MTG Salvation

Pauper players will go nuts over this.

So it's Time Spiral take 2!?

Oh, god, yes

This looks like something worth looking into. I've had a BG Madness-Delve-Tortured Existance deck in my meta which had it's fans, but I haven't even considered going RB with it. What green does is get you random silly flashback gamewinners like Gnaw to The Bone and Moment's Peace to go with Wild Mongrel and Basking Rootwalla. But Lightning Axe and Faithless Looting (to help set up) might actually be great.

A card I found does wonders in some matchups with RG Madness is Kris Mage. It's slower than the Neonate so I tend to keep it in the sideboard, but when going up against Delvers and general Blue Skies nonsense it feels like it wins games on it's own.

I remember the end days of old Extended and how I took a longish break from magic when there was no format legal for Pernicious Deed. If that comes back I might actually look to get into Modern for the first time since the format existed. That is if they actually make Chainer's Edict legal, too. Getting Chainer's Edict, Recoup and Pernicious Deed would be a blast, and I could get over losing Evasive Action, maybe. But downshifting that one would mean all the good stuff you need to make Domain work in Pauper, and that would be really good.

Some advice from a guy who actually played with Fluctuator and Flametongue Kavu. Don't reprint Fluctuator. Just don't. Flametongue Kavu is sneakily much stronger than all the later Flametongues we've been getting for years and either does noting if a fomat is resistant to it (namely, usual threats are too big for him to take them out if you cast him on curve), or it completely wtfpwns dude decks and acts as a power-level gatekeeper even if no deck actually plays him. Meaning he either does nothing, or he really affects the format just by existing. I'd be very careful about that card, unless the format is already opressively dominated by some other gatekeeper with even higher busted-quota requirement for any creature to be playable.

Folks who are nostalgic about FTK often don't really understand how much impact that card can have.

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: 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).

As many potentially useful pauper-legal reprints from sets not published on MTGO as possible.

Oubliette , doooooh
Cemetery Gate
Goblin Grenade -maybe-
Hymn to Tourach -maybe-
Agent of Stromgald
Anti-Magic Aura
Ashes to Ashes
Ashnod's Altar
Desert
Breath of Life
Darkness
Equinox
Essence Filter
Gaea's Touch -maybe-
Gaze of Pain
Glyph of Destruction
Goblin War Drums
Initiates of the Ebon Hand
Kjeldoran Warrior
Lava Burst
Marsh Gas
Mystic Remora
Naf's Asp
Omen
Phyrexian Gremlins
Priest of Yawgmoth
Psychic Purge
Riptide
Rust
Sage of Lat-Nam
Sisters of the Flame
Soldevi Adnate
Soul Kiss
Spore Cloud
Stench of Decay
Stone-Throwing Devils
Sunken City
Transmutation
Undergrowth
Veteran's Voice
Wall of Earth
Whip Vine
Crown-Hunter Hireling

They wouldn't necessarily all be played, but it'd be nice to have them.

Mono W Metalcraft

Sample decklist that has been doing great at the Black Cat Caffe pauper league (including tourney wins):



1. What is the deck about?

The deck is a White Weenie which combines certain aspects of Affinity, the raw stat advantage of Scars Block creatures, the streamlined nature of mono-color decks with artifacts that help weenies attack into premier defensive creatures of the format. It's a cross between Kuldotha Boros and Affinity that plays a lot like Goblins, except it has a much higher creature quality.

2. The cards

2.1 The Land Base

Plains - The deck plays some number of basic plains.
Ancient Den - Enables both Metalcraft and Affinity.
Vault of Whispers - Instead of playing Darksteel Citadel to round out the number of artifact lands, testing has shown playing three copies of this to be more useful. It can be replaced with Darksteel Citatel, but 4 copies are probably too many as the average CC and land count are quite low and drawing multiples will diminish the very tangible benefits of being an explosive mono-colored deck.
Secluded Steppe - Two copies at 17 lands seems to be just right. You don't mind playing them, either because they might get returned to hand.

