Timber Wolves and Dire Wolves need to find their way into one of these products. Turns out that banding ties a lot of silly Abzan stuff into a nasty package for pauper (Aterlife, Undying, Exalted (leaves you guys to gang-block with banding), Convoke (Hey, you've got all these exalted guys loafing around), Deathtouch (other guy dies, Shield Bearer tanks the damage), Reach + Deathouch)...
I doubt that they'd actually reprint banding in a non-online set, but we've been playtesting the banding guys which got reprinted online and boy do they ever work...
Banding + Undying + Serrated Arrows , I don't even...
Speaking of that, the only reason Rhystic Study isn't a pauper staple is that it's a 10 E common. Reprinting it even as a rare would still bring the price down (and boost sales of the set as anyone playing blue in Commander wants one, too).
It's also been vindicated by history and might turn out to actually be playable in Modern on top of everything, too.
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
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.
Speaking of pauper downshifts, I'd kill for Veteran Brawlers and possibly even Flailing Ogre . Those things are enormously powerful in the right decks, the Brawlers would be another 4/4 for 2 to add to the roster, they'd fit anti-Tron ponza strats and they're one of those cards for whom it's a crime that there's not an appropriate format for them to be legal in. Flailing Ogre plays ball in both anti-tron and tron decks and is another silly looking card from Masques Block which kills people stone dead when you actually try it (I know Flailing Soldier is already there, but I wouldn't mind one more of those ).
I left some notorious stuff out for power level reasons. I mean there's a free spell which taps all dudes and a free spell which puts a dude on top of their owners' library, and they're both blue. It was a silly block. But if Blue get's to play Masques Block Constructed in pauper, the other guys ought to get in on the fun, too
I'd sure love to have Thran Turbine in pauper but I suppose it might get too ridiculous in Modern...
I put up the decklist. The only changes I'd advise for starters would be to possibly bump the land count. Don't reduce the number of Toot & Scale, and if soemoene really wants Ornithopters in there, try them in place of Vault Skirge. Ornithopters don't have enough punching power, but in place of Vault Skirges they make you fully immune to electrickery.
Other possible changes would be to the sideboard to bump your game vs. Burn. However, the removal and spell-bomb sideboard slots are pretty necessary to let you adjust your deck for best performance against your particular opponent.
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.
For Elves I recommend Holy Light, that's one matchup where that thing plays ball. Burn is tough as there's nothing in the main that help other than getting lucky with an equipped Vault Skirge, but those tend to eat Searing Blaze. Post-Sideboard it gets better but it's still a bit of a lottery as to whether you draw the necessary stuff.
As for the correct numbers of CG junk, we're on 3 Tooth 1 Scale for our communal rent deck. 4 Bonesplitter. I haven't been at my workplace over at the LGS which is why I didn't put up the decklist yet, but I will today or tomorrow. Those numbers might even not be the best. As long as you don't overdo on the numbers they don't brick the hand up because they both have and further affinity, so as soon as one of them lands even for 1 mana the other ones get down immediately and are also bounce fodder (and handy bounce fodder as you get to use them twice that turn).
I was sceptical of the Chiss-Goria things at first myself, but the more I saw of this deck in action the more appreciation I got for them. It started out as a simple-minded linear deck we rent to completely new folks, but then they started putting in unexpectedly good results and some of us veterans took it for a spin and started winning. Then we analyzed why it's so strong, apart from the obvious high synergy and stats-per-cost, and the insta-equip-also-for-free on the chiss goria stuff turned out to be a huge part of it.
It's just not the same thing when you can attack with all your 2 powered dudes and bump the one you want after blockers are (or aren't) declared, and the game this gives you vs. 1/3's is huge. It's a lot like what goblins do with Gobblin Sledder and Mog Raider, and now we're playing around with it in actual affinity because it lets you get actual mileage out of Frogmite and it also has great things going with Myr Enforcer (and Carapace Forger). Those guys not being roadblocked by Augur and Angler is a huge deal, and it lets you get the benefits of being able to spam multiples of them at the same time. It speeds affinity up quite a bit, too, due to having more 0 cost artifacts to help Enforcers get to the board quickly, and that deck plays very differently when Frogmite is not just a Springleaf Drum outlet.
