[Everything goes Pauper] What would you play?

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Originally Posted by Willoe

Where can I find some lists from the major events? It's actually interesting that you say that Green Stompy is being played as a DTB.

The cards that are not available to the online Pauper community include Snap, Frantic Search and Clod of Faeries. That leaves out High Tide combo, a strong advantage that perhaps allows less combo-hating aggro like Green Stompy. But that's just speculation.!

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They are all on the Wizards website, on the mtgo section.

Here's a link to the most recent one: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital.../tourn/1414884

And Urza's Legacy just came out, so we do have Cloud of Faeries and Frantic Search, both at common. It's the High Tide that's an uncommon, that's a bummer.

But yes, if Cranial is unbanned, take Affinity. It's ridiculous with 4 Cranials.

Otherwise, I still think MUCFae is a good choice. I wouldn't put it past many players to dig up those lists, particularly since they are right there on the mothership's website. It's a good deck too, and doesn't have that many bad matchups, so if you are good at magic, you should be fine piloting it.

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Originally Posted by Willoe

Where can I find some lists from the major events? It's actually interesting that you say that Green Stompy is being played as a DTB.

The cards that are not available to the online Pauper community include Snap, Frantic Search and Clod of Faeries. That leaves out High Tide combo, a strong advantage that perhaps allows less combo-hating aggro like Green Stompy. But that's just speculation.

While it's true that more and more cards will be available online, the fact that Hymn To Tourach will almost never be legal strengthens combo and weakens MBC. Therefore, I believe that there will always be major differences between playing online and playing with actual cardboard.

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Also, can anyone find matchup analysis data for an Affinity deck? (Not the old lists from when Plating was legal, recent data). That would be much appreciated!

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Actually just a few nit picks. Fallen Empires is not online and High Tide was printed as uncommon in masters edition, so high tide is not a legal online pauper deck. Snap, Cloud of Faeries, and Frantic Search however are online and legal as urza's legacy came out last month.

MGA/Stompy is an aggressive and winning deck online. Some decks just can't deal with shilana ledgewalker with rancor, groundswells, and briarshields. Edict you say? Not when they play Khalni Garden and a bunch of other cheap dudes like Quirion Ranger, Nettle Sentinel, Rogue Elephant, and Pit Skulk.

How good is storm combo? I've got almost all of the cards for it, so I think I might pick up what I'm missing since it seems like a neat way to just goldfish a lot of the decks in the format. What's its fundamental turn? 4 or so?

Yeah, turn 4 is about right. You do get the occasional third turn kill from some decks, but they happen rarely.

Also, there is another deck that's not possible to make online, but pretty good offline, MBA, where you get Hymn + Sinkhole. That could provide some problems for the storm deck.

Also, the pauper storm deck isn't very consistent, just letting you know, and there are a lot of hate cards from the board that just ruins your deck, cards like Benevolent Unicorn, Holy Light, the blasts, Echoing Truth/Decay, and general discard effects. It's actually pretty fragile.

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Originally Posted by Willoe

Won't Slivers have terrible matchups against High Tide, Pestilence/Crypt Rats and Storm? If that is true, (I have never played a Slivers deck) I wouldn't bring Slivers to the tournament mainly because I guess there will be a lot of High Tide Combo.

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High Tide wasn't a deck when I play Slivers, because we don't have the Urza's Saga cards.
Anyway, Storm and HT kill you with a single Grapeshot (Goblin Storm kill you with Empty the warrens, but I only face them 2 times) you have Prismatic Strands and Holy Light to fight them.

A good hand of GW Slivers could kill at 4th turn on the play with 4 Slivers vs Storm:
T1: Land, cc1 Sliver (1/1)
T2: Land, Pump Sliver (2x 2/2), attack for 2: 18
T3: Land, Pump Sliver + cc1 Sliver (4 x 3/3), attack for 6: 12
T4: Keep mana for Prismatic Strands on Grapeshot, attack for 12, win.

It isn't easy, because you need 7 exact cards from the 9 you draw, but happens a lot of times.
If the cc1 is the flanking one, your opponent can't kill your critters at combat.

The bad matchups were when you can't reach the 20 damage fast. If your hand is slow or you mulligan to 5, for example, you're going to loose...

High Tide is imo strictly better than regular storm combo. It has more consistency, more tutors, more draw power and goes off turn 3-4. It also has no problems dealing 30+ dmg with a single Grapeshot (which you have 2 of) so life gain is pretty much useless against it.