And no more land shennanigans than that. Playing an off-color land for affinity and metalcraft reasons provides enough benefits and carries enough risk that getting any greedier with your mana base is not recommended.

2.2 Creatures

Court Homunculus
Ardent Recruit
Thraben Inspector
Vault Skirge
Frogmite
Glint Hawk
Kor Skyfisher
Auriok Sunchaser

All your creatures apart from Vault Skirge have either one or both stats higher than their (effective) CC, or that + evasion, and they're all immune to Electrickery / Shrivel / Nausea, while some are even resistant to 2-dmg sweepers. Vault Skirge has evasion, provides metalcraft and lifelink, which compensates for his comparative fragility. Thraben Inspector and Court Homunculus also provide metalcraft and affinity, while Frogmite is one of the easy targets for Glint Hawk and Kor Skyfisher to bounce.

2.2 The Equipment

Bonesplitter
Tooth of Chiss-Goria
Scale of Chiss-Goria

* Bonesplitter is straightforward above-average equipment, invaluable in increasing the punching power of your dudes, and particularly good with Vault Skirge (as that can lead to large life swings) and Thraben Inspector (as it turns him into a servicable attacker vs. Augur of Bolas). It also lets your 3 powered guys threaten Gurmag Anglers, which is no joke.

* Tooth of Chiss-Goria is probably the most important and significant card in the deck. It is the thing that contributes most to the deadliness of this otherwise rather simple-looking deck, as it is rarely found outside of it. Take good note of it, and try it in practice - or even better, try putting this deck together in proxy form then playtest against it, as the impact of this card is a lot easier to see from the enemy perspective.

The card reads like draft chaff at first glance, but what it does is unintuitive, synergistic with multiple cards, and very rare. Let's break it down:

It will, most of the time, effectively cost you 0 mana. This furthers your affinity and metalcraft plans, effectively making it a ritual which leaves behind an equipment. It's also a fine target to bounce with your bounce guys, which will let you activate it twice in the same turn. It's basically an equipment, but one that can be both played and equipped as an instant, which means that it'll occasionally serve as a combat trick (and it might even mean activating metalcraft mid-combat).

And most importantly - it lets your 2 powered guys attack into Augur of Bolas. And since all of them can survive a block from Augur, this tends to blank Delver decks' defenses. It also lets you attack with 2 powered creatures into any 3 toughness ones, such as Kor Skyfisher, and as opposed to regular equipment you can "equip" as an instant, meaning that you can equip the correct guy after you've attacked with a swarm. It also adds value to Traben Inspector as it lets him trade up with 2 toughness creatures, and it lets your Ardent Recruits attack into or trade with pretty much everything other than Gurmag Angler. In multiples it increases the value of your already pushed creatures even further.

All in all, the card provides ridiculous value and after seeing it overperform in this deck my community began wondering whether it should be a staple piece in any aftifact centric deck.

* Scale of Chiss-Goria also has powerful, but a tiny bit more niche impact, so in my meta we tend to play fewer copies. All the synergy that the Tooth has is present, and due to the pushed stats on your creatures it changes certain key bits of math. Your Thraben InspectorS become serious roadblocks, your 2 toughness guys become hard to Firebolt, your 3 toughness guys become hard to Lightning Bolt and become harder to tangle with for Delver of Secrets, and your Vault Skirges become harder to take off the board with Electrickery. And it can also be played as an instant, meaning that it can be used as a pseudo counterspell, combat trick or metalcraft enabler.

2.3 Removal

Journey to Nowhere - Most likely the best maindeck option, particularly with Gurmag Angler in mind.
Sunlance - Great sideboard option vs. non-white.
Holy Light - Fine sideboard vs. non-white swarms.
Serrated Arrows - Comparatively prohibitive CC due to your low land count, but play rather well into your general plan of messing with the stats on key staples in the format.