I'm considering Ornithopter, too, but all the other guys have more punching power without tying up your equipment and trade more easily, so I'm not sure it'd actually work better. However, an experienced pilot who recently aced a tourney with it suggested that maybe 2 Myr Enforcers might be a good idea to top the curve off, and that he wouldn't mind paying 1-2 mana for them instead of trying to cheeze them in for nothing, seeing how the scale and the tooth change the math on their combat prospects vs. the usual suspects.
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.
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.
* 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.
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).
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.
About Augur, people have advocated for it's banning a few times, some even in this very thread.
People bring Augur up because any 1/3 that's worth playing makes it difficult to attack with 2 power or 1 toughness creatures. Since most of everything in pauper is vanilla, this is a pretty big deal against any deck which can't effortlessly increase it's creature's power by at least one. That's more difficult than it seems, or rather, finding card slots just for that takes effort for many decks, while playing augur takes no effort as he also draws a card when played. So people get annoyed with him as they have to look at too many cards which might be playable, but aren't because they won't be able to attack into him.
Should he be banned? Probably not, as him drawing/filtering a card is actually less of a problem than what just having a 1/3 guy on the board does, and there's plenty of those around. Who knows, maybe he's too efficient at it, so some other useful 1/3 could be given a chance...
There are hundreds of overly efficient creatures, the only ones which were suggested for bans were the ones which make all other overly efficient creatures look unplayable by comparison IE "irellevant". Which is two out of thousands of them. That stuff is choking the format, not defining it.
For example?
Myr Enforcer, Carapace Forger, Werebear, Hooting Mandrils, Barrow Ghoul, Frogmite, Mogg Conscripts, Goblin Cohort, Mogg Flunkies, Ardent Recruit, Auriok Sunchaser, Glint Hawk, Arrogant Wurm, Reckless Wurm to name a few off the top of my head... 2/2's for 0-1 are dime a dozen and each one is pushed, 4/4's for 0-1-2-3 are also plentiful and they're all pushed as well, and listing 5 powered guys for 4 mana feels completely stupid, regardless of the fact that they're also pretty pushed, because Angler sets the mana cost bar for 5/5 lower than it is for a pushed 4/4. It's quite anomalous, and if you take it out of the equation the playing field becomes way more even.
I disagree heavily with this reasoning. It's no different from Jund in the era it dominated Modern and where Goyf was the poster child for efficiency. You can go around Angler with a swarm, over it with fliers, ignore it and combo off, burn your opponent, remove it with Skred, Journey to Nowhere, Chainer's Edict or even Thunderous Wrath which would be pretty easy to set up with the current cantrip suite, counter it, and even Affinity can trump it in combat with Atog, Gearseeker Serpent or multiple 4/4s blocking it. Sure it's bigger than anything else, but at the end of the day it's just a vanilla creature in control and midrange's arsenal. And Delver just dies to all kinds of 1 CMC removal or trades with lots of things in the air. Sure they can Foil it or Daze it but then they're behind on cards or tempo respectively, and it's not like you can't play around Daze. The proposition about banning any of them is ludicrous, there's a reason why Boros has game against these decks. What you have to do is print some more efficient creatures that can compete on ground with Angler in other colors. Delver itself has not been a problem for years now, there's a reason why some Izzet Faeries list have been eschewing Delver completely recently.
And anyone remotely reasonable disagrees with THIS reasoning. Print more efficient creatures than Tarmogoyf? Because that's what Angler is, it's Tarmogoyf who's somehow legal in an all-commons format, and Tarmogoyf was ridiculous in multiple much more high-powered formats. The number of tools that deal with Angler is significantly smaller than the number of tools that deal with everything else that pushed - not just playable, but pushed! - in the format. Forcing people to play a meta where only things that kill Angler are playable, because he's splashable enough that pretty much anyone can play him, hurts creature strats further. If you took Angler out, the only thing that would happen is that suddenly every other creature available doesn't look like draft chaff.
As for Delver - he's been a problem for years, and the format hasn't had a serious looking at for years, not bans. Sure he trades with plenty of things and dies to plenty of things, but blue cards that were meant to protect your clock weren't meant to be protecting that efficient a clock.