If you play Framed! I bet you can get a consistent turn 3 kill, sometimes even turn 2.

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Originally Posted by ddt15

High Tide is imo strictly better than regular storm combo. It has more consistency, more tutors, more draw power and goes off turn 3-4. It also has no problems dealing 30+ dmg with a single Grapeshot (which you have 2 of) so life gain is pretty much useless against it.

If you play Framed! I bet you can get a consistent turn 3 kill, sometimes even turn 2.

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Life gain seems less of an issue than damage prevention spells like Benevolent Unicorn and Prismatic Strands, which force you to run Flaring Pain in the sideboard for white decks.

What is the "High Tide" deck? How does it work without Turnabout and Reset? It doesn't seem like Snap/Cloud of Faeries/Frantic Search would be enough.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

Life gain seems less of an issue than damage prevention spells like Benevolent Unicorn and Prismatic Strands, which force you to run Flaring Pain in the sideboard for white decks.

What is the "High Tide" deck? How does it work without Turnabout and Reset? It doesn't seem like Snap/Cloud of Faeries/Frantic Search would be enough.

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It's way enough. I tested an untuned High Tide list on ML (running Eternal Pauper with paper rarities and releases) and it was good enough for us to ban Tide. It's consistent turn 3; it's amazing how much Frantic Search does to a deck acting as both, digging (you have excess lands) and mana acceleration. Heck, turn 2 kills weren't unheard of (only Frantic Search loses any potency that way). Between Merchant Scroll (Frantic Search & High Tide being the targets almost always), all the U cantrips and company, the deck is ridiculously consistent and as you're running Snaps anyways, Benevolent Unicorn does nothing and Prismatic Strand...well, you can have Flaring Pain if you care (you mostly just draw your deck, it's trivial to find singletons) or just counter it.

What I ran:
// Lands
16 [UG] Island

// Creatures
4 [UL] Cloud of Faeries

// Spells
2 [FD] Serum Visions
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [SOK] Ideas Unbound
4 [UL] Snap
4 [FE] High Tide (1)
4 [UL] Frantic Search
4 [TO] Deep Analysis
4 [M10] Ponder
4 [5E] Brainstorm
2 [TSP] Grapeshot
4 [HL] Merchant Scroll

And yeah, it was a 100 times better than the Pauper Storm, which is also pretty incredible for the format. Benevolent Unicorn slows down Grapeshot (forcing Pauper Storm to run removal or Flaring mostly), but it does nothing about EtW for which you really need Holy Light. Being able to only run 4 of each...well, chances of having both are low while with Storm's draw power, playing both is often possible. But Pauper Storm has some consistency issues and isn't all that fast. High Tide just blows it out of the water in every possible way and outside Sui Black doesn't have any natural predators (and against mono-black, there is a blowout Disrupt; not to mention, MD Brainstorm & Deep Analysis).

And yeah, Sinkhole and Hymn, make for a really solid basis for a mono-black deck...other than its creatures suck monkey, which means it really has huge trouble against red. Also, with offline cards Goblin Sligh & straight Burn become much better thanks to Chain Lightning & Goblin Grenade. Flame Rift is relevant for burn too. Online it lacks the critical mass but offline all the cards are there, and with Smash to Smithereens and Martyr of Ashes, the Affinity MU isn't all that bad, really. You can board heavily for it if need be. And yeah, Affinity is obviously a topdog even without Cranial (Flingatog is brutal and you still have Disciples, free guys and company; you may want Duress tho). In other words, I find mono-black to be a solid deck in a vacuum, but it seems like red is a bit too strong for it.

Wait, Merchant Scroll was a common? Holy shit!

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

Wait, Merchant Scroll was a common? Holy shit!

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Yup.


And few decks I forgot to mention:
- UW Blink is a strong, natural control-deck in the format forming a natural foil to red (on average gaining ~10+ life over the first 4 turns as it wants while laying blockers and trading value) with Mulldrifter/Blink draw engine, access to Deep Anal and all the normal draw effects. It is a great home for all the Faerie-effects too.
- Some strong Gush-deck exists though I didn't manage to build one. It's damn obvious that between Daze and the basic blue counters that a blue tempo-deck should be fairly good. And Gush should be good there. Splashing while maintaining Gush's functionality is obviously an issue though and might keep the deck down.
- UG Madness should be doable. You have Mongrel/Rootwalla/Moeba/Deep Anal and the natural Daze & al. and the possible black options ('cause Basking Rootwalla Madnesses in just fine without green mana, though losing Mongrel would suck).