2.4 Anti-Fog tech

Nihil Spellbomb / Relic of Progenitus

Having two of these in the main deck and two in the sideboard is absolutely crucial. The deck is a creature deck with no way to win other than attacking. Without these available you are completely dead to fog spam or fog loops, and you can at the very least expect that from various Boros Builds (Prismatic Strands) and Trons (which are "Fog Loop - the Deck"). They also hit anything related to the graveyard, Firebolt, Chainer's Edict, dredge shennanigans, delve shennanigans, as collateral. They are flex slots vs. decks with no fogs, as all the incidental targets for graveyard hate are collateral, but you are playing them because you are 100% completely dead and helpless vs. fogs and without these you might just rip all your cards to shreds and go play another deck if facing fog spam / loops.

You also don't mind playing them because they work for your affinity and metalcraft and cycle for cards (off of Vault of Whispers or just from activating, respectively).

Notable sideboard considerations

Icatian Javelineers - To take out Gorilla Shaman
Welding Jar - Vs. Land Destruction and anti-affinity sideboards
Prismatic Strands / any etb-lifelink guy / CoP: Red - vs. Burn

Conclusion

That's pretty much the core of it. It's pushed dudes, plenty of evasion, overly synergistic backup, low curve, silly good combat math numbers when context and the metagame are taken into account, some incidental carddraw, swarming capability and a bit of carddraw to keep it going. Mono color consistency and benefits, game against fogs, and all that good stuff. It wins tournaments in our meta and only potentially gets into trouble if it lets Boros Tokens get too many birds into play (even if there are solutions to that problem, too).

I could write up the optional stuff better, but as far as the basics go, this is really all you need to know. We've had people who are complete noobs pick it up and beat up Delvers and Trons all the way to the top on their first ever MtG tourneys. Not their first Pauper tourneys, their first MtG tourneys. After learning to play MtG a few hours before that. It's that simple and powerful. I've seen variations of it around the net, but it doesn't seem to ever show up built like this in widely appraised tourneys, which probably ought to change as it has what it takes to win them.

I'll put up a sample decklist tomorrow.

I'll put up the list that seems to work tomorrow.

I also like the compass vs. burn as it also helps smooth out draws where you have too many off-color artifact lands, as this can happen. Vault of Whispers in place of Darksteel Citadel was in part chosen to let you cast Vault Skirge without paining yourself, too.

I voted no. Affinity is not that horrible right now and there's a wealth of anti-arifact stuff in most sideboards already. What purpose for it did you have in mind?

Yeah, I'm not for banning a million cards, just ones that are obviously constricting what's playable and what's not.

- Delver is way too large for its cost, and it's also in a color which is naturally good against things that shut down creatures strats.
- Angler's simply too big for how easy it is to get him into play, and slots effortlessly into just about any deck, but particularly into ones which are inherently strong.

Those two don't break the rules of the game, but they do break rules of design by with the vast majority of everything else abides. They're vanilla, but just plain too strong, and this has quite an impact in the vanilla heavy world of pauper.

- Moment's Peace and Prismatic Strands are easy to chain, completely shut down 99% of the creature based plans in puaper, they're rather abusable with both loops and card filtering (Cantrip Time Walk!) etc. etc. These two are about as guilty for Blue being so popular in the last year, if not moreso, than anything blue actually does. They're also a large part of why Burn is so strong (I can attest from multiple paper tourneys in my meta lately - Burn won 2 out of the three last ones, and placed 2nd two days ago).

- Ghostly Flicker and that other one enable Fog loops. Availability of those reduces incentive for playing creature based strats, apart from the select few that can deal with a fog loop. They've also been key players in degenerate strats in the past. Chaining too many quality fogs is strong enough that ti warrants a ban or two to the more busted ones, but the ability of multi-flickers to loop anything will still let players break fogs and probably loop other things that weren't meant to be looped.