Fogs were always the underlying problem and banning the most efficient ones and fog loop enablers would also make a lot of the eternal cardpool relevant again, as opposed to now.
Fogs haven't been a problem up until recently where people are abusing Moment's Peace in order to assemble Tron and combo off. Fogs are the equivalent of wraths in Pauper, since we need to have some sort of way to contain swarm strats, otherwise there's no downside to flooding the board like Stompy did with the printing of Burning-Tree Emissary or the various tokens decks that pop up often. Sure, Moment's Peace having flashback is a bit harsh, but it's not bannable, there just needs to be some more graveyard hate on a stick like Dryad Militant or Ash Zealot. Prismatic Strand doesn't even prevent all damage, just from X colored sources, so a multicolor deck or one with colorless creatures should be able to overcome it easily.
The difference between fogs and wraths is huge, because fogs are way more agressively priced and there's no way to react to them apart from counterspells. And they're one sided, so what happens is that one aggro deck blows out another by fogging them. We've been over this earlier in the thread, I'd take wraths in pauper over the current situation. And you're seriously misevaluting Prismatic Strands - multicolored decks in Pauper (unless they're blue) are a huge liablity and fold to land destruction for one thing, and for another it works against direct damage (and costs no mana to flashback) which is in practice ridiculous. Pair a fog that's playable from the graveyard with a loot/rummage effect and what you get is a cantrip time walk that also doesn't hurt your board development, and in case of Prismatic Strands it costs no mana to cast and also protects from burn.
And noone said "ban all graveyard hate", just the most ridiculous and efforless bits because without the need to combat really busted graveyard nonsense there's no need for literally every deck to be able to hose any graveyard strat at all without even sideboarding.
Bojuka Bog , Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus are not innocuous and necessary, they're hardcore overkill, unanswerable, highly splashable, and easy to maindeck. Withoout fog loops and Angler around all they'd do is make anything that has anything to do with the graveyard unplayable. There's more reasonable graveyard hate, and there isn't anything in the pauper pool that takes this kind of overkill outside of the cards mentioned.
The only reason I ever got to thinking about necessary bans for Pauper is Bojuka Bog. The existance and omnipresence of that card makes even trying to put together a graveyard strat pointless, but right now it can't be banned because of fog loops and Angler. And even decks which have no black cards are playing it, and it's clearly preposterous.
Lol, super disagree. There's both opportunity cost and tempo loss in playing Bojuka Bog in off-color decks, and even in Black decks you can just fire it off once. No one plays Relic or Spellbomb main, and there absolutely needs to be good graveyard hate that can be easily splashed, as all colors need a way to deal with the graveyard, much like there's always the need for artifact hate. We all remember how "fun" Standard was when they decided to not have any relevant graveyard hate on the SoI block so all the cool new mechanics could go on uninterrupted. No thanks, Tortured Existence is grindy and strong enough even with graveyard hate if you run it properly, I don't want to deal with it with only things like Crypt Incursion as available answers. You said you think fogs are destroying the format, yet want to allow a deck recurring Spore Frog to thrive.
You have no idea what you're talking about. If recurring a single card is a problem, there's no need to nuke the entire graveyard. Nihil Spellbomb/Relic main is a must for every single creature deck which doesn't have counters otherwise you'll get destroyed by Prismatic Strands and Moments Peace, or any tron that gets going. Not to mention that it hoses Anglers, Chainer's Edict, Firebolt and Faithless Looting which are also all over the place. And if Crypt Incursion , Faerie Macabre and other things aren't good enough for you all I have to say is that you should under no circumstances be talking in a discussion about power levels. Having said that, I do think proper graveyard hate ought to be more generally available outside of black, just not at Bojuka Bog power level.
To me this sounds like you have a gripe with Pauper and it's overall core rather than the format right now (which is certainly in a bad shape mainly due to Gush) because it doesn't suit your particular vision with the format. I'm pretty sure your response will contain some sort of argument for banning a TortEx piece. This thread has reached ridiculous levels of ban-mania I never thought were possible, and that's coming from someone who frequents the State of Modern thread.
