Welcome back folks! I’m back and I’m back on the brew train this week tackling something that I love to do (but rarely get a chance to play) and that’s Standard…PAUPER. With Standard costing about a Bajillion dollars with Jace, Fetchlands, and Hangarback Walkers in virtually every deck it is very difficult to get into a deck and have any sort of success with dumping your wallet on the counter of your LGS. Who can really afford a $700 deck for Standard? Not me. But I can still have tons of fun and do some pretty fun things with all those commons that I open in my drafts. So, today I’m going to dust off my boxes of commons and brew myself up a Standard Pauper deck or two.
There are lots of themes or deck ideas that I could use as the foundation for a deck, but one thing that struck me is the relative depth of Green in most of the previous sets. Yes, Battle for Zendikar has a bit of a bad wrap, but up until this set Green was quite deep at common and had lots of strong cards to use. On top of Green being a deep colour, White was also pretty deep with a number of very strong choices, particularly in Origins. So, while there are lots of viable options my starting point was to look at my Green and White cards first.
As I was flipping through the cards I made a point of ensuring that I had plenty of strong plays early on, much like I would in a draft. Many players make the mistake of assuming that pauper isn’t fast and aggressive because many commons are slow and clunky. However, when you remove those slow and clunky cards you are left with a very powerful and fast format and having an early answer to play is very important. Timberpack Wolf in multiples can be very powerful, and Cleric of the Forward Order can come down and really and change the landscape of the game by erasing early attacks with the very relevant life gain. I love Sandsteppe Outcast and getting a chance to jam that guy again is well worth the time. There are lots of early plays here and it can give me lots of options as I try to get into the game.
Next I made a point of selecting removal that I can use reliably very early or that can offer flexibility. Pacifism, Savage Punch, and Gideon’s Reproach fit the cheap requirement, but Sheer Drop can be good on turn three, but is very good when you can cast it for its Awaken cost.
My final consideration was a finisher or two and Elk Herd, Rhox Maulers, and the Beastmaster seem like strong options. They can all ensure that the deck has a way to bust up a board stall but punching through thanks to Trample, or pumping my team. There might be something to removing the Beastmasters and putting in another pump type spell like Inspired Charge, but I like the pump and a 5/5 body in a format where big bodies can really help settle things down.
This is a list I have put together and will be looking to jam the next time my friends and I get together next. That may not be for a while, but this list feels pretty powerful and a step in the right direction. I’ll report back to you guys when I get a chance to test this one a little.
The other list I’m playing a round with is a kind of like a G/R landfall deck but in Standard there is a bit of a lack of really scary Landfall creatures apart from Snapping Gnarlid, Makindi Sliderunner and Valakut Predator. That said, there are plenty of other good options. Let’s have a little look.
Atarka Beastbreaker is a very solid mana sink once you become Formidable…and with a Gnarlid and a Valakut Predator and one land trigger you are most of the way there. Invoker is the same sort of huge mana sink to let you really blow things up if you can’t seem to stick a bigger body to finish off your opponent. Gearcrafter is just good value. Heelcutter is a bit of sleeper, but repeatedly making it difficult for your opponent to block is a very powerful option.
The spells are pretty simple. Fiery Impulse is a way to clear the path for your dudes to get in, and the rest pump your team. I was honestly really relishing the idea of playing Gnarlid on turn 2, playing Predator on turn 3, and then playing my land on turn 4, attacking, and then Titanic Growth and Temur Battle Rage and crunching in for a huge pile of damage. However, that is probably somewhat optimistic but fun to imagine. Honestly, the deck is pretty self explanatory and feels like it could really lay down a wicked beating if unchecked.
Once again, this one will need a little testing to see if plays as well as it looks. It could be that I need to adjust some of the numbers but I’m very concerned about not hitting enough land drops to make the Landfall actually work out for me. I also considered more Temur Battle Rages, but the fact is that they could very often be dead cards and not really useful if I don’t have a strong target on board. I could also see taking out the Efreets and just running Hooting Mandrills, but I like the surprise of flipping up the Efreet and then getting your opponent for a bunch. The sideboard is also a work in progress and will need to be fleshed out as I go. Facing down decks with bounce effects is the biggest concern because having creatures get pumped and then bounced really sucks. Man I wish Pyroblast was legal in Standard! However, I will need to see what options are available and see what I can manage.