- Gush is a card draw spell which costs nothing apart from bouncing one tapped island and effectively untapping another one. It's pretty much as if Rite of Flame or Lotus Petal also said "Draw two cards" in its textbox. It's not hard to see why this is excessive and unnecessary. I don't think alternate-casting cost spells are a problem by default, but Gush is an anomaly even among them.

- Fireblast gives too much reach to Burn, and lets Burn clock people out way faster than is necessary. Burn is popular because it lets you sidestep the problem of having to play non-broken creatures into Delvers and Anglers, while also sidestepping fogs. The fact that it's doing well now isn't a sign that the meta is open, but that the meta is cemented as Burn is one of the niche strats which sidesteps issues. But even if the meta was open, Fireblast would be excessive in the deck.

And that's, off the top of my head, all that's really degenerate and tangibly constricting the format that could use a ban. I'm not sure there's an objective defense for any of those, or that the game would in any way be hurt by saying "Alright, we've had our fun, let's play with less insane cards now." Blue would have a slower clock, still fine, no Angler would mean 4/4's for 0-1-2 would actually mean something on the board again, pure win for the metagame, no busted fogs or fog-loops would mean that way more creature strats would actually be viable and that there'd be way less pressure to be blue if you want to play dudes, Gush ban would mean even decks with Islands need to invest something into carddraw instead of getting a mana boost out of it (and Fathom Seer would easily find it's way into decks which play it for the land bounce), and banning Fireblast would take away some speed from a largely non-interactive deck that's too full of legacy staples as-is and half a turn to fast for everyone's good.

4/20/19 Paper Pauper
8 players, 3-0 matches, 1st place.

I replaced Delver of Secrets w/Omenspeakers. I hate Delver of Secrets, it's inconsistent unless paired w/a Brainstorm. But for the decks that run Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse, I understand that Brainstorm adds a lot of synergy.

My game plan is "Forbidian" by forcing ninjas in. The Mutagenic Growths give me a 0 cost way to remove blockers.

test vs standard MonoR 3-2.
no SB allowed.
Lost first 2, won the last 3. Learned the match up.

r1 vs UGtron, 2-1.
SB +4 Spreading Seas. -4 Omenspeaker (Sea Gate Oracle/Mnemonic Wall blockers.)
g2 his Ghostly Flicker removed 2 Spreading Seas from his 2 Urza's Towers. He assembled tron and won.
g1 and g3 he didn't assemble tron and lost.

r2 vs UBdelver, 2-1.
SB +1 Echoing Truth (for flipped Delver of Secrets and Gurmag Anglers), -1 Omenspeaker.
He splashed black and ran Gush, Daze and Foil.

r3 vs AcidTrip, 2-0.
SB +1 Echoing Truth (fizzle Reality Acid), -1 Omenspeaker.
If you allow no value off Reality Acid, the synergy cards are weak.
I used Mutagenic Growth vs his Quicksands.

10/15/19 Update:

Mono White Monkfish

Introduction:
I'd like to share one of my personal homebrews.

About the Deck:
Monkfish is an enchantment based aggro deck that has obnoxiously good
board presence, an emphasis on lifegaining, and solid recursion ability,
altogether making the deck surpisingly resilient, grindy, and fairly potent.

Simple in its execution the deck generates lots of value and has some solid
time tested synergies.

I've been running this deck for over 2 years now, and it's still a blast to run!

Why play this deck:
If you like off the wall "rogue" decks that are surprisingly effective give this
one a shot. It does not dissapoint.

The Deck:


*Card descriptions coming soon*

So, as an italian speaker, i guess that "alpine" is generic term in english and doesn't refer specifically to Alps.
Otherwise, that guide is a fellow compatriot of mine

I don't get it, it says Umezawa's Charm but there's no charm on the picture, only Umezawa looking at you with a sm...
Oooooooh.
That's very clever Wizards. Kudos

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

Finally validation of what I was trying to get across. Its a great day today.

Fathom Seer is a strict downgrade and much slower and less flexible. It takes 3 mana to cast and has to be played on the opponents main phase. I'm glad Gush is gone.

