Anything But – Into the Archives

There’s been a lot of talk recently about competitive Pauper and perhaps rightfully so. We’re still not that far from the recent banning and change of the metagame, so there’s been a lot to talk about when it comes to figuring out what to play. However, it’s just not my style to focus so much on competitive play. While it’s the priority to most people, I like to switch things up and look at something more casual in between so that we can get a break from all the seriousness and have some fun. So I’ve decided on putting together a new concept for my casual articles that we’ll get into after a look at the current metagame in our Competitive Corner.

We’re back once again with another full Competitive Corner and I have to say our top three is starting to shape up into something many may find to be not so pleasant. So let’s jump right in and take a look…

Daily Event Results 4/4 – 4/17

Yes, that’s correct, we’re entering into our first week with FissurePost being the top deck. Now keep in mind this is a grouping of the three different versions that we’re currently seeing, which includes the traditional Simic, a Mono-Blue, and the newest member of the family is a UW variant. I still feel no need to break this down individually, as the approach is the same, and attacking them is done in the same way. They are simply going about it in different ways. As you’ll see, however, (for better or worse) DelverBlue was right behind it, only missing out on first by two showings. This can be mostly attributed to the fact that DelverBlue has considerably good matches against all of the most heavily played decks including FissurePost. With Affinity rounding out the top three, we see for the first time a top three that makes up over half the decks in the metagame. Some old favorites such as Stompy and IzzetPost are starting to fall a bit from favor as they struggle a little in this new meta. I think that IzzetPost is the biggest struggle because it will find it hard to compete against a Fissure-heavy metagame. Beyond those top decks, we’re still seeing the new 12-creature Burn deck making a decent showing and rounding things out with some classics such as Goblins, Elves, and Mono-Black Control. The biggest surprise of the week would be the fact that Infect managed to sneak in past our rogue mark with perhaps the highest showing it’s had since the ban.

Here are this week’s rogues…

1.Hexproof – 4
2.DimirTrinket – 4
3.MWA – 3
4.DimirPost – 3
5.MUC – 3
6.SimicPost – 2
7.WeeFiend – 1
8.EnchantStorm – 1
9.BluePost – 1
10.Soldiers – 1
11. JunkPost – 1

A decent list this week, as we see a some old favorites showing once again. I want to, of course, point out once again that the listing of SimicPost here is the UG variant as run by newplan, which does not use the Temporal Fissure combo. In a similar way the listing of BluePost is the version we used to see before the recent ban that used the 8-post core to create a Mono-Blue Control deck. Other classics included the presence of Soldiers, which adds in nicely to the other three showings by Mono-White Aggro. Also an interesting note that we have a single showing by WeeFiend, which we may see increase in numbers with the release of Dragon’s Maze and Nivix Cyclops. As much as I dislike that deck, it will be interesting to see what impact that new creature may have.

Here’s how the undefeated odds are looking…

Small changes this week, though we’ll be more likely to see changes in these first few weeks as we start working with a larger pool of data. DelverBlue still remains the most likely to end in the money, but FissurePost has jumped ahead for the most undefeated showings. Its increase in play has also resulted in it moving up ahead of Affinity for the number two spot. Further down the list, IzzetPost moves up a spot after Burn cooled off a bit, Hexproof dropped two spots, and we’ve reached the point where DimirTrinket has finally shown up enough to make our list.