Is it a problem that my vision of the format is that it isn't ok for an eternal format to be dominated by 5-6 design mistakes which hold 20+ years worth of card pool hostage, if it's meant to be all-commons? Because I'm sick of people looking to get into pauper only ever hearing about one, at most two decks, people not coming to tourneys because they can't put Delver together, people only ever asking for Tron pieces and Delver pieces when looking to buy something and me having to win a tourney every time I want to turn the newbies attention to the fact that decks outside of Tron, UB Delver and Boros Bully exist? I've got thousands of cards to sell and 30-odd decks to rent, and the state of Pauper right now is bad for bussiness, bad for player acquisition, bad for player wallets and generally bad. If there's a format that doesn't have to be dominated by design mistakes it's pauper, and it currently is to a laughable degree, and I want that reduced to a tolerable level.
The problem is Gush and only Gush (although I personally wish it was Foil the one to bite the bullet, but let's be realistic), and to a lesser extent Ghostly Flicker. It should've been the banned card back when Peregrine Drake was a thing instead of Drake itself, which is a pretty tame creature when not coupled with blink. It was problematic with Cloud of Faeries (although that one was problematic on it's own), it was problematic with Drake, and it's problematic right now, and will continue to be problematic regardless of what you ban, be it Dinrova Horror or Stonehorn Dignitary, because that sort of card only needs one meager EtB effect to trickle down to common and all hell will break loose again. And it's clear they don't perceive it as a mistake, since they banned Drake and then went on to make a quasi functional reprint in Displace, which is a lot less powerful but still causes problems with any Archaeomancer + strong EtB creature.
Gush is a silly card. I would never in a million years write something like "Part of the draw of the format is that Gush/whatever is legal in it" or "I whish they banned Foil instead, even though I know that would be wrong." That's your problem. I don't enjoy having broken crap in the pool, and as long as pauper is treated as a dumping ground for things that are banned in other formats we'll have eternal format tourneys with 80% of the field playing one deck. If there's any honest and fair discussion to be had about pauper, people who play it for the Gushes , Preordains and Gitaxian Probes need to shut up and back off. Because even if something is so ridiculous that even that sort of person has to get honest about it, they'll still either not see or ridicule other valid points.
And stop trying to paint it like I'd randomly ban stuff for untangible reasons. I dodn't rail against Preordain or Gitaxian Probe at all, even though they are banned in other formats, and I didn't rail against Tangle even though it's a great Fog, or against Faerie Macabre even though it's splashable graveyard hate, or against any number of really strong things. The problem cards in pauper are few and I don't point fingers at them lightly, and understand exactly why they are a problem. And I own stacks of these cards I claim are ban worthy, I played them all in various formats, I build numerous decks for my community which include them and rent them for tournaments, and I know what's mediocre, what's visibly above average and what's just preposterous. I stand to lose money if these cards are banned, in some cases quite a bit of money, but I would not mind that if it meant a healtier more diverse format, and I know it would.
Ghostly Flicker and Displace need to go, for exactly the reasons you wrote, and we wrote before, and it's time wotc understood that. But we've said all that already. And it's not just the flicker loops. The flashback fogs are too strong, Delver and Angler are too efficient, there are pieces of graveyard hate which is too strong, and Fireblast gives mono red Burn/swarm too much reach when you consider everything else that's available to them. That's about 10 cards. For a format that's not had serious bans in a long time, that's not even all that much. And all these bans would do would be to open up the format so it's not "Delver the Anglering" anymore.
Wow, we've gone from banning Gush (or maybe Foil) to banning Augur of Bolas to banning cantrips to banning efficientcreatures to banning basically everything relevant (killing the format and starting one completely different) to banning fogs and now we're banning something as innocuous and necessary as graveyardhate. What a ride.
Not really. Gush is busted. Foil isn't. Augur of Bolas is really strong but not necessarily banworthy at all. There are hundreds of overly efficient creatures, the only ones which were suggested for bans were the ones which make all other overly efficient creatures look unplayable by comparison IE "irellevant". Which is two out of thousands of them. That stuff is choking the format, not defining it. Fogs were always the underlying problem and banning the most efficient ones and fog loop enablers would also make a lot of the eternal cardpool relevant again, as opposed to now. And noone said "ban all graveyard hate", just the most ridiculous and efforless bits because without the need to combat really busted graveyard nonsense there's no need for literally every deck to be able to hose any graveyard strat at all without even sideboarding.