Well, there we have it for this week. Sure it is a little shorter this week than most, but we’ve got two new brews that you can take out for a spin if you are in to Pauper. I think the format is pretty sweet and even limiting ourselves to just Standard legal cards can still make for some very fun play experiences.
So, until next time have yourselves a great MTG day and be sure to stop by next time for another Casual Encounter.
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters
@bgray8791 on Twitter
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters
I have an admission. I have recently decided that I would dust off my old MTGO account and resurrect it. The intent behind me opening up my MTGO account again was ostensibly to get some more repetition at drafting. I’ve gone and started a few drafts and have fared reasonably well and opened up some very sweet cards. However, by the time I convert any rares into tickets the pool of residual cards is too poor to take on the Standard decks running around these days. However, they are perfect for building a perfectly reasonable Standard Pauper deck and that is exactly what I have done.
In the drafts I have played I seem to usually end up playing G/X meaning that my card pool has a fair amount of Green. That suits me just fine. So, I was browsing through my collection online and noticed I had a pretty reasonable U/G deck. The deck reminded me of a U/G Flash deck I built from RTR/Theros standard that I really liked to play and so I pieced it together. I have been running it against other home brews and decks that lack some of the firepower of full on Standard decks and have been faring reasonably well. It suggests the deck has a certain amount of play that can have it hang around with more robust builds and grab a win. Here’s the deck list.
This deck doesn’t really want to play on its own turn, like any Flash deck, but the reality is that the creature pool generally lacks a variety of common Flash creatures apart from the Cloaked Siren. The way this usually plays out is that you cast your creatures on your turn, and then at Instant speed bounce their stuff or get their critters when they block by pumping your creature. It can do some pretty mean things and set your opponent back with some sizable Tempo plays quite easily giving you an edge to resolve your threats, load them up, and smash face.
The creature package should really have MORE War-Wing Siren as they are just about the best card in this deck. The 1/3 flier with Heroic does an awful lot of work and can get very big very quickly. It becomes a 5/5 if you Bestow the Nyxborn Wolf on it. That’s a full on Dragon. It’s a 4/6 if you cast a Feral Invocation. There are plenty of ways to target this creature, meaning it can get out of control super quickly and really turn up the heat on your opposition.
The other piece that I wish I more of is the Pheres-Band Tromper. This guy is an all-star if you can give him flying with a Stratus Walk because every time he untaps he just gets bigger. Connect a few times with him and you will quickly erase any deficit.
The Asp, the Siege Wurm, and the Benthic Giant are just general all-purpose fatties that plug up the ground and can go on the offensive once you’ve bludgeoned them and need to finish them off.
Of the rest, the Centaur Courser are lacking in punch and other abilities, but in a deck where you need some fodder or just to keep some more pressure up, these guys make for good pals. Sedge Scorpion is the ideal first turn drop and trades with almost anything acting as a real deterrent. I really like the Scry on the Sigiled Starfish to help smooth out those rough patches. The last guy I want to talk about is the Nyxborn Wolf which is probably my favorite common from Born of the Gods. This innocuous Bestow creature really packs a mean punch at +3/+1. Suit up anything with this guy and you have an instant threat. I would happily trade the pair of Coursers for a pair of these guys to round out the deck, but I’m not quite there yet.
On the whole, the deck performs quite well against decks that are of a similar power level, which seems to make it an ideal casual brew where the focus is more on having fun than on winning every single time. There is no doubt this deck suffers from some inconsistency because of the lack of play sets and the relative high variance, but considering it is made up of spare parts it seems to overcome that. And of course, since we all like to win, even if we’re playing around the kitchen table, the fact that this can just about steal a win out of nowhere is also a nice treat.
If this is something that catches your fancy give it a try and let me know what you think. I think it’s fun and surprisingly tricky to balance out the need to go aggressive with the need to hold up your mana for tricks. There is no doubt this sort of strategy is not a full on aggro assault and so patient players are more likely to come out ahead. However, it is fun, interactive, cheap, and deceivingly powerful. Give it a whirl. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
Thanks for reading and until next time keep it fun, keep it safe…keep it casual.