Same for the other two as well. Now when blue keeps showing up maybe they will think about a Delver, Augur or Brainstorm/Ponder/Preordain ban as well. I shouldn't get greedy, I am ecstatic at this announcement.

Firstly, do you know how Morph cards work? You play 3 generic mana to morph them in as a 2/2 facedown. Then to flip them over you have to pay their morph cost, which in Fathom Seer's case is the "cost" of returning two islands to your hand. After it resolves you flip it at any time you could pay the cost to unmorph, not just on your opponent's main phase.

Fathom Seer, while overall a worse card, is NOT a strict downgrade.

It's a Gush that Ninja can pick up. It's a Gush that Flicker effects can double dip with.

Perhaps someone will figure out a viable Delver Arcane package and play Veil of Secrecy and Consuming Vortex and Eye of nowhere and go to town bouncing everything.

I play it in my pauper cube. In a limited environment at least it's just as good if not better than Gush, as are a lot of "______ on a stick" creature versions of spells.


This is all purely academic though, it's not as if Tron gives a ***** about what most/all other decks do.

I think Savage Swipe is the real interesting card from today. Plenty of potential in Mono-G Stompy. And a real unique effect...I've heard of being rewarded for high power, rewarded for low power, but not being rewarded for having a very specific power (besides 1 ala Pendelhaven/Aegis of the Meek, which is basically still "rewarding for low power").

Stream of Thought could be good in Ux Creatureless Control. You don't even have to replicate it to win. Just cast it for 1 while holding up countermagic, shuffling back in a 2nd copy of it or Devious Cover-Up. It's like the Devious Cover-Up wincon, except you can actually replicate it massively if you're in danger of going to time and need to win faster.

Venomous Changeling has potential application in Mono-B Zombies as "removal" against Gurmag Angler which can be recurred with Ghoulcaller's Chant and such.

Imposter of the Sixth Pride will be a boon to janky tribal decks forever, like Soldiers or Griffins with Griffin Rider.

Headless Specter is a crazy card. Don't know how or where, but it has potential.

It shuts off Daze, Foil, Counterspell and Spellstutter Sprite. Tack on a Hexproof from Black or a Hexproof from Red and now we are talking.

Still way too much Delver, Spellstutter Sprite, Daze, Snap, Gush, Ninja of the Deep Hours out there. The meta overall is growing stale, individual pocket metas may differ but I see the same ones over and over again online.

Have been testing this a little bit and trying some different card choices. Just looking to get a second opinion and maybe hear some cards I may have missed.
London Mulligan really helped this deck, TE is not much of a challenge to find nowadays and lots of people just aren't packing ways to deal with it maindeck.

So, this is a Tortured Existence brew that aims to close the game by locking your opponents out of the game using Thoughtpicker Witch. It uses a variety of creatures as sac fodder, primarily Myr Servitor, Mulldrifter, and Trinket Mage. All of them mitigate or negate card disadvantage normally associated with repeated sacrificing. Mesmeric Fiend is another common sacrifice target that can be looped to both control the library and permanently deal with cards that are already in hand. A pair of Grave Scrabblers can really run away with the game with a sac outlet on board, and provide more natural card advantage and free blockers. Myr Servitor itself can wall out some decks with blocks that arent able to clear away enough copies, buying you time while you assemble a lock. Golgari Brownscale is also included to give us a way to simply loop Thoughtpicker Witch with itself every turn in tight situations, and can allow us to gain a lot of life to delay further. Forbidden Alchemy, Mulldrifter and Careful Study help us find cards we need while filling the yard with tutor targets. The shell has a lot of resilience, and dodges edict effects. It feels unique, and perhaps strong enough to take some games off of established archetypes. Trinket Mage itself brings a lot to the table, and being able to loop its effect to find more lands, removal, or hate is quite strong in a shell where one can cast almost as many copies as you can afford.