Bojuka Bog , Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus are not innocuous and necessary, they're hardcore overkill, unanswerable, highly splashable, and easy to maindeck. Withoout fog loops and Angler around all they'd do is make anything that has anything to do with the graveyard unplayable. There's more reasonable graveyard hate, and there isn't anything in the pauper pool that takes this kind of overkill outside of the cards mentioned.
The only reason I ever got to thinking about necessary bans for Pauper is Bojuka Bog. The existance and omnipresence of that card makes even trying to put together a graveyard strat pointless, but right now it can't be banned because of fog loops and Angler. And even decks which have no black cards are playing it, and it's clearly preposterous.
Another insight from another local tourney. We held one this evening, and the field was so even that the guy in the lead was downpaired for the finals. He played W Metalcraft and handily beat up a UB Delver in the first round, and I was playing GB Dredge/Madness/Tortured Existance to playtest it as I put it together for rent. If I'd have won that game, the winner would've been decided on tiebreakers between W Metalcraft, GB Dredge, Affinity and UB Delver.
Now here's the key bit: The guy playing Metalcraft was packing Nihil Spellbomb main. It was a rent deck, and I made it, and I put that thing in there (with Vault of Whispers instead of Darksteel Citadel for the second affinity/metalcraft enabling artifact land) because that deck is so strong, linear and pushed that it's a perfect deck to rent to newbies. Playing it gets them wins and breaks their fear that they need to play Delver to even have a shot at winning anything. The problem is that regardless of how strong it is, and Scars Block is one of the all-time peaks of pushed everything and this pairs it up with Mirrodin, too, anyhow, as insanely pushed as the stuff in the deck is it's completely unplayable because it brick against fog loops. So you abo****ely have to play Nihil Spellbomb (or Relic, obv) to even have a reason to sleeve it up. And in the mainboard, too, because giving up game 1 just sets you up to not draw the necessary card in games 2-3, and without some means to punch through a fog loop you might as well not show up.
Where it gets disasterous for the meta is that it hoses non-broken graveyard stuff as collateral. I was playing a deck which could've lost any number of matches against various opponents. I got to the finals with it on luck and skill. But the guy I was playing in the finals had to run brutal mainboard hate against me simply because otherwise they'd be sitting ducks against Tron's. The omnipresence of Angler doesn't help this, either, as it reinforces the need to have overpowered graveyard hate everywhere. Things that draw you a card to hose the essence of non-dominant strats are just backbreaking, and strats which take that kind of an answer are flat out ridiculous.
So as to what I'd ban - it's still the same list, except that if Angler and fog loops are out of the picture then cards like Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus only serve the purpose to brutally hose anything related to the graveyard so much that it might as well not exist. So they should go, too.
In case anyone's interested here's how the rather small tourney panned out:
1: W Metalcraft 12
2: UB Delver 9
3: Affinity 9
4: Mono B Ponza 6
5: Domain Zoo 6
6: BG Dredge 6
7: G Infect 6
8: Boros Bully 3
9: Rakdos Control 3
10: Turbo Fog 0
I doubt that they'd actually reprint banding in a non-online set, but we've been playtesting the banding guys which got reprinted online and boy do they ever work...
Banding + Undying + Serrated Arrows , I don't even...
It's also been vindicated by history and might turn out to actually be playable in Modern on top of everything, too.
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
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 is generally a goldmine of silly good stuff - I'd love to have Ramosian Captain , Cateran Summons , Deepwood Legate , Molting Harpy (tutorable Delver-blocker
Those are just form MM. From Nemesis:
Defiant Vanguard , Jolting Merfolk , Dark Triumph , Mind Slash (probably too strong) , Rathi Fiend , Mogg Salvage , Rupture , Animate Land , Refreshing Rain , Saproling Cluster , Stampede Driver
And from Prophecy:
Abolish , Glittering Lion , Reveille Squad , Spiketail Drake , Sunken Field , Endbringer's Revel , Nakaya Shade , Noxious Field (maybe) , Outbreak , Keldon Arsonist , Search for Survivors , Forgotten Harvest , Snag (maybe) , Verdant Field , Flameshot
I left some notorious stuff out for power level reasons. I mean there's a free spell which taps all dudes and a free spell which puts a dude on top of their owners' library, and they're both blue. It was a silly block. But if Blue get's to play Masques Block Constructed in pauper, the other guys ought to get in on the fun, too
I'd sure love to have Thran Turbine in pauper but I suppose it might get too ridiculous in Modern...