Would you replace the Serum Visions with Preordain if you played the deck again?

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- UW Blink is a strong, natural control-deck in the format forming a natural foil to red (on average gaining ~10+ life over the first 4 turns as it wants while laying blockers and trading value) with Mulldrifter/Blink draw engine, access to Deep Anal and all the normal draw effects. It is a great home for all the Faerie-effects too.

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I played UW Trinket Blink in an Extended pauper tournament lately and enjoyed it very much. I only lost to Storm Combo, because I had to mull twice and was then stuck on 2 lands and made a few play mistakes in the other game, but I fear the deck would be too slow for the Classic / Paper meta.

I built Affinity for the time being and am now pondering about my sideboard. Blue Elemental Blast seems like a natural fit, but somehow I don't like white in the SB for Unicorn and the damage prevention spells. I'd rather play red for Krark-Clan Shaman for Warrens and Red Elemental Blast as my swiss army knife. Mabye Welding Jar against Burn or removal heavy decks and as Eldariel said, Duress.
I don't think I need something against Martyr of Ashes or Swirling Sandstorm as they only hit non-flying creatures and I run Ornithopters, Somber Hoverguards and Glaze Fiends, so it shouldn't be that bad. Rats and Pestilence are too slow to keep up I think, especially as they hit my opponent too.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

What is the "High Tide" deck? How does it work without Turnabout and Reset? It doesn't seem like Snap/Cloud of Faeries/Frantic Search would be enough.

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There are different takes on it this is my list:

4 High Tide
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Frantic Search
4 Snap
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Ponder
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Ideas Unbound
2 Muddle The Mixture
3 Chromatic Sphere
2 Grapeshot
1 Brainstorm
1 Impulse
1 Tolarian Winds
1 Echoing Truth

17 Island

-sb-
4 Blue Elemental Blast
4 Annul
4 Gigadrowse
3 Deep Analysis

The main differences are to run;
Accumulated Knowledge or Deep Analysis or both. Obviously good vs discard, they can also be discarted to Frantic Search.
Brainstorm or no. Obviously good against discard, but doesn't shuffle your deck. I run one because sometimes you need it but could easily be something else.
Muddle the Mixture or no. I use it because it can tutor up pretty much anything in the deck, (most notably Merchant Scroll can't get Ideas Unbound and this can).
Capsize->infinite mana->Oona's Grace or Grapeshot kill. Grapeshot is just easier imo.

Frantic Search is basically a Turnabout that also digs through your deck. Framed! would make this deck lolbroken. Then you don't even need the Fearie/Snap engine.

I don't like Grapeshot in High Tide. You essentially run 1 dead card in Grapeshot, and 3-4 subpar filter effects in Chromatic Stars.

Instead, you can just get infinite mana, Capsize all your opponent's permanent, reset your board position so you can continue the infinite mana generation, go to 2nd main to get rid of his floated mana, and Oona's Grace him over and over again for the win. You need to run 2 Mnemonic Walls though, which are perfectly fine in a deck that can generate a bajillion mana.

So running that kill, gives you like 2-3 more slots for better filter effects like Preordain.

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Originally Posted by Apex

I don't like Grapeshot in High Tide. You essentially run 1 dead card in Grapeshot, and 3-4 subpar filter effects in Chromatic Stars.

Instead, you can just get infinite mana, Capsize all your opponent's permanent, reset your board position so you can continue the infinite mana generation, go to 2nd main to get rid of his floated mana, and Oona's Grace him over and over again for the win. You need to run 2 Mnemonic Walls though, which are perfectly fine in a deck that can generate a bajillion mana.

So running that kill, gives you like 2-3 more slots for better filter effects like Preordain.

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How do you get enough lands in hand to retrace the Grace that much? Don't you need to hit him for 50 or so?

I don't think you retrace Oona's Grace, just go infinite mana, Grace them, play Mnemonic Wall for Grace, Capsize the Wall and continue the fun.

Yeah, Snap + Wall with 3 High Tide effects is infinite mana. Which might sound like a lot to ask for, but it's actually pretty easy to do once you get going.