Here's my current, albeit minimally refined, list;


Probably going to be brewing this for a bit, would love suggestions, will update it as I go.
I'd compare this deck to Lantern Control, but it's really a Tortured Existence deck at heart. You do close games with library manipulation, but the execution and tutoring are lacking compared to Modern's streamlined Ensnaring Bridge centric lists. Creature combat is important, and often a Thoughtpicker Lock is icing on the cake. This configuration does not play hellbent magic, and generally has a lot more access to potential utility cards, but lacks the speed and card selection of Modern Lantern. It's probably not something that could exist outside of the pauper environment, and personally I think that's really cool.

Would love to hear your opinions and suggestions on this. Don't do pauper too often but brewing this a side project to my modern stuff has turned me onto the format and i've been playing a lot recently and grinding out games with it. Here's my sort of WIP mini-primer on the deck, updated for the current list.

This is a grind-heavy B/R midrange deck that typically falls into more controlling roles. It preys on creature based decks, but has the resilience to beat more traditional black and blue based control archetypes. It plays mostly at instant speed despite running upwards of 25 creatures. The black base uses old favorites like Tortured Existence, Grave Scrabbler, and Stinkweed Imp, but dips into red for UMA newcomer threat Reckless Wurm, and its removal package. It leans on Lightning Axe and other discard outlets to create swing plays in combat with madness blockers and dispose of powerful opposing creatures like Gurmag Angler and Ulamog's Crusher with ease. Death Spark completes the removal suite, helping to grind out smaller bodies and utility creatures (see Delver of Secrets, Llanowar Elves, etc.) while also spearheading the deck's card advantage plan. Utility creatures like Insolent Neonate, Mad Prophet and Kris Mage/Plague Witch can be utilized by minimizing downsize with cards the deck wants to discard, fueling repeatable value plays. The graveyard is a resource for this build, dredging often and accessing the cards it wants to see with Tortured Existence. It also uses binned lands to loop Gurmag Angler, and allows you to access most sideboard cards multiple times in a single game, even if you only see one copy. When the deck gets going it has access to double or triple the amount of cards that the opponent does, and doesnt have issues finding its 1-2 ofs and sideboard cards. It hopes to create an "unnwinnable gamestate" quickly before closing games with large creatures or looping Death Spark ad nauseam. It's adept at turning the corner, and heavily rewards good sequencing.

(Sample Build)
- Land (22) - Instant (7) - Creature (27) - Enchantment (4) -



The Stinkweed Imp/Golgari Brownscale + Tortured Existence Engine allows us to fuel the graveyard, creating a tutorable library of creatures, and helping to loop cards like Gurmag Angler, Death Spark, and Monstrous Carabid. Stinkweed digs 5 deep every draw, and Golgari Brownscale just wins a lot of games by itself due to the pauper metagames general inability to overcome life gain. With this combo we can turn any madness creature into a selective cantrip that can be played every turn while churning through your deck. We play at instant speed using our madness effects, and gain huge amounts of psuedo card advantage to win via attrition with the help of our enablers. Defensively, the deck can drop Stinkweed Imp and friends early to gum up the board, strike down threats with burn, control the game, and hopefully pull the boardstate into a grindy topdeck situation, where we have an incredible advantage in most matchups. Some of the deck struggles against hate in games 2/3, though we can fall onto a backup beatdown plan with our efficient 4 power creatures.

This deck spends a lot of time grinding its way to victory. Opponents will often scoop it up in the face of our engine across a finally empty board, and the grind is the portion of the deck you have to get good at maneuvering around if you want to see success. The MTGO clock is a real factor in some matchups if you're playing online. An understanding of sequencing is absolutely key to winning with this list. I'd like to add that the list feels super fun and skill intensive, leading to a replayable rewarding grind. A lot of the time it plays out like a control deck against aggro plans, slowly stabilizing as it brings the gamestate to a standstill and allows your engine to do its thing until you overwhelm them. Against control, you can sort of play the aggressor, and Mournwhelk puts in work from the board, fighting card advantage from enemy Mulldrifters and demanding an answer. I find the deck is better positioned against creature based strategies, which is often fine, as that's not unpopular in pauper.