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.
Other possible changes would be to the sideboard to bump your game vs. Burn. However, the removal and spell-bomb sideboard slots are pretty necessary to let you adjust your deck for best performance against your particular opponent.
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.
As for the correct numbers of CG junk, we're on 3 Tooth 1 Scale for our communal rent deck. 4 Bonesplitter. I haven't been at my workplace over at the LGS which is why I didn't put up the decklist yet, but I will today or tomorrow. Those numbers might even not be the best. As long as you don't overdo on the numbers they don't brick the hand up because they both have and further affinity, so as soon as one of them lands even for 1 mana the other ones get down immediately and are also bounce fodder (and handy bounce fodder as you get to use them twice that turn).
It's just not the same thing when you can attack with all your 2 powered dudes and bump the one you want after blockers are (or aren't) declared, and the game this gives you vs. 1/3's is huge. It's a lot like what goblins do with Gobblin Sledder and Mog Raider, and now we're playing around with it in actual affinity because it lets you get actual mileage out of Frogmite and it also has great things going with Myr Enforcer (and Carapace Forger). Those guys not being roadblocked by Augur and Angler is a huge deal, and it lets you get the benefits of being able to spam multiples of them at the same time. It speeds affinity up quite a bit, too, due to having more 0 cost artifacts to help Enforcers get to the board quickly, and that deck plays very differently when Frogmite is not just a Springleaf Drum outlet.
I'm considering Ornithopter, too, but all the other guys have more punching power without tying up your equipment and trade more easily, so I'm not sure it'd actually work better. However, an experienced pilot who recently aced a tourney with it suggested that maybe 2 Myr Enforcers might be a good idea to top the curve off, and that he wouldn't mind paying 1-2 mana for them instead of trying to cheeze them in for nothing, seeing how the scale and the tooth change the math on their combat prospects vs. the usual suspects.
Sample decklist that has been doing great at the Black Cat Caffe pauper league (including tourney wins):
3 Vault of Whispers
7 Plains
2 Secluded Steppe
4 Court Homunculus
4 Ardent Recruit
4 Auriok Sunchaser
4 Thraben Inspector
4 Glint Hawk
4 Kor Skyfisher
4 Vault Skirge
4 Frogmite
1 Scale of Chiss-Goria
4 Bonesplitter
2 Journey to Nowhere
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Journey to Nowhere
4 Sunalnce
2 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Holy Light
2 Patrician's Scorn
1 Scale of Chiss-Goria
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.
People bring Augur up because any 1/3 that's worth playing makes it difficult to attack with 2 power or 1 toughness creatures. Since most of everything in pauper is vanilla, this is a pretty big deal against any deck which can't effortlessly increase it's creature's power by at least one. That's more difficult than it seems, or rather, finding card slots just for that takes effort for many decks, while playing augur takes no effort as he also draws a card when played. So people get annoyed with him as they have to look at too many cards which might be playable, but aren't because they won't be able to attack into him.
Should he be banned? Probably not, as him drawing/filtering a card is actually less of a problem than what just having a 1/3 guy on the board does, and there's plenty of those around. Who knows, maybe he's too efficient at it, so some other useful 1/3 could be given a chance...
Myr Enforcer, Carapace Forger, Werebear, Hooting Mandrils, Barrow Ghoul, Frogmite, Mogg Conscripts, Goblin Cohort, Mogg Flunkies, Ardent Recruit, Auriok Sunchaser, Glint Hawk, Arrogant Wurm, Reckless Wurm to name a few off the top of my head... 2/2's for 0-1 are dime a dozen and each one is pushed, 4/4's for 0-1-2-3 are also plentiful and they're all pushed as well, and listing 5 powered guys for 4 mana feels completely stupid, regardless of the fact that they're also pretty pushed, because Angler sets the mana cost bar for 5/5 lower than it is for a pushed 4/4. It's quite anomalous, and if you take it out of the equation the playing field becomes way more even.
