Since I've got a cool and somewhat diverse meta at my LGS (It's actually a Local Gaming Caffee "Crni Macak" or "The Black Cat"), and I write reports for our Tuesday Pauper tourneys, I decided to share some here. We kinda seem to be on top of our game and seem to anticipate some shifts in the meta. And it's good to see some reports of tourneys where you've got cutting edge netdecks present, but not necessarily winning or dominating. Crazy aggro meta this week, and Delvers didn't do so hot (they don't actually win all that much over here), so I'm really curious what we see next week.
For example today, 05.03.2019. we had a 14 man, 4 round evening tourney, and the results were:
1: 12 Rakdos Control
2: 9 Gruul Aggro
3: 9 GW Slivers (Me)
4: 9 Burn (other finalist)
5: 6 RDW Goblins
6: 6 Mono G Infect
7: 6 Dinrova Tron (Won last week)
8: 6 Deep Hours Aggro
9: 5 Stonehorn Tron
10: 4 UR Delver
11: 4 RG Madness
12: 3 Midnight-Gond Combo
13: 3 Deep Hours Aggro
14: 0 Zombies
It was a crazy tourney because the Aggro/Burn/Infect Guys beat up the Trons, Slivers and one of the Trons beat up Delvers (4x Spinneret Sliver main and Grapple with the Past on top of that). So you've got 2 Trons and 3 Delvers (Deep Hours Aggro are mono-blue Delvers), even though none of our UB Delver guys showed up (there were 3 last week), and our Bogles guys were scared of everyone being ready for them after Los Angeles. The guy who played Midnight-Gond placed 2nd last week with Bogles, but this week the RG Madness guy packed Serene Heart , the Infect guy packed Reverent Silence, our for-rent Metalcraft and Rebels both packed Patrician's Scorn (and Aura Flux was highly sought after and passed around) so he tried something else, and it didn't work out.
The finals were Rakdos Control vs. Burn. Rakdos Control is basically mono-black control with a heavy discard emphasis and red bolted on for Firebolts, Lightning Bolts and Terminate + Pyroblast in the sideboard (and Fountain bouncing with Rakdos Carnarium which helped vs. Burn). You could call it RB Monarch, as the plan is to answer all enemy threats, reduce their hand, slam Rose of the Black Thorn down and/or clog the board up with a fat Angler, and ride Monarch to victory. The guy playing it didn't do so well in the previous two weeks, but today the meta really went his way. The Burn guy was playing Pauper for the first time and didn't manage to secure a playset of Curse of the Pierced Heart - he did great in the first three rounds, but the lack of that card lost him the final match vs. control.
Gruul Aggro was another guy trying out Pauper for the first time, and the deck wasn't his, but it's an interesting take on "how do I get the most out of Burning Tree Emissary", with Naya Hushblade and a lot of Alara block multicolored stuff. You don't see it too often online I suppose, and it's been hit-and-miss in our local meta, but it sure has it's days and this was one of them.
Oh, and the most sucessful of the Delvers reported that Faerie Duelist does have a niche and seems to be playable as a sideboard card in mirrors, as it messes up enemy Delvers, which got the deck a win in the mirror. The UR Delver had catastrophic luck with matchups - it should've done really well in the aggro heavy meta, but ended up matched vs. two Trons and Burn, and that's not really what it wants to play against. Shame, as it would've certainly done better against some of the other decks.
The Mono G infect guy beat up a Delver and a Tron handily but he got rushed in the first round by Goblins - they're brutal, but were piloted by a newbie so they didn't do as well as they usually do - and Infect also ran into me with Slivers for a nightmare 1 - 2 match at the end because everything we put on board or had in hand messed with combat math and we both ended up with a headache afterwards. Infect seems to be really good at slapping netdecks around, but doesn't so much fold to random aggro as much as turn from a straightforward no-brainer deck into something that's hugely tricky to pilot. What's cool to notice in those matches is that the Wither part of Infect and using your pump and fight cards to grind the other guy out actually works, and if I didn't draw a Journey to Nowhere to deal with a Rancored up Blight Mamba in game 3 I would've lost that match and Infect would have had 9 out of 12 points. His version is our LGS rent deck and after a lot of community feedback it's got Llanowar Elves and 3-4 Rot Wolf in it as they really help with matches where you can't just rush a guy with huge pump.
Anyone got reports from their local tourneys? Always interesting to see what metas other than the online one look like.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Gruul Aggro was another guy trying out Pauper for the first time, and the deck wasn't his, but it's an interesting take on "how do I get the most out of Burning Tree Emissary", with Naya Hushblade and a lot of Alara block multicolored stuff. You don't see it too often online I suppose, and it's been hit-and-miss in our local meta, but it sure has it's days and this was one of them.
I play a tweaked/modified version of this deck and it can be pure gas at times. If the stars align it can outrace Burn. Get into the long game and it has problems of course. Still can beat a lot of decks out there.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
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We're having another evening tourney on Tuesday and I'm curious about what happens with one particular deck. A casual player and silly meme enthusiast friend of mine who puts together "rock-bottom-tier tribal decks" as works of art ("Crab Deck - it gives you the crabs!") got interested in Pauper and thought about showing up with one of his silly non-competitive decks for the lols. What ended up happening was him choosing to make a Griffin Tribal deck, and then discovering Griffin Rider who, as it turns out, has rather silly stats. And he also discovered that Teremko Griffin is actually pauper legal.
So what happened on Saturday during a multi-event open house was that he took the deck for a playtest, which obviously turned into a feature match because everyone loves to see silly decks and all the newbies heard he had a banding creature in his deck and wanted to see what the damned thing actually does. And he won the feature match vs. Domain Zoo. And Banding, it turns out, is as silly as ever. Just picture a poor Arena kid staring in disbelief and asking "Wait, you're not messing with me, he can actually decide how I deal damage?", and you might as well been there to see it.
Got me thinking about randomly sticking Benalish Hero, Mesa Pegasus or Shield Bearer into decks to mess with people's heads (and their ability to attack with Gurmag Angler 's). It completely slipped my mind those are legal in pauper, and them's nasty ole critters.
Anyhow, Griffin Man said he was certainly coming to the tourney, and he might crash and burn, but he also might not (that Griffin Rider does indeed have silly stats, and he's got a griffin who's immune to Pestilence and Journey to Nowhere, too). It's going to be hilarious either way and I'm chuckling at the idea of writing a report with Griffin Tribal being at above 0 in a field full of nasty netdecks
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Nice report man! We're seeing results mainly from online events, and maybe that's why some content creators are pushing for a ban on Gush (blue decks) and the Monarch mechanic (Boros and Orzhov, to some extent) because, really, you see these decks regularly online. But in paper pauper, we see a lot of variety. So thanks again! Continue with the reports, please.
I wouldn't necessarily be against a Gush ban myself, but thanks a lot for support. Pauper is insanely deep and there's not nearly enough discussison about it around the net. What it actually plays like, that is.
So 12.03.2019, 16 man tourney at The Black Cat Bar:
1) GB Aristocrats won. It was a Carrion Feeder and Bloodthrone Vampire thing with Rancor to let him punch through, and Blisterpod , Brindle Shoat , Young Wolf , Nest Invader and other nasty sac fodder along with Unearth sort of thing. It can get out of hand pretty quickly and is very punishing to midrange, while its key dudes are rather resistant to conditional removal and burn. The Rakdos Control pilot analyzed the list (found it on the net) and said it's pretty much a more robust Stompy.
The problem was, though, that the guy playing it got VERY lucky in his matchups, and that his opponents got impressively bad draws against him. He faced me on UG Madness in the semi finals, and I had the worst hands and draws of the tourney. I couldn't find my bounce for love or money, and I couldn't find either my discard outlets or my lands, too, drawing into Daze after Daze and Arrogant Wurm after my only discard outlet was killed (after being unable to play it on-curve due to lands coming into play tapped). A very similar thing happened to Slivers in the finals - the guy playing them couldn't find any of his 8 removal spells OR his Lead the Stampeede. He lost 0 - 2, but if he saw one Journey to Nowhere at any point he would've won handily. Not to bash the Aristocrats or the guy playing them, but he did make a few severe misplays in both matches and had freakish luck with the games. He also beat Rakdos Control, because the guy playing that was completely unfamiliar with the matchup.
So as far as GB Aristocrats go - yes, they're nasty, but whether they can consistently be nasty enough is highly doubtful.
2) Slivers, when you don't put them together as a toolbox but just take them back to the roots of 4 Spinneret Sliver main, a few Benevolent Bodyguard, Sidewinder Sliver for offense, 16 lords (12 and Plated Sliver), several vigilance slivers, Rancor, Journey to Nowhere and Lead the Stampede are likely the strongest dude deck in the format. By a mile. The finals were lost due to the luck of the draw, but otherwise, as long as the pilot knows how to bait counters and removal, and what the key sliver in each matchup is, there's no way not to be impressed.
Also, the card of the tourney, not just for slivers but in general, was Journey to Nowhere. It won plenty of people plenty of matches, and quite a number of matches that were lost were lost due to someone not being able to find their Journey to Nowhere. It's a reason to play white in Pauper all by itself.
3) Mono G Infect had a rampage and beat people up left and right but ended up brickwalled by Slivers just as last time. It's nasty, it's consistent, and I suspect that we'd see it winning a lot more tourneys if the guy who's constantly renting it wasn't a newbie. That result there was made by a guy who's only been playing magic for a few months, doesn't understand the rules very well, misplays a lot and is no indicator of the decks actual power. A kid straight out of junior high managed to snag the deck for rent one day and won the tourney easily, but he does have a lot more general MtG experience than the usual pilot. And I'm not entirely sure it's even the best build - we had to take quite a number of powerful cards out because the newbie playing the deck just plain didn't understand them. He wiseing up to the game lately and he's been asking for some to be put back in, but I'm not sure I'd even want to retool it back to glass-cannon land of netlists, as it currently plays like a nasty stompy which has double-strike on all it's dudes, and this is consistently doing good.