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters
@bgray8791 on Twitter
I have never been a guy to quibble much over format. I’ve mostly just played whatever I had in whatever deck I felt like building. This can yield some very interesting and fun deck ideas, but it is really only practical if you play with your friends at the kitchen table. However, sometimes, as an exercise to challenge yourself, it is interesting to limit your deck building options and force yourself to do as much (or perhaps more) with less.
To this end, my friends and I are meeting for our monthly game. We get together once a month and it is a collection of people from all the stages of my life. Some of the players are guys I played with as a teenager, others are friends that I have made through playing Magic, while others are spouses or acquaintances I have made elsewhere. It is a very eclectic group with some of them having all the top tier 1 competitive decks. Others are very much interested in brewing with a small number of cards in order to keep the relative cost down. This can result in some match-ups that just aren’t super fun as one guy plays a Legacy “Show and Tell” deck, while the other guy plays a random smattering of cards from the most recent set.
To level the playing field a bit and to make the evening a little different I challenged my friends to build Standard Pauper decks for this month. In case you aren’t overly familiar, Pauper is a format that only uses common cards. By limiting the cards even further by only allowing cards that would be Standard legal (Return to Ravnica and Theros blocks) we have limited the pool of options available and evened out the power level of the cards that can be played.
This is a relatively new experience for me as I have never consciously made a Pauper deck. Sure, I have used common cards and tried to limit my choices, but I have never been one to purposefully limit my card choices so dramatically. Herein lies the challenge: build a deck that I feel can win without leaning on the cards that I come to rely on. My friends all jumped at the suggestion and so it is ON! This weekend we will battle with Pauper!
The first dilemma when trying to build any winning deck is anticipating what you will be playing against. If I were going to be playing at a Stadard event at a local game shop I would come prepared to play against all the top decks like Mono-Black, Mono-Blue, and G/R Monsters. However, we have no meta…this is one off…and so I need to instead rely on my understanding of my opponents and what some of their tendencies are.
Some of the players will be wild cards. They are relatively inexperienced players (even compared to me) and are likely to bring decks packed with creatures and just looking to turn sideways and smash. This likely means inexpensive white, green, and red creatures and ramping into some sort of fatty that will be hard to deal with. With those decks in mind, I will need to ensure I have access to enough removal to slow them down and give myself a chance to get into the game.
My friend David likes mill decks. He likes to play B/U and will undoubtedly slide in some cards that are designed to force me to grind through my library. He will also likely play hand destruction, so I need to come prepared for that. If his mill cards are creatures, then I should be okay because my removal should be able to handle them too, so that isn’t a concern for me overly. The bigger issue is seeing enchantments or artifacts that force the milling of my deck. So, some enchantment destruction needs to be considered in order to close down this angle to some degree. Hand destruction is tougher to deal with because I will need countermagic, but Duress on turn 1 totally ruins the hope of any counter spells, so I may hedge my bets and hope David goes for creatures and not hand destruction.
Sam is a terrific player but invariably will be running a U/x deck with a bunch of counter magic. Sam is the quintessential control player and I expect nothing different. This is always a troubling matchup and Sam is good at it. So, if I can’t beat the control match up…I may have to join it. This is the matchup that I need to be most interested in performing well, so time to go to the old box of stuff and see what I can put together.
I start off with cards from the most recent set, Born of the Gods, and see what I can find. Divine Verdict is a fine reprint of a reasonable removal spell. Most creatures need to attack, and this gets rid of them and is a solid card. Stratus Walk is another strong card. It gives something flying, draws me a card, and is reasonably costed. The last addition is a little steep in terms of cost, but potentially a bomb. Sphinx’s Disciple makes use of the Inspired ability, so for 5 mana (3 colourless and 2 blue) I get a 2/2 flier, but whenever it untaps I draw a card. If I can protect this guy, it could be a real card draw engine. Card advantage in this sort of game will be key and this could be just the ticket.