And anyone remotely reasonable disagrees with THIS reasoning. Print more efficient creatures than Tarmogoyf? Because that's what Angler is, it's Tarmogoyf who's somehow legal in an all-commons format, and Tarmogoyf was ridiculous in multiple much more high-powered formats. The number of tools that deal with Angler is significantly smaller than the number of tools that deal with everything else that pushed - not just playable, but pushed! - in the format. Forcing people to play a meta where only things that kill Angler are playable, because he's splashable enough that pretty much anyone can play him, hurts creature strats further. If you took Angler out, the only thing that would happen is that suddenly every other creature available doesn't look like draft chaff.
As for Delver - he's been a problem for years, and the format hasn't had a serious looking at for years, not bans. Sure he trades with plenty of things and dies to plenty of things, but blue cards that were meant to protect your clock weren't meant to be protecting that efficient a clock.
The difference between fogs and wraths is huge, because fogs are way more agressively priced and there's no way to react to them apart from counterspells. And they're one sided, so what happens is that one aggro deck blows out another by fogging them. We've been over this earlier in the thread, I'd take wraths in pauper over the current situation. And you're seriously misevaluting Prismatic Strands - multicolored decks in Pauper (unless they're blue) are a huge liablity and fold to land destruction for one thing, and for another it works against direct damage (and costs no mana to flashback) which is in practice ridiculous. Pair a fog that's playable from the graveyard with a loot/rummage effect and what you get is a cantrip time walk that also doesn't hurt your board development, and in case of Prismatic Strands it costs no mana to cast and also protects from burn.
You have no idea what you're talking about. If recurring a single card is a problem, there's no need to nuke the entire graveyard. Nihil Spellbomb/Relic main is a must for every single creature deck which doesn't have counters otherwise you'll get destroyed by Prismatic Strands and Moments Peace, or any tron that gets going. Not to mention that it hoses Anglers, Chainer's Edict, Firebolt and Faithless Looting which are also all over the place. And if Crypt Incursion , Faerie Macabre and other things aren't good enough for you all I have to say is that you should under no circumstances be talking in a discussion about power levels. Having said that, I do think proper graveyard hate ought to be more generally available outside of black, just not at Bojuka Bog power level.
Is it a problem that my vision of the format is that it isn't ok for an eternal format to be dominated by 5-6 design mistakes which hold 20+ years worth of card pool hostage, if it's meant to be all-commons? Because I'm sick of people looking to get into pauper only ever hearing about one, at most two decks, people not coming to tourneys because they can't put Delver together, people only ever asking for Tron pieces and Delver pieces when looking to buy something and me having to win a tourney every time I want to turn the newbies attention to the fact that decks outside of Tron, UB Delver and Boros Bully exist? I've got thousands of cards to sell and 30-odd decks to rent, and the state of Pauper right now is bad for bussiness, bad for player acquisition, bad for player wallets and generally bad. If there's a format that doesn't have to be dominated by design mistakes it's pauper, and it currently is to a laughable degree, and I want that reduced to a tolerable level.
Gush is a silly card. I would never in a million years write something like "Part of the draw of the format is that Gush/whatever is legal in it" or "I whish they banned Foil instead, even though I know that would be wrong." That's your problem. I don't enjoy having broken crap in the pool, and as long as pauper is treated as a dumping ground for things that are banned in other formats we'll have eternal format tourneys with 80% of the field playing one deck. If there's any honest and fair discussion to be had about pauper, people who play it for the Gushes , Preordains and Gitaxian Probes need to shut up and back off. Because even if something is so ridiculous that even that sort of person has to get honest about it, they'll still either not see or ridicule other valid points.
And stop trying to paint it like I'd randomly ban stuff for untangible reasons. I dodn't rail against Preordain or Gitaxian Probe at all, even though they are banned in other formats, and I didn't rail against Tangle even though it's a great Fog, or against Faerie Macabre even though it's splashable graveyard hate, or against any number of really strong things. The problem cards in pauper are few and I don't point fingers at them lightly, and understand exactly why they are a problem. And I own stacks of these cards I claim are ban worthy, I played them all in various formats, I build numerous decks for my community which include them and rent them for tournaments, and I know what's mediocre, what's visibly above average and what's just preposterous. I stand to lose money if these cards are banned, in some cases quite a bit of money, but I would not mind that if it meant a healtier more diverse format, and I know it would.