Here’s this week’s Daily Event breakdown…

Fast Stats!
Daily Event: 5323382
Number of Players: 70
Deck Types Represented: 18
Packs Won: 146

There were 70 players who showed up for this event. Among these 70 players there were 18 different deck types represented with the most prevalent being Affinity once again. Here’s the full breakdown…

Affinity – 9
DelverBlue – 7
MBC – 6
Stompy – 6
Elves – 6
FissurePost – 5
Burn – 5
IzzetPost – 5
Goblins – 4
DimirTrinket – 3
WeeFiend – 3
Hexproof – 3
Infect – 2
SimicPost – 1
DimirPost – 1
GreenPost – 1
MWA – 1
Tortured Reanimator – 1

By the end of the second round, there had already been sixteen players eliminated, including a player who dropped after the first round and a player who no-showed in his first match. So if you’re wondering why the decks don’t total to 70, it’s because of the one player who did not show for his first round match, and therefore, we don’t know what he entered with. Another seventeen players would be forced to drop from the tournament by the end of the third round with no hopes of ending in the money. This week’s condolences go out to dauthawhitemeat, Jamezzz, Knego, limits2, Turboschaf, and XxMishraxX, who all started strong at 2-0 but would go on to lose their next two rounds, which would keep them from the 3-1 minimum. Here’s how the decks matched up this week…

Eliminating outliers, this week’s top performer was IzzetPost, which won almost 82% of its matches. This is a huge jump for a deck that has fallen from favor in a Fissure-heavy world. At the other end of the spectrum we have Infect, which didn’t even win 17% of its matches. Things were split for the low-showing decks such as DimirPost, Tortured Reanimator, MWA, GreenPost, and SimicPost, which all went 2-2 in overall matches, but had very few players behind them. Other high showings included FissurePost that won 69% of its games, WeeFiend at 64%, Burn at 58%, and Hexproof at 56% to round out our top five.

There were a small number of undefeated showings this week, but a decent number of overall showings. Only four players managed to reach that 4-0 mark with two of those being IzzetPost. The remaining two undefeated marks went to DelverBlue and FissurePost. Beyond that there were an additional seventeen players that ended up with a 3-1 record for a total of 146 packs won in this event. We’re going to finish things up here with a look at the 12-creature burn deck that we talked about last week in action against one of the strongest decks in today’s meta, DelverBlue…

 

SimicPost

I feel like I’ve been referring to this deck quite a bit in recent articles. When asked, I believe there are a large number of Pauper players who find something about the basic 8-post deck to be unfair. I too find myself not liking most versions unless they have attempted to do something creative with it. One of the soft spots I have for 8-post is when it’s paired with a creative form of control. For example I dislike IzzetPost because I find it boring and overplayed, but I’ve always tried to champion the use of both Dimir and SimicPost decks as stronger options. To me, beyond the use of Electrickery, I felt that red didn’t give blue what it needed to really have the teeth I wanted it to have. Black, however offered the deck a number of kill spells while green gave the deck even better mana acceleration. I’ve had a fondness for SimicPost, as the weaker of the two, going back to my creation of a deck that someone managed to show with, and up until this point where newplan has been successful with a version in this rather unfriendly metagame. Now I’ve seen a few variations including one that brought in copies of Temporal Spring, which could really use some more love. This is the most current version he’s running (I believe)…

This list does a lot of fun things and is really well-built to handle the creature-heavy metagame we find ourselves in. Take for example the use of Fade Away in the main, which is something that has become a sideboard staple for most blue control decks. This can even get a lot of use in matches against other control decks like DelverBlue, which runs the fine line between aggro and control. The deck manages all of the typical 8-post characteristics by using a lot of draw and to find its finisher in Kaervek’s Torch. I like that it draws in that one card I find to be useful out of red and still manages to use the highlights from green in things such as Crop Rotation and Reap and Sow. You also get additional advantages through Reap and Sow as a bit of land destruction for the 8-post mirror matches. I think this deck is something that others should take as an example for what Pauper really needs. A deck like this is built to attack the current meta and uses things that may be usually considered as sideboard-only options in the main.

It has been a while since we’ve gone down any casual path for Pauper. While I can sit back and blame this on the new metagame all day, I have to admit there’s another issue that’s been holding me back. Seeing as we’re on the verge of seeing the release of Dragon’s Maze, you can understand that we’ve been at a bit of a creative stalemate for a while. While I believe that there is always room for someone to discover something new and create a new deck, you start to reach a point where you know the limitations of the current metagame and just can’t get things moving to find something new you want to do. There will be plenty of time to find fun and new things to do with Dragon’s Maze, but I was content with just continuing to put out content concerning competitive play. However, the whole time that was happening, the casual player in me was dying a little just craving something less serious.