Once you have that, you can just use the infinite mana to bounce Wall to get back whatever you have in your graveyard, and make your opponent draw their library by recurring Oona's Grace over and over again with Capsize and Wall. You can use Deep Analysis too, but I find that sometimes I exile Deep Analysis pretty fast, so instead, I just stuck a single Oona's Grace, which can be Scrolled for, in the deck. Grace is also never a dead card, since you can just cycle lands for 3 mana once it's in the yard.

I think it's better than the Grapeshot kill, as you get to play with no Chromatic Stars (which are weak filter effects), and don't need Grapeshot, which is pretty much a dead card in your hand while you are digging.

If anyone is interested how our small tournament went, here's a short recap: I did play Affinity and lost all but 1 game :) I played against MUC, Burn, Slivers, some GB Madness variant (not quite Dead Dog, a known pauper deck) and Goblins. To my surprise the MUC deck won the tournament, only losing to the GB Madness deck as he simply revived everything over and over again and the MUC player forgot to put some graveyard removal into his sideboard.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with my performance, yet I don't think I made that many play mistakes. I can't blame all my losses on bad luck and maybe I should have mulliganed one or two hands, but the deck really didn't like me at all. Either I go stuck with no blue mana and drew only blue cards or I simply drew lands and Petals / Drums only.

Well, whatever. It was a fun tournament and I did have fun playing. Next time I'll play the High Tide deck (a friend said he'd borrow me 4 Ideas Unbound and forgot them, so I had to stick with Affinity), maybe that works out better.

Good to hear everything worked out fine! Sad to hear you went 1-X.

That's not your fault, shit happens with Affinity once in a while. I tried to goldfish on MWS yesterday and I had like eight turn 6+ kills in a row! Overall, I think the deck is super strong, but occasionally, your library consists of sixty pieces of trash as you draw the cards in it. That could be fixed with card draw and/or cantrips, but then the deck would look completely different.

Can you grab the MUC list and post it here? I'm really interested!

Oh, and what build did you play yourself? If you could post the list I'd be a happy Pauper-nerd :smile:

I played this:

// Lands
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Great Furnace
1 Ancient Den
4 Vault of Whispers

// Creatures
4 Myr Enforcer
3 Somber Hoverguard
4 Frogmite
4 Disciple of the Vault
4 Glaze Fiend
4 Ornithopter

// Spells
4 Cranial Plating
4 Thoughtcast
4 Lotus Petal
4 Springleaf Drum
4 Bonesplitter

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Welding Jar
SB: 4 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 4 Duress
SB: 4 Blue Elemental Blast

I wanted to play white in the SB, but the 3 Ancient Dens I missed didn't arrive in time (still haven't), so I couldn't. It didn't hurt that much, because I wasn't hit by sweepers at all, but it could have bought me the turn I often needed. The deck did allow for some busted starts (17 damage turn 3 anyone?), but I simply couldn't get consistant draws. The main problem was the blue mana. I cut a Hoverguard for an Ornithopter, but even then I was stuck with 2 or more blue cards in my hand with no blue mana a few times. As I ran 7 blue cards and 11 cards which can produce blue mana, I don't know what I did wrong.
That's also the reason why I didn't play Atog as I didn't want to add any cards requiring colored mana.

If anyone has any comments on the deck or suggestions how to make it better, I would really appriciate any help. As said before, I don't know what I did wrong and that leaves little room for improvement.

The MUC deck:

// Lands
4 Quicksand
19 Island

// Creatures
4 Spire Golem
4 Pestermite
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Spellstutter Sprite

// Spells
4 Counterspell
4 Condescend
2 Essence Scatter
4 Exclude
2 Echoing Truth
4 Think Twice
2 Remove Soul

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Faerie Trickery
SB: 4 Force Spike
SB: x Annul
SB: x ???

Ninja of the Deep Hours was awesome. Counter something, draw a card, counter something else or EOT, tap blocker with Pestermite and next turn get a card and Pestermite back. Even attacking with Spire Golem, ninjaing and playing the Spire Golem for free again to block was cool. It also has to be said that the MUC player made quite a few play errors at first and had to develop a feeling for the deck during the tournament, so his performance could have been better.

Finally, I'd like to ask you, Willoe, where do you usually discuss decks or get information on pauper? As you say you are a pauper-nerd, you have to have some sources :) Except for PDCmagic, I don't know any valueable website.