4) I'm not sure if that Kuldotha Boros guy is Kuldotha Boros or Boros Bully or Boros Monarch (which one's which ) but he's not boros tokens. It's the silly white flying package, silly artifact and white draw package, and plenty of quality burn. The guy's an old, experienced player and he consistently does well, but his results on Kuldotha Boros seem to be less impressive than the ones on our rentable W Metalcraft (he won and tied for 1st place on that). He also got lucky against me, because my draw vs. him was even worse than against the Aristocrats guy, while his other matches were quite favorable for his deck.
5) I was testing out a UG Madness / Delver mashup, and I'm quite happy with how Land Grant and Elephant Ambush flipped my Delver. The idea was to use Land Grant as a way to have "lands" flip my Delver, while also having more threats than delvers usually do while also having access to nasty green sideboard tech. It beat Boggles (3x Moment's Peace and 3x Tranquility in the side, no messing around with that matchup), won a close 2 - 1 vs. Griffin Tribal (banding, my dudes, is a nasty ability, and Madness doesn't like Journey to Nowhere), but had horrendous draws vs. Aristocrats and Kuldotha Boros. The deck has issues with consistency, but I'm working on it. I could've won both those matches had I seen any cards, but a deck that has such lousy hands means the deckbuilder messed something up, and I'm to blame for that.
6) Rakdos Control pretty much got blindsided by GB Aristocrats, which would not likely happen if they played again, and drew with Boros Tokens. He says Boros is his worst usual matchup, and that he really needs to start just conceding game one if the other guy isn't hopelessly screwed and then mop up games 2 and 3 where his sideboard gives him the edge.
7) Burn's Burn. The pilot was a first time Pauper tourney player and had never faced infect before, so the infect guy blindsided him with silly shennanigans, and he had to drop after round 3 with 2 - 1. If it wasn't for those two things he'd have probably had a shot at the win (but Slivers would have given him a run for his money if he ran into them).
8) Griffin Tribal! Nasty little deck, a lot of flies, a lot of threats, several cool tricks, huge Griffin Rider, Journey to Nowhere , Benevolent Bodyguard , Springleaf Drum into Teremko Griffin - lowish curve otherwise. I barely pulled a 2 - 1 vs. it as Banding made it impossible to trade sensibly in combat, and he beat Ponza with Springleaf Drum and Spell Pierce action. It was his first time at a tourney, he had no idea what to expect of the pauper metagame, and he could've had 3 wins if he did me in (and he almost did), and he also got bushwacked by Burn because he didn't know how fast it was and also didn't draw any of his sideboard. I suspect we'll be seeing more of Griffin Man in the future.
9) And the Boggles guy found out why Boggles don't win everything all the time. When he didn't walk into sideboards, he won. When he did, he lost. It's a really horrible matchup for any color which can't deal with enchantments (and no, edict effects don't work - too many boggles to sac, only one needs to do his thing).
I won't get into the others in detail as they didn't do so well, but the UB Delver guy ran into Slivers (horrible matchup) and both Boros Guys (also horrible matchups) so it was more of a matchup thing (that guy is one of the only two ever to win Black Cat Bar tourneys with any kind of Delver).
Looking forward to more tourneys and reports, and also for the board meeting of the Black Cat Brewery - it's a Monday staff meeting between us guys who run the show, we sort cards for sale and trade, spruce up decks for rent and brew for pauper while we're at it. Very interesting developments lately, we need to find what's the best use for the playable Banding critters, see if we can put togheter a Mono B Pestilence with Cemetery Gate (someone informed me that it's actually pauper legal, lol, and I sure hope it is, as I've been itching to see that on a table again for sooooo long - not to mention perma-pestilence and imunity to Gurmag Angler while also being able to block anything that doesn't fly are objectively very good things ), and see about adjusting some netdecks to a serious meta (also finsih up some more widely known decks which are under construction, so that folks can rent them).
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
You have a healthy local meta for sure. Luck and variance happens to me all the time on MTGO, sometimes for sometimes against. Its a part of the game and I try to let my opponent know when it happens for me or against them as a game can become a non-game and doesn't even feel like playing a game of Magic. As for a couple of your observations.
I don't find GW Slivers scary in the least. I've been having fun beating them recently with a mono-red Enchantment/Token deck. Slivers doesn't have mass removal or Fogs and they don't have enchantment removal game one, and not a lot sided in on game 2/3. If they don't draw into their protection they are a sitting duck. Nut draws and they are very powerful but that doesn't happen every game.
Bogles on the other hand when I break it out always feels potent and dangerous even in its bad matchups. The key is to get the bogle out and protect it from edicts and Electrickery. If you do that its lights out most of the time. Slamming a Bogle on turn one is not always the best play. (Unless you have another in hand and are trying to bait, if you know the matchup). Holding an enchantment in hand has to be done at times as well in games 2 and 3.
Kuldotha Boros decks are so very consistent. Its not even funny. Prismatic Strands makes me want to puke when its played I am so sick of it.
Again thanks for the report of your meta. I see indicators of the online meta in it but I believe there is a lot more control online, even as I have been seeing a downtick of Blue or Ux Control decks.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
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The thing with Bogles in our meta is that every deck is armed to the teeth against them - Serene Heart , Reverent Slience , Patrician's Scorn , Tranquility , Fogs , Aura Flux , you name it. What they do really well around here is beat up burn and mono-black guys , everybody else packs half a sideboard against them. It's like Dredge in other formats, either folks pack so much hate for the deck that it's impossible for it to do anything at all, ever, or there's no point to coming to the tourney at all because Bogles will win. It's a bit different online where you could end up in a pod with anything at all and never see any Bogles, but when you know for a fact there'll be 1-3 of them in the tourney depending on who shows up, you know you can end up in a situation where your chances at winning will hinge on not getting beat up by Bogles. We kinda like having them around because they mess burn up, which is nice, but we're also kinda annoyed at them because they really kill anyone's desire to play black. And it doesn't take any ammount of care for Bogles to beat any black deck, from what we've seen - there's always an unpantsed Bogle to sack to edicts. The only reliable way to actively make that deck lose seems to be killing all their enchantments or fogging them to death (or a quick enough hand from a specific Rebel build), nothing else seems to work. Sideboards murder them, but you do need enough stuff that does them in in the sideboard to up your chances of actually drawing it - just a playset of one thing won't do it, it takes 7-8 cards which say "Boggles lose this game" on them to be sure. But they do reliably fold to that.
It all kinda evens out because they tie up half of everyone's sideboard so people can't really afford to pack as many match-killers for different matches as they could otherwise, which is appreciated by anyone packing/renting a deck which isn't that degenerate but folds to sideboards. They also have a bit of what we call "the Infect problem" or "Dreadmaw problem" - they also have games where they draw too many Bogles, or games where they draw too many auras, just like Infect can draw too many dudes and too little pump and vice/versa or Big Green can draw all ramp and no big dudes, or the other way around.
And that's a weird perspective on Slivers. For us they're the next most stable and dependable deck after Rebels (who're by their nature prone to always playing the exact same match over and over again). It's all lords, and there's more of them than the other guy has counters/removal/dudes. And there's always some sliver who's a must-deal-with in any matchup. So what happens most often isn't nut draws, it's that the other guy can deal with the lord pileup, or they can deal with the problem sliver, but they can't deal with both. They got their problems and bad matchups, sure, but, as I've said, the only thing that seems to beat them for consistency is Rebels, except Rebels don't beat them for raw power.
Kuldotha Boros would be the close third. Yeah, that deck is really annoying and some folks hate playing against it, but despite all the good stuff red brings to the table, mono-white metalcraft seems to beat it for performance. Folks have begun brewing with mainboard Tin Street Hooligan in RG combiantions as it can break their engine or mess with their lands, but I guess we'll figure out how to make Kuldotha Spammers miserable eventually. Right now we're still on the "let's make Delver/Bogles/Tron people regret their choice of deck" bandwagon. Kuldotha Boros is kind of off the hook in terms of concentrated hate ATM as folks are really glad whoever's playing it isn't playing Metalcraft. If someone actually manages to win a tourney or two with Boros the general attention might turn to them.
However, we've just recently figured out that certain things we thought weren't online-legal are in fact online legal due to some obscure set which gatherer doesn't list (some of us old farts got introduced to scryfall by the newbies just last week). There'll be brewing with Flood and Energy Tap in the coming weeks, and it'll take us a short while to pick the cards up once we're happy with the builds, but we expect a local metagame shift soon enough if it turns out we can break some of the stuff that we haven't even considered due to thinking it was not legal. There's got to be some game in either Spire Golem or Myr Enforcer + Energy Tap, Flood will make mono blue sideboards for sure, Cemetery Gate gives a whole new dimension to mono-black, and Abzan Banding needs to be plumbed in depth to find the exact most silly thing about it to lean on. That's on top of some brews that were in the making before all this came to attention which bring their own stuff to the table and some folks / us at the bar finally putting together some more widely known decks. So, interesting times ahead.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
However, we've just recently figured out that certain things we thought weren't online-legal are in fact online legal due to some obscure set which gatherer doesn't list (some of us old farts got introduced to scryfall by the newbies just last week). There'll be brewing with Flood and Energy Tap in the coming weeks, and it'll take us a short while to pick the cards up once we're happy with the builds, but we expect a local metagame shift soon enough if it turns out we can break some of the stuff that we haven't even considered due to thinking it was not legal.
Energy Tap and Flood are both legal due to the MTGO Treasure Chests, which is one of those weird random quirks of MTGO Legality. It also gives us some unique cards like Drafna's Restoration, and the W/B/G Monarch cards which are already so format impacting (but not the U/R ones).