It didn’t take much thought to decide what I was going to do from here. Back when I was writing at PureMTGO, I found myself in a similar situation and decided to start a “mini-series” within Anything But where I took a look at rogue decks both past and present. Clearly I couldn’t quite do this again as we now take a look a rogue decks in every article with our spotlight section. Thankfully with my article last week I was already in a nostalgic mood and the idea was clear from there. While backing up files from my computer, I found my old deck folder from about a year ago when I had to take a break from the game. Having merged this together with my current decks folder, I now have quite the “collection” of decks. This ranges over a number of formats, and there are quite a few gems in there. I’m sure I’m not the only one with a similar issue, but I’ve got a significant number of deck lists that probably should have been updated as new sets were released. It is almost an impossible task to imagine that someone would sit down and update every single deck they’ve ever saved.

What this results in, however, is that I often am scrolling through these many decks, seeing a name, and going, “Huh, I wonder what that is.” So in order to have a bit of fun and get myself some answers to that question, I’m going to be bringing you this casual Pauper sub-series where I go down my long list of decks and bring out some of the random decks from my Pauper archive! This ranges from casual to rogue competitive decks, things that haven’t been updated in over a year, other writers’ creations, failed casual experiments, and probably everything in between. I do want to add a quick disclaimer and note that because these are old, I may not know who to credit them to so I apologize in advance and at least promise that I won’t be trying to claim credit for their creation! Now, for each archive article I’ll take a look at the deck, examine its pieces, play it a few times, and then perhaps take a look at what cards might be added if it was being updated. It’s always fun for me to sit down and break out a deck that I haven’t seen or played with in a long time so hopefully you guys have some fun going through these decks with me as well!

This week I’ve decided we’re going to be taking a look at a deck that was simply labeled as “cogs.dek” and I’m pretty sure it is not of my creation. The deck looks to capitalize on some oddball spells in order to create some fun combinations and utilization of the classic Mirrodin spellbombs. Let’s just take a look at the deck, and then I’ll talk about it real quickly…

Now the main interactions of the deck lie within the use of Trinket Mage and Leonin Squire, which are keys for finding and reusing your “cogs”. Obviously, the use of Trinket Mage can be for finding a spellbomb or land if you’re a bit behind, and the Leonin Squire allows you to reuse those spellbombs after you’ve activated either of their abilities and sent them to the grave. Between these two, the Leonin Squire is obviously going to be the most important. In total the deck only has eight “cogs” that can be fetched out with the Trinket Mages. While this may seem like a lot based upon the fact that you only have half that many Trinket Mages, you’ll have to take into consideration that you’ll be drawing these pieces as well. Much more important to you will be the ability to return the spellbombs to your hand after activation and use.

There are quite a few ways for this deck to reuse these creatures as well. Beyond the use of four Leonin Squires you get the potential to reuse them again and again thanks to Ninja of the Deep Hours, Momentary Blink, and even using Sanctum Gargoyle as additional copies. This can work out to be a total of seventeen uses. If all of these are successful then you can consider that Pyrite Spellbomb can do a potential of 38 damage. Obviously, this is very slow and mana-heavy, but the potential is still there nonetheless. The last note I’ll make is that it’s important to remember that the Sanctum Gargoyles can return each other from the graveyard as they are not limited by the single converted mana cost stipulation, which can be helpful to give you back the evasive creature.