Next, I look at some options in Theros. Prescient Chimera is one place to start that could be a pretty good bomb. For 5 mana (3 colourless and 2 blue) I get a 3/4 flier that let’s me Scry 1 every time I cast an Instant or Sorcery. As a 5 drop at the top of my curve this is pretty strong creature that allows me to draw into better cards as the late game continues. It also works pretty well with Sphinx’s Disciple to set up the Inspired trigger to ensure that the extra card is more valuable to me. Next I need to look at some enchantments and conclude that Chosen by Heliod is a solid, inexpensive Aura that is useful and pairs really nicely to help protect Sphinx’s Disciple. Chosen By Heliod is also a very dynamic card with Wingsteed Rider to trigger the Heroic trigger. All in all, some good fodder for a viable Pauper deck.
The last additions to the deck are from Return to Ravnica block and include Lyev Decree. Lyev Decree is very interesting because it allows me to tempo my opponents out by rendering their creatures unable to block. It is cheap and efficient and allows me to power through some extra damage. Shielded passage is another interesting little twist that protects cards, either Sphinx’s Disciple, or enacts the Heroic trigger on Wingsteed Rider, and triggers the Scry on Prescient Chimera. All three are very relevant abilities in this deck making Shielded Passage a very interesting card and neat combat trick. The last creature is Keening Apparition which builds in a little enchantment destruction and a very reasonable 2/2 body. This is in essence a “Bear” with a bonus and raises its appeal considerably.
Here’s the Decklist
U/W Tempo – Standard Pauper
In building this deck I looked at a variety of things and considered what pieces went together. I started with my curve looking to curve out into my powerful creatures and not miss out on any of the spots if I could help it. There is no Turn 1 play, which is unfortunate, but I struggled to fit a solid 1 drop in this deck and opted to pass on it. Turn 2 I can play Concordia Pegasus or Keening Apparition, at 3 there is Wingsteed Rider and Wavecrash Triton. I almost stumbled at 4, but I noticed Runewing and immediately saw that it was a viable option with an upside. I curve out at 5 with Prescient Chimera and Sphinx’s Disciple giving yet more flying threats.
The Spells really serve three purposes. My first play is to try and straight up remove my opponent’s creatures from the battlefield with Divine Verdict or Last Breath. If that doesn’t work I can use Lyev Decree to slow them down and punch my own creatures through their defences. All the other spells are there to protect my creatures and to trigger Heroic abilities on my Wingsteed Rider or Wavecrash Triton, which can also serve the dual role of adding to the tempoing out of my opponent by tapping their creatures.
Overall, I think the deck looks pretty solid and like it may have a good showing this weekend when I sit down for my Casual Encounter with my pals. If you have any suggestions, let me know as I would love to hear what you guys think. I’ll also give you an update on how it fares and what adjustments I intend to make down the line. I have really enjoyed this process and think that this may be something I continue to bring forward to my Casual Encounters to keep them fun and different.
Until next time keep it fun, keep it safe…and keep it Casual.
Bruce Gray
Panic sets in as you are told by the pretty lady at the airport terminal that your luggage has been lost. It’s unthinkable. How could your luggage be lost? You need that for this weekend. Your clothes were in there. Your hygiene products were in there. Your Magic cards were in there!
How are you to compete at the Grand Prix without them? You plead with the lady to find out if she can do anything to help you, but all she can do is shake her head and say that they should be able to recover it tomorrow. But tomorrow will be too late. You need to register your deck in a couple of hours. How can you play without a deck? You hang your head dejectedly and pace for a few minutes as you try and think of something. Some sort of solution. Hey! Maybe someone at the venue will lend you a deck? That’s feasible, right? Might as well give it a shot.
So you call a cab as you take a look in your wallet. Not much there, but enough for entry into the Grand Prix, the cab ride, maybe a meal or two. Might even be able to pick up a chase rare that you had been intending to find.
The cab pulls up to the venue and you hand him the toll. That’s some of your hope gone. You start walking around among the masses of people, noticing a few Pro players signing autographs and a few MTG Personalities talking with other players. Vendors have setup and are already hawking their wares. Everything from cardboard crack, to sleeves and playmats, dice, and tokens. You open your wallet again to see what measly amount you have. But of all the things you see, your friends are not amongst them. You pull out your cell phone and try calling them. Long distance charges be damned. One of them picks up, but it’s so loud where you are that you can’t hear anything.