Yeah, those treasure chest things completely slipped past us dinosaurs who still check legality via gatherer
Energy Tap in particular is a card that fascinated me since I was a kid, but it was never really legal in a format where you could get actual mileage out of it. But now it is There's got to be a workable Deep Hours Aggro build where you use it with Ninja of Deep Hours or Spire Golem into Rush of Knowledge (with counter mana open), and an affinity build where you tap a Myr Enforcer to flood the board with Self-Assembler.
The later seems to also be a cool place to go multiple 4/4 guys (Carapace Forger, Myr Enforcer and Self-Assebler) and mess Gurmag Angler up with Tooth of Chiss-Goria. We haven't started brewing it up propely, but Sultai Tooth & Scale (except with Welding Jar in place of the Scale of Chiss-Goria) seems like it could be exactly what Affinity was looking for to get back into tier 1 terrioty ^^ Mono W Tooth & Scale is very notorious in our meta (I hope it catches on), it'd be hilarious to see a Sultai Version (black for Dhund Operative , Duress , Night's Whisper and one of those things which bring an artifact and a dude back from the dead - the only red card the deck would really miss would be Krark-Clan Shaman).
There's no way one or both of those don't work out and turn out to be competitive, but getting the components and numbers right to prevent uneven hands is likely to end up being tricky.
Now that we're aware that Drafna's Restoration is actually legal Pauper Eggs seems more and more doable. And Flood + Ninja of the Deep Hours seems like it should be filthy in some matchups. Shame it doesn't change a whole lot about the problematic matchups for Delver/Faeries/Deep Hours Aggro/Blue Skies, as you can't tap down Bogles or white fliers, and it's not at it's peak power vs. go-wide in general, but there'll be games won off of that for sure.
And Abzan Bandwagon seems sillier and sillier every day. Every day someone comes up with a screwier thing to redirect enemy damage to, from that Ravnica Allegiance Granny to Young Wolf with Serrated Arrows on board.
Pauper - gotta love it. We might put together an 8-man tourney side-event tomorrow as there's a multievent at the Black cat, but none of these brews will be operational in time. At least one of them might get played next Tuesday, as the Brewery is on Monday and the lists are on fire
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Small 8-man pod during a multievent at the Black Cat (16.03.2019.)
1: 9 Rakdos Monarch
2: 6 UR Ponza (me, also other finalist)
3: 6 Griffin Tribal
4: 6 Inside Out
5: 3 Mono G Infect
6: 3 Tooth & Scale
7: 3 Burn
8: 0 Inside Out
So, we had a small chill tourney today just to playtest some stuff and that's how it turned out.
Rakdos Monarch is quite strong it seems - it's more-or-less the discard part of mono black lists, Chainer's Edict, Black carddraw, some quality burn and a strong red sideboard. It discards the other guy's threats, kills what it doesn't discard and ride Angler or Monarch to victory. I've been hearing that Blue-Black control is quietly really strong online lately, but this thing can feel downright unfair to play against. It didn't clear the thing with 2 - 0 's, so I could not worry and write it off as a good day for RB control, but I'm getting a bit worried as it seems to be improving in performance all the time and this is the second time it won a tourney lately.
I played a rogue deck which I put together for rent simply because I wanted a deck for Fade Away, Seismic Spike and Flailing Soldier to be in. It was meant to be a fun and different deck for someone to pick up for rent when they don't want the pressuer that comes with playing a tier 1 deck, but still be able to randomly mess up some spike's day for the lols. It ended up beating Inside Out, which has a reputation as a strong deck in our local meta, and then it beat Tooth & Scale, which has an ever more notorious reputation in our meta. The fun thing about the deck is that it's a ponza which is exceptionally good vs. go-wide due to Fade Away, can lock people out of games strangely fast with Goblin Electromancer and Capsize, and it's quite punishing to low-curve / low-land count decks due to Flailing Soldier. In our experience black ponza does much better vs. control, and doesn't do very well vs. the things I just listed, so playing the UR one feels quite novel and refreshing. It's not top-tier or anything, and the build was completely untested and will take a ton of work to get properly serious, but it turned out to be strangely good against some local boogeyman decks.
The problem was that it's nowhere nearly as good vs. control as black Ponza is and my opponent in the finals was a discard-based control with cheap, efficient black card-draw and enough removal to take out all my threats with ease. It's a bit hard to tell, though, because I had awful, awful luck with mulligans, and my opponent was pretty much horribly flooded (good vs. the deck) AND instead of drawing dead cards against the deck, they drew only cards which were relevant in the matchup.
And Griffin Tribal came in third! So, good day for meme decks, I suppose, but on the other hand it's a deck full fliers which has access to Journey to Nowhere and enough room for random tech to have something that works really well against whoever they're playing either main or side. The staples it uses are quite strong, and the creature base, although not tier 0 for either of their colors, is not far enough below top tier to cause the deck to not work. It just seems to be rock-solid. Who'd have thought?
Inside Out is a bit of a boogeyman among the crowd here because it won a few tourneys, but as you can see, one completely crashed and burned, and the other one lost game one vs. me on UR Ponza, and barely won 2 - 1 against Tooth & Scale. My deck was indeed something the Inside Out pilot didn't expect - Flailing Soldier really put pressure on it to try to go off as fast as possible, and the deck needs to assemeble several combo pieces to go off. The one who did better at least managed to beat Burn, while the other one didn't, and that matchup is bizzare. Last time I played Inside Out vs. Burn we went to time and it's one of the strangest things I've seen in pauper. It's a matchup that's bad for both sides! The Inside Out player who did worse ran into Griffin Tribal, and that deck seems to be a random bad matchup for anybody, then ran into Infect which is just faster and simpler when it comes to doing basically the same thing, and then ran into Burn and that time it went the way of Burn.
Infect can't really beat Rakdos Control. It has way more removal than Infect has dudes, and that's that. Then Infect played against Inside Out, and they're kinda simmilar except Infect does it's thing with less hassle. And then it was a tossup vs. Griffins, and Griffins both have ways to screw with the combat step and don't have "the Infect problem" of drawing the wrong sort of thing (anywhere near as much as Infect does). Not a good day.
It also wasn't a good day for Tooth & Scale. The first mistake vs. Ponza was keeping a one-lander (as it's usually fine against other things), and it also ate a Fade Away into Capsize lock in the other game it lost in that match. It beat Burn 2 - 1, but it lost 1 - 2 to Inside Out due to what the pilot said was a greedy play on his part.
So, that's that, a small, fun tourney, two meme decks in top 3, and more of a playtest for everybody involved. We'll be having our usual Tuesday tourney where we expect better attendance, and there'll be a tourney at a different venue folks are kinda hyped up about as they don't usually hold them but they invited me to run the thing as the guys who run that place enjoy the reports and would like to introduce their crowd to Pauper.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Well, this time I took it. People have been buying up the store's Lightning Bolts, Fireblasts and the goblins that go into that RDW aggro list lately, so it took me forever to actually get the cards I need for a tradish Goblins list. Whoever's been reading this might have noticed me talking about Goblins terrorizing my local meta, and there you have it, the little s****s are horrifying.
It was a no-nonsense build made with redundancy in mind - 8 2/2 for R, Foundry Street Denizen, Kruin Striker, Mogg Raider, Goblin Sledder, Mogg War Marshal, Goblin Bushwacker, Lightning Bolt, Fireblast , nothing at all above 2 mana, 19 lands to be sure I can cast two things at once (might have been 1 too many), all mountains so I can always use up all the mana. Flaring Pain won me a game in the finals vs Boros Tokens, Sparksmith won me a game vs Infect and I got very lucky and barely won the first two rounds vs. Mono Black Devotion and Mono Black Ponza 2 - 1.
The deck is very, very simmilar to Tooth & Scale - you use Mogg Raider and Goblin Sledder to screw with combat match and stats on your dudes, much like you use Tooth of Chiss-Goria and Scale of Chiss-Goria. You have stronger pump, but smaller dudes for the (low) cost, but they have larger dudes for the same cost and their pump doesn't need fuel.
Also, I find Goblins to work the best the less fancy you try to make them. They never ever look like anything on paper, so everyone goes and tries to put in goblins that do something, while in truth you just need practice and some game experience to realize how brutal they actually are. You do, of course, always run the risk of running out of gas, and you do go into topdeck mode, but the deck does seem to be able to put opponents into a position where you have a lot of outs and they can't turn the tables fast enough.
Top 4 featured 2 Boros variants, one was a go-wide tokens / flashback, and one was the default grindy "metalcraft" variant. They both did well, as did Bogles. Bogles lost to a Flagbearer sideboard and barely beat Rebels, but otherwise had good matchups because it managed to evade the sideboard minefield.
Mono Black guys both barely lost to me, and both of them due to one crucial greedy play (a different one for each). They did both get handled by Boros, though.
Not that much to say otherwise. Infect had mulligan disasters vs. me, Dimir Flicker did well, Stonehorn Tron managed to pull a draw with Boros Metalcraft but didn't do very well, Griffin Tribal lost it's matches 1 - 2 in very close games - the pilot lost a match to Tron due to inexperience with the matchup, and the deck isn't great vs mono Black (it's not hopeless, but the pilot decided to mainboard some counterspells next time).
The Stompy and Rebel players had to drop after round 2, so their results aren't indicative of much, and Rebels take a bit of expert handling while the guy had never played them before.
Delvers were nowhere to be seen. There was a Delver for rent, and at least two people had a Delver deck with them but opted not to play it. The general conclusion is that it's a bit of a Timmy deck. The kind of person who builds it thinks that since they've got the most broken stuff that they have the best deck, and then get severely disappointed when they don't 2-0 everything and win every tourney, while everybody else just preys on the deck mercilessly due to it's low threat density. I see this a lot - get interested in Pauper, look for stuff that's obviously broken, make a Delver deck, come to a tourney, lose more than 0 matches, lose all interest in the format when it turns out it's not free wins. About 1 in 5 people actually shelve the Delver and get interested in a different deck. Too few people seem to be interested in a format where you can't google a decklist for free boosters.
