all decks has decreased. The flattened power level bodes well for the long term health of Pauper. At the same time, it puts decks that have a lot of decent matchups (but few great ones) in a position to succeed provided the pilot finds the correct build on the current week.
I want to leave you with two different takes on midrange decks that both performed well on Sunday. First is a Monarch/Reality Acid mash up, the second a Mardu Tortured Existence deck that leans on Kami of False Hope for a Spore Frog lock.
NerdtotheCore 
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