An announcement comes over the speaker that Deck Registration for the Grand Prix will be ending in an hour. Last chance to get in. That panic starts creeping from your heart to your stomach. You flew all this way to compete. This was your vacation. You spent months planning this, tuning your deck, and all for what? To not be able to enter? You couldn’t let that happen.
You make your way over to the vendors and start looking in their showcases. Everything is through the roof! You check your wallet again. Definitely not enough for a single fetch land, let alone a playset of Past in Flames, or Birthing Pod, or even a Scapeshift. How could you imagine to compete with anything in the field without the heavy hitters? But you are desperate and keep looking, until your eye falls on something shiny. A vendor has a FNM Promo of Armadillo Cloak in their showcase, four dollars. Not that it would help you much, because the card isn’t Modern, which is what you came here to play.
But wait? Wasn’t there a card that was recently printed that acted like Armadillo Cloak? Sure was! It’s Unflinching Courage! Your mind starts racing as cards run through your head. Rancor, Ethereal Armor, Daybreaker Coronet, Kor Spiritdancer. Reid Duke’s deck from last year! But we can’t afford Daybreaker’s, Kor Spiritdancer’s, nor the Leylines of Sanctity that have to be in the sideboard to even make the deck possible, let alone the fetch lands that make white available to play the important pieces. So how could you even manage to make the deck? Pauper. That’s how. You ask the vendor if he has bulk commons and begin rifling through long boxxes.
The announcement comes over the P.A. system again letting you know there’s only fourty-five minutes left to register. Panic has begun to subside as you’ve figured out your plan. Now to just get the pieces in place. You got this!
So, I never intended to write a series about transitioning diffrerent format’s to and from Pauper, but it looks like that’s what I’ve done. I started writing an article about Standard and how new players can get into the scene with a collection of commons, and then I wrote about Legacy. Well, this time I am here to write about Modern showcasing one of My favourite decks. Hexproof. AKA Bogles.
The deck is pretty straight forward as far as decks go. You play down one of your hexproof creatures, play a bunch of auras on it, and smash your opponents face in. Sounds easy enough, right?
Well if you don’t have the money to run Reid Duke’s version, which includes the aforementioned Kor Spiritdancer (which will usually run you about $10 a piece) or the Daybreak Coronet’s (again another expensive card at a high of $25), not to mention the fetch lands, then you can turn to Pauper.
The first thing we need to do is establish our Mana Base. Now we can’t afford fetch lands, obviously, so how do we make our lands tap for white? Because we can’t run this without Ethereal Armor or Arma… sorry, Unflinching Courage. Well, this deck is based off of enchantments, so why not start looking there?
The best aura’s that will fix mana for a deck like this, at the common level, are Abundant Growth which will let us tap for any colour and it also cantrips. The other one is Utopia Sprawl, which will ramp you up a colour on top of the mana generated by the land itself. And if you feel adventurous enough you could spring for the recently printed Selesnya Guildgate. They are almost like Temple Gardens or Sunpetal Groves, but not nearly as expensive. And since we aren’t running the Coronets, these auras can fill that slot. Not to mention they both synergize well with the Ethereal Armor.
Now to replace the Kor Spiritdancer we have to do a little bit of looking. I mean nothing can really compare to the card drawing that this creature is capable of, nor the Ancestral Mask like ability built into it. But what if I told you there was another option? One that in some cases might even be a little bit better? What could be better than having a playset of Gladecover Scout and Slippery Bogle’s to annoy your opponent? What could be better than eight hexproof creatures? Why twelve of course! That’s right, Silhana Ledgewalker can easily replace the Kor Spiritdancer. And sure, it isn’t as pumpable and it doesn’t have the card draw bonus, but it’s another creature your opponent can’t touch. Plus it has the upside of conditional unblockability. If our opponents can’t stop it in the air then they are really in trouble. Even if they can they still have to deal with Trample and First Strike!