There's a tourney coming up on Sunday where there might be many people for whom Tuesday evening is not the ideal time, and there might be people who don't usually play Pauper at all, and they all have Delver decks, so there might be half the field worth of Delvers there. My prediction is that either Boros Metalcraft takes them, or some Sliver or other Delver killer who gets lucky and plays nothing but their matchup of choice all tourney long. Or some Delver plays nothing but mirrors and ends up taking it.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Do you have a list for the UR ponza list? I have been trying to come up with a mana denial UG list that uses Early Frost, Hoodwink and Rishadan Cutpurse. Trying to integrate it into some sort of instant/flash deck with Growth Spiral and Ambush Viper
Im with Brainz on the UR ponza deck list. I've also been brewing with an Izzet build, which you can find here: Izzet Ponza, and I'm interested on what other cards can be included.
Play it on opponents upkeep and you get to draw an extra card your next turn. The 3 cmc is steep but if you want to frustrate your opponent, it does the job.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I'm really not happy about my UR Ponza list, but I'll put it up when I get a chance to check the cards out. There must be a better, more reliable build, except I just threw this one togather in 10 minutes I had between job assignments right before the tourney.
As for Solfatara - I'd throw a Solfatara , Turf Wound and Pardic Miner Pauper list together in an instant if they only downshifted Pardic Miner. It's a hilarious deck that you can currently only play in casual, except it's opposite of casual and if you do play it outside of a tourney you will lose friends. Solfatara and Turf Wound offer lols to be had with Electormancer, too, but you do need some more early pressure stuff for them to really work (Ghitu Lavarunner certainly comes to mind and Flailing Soldier is a fun and powerful card if it actually works in that sort of build).
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Thanks for sharing Turf Wound. Will have to pick that one up.
Mono R Land Destruction with Thermo-Alchemist and/or The 1R pinger dude (I forget its name) from Amonkhet block could be fun, if not downright irritating.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
And there's a Capsize in the sideboard, as well as that guy who EtB gets an instant or sorcery from the grave and Flurry of Horns to substitute for Flailing Soldier when you're on the draw (and for a more solid threat array). There's gotta be better ways to make this deck, some card draw would be really good to have (couldn't settle on which so I put none in). And, like, it's not like the deck couldn't just go grixis and play Delver and Angler, dooooh.
And there might be a hilarious UR or grixis build which goes Electromancer / Nightscape Familiar into Solfatara + Hoodwink , but reaaaaaaaaly needs a plan for times when you're on the draw.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Alrighty, 17-man event this Sunday, with a top 8 ^^
Swiss:
1 11 Rakdos Monarch
2 10 GW Slivers
3 10 Boros Monarch
4 10 Mono W Rebels
5 10 Mono G Infect
6 10 Orzhov Pestilence
7 9 Burn
8 9 Mono W Rebels (me)
9 9 Burn
10 8 Tooth & Scale
11 7 GB Aristocrats
12 6 GB Dredge
13 3 (???)
14 3 Gruul Aggro
15 0 Burn - early drop
16 0 UB Delver - early drop
17 0 Orzhov Mono Black
Really cool tourney - no blue anywhere near the top 8, and all the Delver folks went and did an Ixalan backdraft having lost confidence in their decks. True story.
Rakdos Monarch beat swiss hard, and the only deck that was as dominant in terms of performance were the GW Slivers. No f*****g around with those two, and Rakdos Monarch was the only one actually put a stop to the Sliver rampage and emerge at the top. Two Rebels at the tourney, quite different builds, both piloted by folks who were around to see Masques Block in person, both did well, even if I did barely squeeze into the top 8 (I lost to Infect and GB Aristocrats in Swiss). 6 out of 8 finalists were at least part white, too, an interesting thing to note.
But then things went silly in the top-8. First round my Rebels kicked out Rakdos Control, and Rebels and Dredge seem to be the only two bad matchups that deck has. Slivers lost 1 - 2 to Burn, in part due to a massive mana/color screw in game 1. Infect took out the other Rebels. Kuldotha Boros got handled by Orzhov Pestilence, which makes sense as the BW deck is a bit of a metagame answer to Boros, but it was also a massive luckout for Pestilence as Rakdos Monarch and the Rebels which went out would've beaten it up handily.
In the semi-finals, my Rebels took out Infect, which beat me up 2 - 0 in swiss. This time I drew into my Icatian Javelineers and Serrated Arrows and we both pulled tricky moves and manouvered each other until I was able to lock him down. Great games! And Orzhov Pestilence beat Burn 2 - 1. Burn won the first game, but Pestilence drew into it's sideboard in games 2 and 3, something Slivers were unlucky with.
And the finals were anticlimactic. I lost 0 - 2 because I was a doofus who played mono white with 0 ways to deal with enchantments or artifacts either in the main or in the side. And nothing with pro-black in Rebels as I was (correctly) anticipatig a field of Burn. The other Rebel pilot would've just stuck down a Nightwing Glider, took monarch and hit Pestilence and Pristine Talisman with whatever and won it easily, but I had none of that in my deck at all, so the other guy beat me handily.
I wish I had more time to share a few insights - Benevolent Bodyguard , for example, does a LOT of work, when you remember to actually put him in a deck - but I'm really bummed for time right now.
Big tourney, interesting developments, and the Black Cat Bar crew decided that we need to look into the whole Delver and Affinity situation and bring them (and people who own them) back into the (meta)game.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Letely I've not had time to report on the happenings at the Black Cat, but it's been very interesting. The recent flood of Delvers in Pauper challenges looks completely bizzare.
The last several 16-man events, 4-rounders all, have had the following top 4's:
And it's not like there wasn't a single Delver at the tourney, but this online resurgence is weird. If anything Tron has gotten more popular over here, Elves are always present, Goblins are still widely feared, GW Slivers took a tourney, Infect of all things took a tourney... I saw the latest pauper challenge report and there was barely any green at all in it, while Green seems to be doing quite alright for itself over here.
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"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Now that the London mulligan trial is over on MTGO its back to wall to wall Blue decks in the Tourney practice queues. Delvers and counterspells make me want to rage quit. I hope the new mull rule kicks in soon. It was refreshing to see less Blue decks over the past couple of weeks there.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
We had a 21-man tourney this evening, unfortunately only time for 4 rounds, and it had hilarous rezults:
1: 12 Izzet Blitz
2: 12 Rats - me (Rat Colony, Okiba-Gang Shinobi, Unearth, Dirge of Dread, Duress, Wail of the Nim, Disfigure - pretty much all of the mainboard )
3: 9 UB Delver (lost only to the winner)
4: 9 Oops, all instants!
5: 9 Tooth & Scale (lost only to the winner)
6: 9 Bogles (lost only to the winner)
7: 6 Affinity (lost to the winner and me)
8: 6 Rainbow Tron
9: 6 Tradish Goblins
10: 6 GW Slivers
11: 6 Boros Tokens
12: 6 Heroes of Benalia
13: 6 Rebels
14: 5 Turbo Fog (guy was tutoring newbies while they played, otherwise would've placed higher)
15: 5 GW Slivers (piloted by complete newbie to MtG - only one loss out of 3 rounds. This is usually a better sign a deck is silly than when a veteran takes a tourney with something)
16: 4 Familiars
17: 3 Infect
18: 3 Inside Out Combo
19: 1 Rogue Tribal (Had awful matchups and was missing a key card - Wail of the Nim. That thing won me a lot of games in many different ways and needs to see more play.)
20: 1 Mono U Delver (piloted by complete newbie to MtG)
21: 1 Griffin Tribal (piloted by complete newbie to MtG)
It would have been hilarous if we had time for the 5th round and I actually won vs. Kiln Fiend, because then Rats would have won. I think I'll try out a list with 2-3 Sinuous Vermin mainboard, otherwise there's a lot of silly strong cards in there. Sideboard is mostly extra copies of 3-offs, a single Crypt Rats, 4x Chainer's Edict. 4x Chittering Rats, 4x Ruthless Invasion.
I think Ruthless Invasion has a place in GW Slivers lists if not elsewhere, too. Okiba-Gang Shinobi is practically a planeswalker, and Wail of the Nim is silly strong (albeit in the kind of deck it's meant to be played in). These three really ought to see more play.
There's a serious Rat deck out there and I'm probably close to it, my list just needs tweaking.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
So um, blue's definitely not dead after the bans, Kiln Fiend is obviously not dead after the bans. Nice to know.
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"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
A teammate and me went to neighbouring Italy for the Paupergeddon big tourney in Pisa. There were 214 or people or so, and we went with Rakdos Control (buddy) and Corrupt Control (me). He went 4 - 3 - 1, but would have done better if the universe didn't decide to mess us up and pair him against me in one of the rounds. I did better, and ended up 32.
I certainly could've done better but I ran into an Atog-Fling combo in round 2 - it's an affinity with nothing but Atog, Fling, eggs and filtering, and lost 2 - 0. Then when I climbed up into top 16 I ran into an Izzet Delver and drew with the guy (if I had just a little more time I would've won, and I think I messed up in the game I did lose). This then got ugly because I fell back down and got paired with another Izzet Delver which turned out to be my worst matchup and lost to that too. With a little bit more luck - such as being paired with literally anything else as I was easily handling Tron, for example - I think I could've been at least in the top 8. Well, I hope my luck turns out better next time.
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"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
A teammate and me went to neighbouring Italy for the Paupergeddon big tourney in Pisa. There were 214 or people or so, and we went with Rakdos Control (buddy) and Corrupt Control (me). He went 4 - 3 - 1, but would have done better if the universe didn't decide to mess us up and pair him against me in one of the rounds. I did better, and ended up 32.