These colors and the shell allow ufor some awesome sideboard plans that create post board configurations that feel like intuitive functioning decks with better matchups, rather than a pile of silver bullets you have to make space for that don't fit into the plan. There's potential for a lot of synergy, and interesting cards like Ingot Chewer, Mournwhelk, and Faerie Macabre combine with Tortured Existence to give the deck repeatable "spells" that provide premium value when slotted into the engine against many common meta decks. Cards like Golgari Brownscale and Crypt Rats come in against aggressive decks to sustain you, but again, don't dilute your plan when drawn.

Red Madness Creatures - Bloodmad Vampire and Reckless Wurm are secret all stars. They can be played at instant speed with all of your enablers, and are an Ambush Viper worthy of pauper's powerlevel. Wurm is a solid blocker, and he spearheads the beatdown plan that the deck executes to win if your opponent doesnt scoop it up, plowing through smaller creatures with trample. Using the resilience provided by the deck's engine, a few copies can clear away any defense given time, or boardstall opponents for multiple turns with a wall of 4/4's. Bloodmad can come down as early as turn 2 against more controlling decks with weaker board presence, and punch in for a lot of damage. The vampire spends much more time dying than Wurm on ambush duty, but can also be reasonably played without it's madness cost in the earlygame, and is less mana intensive to loop, making it an effective removal spell after your engine gets going. Notably, both Reckless Wurm and Bloodmad Vampire trade up to Gurmag Angler easily with the help of Death Spark, Kris Mage, or Plague Witch.

Death Spark - This card is a whole mess of fun, but requires proper sequencing to get the most out of. Essentially a repeatable Gut Shot, Death Spark is an effective answer to popular creatures from many meta decks across pauper, easily clearing away 1 and 2 toughness creatures for the entirety of the game. It dominates Delver of Secrets, Spellstutter Sprite, and anything out Elves or Goblins. Its a hose against most cheap utility creatures and being able to have all your copies every turn really wins some games by itself. It takes some practice to use properly, but Death Spark is almost always going to stick around once you nab a copy, and even when its not removing things you can be using it to chip at their life total every time a creature is about to hit your bin. There are a lot of turns in the earlygame where you'll have spare mana to use it, and it really shines. It's felt so good I've even cut the omnipotent Lightning Bolt from the maindeck, as it was feeling mediocre compared to Lightning Axe at mopping up larger threats, and inefficient next to Death Spark for smaller ones. When you're dredging through your deck, you actually have the option to order the cards that hit the bin, so you can often snag extra copies of the useful utility spell when you're using Stinkweed Imp to see more cards. Death Spark is also facilitated by most of our discard enablers, most notably Monstrous Carabid and Tortured Existence. It's not too hard to keep a constant flow of them going, and 2-3 copies can be looped every turn with some consistency in the later turns. The best part about Death Spark is that it does so much more than just removal and damage for this build. It's recursion offers a great synergy with the list, allowing you to discard the spark for value, and recur it later into the game, really helping to combat the inherent card disadvantage that some of the cards the deck uses inflict. Paying a mere 1 on upkeep to pseudo-draw a card is an incredible effect to have in a list full of discard outlets.

Heres a few relevant synergies and ways to enable Death Spark's recursion for anyone who hasnt played with the card:
- Undertaker - Discard Death Spark and a creature using another source to effectively pay 1B to tutor a creature from your graveyard every turn.
- Mad Prophet - Discard Death Spark to Mad Prophet and a creature using another source to effectively pay 1 to draw a card every turn.
- Insolent Neonate - Discard Death Spark to pay for an Insolent Neonate activation. Because of the sequencing of the Neonate's ability, Death Spark is put into the graveyard below Insolent Neonate, resulting in an easy recurrence that allows you to pay 1 any future turn to recoup some of your card advantage loss on the Neonate's ability.