Sounds pretty simple eh? Let’s go one step further. If you have a little bit of cash, but not a lot, you can find a replacement for the Leyline of Sanctity (A $15 dollar rare!). Ever heard of the True Believer? And no, I’m not talking about the kid Henry from Once Upon a Time (Good series by the way!). True Believer (a $1 rare if you are lucky, $2 if you are not) was a creature printed in Onslaught that gave you Shroud. But it was printed again in Tenth Edition which makes it Modern legal. Now, yes it will die to Doom Blade and Lightning Bolt. But it’s a step in the right direction. Especially if you want to modify your deck a bit and run Alpha Authority, but I’m getting off topic.
Let’s see what this might look like, shall we?
Enchantments (28)
Creatures (12)
Lands (20)
And so there you have it. Without getting into Sideboard cards you have a functional (if a little underpowered) Modern deck made out of mostly commons. And if nothing else? It’s a great place to start!
~ Gerald Knight
Extra Booty: Now there are a few things I want to address in Extra Booty today. The first is if you are going to upgrade the deck, do so with the lands first. An easy way to modify the deck when you can acquire lands (such as Sunpetal Grove and Temple Garden) is to remove one mana fixing aura per land added. From here you can add in other auras that you think might work well. If you can get the Spiritdancers then you can let the Ledgewalkers go and replace them with this bomb of a creature. And if you can find the Coronet’s then I tip my hat to you and you can replace them with whatever makes you feel most comfortable.
Now, the xtra special thing I want to talk about, which I don’t normally do, is a sideboard (or mainboard) “tech” card that is good against pretty much every deck out there.
Suppression Field. It has been seen as a singleton, or in pairs, in a couple of sideboards. But I think that it deserves some special attention from a sideboard standpoint, if not from a mainboard. The card makes activated abilities cost more to play. So this means that your opponents Birthing Pod is going to cost more. Your opponents Arcbound Ravager won’t be the sacrifice engine it’s supposed to be. And Ad Nauseum will generally fold as Lightning Storm counts as an activated ability, even while it is on the stack. Now you’re going to argue back that there are plenty of decks that it doesn’t hit. Such as Storm or Zoo. And you are right on that, except that if you read everybody’s favourite fetch lands properly, they are not mana activated abilities. I’ll let you think on that until next time.
You turn the key and lock up the shop for the day, ready to go home and get some grub before heading out to Friday Night Magic, ready to test out that shiny new Heroic deck you’ve been tweaking when your phone goes off. It’s your little cousin, and he is going on about how Grandma got him the Magic Holiday Gift box for Christmas, bragging about how he pulled a Fabled Hero, Prognostic Sphinx and Polis Crusher. He sounds so excited about his loot, when he asks you if he can come with you tonight. You think about it for a second and say why not?
You go and pick him up and bring him home, looking at his collection realizing quickly that what little has isn’t going to stand a chance at your local game shop. You walk over to your overloaded shelf of magic cards and pull a deck off of it. It’s one of those Pauper decks that you read about on Three Kings Loot’s website the other week. It’s the mono black one, which only seemed appropriate after you saw your cousins reaction to the dreaded Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Like a kid in a candy store.
So you both scarf down some pizza while playing a few matches before heading over to the shop, only to realize once you step through the door that it wasn’t Standard tonight, but Vintage. Your heart skips a beat thinking about how wrecked your cousins deck is going to get against that kind of competition. A Standard Pauper deck isn’t built to take on those types of decks. So you ask him how much money he has on him, thinking that maybe you could get a few cheap cards to give him a chance. He looks at you and says that all he has is the twenty dollars that aunt Gladys gave him. Twenty dollars isn’t going to go far in Vintage, not by a long shot. But then you have a brainstorm and hop on your smartphone and look up Classic Pauper decks. They are cheap enough and might just have a chance.
Given your cousins fascination with the Gray Merchant you settle on a Mono-Black deck and walk up to the counter giving the list to the owner, before realizing that Classic Pauper is an online format only and that there are cards printed from sets not released online that could be added. You make a few changes to the list and smile as your cousin begins gathering all the cards together to take on his first challenger.