I certainly could've done better but I ran into an Atog-Fling combo in round 2 - it's an affinity with nothing but Atog, Fling, eggs and filtering, and lost 2 - 0. Then when I climbed up into top 16 I ran into an Izzet Delver and drew with the guy (if I had just a little more time I would've won, and I think I messed up in the game I did lose). This then got ugly because I fell back down and got paired with another Izzet Delver which turned out to be my worst matchup and lost to that too. With a little bit more luck - such as being paired with literally anything else as I was easily handling Tron, for example - I think I could've been at least in the top 8. Well, I hope my luck turns out better next time.
That's weird, I also play mainly Corrupt Control on MTGO and I consider Izzet Delver one of my better matchups. I've been tracking my stats on MTGO Competitive leagues and I have an 83.33% win rate against it. It does take some very tight play, and you have to be super reactive to get maximum value and don't let any Spellstutter Sprite triggers actually work, but going up to 4x Distress (I like it more than Duress) between maindeck and sideboard helps a lot to clear out Counterspells before kill spells. I also have 2x Cower in Fear in the sideboard which is an awesome card in the matchup, and Pristine Talisman both serves as removal vs. a Faerie or Augur of Bolas, while letting you bank life and stay outside Lightning Bolt range.
I've also played vs. the Atog-Fling pure combo deck, and yeah, it's hella tough...even with all my discard spells sided in, it still barely feels like enough.
A teammate and me went to neighbouring Italy for the Paupergeddon big tourney in Pisa. There were 214 or people or so, and we went with Rakdos Control (buddy) and Corrupt Control (me). He went 4 - 3 - 1, but would have done better if the universe didn't decide to mess us up and pair him against me in one of the rounds. I did better, and ended up 32.
I certainly could've done better but I ran into an Atog-Fling combo in round 2 - it's an affinity with nothing but Atog, Fling, eggs and filtering, and lost 2 - 0. Then when I climbed up into top 16 I ran into an Izzet Delver and drew with the guy (if I had just a little more time I would've won, and I think I messed up in the game I did lose). This then got ugly because I fell back down and got paired with another Izzet Delver which turned out to be my worst matchup and lost to that too. With a little bit more luck - such as being paired with literally anything else as I was easily handling Tron, for example - I think I could've been at least in the top 8. Well, I hope my luck turns out better next time.
I thought Corrupt Control had a good matchup against Delver and a bad matchup against Tron?
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Modern
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
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For example today, 05.03.2019. we had a 14 man, 4 round evening tourney, and the results were:
1: 12 Rakdos Control
2: 9 Gruul Aggro
3: 9 GW Slivers (Me)
4: 9 Burn (other finalist)
5: 6 RDW Goblins
6: 6 Mono G Infect
7: 6 Dinrova Tron (Won last week)
8: 6 Deep Hours Aggro
9: 5 Stonehorn Tron
10: 4 UR Delver
11: 4 RG Madness
12: 3 Midnight-Gond Combo
13: 3 Deep Hours Aggro
14: 0 Zombies
It was a crazy tourney because the Aggro/Burn/Infect Guys beat up the Trons, Slivers and one of the Trons beat up Delvers (4x Spinneret Sliver main and Grapple with the Past on top of that). So you've got 2 Trons and 3 Delvers (Deep Hours Aggro are mono-blue Delvers), even though none of our UB Delver guys showed up (there were 3 last week), and our Bogles guys were scared of everyone being ready for them after Los Angeles. The guy who played Midnight-Gond placed 2nd last week with Bogles, but this week the RG Madness guy packed Serene Heart , the Infect guy packed Reverent Silence, our for-rent Metalcraft and Rebels both packed Patrician's Scorn (and Aura Flux was highly sought after and passed around) so he tried something else, and it didn't work out.
The finals were Rakdos Control vs. Burn. Rakdos Control is basically mono-black control with a heavy discard emphasis and red bolted on for Firebolts, Lightning Bolts and Terminate + Pyroblast in the sideboard (and Fountain bouncing with Rakdos Carnarium which helped vs. Burn). You could call it RB Monarch, as the plan is to answer all enemy threats, reduce their hand, slam Rose of the Black Thorn down and/or clog the board up with a fat Angler, and ride Monarch to victory. The guy playing it didn't do so well in the previous two weeks, but today the meta really went his way. The Burn guy was playing Pauper for the first time and didn't manage to secure a playset of Curse of the Pierced Heart - he did great in the first three rounds, but the lack of that card lost him the final match vs. control.
Gruul Aggro was another guy trying out Pauper for the first time, and the deck wasn't his, but it's an interesting take on "how do I get the most out of Burning Tree Emissary", with Naya Hushblade and a lot of Alara block multicolored stuff. You don't see it too often online I suppose, and it's been hit-and-miss in our local meta, but it sure has it's days and this was one of them.
Oh, and the most sucessful of the Delvers reported that Faerie Duelist does have a niche and seems to be playable as a sideboard card in mirrors, as it messes up enemy Delvers, which got the deck a win in the mirror. The UR Delver had catastrophic luck with matchups - it should've done really well in the aggro heavy meta, but ended up matched vs. two Trons and Burn, and that's not really what it wants to play against. Shame, as it would've certainly done better against some of the other decks.
The Mono G infect guy beat up a Delver and a Tron handily but he got rushed in the first round by Goblins - they're brutal, but were piloted by a newbie so they didn't do as well as they usually do - and Infect also ran into me with Slivers for a nightmare 1 - 2 match at the end because everything we put on board or had in hand messed with combat math and we both ended up with a headache afterwards. Infect seems to be really good at slapping netdecks around, but doesn't so much fold to random aggro as much as turn from a straightforward no-brainer deck into something that's hugely tricky to pilot. What's cool to notice in those matches is that the Wither part of Infect and using your pump and fight cards to grind the other guy out actually works, and if I didn't draw a Journey to Nowhere to deal with a Rancored up Blight Mamba in game 3 I would've lost that match and Infect would have had 9 out of 12 points. His version is our LGS rent deck and after a lot of community feedback it's got Llanowar Elves and 3-4 Rot Wolf in it as they really help with matches where you can't just rush a guy with huge pump.
Anyone got reports from their local tourneys? Always interesting to see what metas other than the online one look like.
I play a tweaked/modified version of this deck and it can be pure gas at times. If the stars align it can outrace Burn. Get into the long game and it has problems of course. Still can beat a lot of decks out there.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
So what happened on Saturday during a multi-event open house was that he took the deck for a playtest, which obviously turned into a feature match because everyone loves to see silly decks and all the newbies heard he had a banding creature in his deck and wanted to see what the damned thing actually does. And he won the feature match vs. Domain Zoo. And Banding, it turns out, is as silly as ever. Just picture a poor Arena kid staring in disbelief and asking "Wait, you're not messing with me, he can actually decide how I deal damage?", and you might as well been there to see it.
Got me thinking about randomly sticking Benalish Hero, Mesa Pegasus or Shield Bearer into decks to mess with people's heads (and their ability to attack with Gurmag Angler 's). It completely slipped my mind those are legal in pauper, and them's nasty ole critters.
Anyhow, Griffin Man said he was certainly coming to the tourney, and he might crash and burn, but he also might not (that Griffin Rider does indeed have silly stats, and he's got a griffin who's immune to Pestilence and Journey to Nowhere, too). It's going to be hilarious either way and I'm chuckling at the idea of writing a report with Griffin Tribal being at above 0 in a field full of nasty netdecks
So 12.03.2019, 16 man tourney at The Black Cat Bar:
1: 12 (GB Aristocrats)
2: 9 (GW Slivers) - other finalist
3: 9 (Mono G Infect - rent)
4: 9 (Kuldotha Boros / Monarch)
5: 7 (Rakdos Control) - last tourney winner
6: 6 (UG Madness - rent) - Me
7: 6 (Burn)
8: 6 (UW Griffin Tribal)
9: 6 (Boggles)
10: 5 (Boros Tokens)
11: 4 (UB Delver)
12: 4 (Zombies)
13: 3 (Mono B Ponza)
14: 3 (RG Madness)
15: 3 (Dimir Flicker)
16: 1 (Mono B Orzhov)
Alrighty, here's how it panned out:
1) GB Aristocrats won. It was a Carrion Feeder and Bloodthrone Vampire thing with Rancor to let him punch through, and Blisterpod , Brindle Shoat , Young Wolf , Nest Invader and other nasty sac fodder along with Unearth sort of thing. It can get out of hand pretty quickly and is very punishing to midrange, while its key dudes are rather resistant to conditional removal and burn. The Rakdos Control pilot analyzed the list (found it on the net) and said it's pretty much a more robust Stompy.
The problem was, though, that the guy playing it got VERY lucky in his matchups, and that his opponents got impressively bad draws against him. He faced me on UG Madness in the semi finals, and I had the worst hands and draws of the tourney. I couldn't find my bounce for love or money, and I couldn't find either my discard outlets or my lands, too, drawing into Daze after Daze and Arrogant Wurm after my only discard outlet was killed (after being unable to play it on-curve due to lands coming into play tapped). A very similar thing happened to Slivers in the finals - the guy playing them couldn't find any of his 8 removal spells OR his Lead the Stampeede. He lost 0 - 2, but if he saw one Journey to Nowhere at any point he would've won handily. Not to bash the Aristocrats or the guy playing them, but he did make a few severe misplays in both matches and had freakish luck with the games. He also beat Rakdos Control, because the guy playing that was completely unfamiliar with the matchup.
So as far as GB Aristocrats go - yes, they're nasty, but whether they can consistently be nasty enough is highly doubtful.
2) Slivers, when you don't put them together as a toolbox but just take them back to the roots of 4 Spinneret Sliver main, a few Benevolent Bodyguard, Sidewinder Sliver for offense, 16 lords (12 and Plated Sliver), several vigilance slivers, Rancor, Journey to Nowhere and Lead the Stampede are likely the strongest dude deck in the format. By a mile. The finals were lost due to the luck of the draw, but otherwise, as long as the pilot knows how to bait counters and removal, and what the key sliver in each matchup is, there's no way not to be impressed.