- Recur Death Spark after its put into your yard by any means by timing activations of any discard outlet like Tortured Existence, Undertaker, Mad Prophet, etc. to place creature cards above it. (Be careful not to dredge away creatures you're using to recur it if you're dredging at instant speed with Insolent Neonate or Monstrous Carabid.)
- Recur Death Spark after its put into your yard by any means by cycling a Monstrous Carabid.


Undertaker - My current version is happily running a pair of Undertakers. This card is functionally very similar to Tortured Existence and is in many ways copies 5-8, chipping in for consistency. The two drop however has the advantage of being a creature. This allows you to recur him from the graveyard with our Grave Scrabblers if you need to get the engine running, and can be grabbed in response to your Tortured Existence being removed, allowing you to continue your gameplan in dire situations. He can even be set up beside a Tortured Existence to allow us to exchange extra lands or spells (like the self recurring Death Spark) for creatures. Well worth some number in the main.

Monstrous Carabid - I'll admit, it took me a while to really understand how good cycling creatures like Monstrous Carabid and Horror of the Broken Lands are in this deck. Part of it is that I didnt quite get at first that it needs creatures in the bin, and often, our opponent just isn't going to oblige. Both Tortured Existence and Undertaker require a target, and sometimes you find yourself sitting on a handful of Grave Scrabblers with nothing to recur. Monstrous Carabid allows us to have something to do during our often durdly early turns, cycling itself for no immediate drawback and thinning our deck. When we do need a target for our engines, you maintain card parity in the graveyard by simply grabbing the Carabid, and cycling it right back. Not only does this allow us to cast our Madness creatures, it ends up creating tons of card advantage, and is something you're always happy to do when you have spare mana. It helps enable Death Spark recursions with ease, and is a great target for Grave Scrabbler/Tortex if you dont particularly need anything and you want to dig for answers instead. Carabid also allows us to get as many dredges as we can afford, at instant speed to boot. In an absolute worst case scenario, his 4/4 body isnt even irrelevant in pauper, trumping 90% of the creature base. Probably one of the secret best cards of the deck.

Mad Prophet - So, my defense of UMA draft chaff. Frankly, I wish this card was Merfolk Looter, but red doesn't have great repeatable rummage effects at common. Mad Prophet's mana cost is excessive, and I wont debate that. However, I think an on-board rummage brings something to this deck that it truly needs. Being able to rummage enables a ton of relevant interactions with cards like Death Spark, Stinkweed Imp, and any madness creature. The card advantage provided by turning the negative half of rummaging into an upside is invaluable, and I think its well worth running the clunky 4 drop to get. I considered and tested Rummaging Goblin in his place, but found it much worse. Both of these creatures are bolt bait. They die a lot, and have a lot of removal pointed at them. Now, this isnt too much of an issue for a deck that has as much recursion as this one does, but it means Haste is relevant text, allowing us to get at least some immediate use every time it's cast. Being a 2/2 is also relevant, allowing Mad Prophet to block much better than the goblin, live the occasional Crypt Rats activation from our side of the board, and dissuade Gut Shot effects, so Mad Prophet made the cut instead.

Rakdos Carnarium - I have not built a lot of pauper manabases. I'll be the first to admit it. However, I do think Rakdos Carnarium is an awesome include here. This is a deck that is very greedy with its mana, and it likes having 5-8 mana every turn in the later stages of the game to really get the most out of the engine. Its also a deck that really wants a lot of effects, cramming outlets/dredgers/value/removal/etc , and happens to pass up on turn 2 plays for the most part, or put another 1 drop into play. Carnarium seems like a no brainer, allowing us to lower the total land count and still see enough sources. You can also cheekily use it to get Madness creatures into play by discarding due to hand size without missing land drops, but that's a rare application.

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Lemme know what you think, Is this any good? Am I just a crazy Modern player who has no idea what hes talking about? Any neat cards i've missed? Been playing this a ton on MTGO recently with more success than I expected. How could I improve it?