The store owner calls out the pairings and you sit down beside your cousin and watch as he drops down a first turn swamp and Duress to draw out his opponents Force of Will, followed by a second swamp and a Hymn to Tourach. His opponent groans and your little cousins face lights up. Maybe, just maybe, he can pull this off.
The above is a Mono-Black Control deck in Classic Pauper, a format that is almost exclusively online. There are a few stores that hold tournaments and the format is growing in paper popularity, but it isn’t mainstream yet. Inside you can see a healthy mix of discard and removal and card draw, a board wipe to keep things under control, and your end game Gray Merchant and Corrupts. A deck like this costs under $20 at 3KL, and is a great way for a new player to have a deck that has a chance of being competitive if they ever come across some really old school players, and they don’t have to give up their college loan to afford it.
As a quick rehash, if you are not familiar with the Pauper format or did not read my previous article on it, Pauper is a format made up entirely of commons. All the standard rules to Magic apply with a 60 card (minimum) deck and a 15 card (maximum) sideboard. The major thing to note about Classic Pauper is that it allows for any card that has ever been printed at the common level to be used. Yes, even a card like Rancor. Speaking of…
So, like I did with my last Pauper article I am going to throw an extra bone at you, an alternative if you aren’t a control player is Green-White Hexproof. One of my personal favourites. The deck ‘runs on rails’ as it were, and is relatively easy for young or new players to pilot. It’s very simple in that you try and get your Hexproof creature down and then load it up with aura cards and beat your opponents face. “Cheap” and effective auras include Armadillo Cloak ($1.99 each), Rancor ($3.75), Ethereal Armor ($0.25 each), or it’s older and more effective brother Ancestral Mask ($0.49). Combined with aura’s like Abundant Growth ($0.25) that enchant your lands to mana fix, you can quickly make quite the untouchable beat stick of a creature.
So there you have two cheap and effective Pauper decks you can build for new players to help them get into Vintage.
Who says that Magic has to be expensive?
~ Gerald
You walk through the door and turn on the light, the adrenaline of tonight’s matches is still coursing through you as you shoulder your backpack to the floor. Your shoes and jacket are next to go as you take them off and set them in their proper places before picking up the backpack and going to the dining room table. You open your backpack up and pull out the deck box containing the deck that won you tonight’s FNM draft at your local game shop. It was hard fought, but in the end you persevered and walked out with mad loot.
After taking a breath or two you begin the practiced art of desleeving your deck, stopping for a few moments as you as you reflect upon the Voyage’s End that bounced Hythonia the Cruel before she could go montrous and wipe out your little army, the Lightning Strike that killed the Disciple of Phenax before the devotion trigger could count it and make you discard your bomb, and finally that Prognostic Sphinx that made your opponent cringe when it hit the board and you had not one but two Flamespeaker Adepts ready to strike! Ahh, that was a match to remember.
After you finish the chore of desleeving your cards you grab your trade binder and put the Prognostic Sphinx into its new home behind the two or three you already had from drafting the previous weeks. Quite a collection you have built up, you look at it smiling to yourself before walking over to your bookshelf. Only there aren’t many books on the shelf. No, instead there are those long white boxes that we all know and love to use for storage of cards. You look them over and read the writing that sorts them by set – RTR, GTC, DGM, M14 and THS. You take the last one off the shelf and open it to find that you don’t have near enough room to put all of these commons you drafted with the rest of your prize winning deck tonight. So you grab another box, write THS on it and throw them inside probably to be neglected like all the others sitting on your shelf.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. There are other things that you can do with that abundant collection of commons you bring home every week. And I don’t mean the usual suspects. I mean, who of us hasn’t taken a basic Mountain and folded it in half to mark the area of the storage box as being your red section. Or used a card to mark your place in the book you’re reading, if you’re a book reading sort. As an aside my personal favorite was Earthbind while reading William R Forstchen’s Magic the Gathering: Arena. Or maybe you were one of those people that decided that they were going to pretend to be Gambit from the X-Men when you heard that Seething Song was getting banned. There are many things that we do with the extra commons we have laying around, but hopefully none of those examples beats what I am hopefully about to talk to you about.
Pauper.