Also, the card of the tourney, not just for slivers but in general, was Journey to Nowhere. It won plenty of people plenty of matches, and quite a number of matches that were lost were lost due to someone not being able to find their Journey to Nowhere. It's a reason to play white in Pauper all by itself.
3) Mono G Infect had a rampage and beat people up left and right but ended up brickwalled by Slivers just as last time. It's nasty, it's consistent, and I suspect that we'd see it winning a lot more tourneys if the guy who's constantly renting it wasn't a newbie. That result there was made by a guy who's only been playing magic for a few months, doesn't understand the rules very well, misplays a lot and is no indicator of the decks actual power. A kid straight out of junior high managed to snag the deck for rent one day and won the tourney easily, but he does have a lot more general MtG experience than the usual pilot. And I'm not entirely sure it's even the best build - we had to take quite a number of powerful cards out because the newbie playing the deck just plain didn't understand them. He wiseing up to the game lately and he's been asking for some to be put back in, but I'm not sure I'd even want to retool it back to glass-cannon land of netlists, as it currently plays like a nasty stompy which has double-strike on all it's dudes, and this is consistently doing good.
4) I'm not sure if that Kuldotha Boros guy is Kuldotha Boros or Boros Bully or Boros Monarch (which one's which ) but he's not boros tokens. It's the silly white flying package, silly artifact and white draw package, and plenty of quality burn. The guy's an old, experienced player and he consistently does well, but his results on Kuldotha Boros seem to be less impressive than the ones on our rentable W Metalcraft (he won and tied for 1st place on that). He also got lucky against me, because my draw vs. him was even worse than against the Aristocrats guy, while his other matches were quite favorable for his deck.
5) I was testing out a UG Madness / Delver mashup, and I'm quite happy with how Land Grant and Elephant Ambush flipped my Delver. The idea was to use Land Grant as a way to have "lands" flip my Delver, while also having more threats than delvers usually do while also having access to nasty green sideboard tech. It beat Boggles (3x Moment's Peace and 3x Tranquility in the side, no messing around with that matchup), won a close 2 - 1 vs. Griffin Tribal (banding, my dudes, is a nasty ability, and Madness doesn't like Journey to Nowhere), but had horrendous draws vs. Aristocrats and Kuldotha Boros. The deck has issues with consistency, but I'm working on it. I could've won both those matches had I seen any cards, but a deck that has such lousy hands means the deckbuilder messed something up, and I'm to blame for that.
6) Rakdos Control pretty much got blindsided by GB Aristocrats, which would not likely happen if they played again, and drew with Boros Tokens. He says Boros is his worst usual matchup, and that he really needs to start just conceding game one if the other guy isn't hopelessly screwed and then mop up games 2 and 3 where his sideboard gives him the edge.
7) Burn's Burn. The pilot was a first time Pauper tourney player and had never faced infect before, so the infect guy blindsided him with silly shennanigans, and he had to drop after round 3 with 2 - 1. If it wasn't for those two things he'd have probably had a shot at the win (but Slivers would have given him a run for his money if he ran into them).
8) Griffin Tribal! Nasty little deck, a lot of flies, a lot of threats, several cool tricks, huge Griffin Rider, Journey to Nowhere , Benevolent Bodyguard , Springleaf Drum into Teremko Griffin - lowish curve otherwise. I barely pulled a 2 - 1 vs. it as Banding made it impossible to trade sensibly in combat, and he beat Ponza with Springleaf Drum and Spell Pierce action. It was his first time at a tourney, he had no idea what to expect of the pauper metagame, and he could've had 3 wins if he did me in (and he almost did), and he also got bushwacked by Burn because he didn't know how fast it was and also didn't draw any of his sideboard. I suspect we'll be seeing more of Griffin Man in the future.
9) And the Boggles guy found out why Boggles don't win everything all the time. When he didn't walk into sideboards, he won. When he did, he lost. It's a really horrible matchup for any color which can't deal with enchantments (and no, edict effects don't work - too many boggles to sac, only one needs to do his thing).
I won't get into the others in detail as they didn't do so well, but the UB Delver guy ran into Slivers (horrible matchup) and both Boros Guys (also horrible matchups) so it was more of a matchup thing (that guy is one of the only two ever to win Black Cat Bar tourneys with any kind of Delver).
Looking forward to more tourneys and reports, and also for the board meeting of the Black Cat Brewery - it's a Monday staff meeting between us guys who run the show, we sort cards for sale and trade, spruce up decks for rent and brew for pauper while we're at it. Very interesting developments lately, we need to find what's the best use for the playable Banding critters, see if we can put togheter a Mono B Pestilence with Cemetery Gate (someone informed me that it's actually pauper legal, lol, and I sure hope it is, as I've been itching to see that on a table again for sooooo long - not to mention perma-pestilence and imunity to Gurmag Angler while also being able to block anything that doesn't fly are objectively very good things ), and see about adjusting some netdecks to a serious meta (also finsih up some more widely known decks which are under construction, so that folks can rent them).
You have a healthy local meta for sure. Luck and variance happens to me all the time on MTGO, sometimes for sometimes against. Its a part of the game and I try to let my opponent know when it happens for me or against them as a game can become a non-game and doesn't even feel like playing a game of Magic. As for a couple of your observations.
I don't find GW Slivers scary in the least. I've been having fun beating them recently with a mono-red Enchantment/Token deck. Slivers doesn't have mass removal or Fogs and they don't have enchantment removal game one, and not a lot sided in on game 2/3. If they don't draw into their protection they are a sitting duck. Nut draws and they are very powerful but that doesn't happen every game.
Bogles on the other hand when I break it out always feels potent and dangerous even in its bad matchups. The key is to get the bogle out and protect it from edicts and Electrickery. If you do that its lights out most of the time. Slamming a Bogle on turn one is not always the best play. (Unless you have another in hand and are trying to bait, if you know the matchup). Holding an enchantment in hand has to be done at times as well in games 2 and 3.
Kuldotha Boros decks are so very consistent. Its not even funny. Prismatic Strands makes me want to puke when its played I am so sick of it.
Again thanks for the report of your meta. I see indicators of the online meta in it but I believe there is a lot more control online, even as I have been seeing a downtick of Blue or Ux Control decks.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
It all kinda evens out because they tie up half of everyone's sideboard so people can't really afford to pack as many match-killers for different matches as they could otherwise, which is appreciated by anyone packing/renting a deck which isn't that degenerate but folds to sideboards. They also have a bit of what we call "the Infect problem" or "Dreadmaw problem" - they also have games where they draw too many Bogles, or games where they draw too many auras, just like Infect can draw too many dudes and too little pump and vice/versa or Big Green can draw all ramp and no big dudes, or the other way around.
And that's a weird perspective on Slivers. For us they're the next most stable and dependable deck after Rebels (who're by their nature prone to always playing the exact same match over and over again). It's all lords, and there's more of them than the other guy has counters/removal/dudes. And there's always some sliver who's a must-deal-with in any matchup. So what happens most often isn't nut draws, it's that the other guy can deal with the lord pileup, or they can deal with the problem sliver, but they can't deal with both. They got their problems and bad matchups, sure, but, as I've said, the only thing that seems to beat them for consistency is Rebels, except Rebels don't beat them for raw power.
Kuldotha Boros would be the close third. Yeah, that deck is really annoying and some folks hate playing against it, but despite all the good stuff red brings to the table, mono-white metalcraft seems to beat it for performance. Folks have begun brewing with mainboard Tin Street Hooligan in RG combiantions as it can break their engine or mess with their lands, but I guess we'll figure out how to make Kuldotha Spammers miserable eventually. Right now we're still on the "let's make Delver/Bogles/Tron people regret their choice of deck" bandwagon. Kuldotha Boros is kind of off the hook in terms of concentrated hate ATM as folks are really glad whoever's playing it isn't playing Metalcraft. If someone actually manages to win a tourney or two with Boros the general attention might turn to them.
However, we've just recently figured out that certain things we thought weren't online-legal are in fact online legal due to some obscure set which gatherer doesn't list (some of us old farts got introduced to scryfall by the newbies just last week). There'll be brewing with Flood and Energy Tap in the coming weeks, and it'll take us a short while to pick the cards up once we're happy with the builds, but we expect a local metagame shift soon enough if it turns out we can break some of the stuff that we haven't even considered due to thinking it was not legal. There's got to be some game in either Spire Golem or Myr Enforcer + Energy Tap, Flood will make mono blue sideboards for sure, Cemetery Gate gives a whole new dimension to mono-black, and Abzan Banding needs to be plumbed in depth to find the exact most silly thing about it to lean on. That's on top of some brews that were in the making before all this came to attention which bring their own stuff to the table and some folks / us at the bar finally putting together some more widely known decks. So, interesting times ahead.
Energy Tap and Flood are both legal due to the MTGO Treasure Chests, which is one of those weird random quirks of MTGO Legality. It also gives us some unique cards like Drafna's Restoration, and the W/B/G Monarch cards which are already so format impacting (but not the U/R ones).
I've been fascinated for a long time by the idea of a "Big CMC" Affinity deck with Myr Enforcer, Gearseeker Serpent, etc, and Energy Tap + Rush of Knowledge.
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
Energy Tap in particular is a card that fascinated me since I was a kid, but it was never really legal in a format where you could get actual mileage out of it. But now it is There's got to be a workable Deep Hours Aggro build where you use it with Ninja of Deep Hours or Spire Golem into Rush of Knowledge (with counter mana open), and an affinity build where you tap a Myr Enforcer to flood the board with Self-Assembler.