The “cog” pieces are interesting in themselves. We start off with a selection of the three, color-appropriate, spellbombs that we were given in Mirrodin as this deck predates the newer spellbombs. These will give you a lot of great options to control creatures, gain life to stay in the game, and/or draw cards. You can even create an entirely burn-based win condition rooted entirely on of the use of Pyrite Spellbomb as a direct damage spell, which works great if you find yourself in a creature stalemate. One thing you shouldn’t underestimate is the ability of these spellbombs to act as card draw in the early game until you have your colors established. Beyond those, we of course get artifact lands in order to provide Trinket Mage as a color fix, which is something I’ve used several times in playing this deck. Finally things are rounded out by Bonesplitter and Viridian Longbow. The Bonesplitter is a great addition and can help win games when attached to fliers. I found that the Viridian Longbow worked mostly as that third point of damage to turn a Pyrite Spellbomb into a Lightning Bolt or finish off some of those pesky faeries in matches against blue.

The deck is then rounded out by a few copies of Mulldrifter, which will be very important for refilling your hand, and Steamcore Weirds for added creature control. Now for those of you who prefer to watch instead of read, here’s my discussion on this deck…

At first glance my thoughts were that it needed at least a single copy of Seat of the Synod, but in reality in order to find that copy with Trinket Mage you will need to have blue mana available any ways and there was only one time where I was really dying for a second blue. You may also notice that it can feel a bit land-heavy. There are times where I felt heavily mana-flooded even though it runs no more lands than the typical 60-card deck. Part of this is the fact that it isn’t running any fetch lands, which really do help to thin things out. The deck can actually be a bit light on card draw as well. With Trinket Mage you’re thinning your deck, but leaving behind lands. Mulldrifter is a decent draw spell, especially when paired with Momentary Blink, and there are other draw options through the spellbombs and ninjas. Keeping that in mind, sometimes I found myself still wanting more draw! Maybe that’s just me being greedy because it wasn’t occurring in every game. Take a look at a couple of the games I played…

So there’s a look at the deck as is, but when it comes to modernizing the deck, there are only a few areas that I think can be improved. While I had issues with the land base I don’t feel that the addition of fetches like Evolving Wilds or gates are fitting in the deck. First off, the fact that these lands enter the battlefield tapped slows things down more than you’d expect, and second, you really want as many lands to be snow lands so that you maximize the use of Skred. I still might include that single copy of Seat of the Synod just for that random chance when it could be helpful.

The first major area that I think has to be considered is the use of the new spellbombs or other “cogs”. The new, color-appropriate spellbombs would be Flight Spellbomb, Origin Spellbomb, and Panic Spellbomb. These are all pretty terrible in comparison. The closest to being usable would be Origin Spellbomb and even that is pretty bad because you don’t need more creatures and especially not a 1/1. Beyond those I think a case could be made for switching out the Viridian Longbow, but there aren’t a lot of options beyond it. The first thing that comes to mind is Sylvok Lifestaff, which was not around when this deck was put together. The added lifegain could be a nice complement to the other gain in the deck and would allow you to perhaps trade the Sunbeam Spellbomb for something like another Pyrite Spellbomb. That might be the beginning and end of that list of alternatives.

The final thing I’d consider is the use of Ghostly Flicker. The tough part is obviously trying to find room for it in the deck, but the ability to blink two things at once is great. In order to blink two creatures, you’ll need 4 mana available for two Momentary Blinks in hand or more if you’re using one from the graveyard. The deck would be missing out on the abusive combination of Ghostly Flicker and something like Mnemonic Wall, but it wouldn’t be terrible to work in a single copy of Archaeomancer to make that happen, but you’d have to weigh the pros and cons between using Momentary Blink versus Ghostly Flicker. Not a lot of changes, but you have to consider that the deck is pretty solid from the start.

Well, the last thing I want to mention here is what is on the docket for next week. It is that time again and we’re going to get into our first “month in review” since the ban has been put into place. We’ll take a look at what the meta has been like on a larger scale and lots of other fun stats. So until then, guys, feel free to leave your comments below and check me out on twitter @MTGOJustSin.