It's worth noting that while High Tide is insane and the Mnemonic Wall kill especially so, it should be run only in an unprepared metagame. Pauper as a format has no outs to Faerie Macabre, to which a Mnemonic Wall kill falls with ease unless you run something like Vision Charm as a substitute kill from the board. Without a mill-based out, you have to run 5 pieces of targeted draw to be able to win with certainty, and even then have to be very careful with your Snaps and Capsize. The Grapeshot kill may be worse overall, but the hate is much easier to combat.

I echo the sentiment of running Affinity or High Tide if they're available fully powered - the decks are just insane. Hymn-powered black decks can also take surprisingly many to school: They're almost as powerful as Teachings decks, but have much faster and more stable mana, which makes protracted play much less exhausting. Hymn Black and Teachings are the format's Jund - monsters that can be built to beat practically anything, with the trick being correct metagame prediction.

Some of my decks, maindecks only:

UR Teachings:

//Creatures
4x Martyr of Ashes
4x Mulldrifter
3x Calcite Snapper
3x Sea Gate Oracle

//Other permanents

//Spells
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Staggershock
3x Terminate
1x Seismic Shudder

4x Counterspell
3x Mystical Teachings
1x Rewind
1x Mysteries of the Deep
1x Grim Harvest

//Lands
6x Island
5x Mountain
1x Swamp
4x Terramorphic Expanse
3x Izzet Boilerworks
1x Halimar Depths
4x Veinfire Borderpost

A versatile, powerful monster that can take on most decks. Annihilates small creature decks and Storm like nobody's business. Creatures are either impossible to kill or cantrippy bastards not worth killing. Mana is BAD and requires a lot of thought to play correctly, and the deck is overall slow as hell. Calcite Snapper, Martyr and Staggershock clean house in traditional matchups with Grim Harvest providing an excellent lategame, while the countersuite and Martyrs make Storm cry. UR also has stupid amounts of hate available from the sideboard. You could easily formulate an all-purpose board about 12 cards of which could double as Storm hate. Pyroblast and Dispel are hawt.

For more power and mana woes, the deck can be fitted with Sprout Swarm (-Mysteries, Halimar, Boilerworks, +Swarm, Forest, Evolving Wilds or something), which, based on limited testing, is absolutely insane.

High Tide:

//Mana:
4x High Tide
4x Cloud of Faeries
4x Snap
4x Frantic Search
2x Dream's Grip

//Draw:
4x Merchant Scroll
4x Impulse
4x Ponder
3x Preordain

4x Ideas Unbound
4x Words of Wisdom
1x Compulsive Research

//Kill:
2x Mnemonic Wall
1x Capsize

//Land:
15x Island

Not much to see here. Mnemonic Tide in all it's ridiculous glory. The Dream's Grip may look odd, but they are necessary in smoothing out the mana. High Tide as a deck has a problem of having an awful lot of two-drops and is screwed if it ever ends up with a single mana in the pool. The Grips help with that and can double up as disruption (untap land, tap opponent's land, skip to second main, resume insanity. Isn't it nice not having to care about mana in your pool?)

Again, to be run only in an unprepared meta, because Faerie Macabre rapes you so bad it's not funny.

Yesterday, I was at a friend's place and played with and against this with my Teachings list and standard Storm builds.

Discard:

//Creatures:
4x Ravenous Rats
4x Augur of Skulls
4x Dauthi Slayer

4x Liliana's Specter
4x Chittering Rats
4x Crypt Rats

//Spells:
4x Dark Ritual
4x Unearth
4x Sign in Blood
4x Hymn to Tourach

//Land:
20x Swamp

Simple, straightforward, stable, powerful, light to play. The deck is pretty self-explanatory: Apply pressure, keep pressure, you just won. Not a terrible fan of the Augurs myself, but the rest of the build is solid.


EDIT: And someone was wondering what Pauper Stompy looks like. Here's a list that Top8'ed in Magic Online's weekly tournament recently. Obviously no M11 yet on MODO:

Monogreen Stompy

//Creatures:
4x Jungle Lion
4x Nest Invader
4x Nettle Sentinel
3x Quirion Ranger
2x Rogue Elephant
4x Safehold Elite
4x Skarrgan Pit-Skulk

//Other spells:
4x Bonesplitter
4x Gather Courage
4x Groundswell
4x Rancor

//Lands:
16x Forest
3x Khalni Garden

//Sideboard:

4x Gleeful Sabotage
4x Hidden Spider
1x Khalni Garden
2x Shinen of Life's Roar
4x Thermokarst