The later seems to also be a cool place to go multiple 4/4 guys (Carapace Forger, Myr Enforcer and Self-Assebler) and mess Gurmag Angler up with Tooth of Chiss-Goria. We haven't started brewing it up propely, but Sultai Tooth & Scale (except with Welding Jar in place of the Scale of Chiss-Goria) seems like it could be exactly what Affinity was looking for to get back into tier 1 terrioty ^^ Mono W Tooth & Scale is very notorious in our meta (I hope it catches on), it'd be hilarious to see a Sultai Version (black for Dhund Operative , Duress , Night's Whisper and one of those things which bring an artifact and a dude back from the dead - the only red card the deck would really miss would be Krark-Clan Shaman).
There's no way one or both of those don't work out and turn out to be competitive, but getting the components and numbers right to prevent uneven hands is likely to end up being tricky.
Now that we're aware that Drafna's Restoration is actually legal Pauper Eggs seems more and more doable. And Flood + Ninja of the Deep Hours seems like it should be filthy in some matchups. Shame it doesn't change a whole lot about the problematic matchups for Delver/Faeries/Deep Hours Aggro/Blue Skies, as you can't tap down Bogles or white fliers, and it's not at it's peak power vs. go-wide in general, but there'll be games won off of that for sure.
And Abzan Bandwagon seems sillier and sillier every day. Every day someone comes up with a screwier thing to redirect enemy damage to, from that Ravnica Allegiance Granny to Young Wolf with Serrated Arrows on board.
Pauper - gotta love it. We might put together an 8-man tourney side-event tomorrow as there's a multievent at the Black cat, but none of these brews will be operational in time. At least one of them might get played next Tuesday, as the Brewery is on Monday and the lists are on fire
1: 9 Rakdos Monarch
2: 6 UR Ponza (me, also other finalist)
3: 6 Griffin Tribal
4: 6 Inside Out
5: 3 Mono G Infect
6: 3 Tooth & Scale
7: 3 Burn
8: 0 Inside Out
So, we had a small chill tourney today just to playtest some stuff and that's how it turned out.
Rakdos Monarch is quite strong it seems - it's more-or-less the discard part of mono black lists, Chainer's Edict, Black carddraw, some quality burn and a strong red sideboard. It discards the other guy's threats, kills what it doesn't discard and ride Angler or Monarch to victory. I've been hearing that Blue-Black control is quietly really strong online lately, but this thing can feel downright unfair to play against. It didn't clear the thing with 2 - 0 's, so I could not worry and write it off as a good day for RB control, but I'm getting a bit worried as it seems to be improving in performance all the time and this is the second time it won a tourney lately.
I played a rogue deck which I put together for rent simply because I wanted a deck for Fade Away, Seismic Spike and Flailing Soldier to be in. It was meant to be a fun and different deck for someone to pick up for rent when they don't want the pressuer that comes with playing a tier 1 deck, but still be able to randomly mess up some spike's day for the lols. It ended up beating Inside Out, which has a reputation as a strong deck in our local meta, and then it beat Tooth & Scale, which has an ever more notorious reputation in our meta. The fun thing about the deck is that it's a ponza which is exceptionally good vs. go-wide due to Fade Away, can lock people out of games strangely fast with Goblin Electromancer and Capsize, and it's quite punishing to low-curve / low-land count decks due to Flailing Soldier. In our experience black ponza does much better vs. control, and doesn't do very well vs. the things I just listed, so playing the UR one feels quite novel and refreshing. It's not top-tier or anything, and the build was completely untested and will take a ton of work to get properly serious, but it turned out to be strangely good against some local boogeyman decks.
The problem was that it's nowhere nearly as good vs. control as black Ponza is and my opponent in the finals was a discard-based control with cheap, efficient black card-draw and enough removal to take out all my threats with ease. It's a bit hard to tell, though, because I had awful, awful luck with mulligans, and my opponent was pretty much horribly flooded (good vs. the deck) AND instead of drawing dead cards against the deck, they drew only cards which were relevant in the matchup.
And Griffin Tribal came in third! So, good day for meme decks, I suppose, but on the other hand it's a deck full fliers which has access to Journey to Nowhere and enough room for random tech to have something that works really well against whoever they're playing either main or side. The staples it uses are quite strong, and the creature base, although not tier 0 for either of their colors, is not far enough below top tier to cause the deck to not work. It just seems to be rock-solid. Who'd have thought?
Inside Out is a bit of a boogeyman among the crowd here because it won a few tourneys, but as you can see, one completely crashed and burned, and the other one lost game one vs. me on UR Ponza, and barely won 2 - 1 against Tooth & Scale. My deck was indeed something the Inside Out pilot didn't expect - Flailing Soldier really put pressure on it to try to go off as fast as possible, and the deck needs to assemeble several combo pieces to go off. The one who did better at least managed to beat Burn, while the other one didn't, and that matchup is bizzare. Last time I played Inside Out vs. Burn we went to time and it's one of the strangest things I've seen in pauper. It's a matchup that's bad for both sides! The Inside Out player who did worse ran into Griffin Tribal, and that deck seems to be a random bad matchup for anybody, then ran into Infect which is just faster and simpler when it comes to doing basically the same thing, and then ran into Burn and that time it went the way of Burn.
Infect can't really beat Rakdos Control. It has way more removal than Infect has dudes, and that's that. Then Infect played against Inside Out, and they're kinda simmilar except Infect does it's thing with less hassle. And then it was a tossup vs. Griffins, and Griffins both have ways to screw with the combat step and don't have "the Infect problem" of drawing the wrong sort of thing (anywhere near as much as Infect does). Not a good day.
It also wasn't a good day for Tooth & Scale. The first mistake vs. Ponza was keeping a one-lander (as it's usually fine against other things), and it also ate a Fade Away into Capsize lock in the other game it lost in that match. It beat Burn 2 - 1, but it lost 1 - 2 to Inside Out due to what the pilot said was a greedy play on his part.
So, that's that, a small, fun tourney, two meme decks in top 3, and more of a playtest for everybody involved. We'll be having our usual Tuesday tourney where we expect better attendance, and there'll be a tourney at a different venue folks are kinda hyped up about as they don't usually hold them but they invited me to run the thing as the guys who run that place enjoy the reports and would like to introduce their crowd to Pauper.
1: Goblins 12 (Me)
2: Boros Metalcraft 10
3: Bogles 9
4: Boros Tokens 7 (other finalist)
5: Dimir Flicker 7
6: Mono B Devotion 6
7: Mono B Ponza 6
8: Infect 6
9: Stonehorn Tron 4
10: Naya Landfall 3
11: Dreadmaw Stompy 3 (drop)
12: Griffin Tribal 3
13: GB Dredge 3
14: Mono W Rebels 0 (drop)
Well, this time I took it. People have been buying up the store's Lightning Bolts, Fireblasts and the goblins that go into that RDW aggro list lately, so it took me forever to actually get the cards I need for a tradish Goblins list. Whoever's been reading this might have noticed me talking about Goblins terrorizing my local meta, and there you have it, the little s****s are horrifying.
It was a no-nonsense build made with redundancy in mind - 8 2/2 for R, Foundry Street Denizen, Kruin Striker, Mogg Raider, Goblin Sledder, Mogg War Marshal, Goblin Bushwacker, Lightning Bolt, Fireblast , nothing at all above 2 mana, 19 lands to be sure I can cast two things at once (might have been 1 too many), all mountains so I can always use up all the mana. Flaring Pain won me a game in the finals vs Boros Tokens, Sparksmith won me a game vs Infect and I got very lucky and barely won the first two rounds vs. Mono Black Devotion and Mono Black Ponza 2 - 1.
The deck is very, very simmilar to Tooth & Scale - you use Mogg Raider and Goblin Sledder to screw with combat match and stats on your dudes, much like you use Tooth of Chiss-Goria and Scale of Chiss-Goria. You have stronger pump, but smaller dudes for the (low) cost, but they have larger dudes for the same cost and their pump doesn't need fuel.
Also, I find Goblins to work the best the less fancy you try to make them. They never ever look like anything on paper, so everyone goes and tries to put in goblins that do something, while in truth you just need practice and some game experience to realize how brutal they actually are. You do, of course, always run the risk of running out of gas, and you do go into topdeck mode, but the deck does seem to be able to put opponents into a position where you have a lot of outs and they can't turn the tables fast enough.
Top 4 featured 2 Boros variants, one was a go-wide tokens / flashback, and one was the default grindy "metalcraft" variant. They both did well, as did Bogles. Bogles lost to a Flagbearer sideboard and barely beat Rebels, but otherwise had good matchups because it managed to evade the sideboard minefield.
Mono Black guys both barely lost to me, and both of them due to one crucial greedy play (a different one for each). They did both get handled by Boros, though.
Not that much to say otherwise. Infect had mulligan disasters vs. me, Dimir Flicker did well, Stonehorn Tron managed to pull a draw with Boros Metalcraft but didn't do very well, Griffin Tribal lost it's matches 1 - 2 in very close games - the pilot lost a match to Tron due to inexperience with the matchup, and the deck isn't great vs mono Black (it's not hopeless, but the pilot decided to mainboard some counterspells next time).
The Stompy and Rebel players had to drop after round 2, so their results aren't indicative of much, and Rebels take a bit of expert handling while the guy had never played them before.
Delvers were nowhere to be seen. There was a Delver for rent, and at least two people had a Delver deck with them but opted not to play it. The general conclusion is that it's a bit of a Timmy deck. The kind of person who builds it thinks that since they've got the most broken stuff that they have the best deck, and then get severely disappointed when they don't 2-0 everything and win every tourney, while everybody else just preys on the deck mercilessly due to it's low threat density. I see this a lot - get interested in Pauper, look for stuff that's obviously broken, make a Delver deck, come to a tourney, lose more than 0 matches, lose all interest in the format when it turns out it's not free wins. About 1 in 5 people actually shelve the Delver and get interested in a different deck. Too few people seem to be interested in a format where you can't google a decklist for free boosters.