Ghostly Flicker and Displace need to go, for exactly the reasons you wrote, and we wrote before, and it's time wotc understood that. But we've said all that already. And it's not just the flicker loops. The flashback fogs are too strong, Delver and Angler are too efficient, there are pieces of graveyard hate which is too strong, and Fireblast gives mono red Burn/swarm too much reach when you consider everything else that's available to them. That's about 10 cards. For a format that's not had serious bans in a long time, that's not even all that much. And all these bans would do would be to open up the format so it's not "Delver the Anglering" anymore.
Not really. Gush is busted. Foil isn't. Augur of Bolas is really strong but not necessarily banworthy at all. There are hundreds of overly efficient creatures, the only ones which were suggested for bans were the ones which make all other overly efficient creatures look unplayable by comparison IE "irellevant". Which is two out of thousands of them. That stuff is choking the format, not defining it. Fogs were always the underlying problem and banning the most efficient ones and fog loop enablers would also make a lot of the eternal cardpool relevant again, as opposed to now. And noone said "ban all graveyard hate", just the most ridiculous and efforless bits because without the need to combat really busted graveyard nonsense there's no need for literally every deck to be able to hose any graveyard strat at all without even sideboarding.
Bojuka Bog , Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus are not innocuous and necessary, they're hardcore overkill, unanswerable, highly splashable, and easy to maindeck. Withoout fog loops and Angler around all they'd do is make anything that has anything to do with the graveyard unplayable. There's more reasonable graveyard hate, and there isn't anything in the pauper pool that takes this kind of overkill outside of the cards mentioned.
The only reason I ever got to thinking about necessary bans for Pauper is Bojuka Bog. The existance and omnipresence of that card makes even trying to put together a graveyard strat pointless, but right now it can't be banned because of fog loops and Angler. And even decks which have no black cards are playing it, and it's clearly preposterous.
Now here's the key bit: The guy playing Metalcraft was packing Nihil Spellbomb main. It was a rent deck, and I made it, and I put that thing in there (with Vault of Whispers instead of Darksteel Citadel for the second affinity/metalcraft enabling artifact land) because that deck is so strong, linear and pushed that it's a perfect deck to rent to newbies. Playing it gets them wins and breaks their fear that they need to play Delver to even have a shot at winning anything. The problem is that regardless of how strong it is, and Scars Block is one of the all-time peaks of pushed everything and this pairs it up with Mirrodin, too, anyhow, as insanely pushed as the stuff in the deck is it's completely unplayable because it brick against fog loops. So you abo****ely have to play Nihil Spellbomb (or Relic, obv) to even have a reason to sleeve it up. And in the mainboard, too, because giving up game 1 just sets you up to not draw the necessary card in games 2-3, and without some means to punch through a fog loop you might as well not show up.
Where it gets disasterous for the meta is that it hoses non-broken graveyard stuff as collateral. I was playing a deck which could've lost any number of matches against various opponents. I got to the finals with it on luck and skill. But the guy I was playing in the finals had to run brutal mainboard hate against me simply because otherwise they'd be sitting ducks against Tron's. The omnipresence of Angler doesn't help this, either, as it reinforces the need to have overpowered graveyard hate everywhere. Things that draw you a card to hose the essence of non-dominant strats are just backbreaking, and strats which take that kind of an answer are flat out ridiculous.
So as to what I'd ban - it's still the same list, except that if Angler and fog loops are out of the picture then cards like Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus only serve the purpose to brutally hose anything related to the graveyard so much that it might as well not exist. So they should go, too.
In case anyone's interested here's how the rather small tourney panned out:
1: W Metalcraft 12
2: UB Delver 9
3: Affinity 9
4: Mono B Ponza 6
5: Domain Zoo 6
6: BG Dredge 6
7: G Infect 6
8: Boros Bully 3
9: Rakdos Control 3
10: Turbo Fog 0