For those of you who don’t know the word and just went to Google to search the definition, that’s not what I am talking about. While it is a decent word to describe the format, we aren’t talking about being poor or impoverished but instead a format of Magic: the Gathering. You see, a few years ago Wizards of the Coast sanctioned a format exclusively on Magic Online that was spearheaded entirely by the player community. The format doesn’t officially exist as a sanctioned format in paper, but that’s no reason why you can’t take advantage of the great resource you have sitting in those little white cardboard boxes. But first I should explain the rules of Pauper. Now there are two different versions but for the purpose of this article I’m going to focus on Standard Pauper. But they both work from the same set of rules.
Now to elaborate a bit on the legality of cards I will use a recent example to clarify the rules with Rancor, a misprint but great card none-the-less. Rancor was originally printed at common in the Urza’s Legacy, which means that if you are playing Classic Pauper you can use it in any deck you are playing. However, and this is going back before M13 rotated out, it wouldn’t be usable in Standard Pauper because it was reprinted at Uncommon. Therein lies one of the main differences between the two formats. The other is the banlist, which for the purposes of Standard Pauper is none.
I already know what you are thinking. Why would anybody want to play with just commons? Well, the first thing I will present to you is that it is a challenge, and if you are playing Magic then I can only assume that you like a challenge. The second is that it is a gateway and there is no reason why we shouldn’t keep the community growing.
1. The Challenge!
There are a total of 1114 cards currently printed in Standard including mythics, rares, uncommons and commons. That’s a fair number of cards to work with to make decks. Not nearly as expansive as Modern or Legacy, but that’s still over a thousand cards to work with to pull together a collection of 60 cards to sling spells with. Even the best players, teams, and deck builders have trouble finding the best combination of cards within that limitation. But what happens when you take away everything but the commons? You are left with 473 cards, a much smaller pool. Now there is the challenge, build a deck using only the 473 cards available to you AND make it competitive. Don’t think it’s possible, do you? Well let me put together a list of commons in the current Standard that can be played competitively.
Mono-Black Devotion for Standard Pauper
MAINDECK
Creatures (18)
Spells (19)
Lands (23)
SIDEBOARD
And that folks is a Standard Pauper Mono-Black Devotion deck. It’s not nearly as powerful as the one running amok on the pro circuit right now and costs well over two-hundred dollars, but it isn’t altogether that bad. Instead of Hero’s Downfall you have Quag Sickness for removal, you have Disciple of Phenax for hand control in place of Thoughtseize, Deathcult Rogue to deliver near unblockable damage and it increases your devotion count for the most hated common in Standard Gray Merchant of Asphodel. All in all this deck has the potential to be devastating for a collection which was slated to exist simply as bookmarks or dividers. And you thought it couldn’t be done.
2. It’s a Gateway.
Ever been at work talking with a coworker about Magic and someone listening in on your conversation asks what it is you are talking about? Or had a new person walk into your LGS to discover what the rage is everyone is talking about? Or do you have children or nephews/nieces that are interested in playing? Why not start them out by building them a deck with commons? Why not build them a Pauper deck to get them started?
Do you remeber when you started? What did you buy to get into the game? Was it a few boosters to see what the game was all about? Was it a whole booster box or a duel deck? All of those options are great, but they cost a decent amount for anybody who is just jumping in. Not every player is going to want to drop anywhere from $20 to $125 to just experiment with a new game to see if it is for them. So why not take those extra commons you have laying and build some cheap decks for new players to experience what the game is all about before they start investing massive amounts of money with their sites set on playing next to fabled Pro Tour players. I’ll even throw you a bone and give you another Standard Pauper list to help you or your friends get started.
UW Enchantment Aggro for Standard Pauper
MAINDECK
Creatures (24)
Spells (14)
Lands (18)
SIDEBOARD
So there you have two decks to start with, a Mono-Black Devotion deck and a Blue-White Enchantment Aggro deck. And believe me there are many many more out there. So instead of using your commons as a bookmark, a divider or even as ammunition think about the challenge of playing without the most powerful cards, or think about making some decks for new players to start getting their feet wet and helping to grow our community. But whatever you do, don’t let your Friday Night Leftovers go to waste.
– Gerald Knight