There's a tourney coming up on Sunday where there might be many people for whom Tuesday evening is not the ideal time, and there might be people who don't usually play Pauper at all, and they all have Delver decks, so there might be half the field worth of Delvers there. My prediction is that either Boros Metalcraft takes them, or some Sliver or other Delver killer who gets lucky and plays nothing but their matchup of choice all tourney long. Or some Delver plays nothing but mirrors and ends up taking it.
Brainz Archetypes/Synergies Thread [WIP]
Solfatara
Play it on opponents upkeep and you get to draw an extra card your next turn. The 3 cmc is steep but if you want to frustrate your opponent, it does the job.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
As for Solfatara - I'd throw a Solfatara , Turf Wound and Pardic Miner Pauper list together in an instant if they only downshifted Pardic Miner. It's a hilarious deck that you can currently only play in casual, except it's opposite of casual and if you do play it outside of a tourney you will lose friends. Solfatara and Turf Wound offer lols to be had with Electormancer, too, but you do need some more early pressure stuff for them to really work (Ghitu Lavarunner certainly comes to mind and Flailing Soldier is a fun and powerful card if it actually works in that sort of build).
Mono R Land Destruction with Thermo-Alchemist and/or The 1R pinger dude (I forget its name) from Amonkhet block could be fun, if not downright irritating.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
3x Augur of Bolas
3x Flailing Soldier
4x Stone Rain
4x Seismic Spike
3x Pillage
3x Molten Rain
3x Slow Motion
3x Firebolt
1x Capsize
4x Sandstone Needle
3x Izzet Boilerworks
And there's a Capsize in the sideboard, as well as that guy who EtB gets an instant or sorcery from the grave and Flurry of Horns to substitute for Flailing Soldier when you're on the draw (and for a more solid threat array). There's gotta be better ways to make this deck, some card draw would be really good to have (couldn't settle on which so I put none in). And, like, it's not like the deck couldn't just go grixis and play Delver and Angler, dooooh.
And there might be a hilarious UR or grixis build which goes Electromancer / Nightscape Familiar into Solfatara + Hoodwink , but reaaaaaaaaly needs a plan for times when you're on the draw.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, just going Goblin Electromancer, Delver, Ghitu Lavarunner, Augur of Bolas some LD, some draw, Firebolt, Capsize and Fade Away (vs. go wide) could make for a very solid deck. For decks with lower threat density substitute Fade Away for Slow Motion.
Swiss:
1 11 Rakdos Monarch
2 10 GW Slivers
3 10 Boros Monarch
4 10 Mono W Rebels
5 10 Mono G Infect
6 10 Orzhov Pestilence
7 9 Burn
8 9 Mono W Rebels (me)
9 9 Burn
10 8 Tooth & Scale
11 7 GB Aristocrats
12 6 GB Dredge
13 3 (???)
14 3 Gruul Aggro
15 0 Burn - early drop
16 0 UB Delver - early drop
17 0 Orzhov Mono Black
Really cool tourney - no blue anywhere near the top 8, and all the Delver folks went and did an Ixalan backdraft having lost confidence in their decks. True story.
Rakdos Monarch beat swiss hard, and the only deck that was as dominant in terms of performance were the GW Slivers. No f*****g around with those two, and Rakdos Monarch was the only one actually put a stop to the Sliver rampage and emerge at the top. Two Rebels at the tourney, quite different builds, both piloted by folks who were around to see Masques Block in person, both did well, even if I did barely squeeze into the top 8 (I lost to Infect and GB Aristocrats in Swiss). 6 out of 8 finalists were at least part white, too, an interesting thing to note.
But then things went silly in the top-8. First round my Rebels kicked out Rakdos Control, and Rebels and Dredge seem to be the only two bad matchups that deck has. Slivers lost 1 - 2 to Burn, in part due to a massive mana/color screw in game 1. Infect took out the other Rebels. Kuldotha Boros got handled by Orzhov Pestilence, which makes sense as the BW deck is a bit of a metagame answer to Boros, but it was also a massive luckout for Pestilence as Rakdos Monarch and the Rebels which went out would've beaten it up handily.
In the semi-finals, my Rebels took out Infect, which beat me up 2 - 0 in swiss. This time I drew into my Icatian Javelineers and Serrated Arrows and we both pulled tricky moves and manouvered each other until I was able to lock him down. Great games! And Orzhov Pestilence beat Burn 2 - 1. Burn won the first game, but Pestilence drew into it's sideboard in games 2 and 3, something Slivers were unlucky with.
And the finals were anticlimactic. I lost 0 - 2 because I was a doofus who played mono white with 0 ways to deal with enchantments or artifacts either in the main or in the side. And nothing with pro-black in Rebels as I was (correctly) anticipatig a field of Burn. The other Rebel pilot would've just stuck down a Nightwing Glider, took monarch and hit Pestilence and Pristine Talisman with whatever and won it easily, but I had none of that in my deck at all, so the other guy beat me handily.
I wish I had more time to share a few insights - Benevolent Bodyguard , for example, does a LOT of work, when you remember to actually put him in a deck - but I'm really bummed for time right now.
Big tourney, interesting developments, and the Black Cat Bar crew decided that we need to look into the whole Delver and Affinity situation and bring them (and people who own them) back into the (meta)game.
The last several 16-man events, 4-rounders all, have had the following top 4's:
1: Affinity
2: Rakdos Monarch
3: Tooth & Scale
4: Tradish Goblins
1: Deep Hours Aggro
2: Inside Out Combo
3: Zombies
4: Boggles
1: Dinrova Tron
2: Esper Familiars
3: Affinity
4: WB Pestilence
1: Tradish Goblins
2: RG Madness
3: Esper Familiars
4: Dinrova Tron
1: Rainbow Tron
2: WB Pestilence
3: Cascade Reanimator
4: Tooth & Scale
1: GW Slivers
2: Boros Monarch
3: Burn
4: Elves
1: Infect
2: Fangren Tron
3: Tooth & Scale
4: Elves
And it's not like there wasn't a single Delver at the tourney, but this online resurgence is weird. If anything Tron has gotten more popular over here, Elves are always present, Goblins are still widely feared, GW Slivers took a tourney, Infect of all things took a tourney... I saw the latest pauper challenge report and there was barely any green at all in it, while Green seems to be doing quite alright for itself over here.
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1: 12 Izzet Blitz
2: 12 Rats - me (Rat Colony, Okiba-Gang Shinobi, Unearth, Dirge of Dread, Duress, Wail of the Nim, Disfigure - pretty much all of the mainboard )
3: 9 UB Delver (lost only to the winner)
4: 9 Oops, all instants!
5: 9 Tooth & Scale (lost only to the winner)
6: 9 Bogles (lost only to the winner)
7: 6 Affinity (lost to the winner and me)
8: 6 Rainbow Tron
9: 6 Tradish Goblins
10: 6 GW Slivers
11: 6 Boros Tokens
12: 6 Heroes of Benalia
13: 6 Rebels
14: 5 Turbo Fog (guy was tutoring newbies while they played, otherwise would've placed higher)
15: 5 GW Slivers (piloted by complete newbie to MtG - only one loss out of 3 rounds. This is usually a better sign a deck is silly than when a veteran takes a tourney with something)
16: 4 Familiars
17: 3 Infect
18: 3 Inside Out Combo
19: 1 Rogue Tribal (Had awful matchups and was missing a key card - Wail of the Nim. That thing won me a lot of games in many different ways and needs to see more play.)
20: 1 Mono U Delver (piloted by complete newbie to MtG)
21: 1 Griffin Tribal (piloted by complete newbie to MtG)
It would have been hilarous if we had time for the 5th round and I actually won vs. Kiln Fiend, because then Rats would have won. I think I'll try out a list with 2-3 Sinuous Vermin mainboard, otherwise there's a lot of silly strong cards in there. Sideboard is mostly extra copies of 3-offs, a single Crypt Rats, 4x Chainer's Edict. 4x Chittering Rats, 4x Ruthless Invasion.
I think Ruthless Invasion has a place in GW Slivers lists if not elsewhere, too. Okiba-Gang Shinobi is practically a planeswalker, and Wail of the Nim is silly strong (albeit in the kind of deck it's meant to be played in). These three really ought to see more play.
There's a serious Rat deck out there and I'm probably close to it, my list just needs tweaking.
3-4 Boros Monarch
3-4 GW Slivers
2 Kiln Fiend
1 Oops, all instants
So um, blue's definitely not dead after the bans, Kiln Fiend is obviously not dead after the bans. Nice to know.
I certainly could've done better but I ran into an Atog-Fling combo in round 2 - it's an affinity with nothing but Atog, Fling, eggs and filtering, and lost 2 - 0. Then when I climbed up into top 16 I ran into an Izzet Delver and drew with the guy (if I had just a little more time I would've won, and I think I messed up in the game I did lose). This then got ugly because I fell back down and got paired with another Izzet Delver which turned out to be my worst matchup and lost to that too. With a little bit more luck - such as being paired with literally anything else as I was easily handling Tron, for example - I think I could've been at least in the top 8. Well, I hope my luck turns out better next time.
That's weird, I also play mainly Corrupt Control on MTGO and I consider Izzet Delver one of my better matchups. I've been tracking my stats on MTGO Competitive leagues and I have an 83.33% win rate against it. It does take some very tight play, and you have to be super reactive to get maximum value and don't let any Spellstutter Sprite triggers actually work, but going up to 4x Distress (I like it more than Duress) between maindeck and sideboard helps a lot to clear out Counterspells before kill spells. I also have 2x Cower in Fear in the sideboard which is an awesome card in the matchup, and Pristine Talisman both serves as removal vs. a Faerie or Augur of Bolas, while letting you bank life and stay outside Lightning Bolt range.
I've also played vs. the Atog-Fling pure combo deck, and yeah, it's hella tough...even with all my discard spells sided in, it still barely feels like enough.
Anyways, thanks for all the reports!
I thought Corrupt Control had a good matchup against Delver and a bad matchup against Tron?
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB