Well after a brief and unexpected hiatus we’re back in action and this week we’re going to be finally jumping into a look at Pauper’s new metagame. In my last article we took a look at what things looked like on a larger scale. After what actually turned out to be a period of ten weeks of a tracked playing environment, I took the time to sit down and create a summary of what things looked like on a larger scale. The way that the planets aligned had this article coming out around the same time as two other major events for Pauper. The first and more insignificant by comparison would be the release of Gatecrash. This second set in the Return to Ravnica block has so far had almost no impact, but either way it was significantly dwarfed by the update to the Banned and Restricted (BnR) list for Pauper. For the most part I decided to avoid this discussion in order to focus on the numbers. Even now I’m going to do my best to minimize the impact of this announcement. Instead of wasting time talking about my opinions on the subject, I’m going to just accept what is and focus instead on what the current metagame has become. If you’re looking for a great discussion and opinions on the new BnR changes then I recommend checking out this episode of the Pauper’s Cage podcast.
When the announcement came, we all knew that significant changes were coming our way. It wouldn’t take much to quickly realize that by banning both Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens, Wizards was going to be removing Storm variants completely from the playing environment. Updates to the BnR list are significant in almost any format, and it usually signals a changing of the guard. If you consider for a minute a change to the list for Legacy Tribal Wars or even 100 Card Singleton, you’ll find that these will have significantly less impact, seeing as they are no longer supported formats and are played entirely by the community in casual or player run events. I’m sure that I am not alone in seeing an update to one of these formats and scratching my head wondering why effort was made for this type of update when the format sees no support. When you move toward formats that are more popular and do actually have Daily Events then you’ll find that a particular change will cause great waves throughout the Internet.
While I know that not all of my readers are familiar with eternal formats like Legacy, but for those who are, just imagine for a minute what type of impact the banning of Force of Will would have. This type of major change may be an exaggerated example when taken in comparison to what change was made for Pauper, but the concept is similar for a few reasons. Consider for a minute the BnR list for Pauper before this recent update. This list was the smallest seen in a supported format with only Frantic Research and Cranial Plating taking a hit. These were necessary bans and kept Temporal Fissure storm and Affinity decks in check. For years the format held its own with only these two simple restrictions keeping things in line. Updates to the format’s metagame were entirely influenced by new set releases or some creative brew by one player or another. After years of being a sleeping giant, Wizards finally stepped in and decided that perhaps the format got a bit stale (not an official reason from Wizards; however, I feel it’s a pretty good assumption) and that change had to be made.
When you look at the two deck types that were directly affected by this update, you clearly see that Infect was reigned in while Storm was completely killed beyond Temporal Fissure. This meant big things, not only for decks that held great matches against these deck types, but also for simple card choice. Now decks like IzzetPost no longer needed to waste spots in their maindeck or even sideboards to compensate for the swarm of goblin tokens that they had previously been expecting to see. With the entire metagame up in the air, people would fall back on old favorites in order to see themselves through such tough times. Continued discussion over right vs. wrong has continued throughout the Internet and no matter which side you were on, everyone had one bottom line focus… “We’re only a few days in. Let’s wait and see.”
Well folks, we’ve finally reached a reasonable point where we can get a solid idea as to what we may expect to see from here out in Pauper. I guess that old saying, “everything happens for a reason,” fits well here. With the delay in the posting of my month in review article, it provided me with a great opportunity to gather a bit of additional information with regard to where we’re heading. Had I put another article up, the information with regard to the metagame would have been actually divided between pre- and post-ban. Now we’re going to be able to take a look at three weeks worth of information and get perhaps a clearer picture of where things are. Before we get into things, I’m just taking this opportunity to spell out a few concepts. The first is that we will definitely get a chance to do another “month in review” type of article with the new meta’s data. While three weeks does provide us with a more solid look at where the meta is heading, it still is relatively new. There is still plenty of time for things to change in Pauper and that will give us a great point to review. The second thing I’m noting is that, because this is going to cover three weeks in a “special episode” kind of way, there will be no specific Competitive Corner this week. In fact this whole article is more like an extended Competitive Corner! So let’s jump right in and take a look at what the breakdown was for the past three weeks…
Daily Event Results 2/7 – 2/27
Okay, there are so many things to talk about here. Let’s start off with a few technical notes, shall we? If you’ll notice, we are once again using the rogue system, and any deck that showed up fewer than seven times during this period is being compacted for the sake of seeing a clearer picture of the metagame. It looks a bit skewed here because there is an extra week’s worth of data. The other thing you’ll note is the different look at the table. In an attempt to compress things, I’ve abbreviated it to simply show where the totals lay on the scale.
The next thing I want to talk about before we get into what we’re seeing here is a clarification of titles. For those observant readers, you may notice there are two slices of this pie that are not labeled. Again, this was removed for the sake of formatting, but they represent Infect and Burn, each of which approximated 1% of the metagame shown. You can still see these totals at the end of the table. Now let’s talk about some names. In the pre-ban metagame, we knew there to be three variations of storm decks that used Temporal Fissure. I had classified these as FissureStorm (the variant with familiars), EnchantStorm (the version using land enchantments), and SimicPost (the UG variant in an 8-post shell). With the increase in power from the recent bannings, there has been a new variation of Temporal Fissure storm in an 8-post shell. As such I’ve altered the names slightly. EnchantStorm remains the same; however, FissureStorm has been re-titled as FamiliarStorm, and SimicPost is now covered under a broader FissurePost typing. I won’t go into details over these just yet because that will get us a bit off-topic, but we’ll get to it soon, I promise!
So let’s look back at this table. Things are pretty similar to what we’re used to with three decks holding a majority of the metagame. With the removal of Storm as a deck type, it would see that Stompy has stepped up and taken its place. There had been a few rare occasions pre-banning where Stompy did manage to have a strong week, but now it would seem that it really has solidified its place. As the top-played deck, this week it seemed like a safe choice for players who weren’t quite sure what this new metagame would hold. In second place was DelverBlue, which I had said during last week’s article was going to be the deck to play in order to combat the metagame (although that didn’t really take into account Stompy being a top-tier deck). Beyond these three regular contenders, it has to be noted that Affinity has become a monster. While the deck had a bit of a slow start, it came up big at the end and was only 20 showings away from IzzetPost. Never has Affinity shown so strong and it could be a result of the deck managing well against the Fissure storm variants. When playing against a deck that looks to reset your board state, it seems common sense to play a deck that can rebuild as fast as the opponent can dismantle. This is also the reason we’ve seen an influx of other quite names like Elves and Goblins. These decks have really managed to hold out because not only could they hold against the oppressive bump of Fissure wins, but also against long term contenders like DelverBlue. Here are the rogue names that were left off this list…
1. MonoBlack Control – 5
2. BluePost – 5
3. GreenPost- 2
4. Graveyard Gruul – 2
5. RG/LD – 1
6. UB Control – 1
7. Stinkweed Zombies – 1
8. Tortured Reanimator – 1
9. Soldiers – 1
10. DimirTrinket – 1
11. SimicPost – 1
I have to say, as a whole, I expected a larger number of rogue decks as the new meta unfolded. With room to experiment thanks to the void left behind by Storm, it seemed a ripe opportunity for adventurous players to step out with their favorite rogue. We did see a few cool things show up, but overall none of them really took off. I was also surprised things like Mono-Black Control and Stinkweed Zombies, two deck types that are known for their ability to destroy a hand, didn’t show up more. Even though these decks don’t have great matches against the new top three they are able to hold ground when it comes to Fissure variants and we did see a period where these were quite plentiful. Also allow me to note the obvious, but I already discussed changing the classification of SimicPost, and this one was not a Fissure version. There were two new contenders that showed up amongst some old favorites, which are classified as RGLD and Graveyard Gruul. Let’s take a look at these decks…
RG/LD by ScarletMacaw
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This deck, which showed up in only the second day of the new meta, was built as a direct counter to what ScarletMacaw correctly identified as the new world order. With 15 maindeck land destruction spells it is hard to argue that this deck wasn’t built entirely to counter 8-post decks. This is a great strategy, as 8-post is a pretty safe deck to play when you’re in an unfamiliar metagame. My favorite part of the deck, however, wasn’t the huge land destruction base, but instead, the sideboard. This could still be a great option with the recent increase of Affinity decks, as you see that all 15 sideboard cards (not counting the flashback cost on Ancient Grudge) counter the deck incredibly well. Play this deck and beat down on all 8-post decks, and then if you find yourself against Affinity? Well, simply side out 15 land destruction spells for 15 artifact destruction spells. Now that’s what I call stereotyping. I’m guessing the reason this type of deck hasn’t won more games has to do with the fact that as the new meta played out, we saw 35% of the meta held by DelverBlue and Stompy, which this doesn’t really counter that well. That being said. the deck looks like a lot of fun and I feel like it could be better fleshed out. If the sideboard was made a bit less anti-Affinity in favor of some burn/kill and the creature base was switched up to put in a few better bodies you may have something. With the use of the mana dorks to ramp, you’d think it’d be a great spot for an Ulamog’s Crusher or two. The Durkwood Baloth is about the size you want, but think about the options like Blastoderm that can’t be targeted (although it’s only temporary) or Kavu Primarch since it’s a little bigger. Win or lose, the deck looks like it could be quite frustrating to play against.
Graveyard Gruul by Fliphead
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Now I haven’t had a chance to play this deck, so I’m not going to make a fool of myself trying to explain how it runs. The deck is incredibly creative, as Fliphead came up with a bunch of really cool graveyard interactions. This deck has a selection of discard, but can capitalize on building up his own graveyard through things like threshold, flashback, and even unearth all of which take advantage of replaying cards from your graveyard. The deck is set up for some awesome card advantage situations as things like Faithless Looting allow you to draw cards and then be able to still play what you throw away. I have to say that I’m looking forward to getting a chance to run this because I’m a bit confused by the use of Acorn Harvest. I have to make a quick shout out here to MTGO Academy’s own Jason Moore who came up with the really cool name for the deck. Seeing this at first, I was really unsure where it was going. I think ultimately this will end up playing out in a similar way that the RB version of Tortured Reanimator did with E. Hustle. The deck was strong and could win a lot of events, but there were so many interactions that it took a lot of practice and solid play to make it work. This type of deck may not be suited for the newer player to the game or even to the format for that matter.
The type of creativity that we see in these two decks is what I had hoped to see more of as the new meta unfolded. I guess the argument could be made that we are still sitting in an area that is relatively untested. There is still a lot of room for people to innovate or find some new piece to this pie, but at the beginning, things were looking pretty bleak. What most people were complaining about was the influx of the different Temporal Fissure variants and 8-post decks. At first it would seem that these had heavily oppressed the meta and that things had gone back the way of FissureStorm when Frantic Search was still alive and well in the format. Early reviews of the new meta showed that these two deck types accounted for 41% of the decks winning in Pauper. Here’s how things breaks down at this point…
As you can see, things calmed down quite a bit, but this may be a bit misleading. You have to remember that this information is taken from the Daily Event results that we’re provided each day by Wizards. This is an incomplete listing of the full meta and therefore the complaining of regular grinders might not be just complaining. There is always a chance that we’re seeing a lot of these deck types showing up in events and just not winning. A deck doesn’t have to win a significant number of games in order to be oppressive. In my last article I had determined that only approximately 11% of the metagame was made up of Infect decks and yet it had been targeted for bannings because of the speed and presence the deck put forth. Here we see that Temporal Fissure variants aren’t that far behind at 10% of the metagame. As part of the regular Competitive Corner, I use the spotlight section to focus out a specific Daily Event that was not listed by Wizards to see how things broke down on a larger scale. While we’re not following a traditional Competitive Corner this week, I did still take a look at a Daily Event and break it down. We’re not going into a lot of details over this, but I want to show you the resulting numbers…
This Daily was one that was a few weeks into the new meta, so it shows that things have calmed down quite a bit when it comes to Fissure variants. In total there were only three players in this event running Fissure variants (two FissurePost and one FamiliarStorm) and these managed to combine for two 3-1 finishes. For those who may be curious, FamiliarStorm’s only loss came at the hands of DelverBlue and the FissurePost decks lost to DelverBlue players as well. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who sees the balance between how oppressive Fissure variants were at the beginning and yet how many DelverBlue decks ended up on our total. This seems like an ideal time to take a look at what types of Fissure decks I’ve been referring to. We’re not going to go into a significant amount of detail over how these decks work, but I do think that everyone should be aware of what they should be on the lookout for.
FamiliarStorm by Corrado
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This is the most traditional variation of Temporal Fissure storm, which looks to use the old Ravnica Pauper duals in order to generate additional mana from land untap spells like Cloud of Faeries and using familiars to reduce spell costs. This is similar to the old version, which caused the banning of Frantic Search since it granted the deck the significant ability for card filtration and another method of untapping lands for profit. There have been some interesting changes to the deck over time, such as the inclusion of the Archaeomancer combo to help generate more card advantage and mana. It can be somewhat difficult to attack this type of deck, but usually attacking the mana support is a solid idea. Removal of the Ravnica duals and familiar creatures makes it increasingly difficult for the storm to occur. As with any Fissure deck, the win condition doesn’t come from the storm, but instead from steady damage over time with the 1- and 2-power creatures once you’ve cleared the blockers off the board with Temporal Fissure.
EnchantStorm by leitluk
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This deck was originally “made famous” by DoGBuiscut, who ran the deck including a single Grapeshot. Obviously that can no longer be the case, but I have always felt these lists were more concise than the FamiliarStorm lists. The best way to deal with their manabase comes down to destroying lands, which seems easy to do in a meta that runs Post-heavy. The deck really ran clean during the end period of the last meta because it was no longer favorable to run land destruction in a sideboard since there were bigger fish to fry. Now that Post is back and land destruction is more popular, the deck drops once again, but the list still works well. As you can see, this one takes more reliance upon the Archaeomancer combination so some instant-speed graveyard removal can mess that plan up. Once again you see that this list looks to use Mulldrifters to carry the deck for most of its damage in the end.
Simic FissurePost by mysza
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As much as I dislike FissureStorm decks and the oppressive nature of having an opponent completely reset your board state to zero, I have always admired the creative thought process that went into the creation of the 8-post variant. Unlike the Familiar and Enchantment versions of the deck, this deck can bring in other win conditions that are more traditional to 8-post such as the Ulamog’s Crusher and Kaervek’s Torch so that the game doesn’t take forever to get underway. The deck even has the potential to get a fast win off of these without the opponent even seeing a Temopral Fissure. Older versions included other draw/ramp such as Explore, which fits into the idea of card advantage from different angles in one spell. I’ve tried several times to successfully mesh together two different deck types, but never has it been as smooth as this was. The deckbuilder in me has great admiration (and perhaps a bit of jealousy) for the individual who managed to see how these two pieces would work together so smoothly.
Blue Fissurepost by rc6311
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This new version of FissurePost is the basic reason that I’ve decided to rename all of my Fissure decks. While not as strong as the Simic version this “mono-blue” version uses a similar idea, using locus lands to help generate the mana base for storms and Ulamog’s Crusher as a bigger finisher. The deck brings in a very light black splash to bring in Nightscape Familiar. This is an attempt to make up for the ability of green to help ramp up a mana base, but there is also some small benefit of being able to reuse Forbidden Alchemy. There was another version that I cannot seem to track down at this moment that uses less of a black splash. As you can see this deck keeps going with the Ravnica dual and is easily based around being able to tap for a significant amount of mana even if it’s just to get that crusher into play. A very interesting version, but it just doesn’t hold up as well as its Simic cousin since that version brings in more win conditions and a different reliance upon certain pieces.
As a quick note, I know there is some “debate” on how things should be grouped. I personally think it works to combine these two decks as FissurePost since they hold a similar approach to the storm. I know that some people will disagree and want things separated, so for those who are wondering, there were a total of 26 decks that I classified as “FissurePost” from this pool of data. Of those 26 decks, there were only 3 that were variations on the “mono-blue” version of the FissurePost deck type.
I’m sure at this point, some people are looking at this and thinking that this is all well and good, but if the number of Fissure decks (52) has decreased as the metagame has progressed, then why are we wasting so much time on this? Well, with the absence of the other Storm variants in the metagame, we’re sitting here with very few options available to Pauper players for combo decks. Beyond FissureStorm the options basically come down to WeeFiend and the gimped version of Infect. In comparison the one deck you’re most likely to come across out of these three is going to be Fissure. Our current meta is very heavy on the aggro these days. Just take a look at the top four decks in this new meta and you’ll see the only non-aggro base is going to be IzzetPost. To generalize let’s take a look at rock-paper-scissors then and now…
As you can see, things have taken a significant swing with control being switched out for the new meta where aggro reigns supreme. With this knowledge in hand, there are two roads we know that this metagame can follow. The first would be a continued path along this line where aggro remains heavily in favor, as people see that Stompy and its kin are running rampant in this metagame and they join the ranks as well. The other path runs more along the lines of this idea of harmony. It seems that everywhere we turn, we’re faced with this same idea, whether it’s in stories or movies or other Magic-related articles, there is this constant idea of balance. The whole theory behind the game of rock-paper-scissors itself is that there is balance between all three aspects. In response to this type of cycle, the meta could go down a new path approaching balance to control-heavy as decks like Mono-Black Control step up to handle all the creatures out there. Just take a look at the success we’ve already seen from DimirPost, which is a great control deck when it comes to dealing with creatures. In a similar way, we wouldn’t be surprised by seeing UB Control and Teachings Control start appearing again as well. What most players really want to know about is where things go from here. We now know where things are starting to go and what our new top decks will be: Stompy, DelverBlue, and IzzetPost.
Stompy has proven to be a troublesome aggro deck for a lot of reasons. A deck that is so reliant upon creatures seems to be a good match for Mono-Black Control, which runs minimal creatures alongside a full package of creature removal. Stompy has evolved significantly over the years and has managed to find a way around this through Innistrad mechanics like Morbid and Undying, which allow the deck to gain significant benefit from having its creatures killed. This is where DelverBlue comes in. If an aggro deck is getting an advantage from having its creatures killed, then you need to get an edge by targeting down these creatures before they even hit the battlefield. Countermagic is the name of the game here and the mana curve on Stompy proves continually favorable in the use of Spellstutter Sprites. Instead of waiting for a buildup of faeries, DelverBlue is going to be able to target down a large number of Stompy’s spells with just a single Spellstutter Sprite.
When it comes to DelverBlue the deck has quite a few favorable matches. The deck walks such a fine line between aggro and control that it’s hard to find a way to attack the deck. You can try to shut down the aggro side, but with well-placed countermagic they can avoid that. In a similar way, if you work to avoid the control aspect then you’ll get beaten down thanks to fast creatures like the Frostburn Weird. Oddly enough, in the Daily Events that I’ve looked at, the best deck to run against DelverBlue ended up being DimirPost. It would seem this works because it has its own balance between countermagic and creature kill. Not to mention the use of Glimmerpost helps the deck recover from a fast start on those Turn 1 Delver of Secrets. While the deck isn’t played heavily, I’d think it too would have a good match against Stompy as it can control creatures before they enter play as well as those that slip past countermagic, which DelverBlue can’t.
I think the harder balance comes down to IzzetPost. The best matches against IzzetPost have been basically removed. Decks like Storm and Infect were great against a wealth of IzzetPost variants due to the fact that they were fast enough to finish the match before IzzetPost had time to stabilize the board. Like most 8-post decks, IzzetPost relies heavily on getting to the mid-to-late game, where it is gaining a lot of life, drawing a lot of cards, and basically just waiting to draw into its finisher. In most cases these win conditions were relegated to being only one or two cards in sixty and the deck had no problem with that. The idea that a sixty card deck was built just to find a single card for the win seems silly, but it works. These decks are basically out of the picture now and we have to rely on more old fashioned ways of attacking 8-post with land destruction.
I feel this is a good place to discuss the current state of Infect. One of my biggest complaints about the recent bannings was the difference between reducing the power of a deck and removing it from the metagame completely. With the removal of both Empty the Warrens and Grapeshot we have seen these Storm variants completely removed from the metagame. In comparison, the other bans in Pauper have all been done in order to simply reduce power, which I believe to be the proper way to do things (feel free to disagree in comments below, but you won’t change my mind). What we’ve seen so far out of Infect is very little activity. I think people haven’t yet caught onto the idea that the Infect deck isn’t dead… it still can work. Here’s one recent version of today’s Infect deck…
Infect Post-Ban by Costantini
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The loss of Invigorate only manages to slow down the deck, but the core remains the same. The replacements come along the lines of additional pump spells and can include such creative things as the Llanowar Augur as you can see in this list. This creature can act as a balancing act against mirrors and other fast creatures, while still giving the deck a few extra Giant Growths. One ultimately has to wonder whether or not the deck still can pull off those wins that are fast enough to counteract the play of IzzetPost. It isn’t hard to imagine how this deck can still pull off a Turn 2 win with a Turn 1 creature into something along the lines of two Groundswells and a Mutagenic Growth just to name one route. As we move further and further into this new metagame we’re finding that the Infect players are realizing that the deck still can work. Out of the eight total showings from Infect over this period, six of those wins came within the last week. There has even been a new approach to the deck type that we’ve seen in a few recent Daily Events…
UG Infect by Charlesjacenorman
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This interesting variant brings in the blue mana in order to get access to Blighted Agent. I feel that the deck really is stretching to bring in Adventuring Gear, a key pump mechanic for the old Boros Landfall deck, but I guess with the use of a full set of Evolving Wilds, it can make some heavy hits. Personally I thought that a more interesting combination for a creature like Blighted Agent would have been the recently printed Hands of Binding, which would work great to get some control going against the numerous aggro options. Although that might just be my longing for some better options for unblockable creatures.
What I hope to point out in decks like this and the FissurePost variants is the opportunity for creativity. There is plenty of room to change things and create new approaches to similar deck types. Maybe it’s just me holding onto a hope that things are still yet unsettled for the new metagame. Things are not as balanced as they really should be just yet. Let’s take a look at a chart from last week’s article that examined the top four decks in the meta in comparison to the remainder…
As you can see these four decks were obviously quite heavily played and held just over half the metagame. While this was a bit oppressive, there were some considerations that could be made for this type of compensation. The breakdown between these four was almost even with no one deck holding a major portion of the whole meta. The remaining decks that were included had captured quite the variety of options and we saw a healthy cycle between rogues. So what does the current top four look like?
As you can see, things aren’t nearly as balanced (if you even want to consider the old meta as being balanced). The top four decks extend well beyond that 50% mark and if you dive into the details of what makes up that remaining 38%, you’ll see that the rogues are few and far between. Ignoring that section you still have to realize that the top three decks are making up almost 50% of the decks alone. One of the things I really loved about the Pauper format was the opportunity that it provided. When it comes to cost you can’t beat it and yet it played with an eternal cardpool. At the same time, the format was healthy and there were a number of established options for players both new and old. Now we’re approaching that point that I always complain about in relation to things like Standard in past years. We have the majority of the format being made up completely by three decks.
So what are my hopes from here out? I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that this is a beginning, that we’re now at a point where people will get an opportunity to read this and see what the current metagame is made of so that they can formulate a new approach. Once you know what you’re facing down, you can decide what the best way is to attack it.
Feel free to leave your own thoughts on the new Pauper meta in the comments below or join in the fun by following me on Twitter.
Very interesting article, and a great first insight into the new post-ban meta. Nothing beats statistics and even though there’s only a limited pool of dailies to work from, you do the best statistics out there. And your focus on a single event is really worthwhile too imo.
Despite your indication in the opening para that you’d stay away from opinion, your generally negative opinion about the bannings did shine through (nothing wrong with that, opinion is fine!). I think you were a little unfair though in implying that WoTC’s criteria for the bans was merely “perhaps the format got a bit stale”, and this actually does affect the conclusions you draw from the later statistics where you seem to be implying that the bans have failed because the meta is if anything less varied in raw statistical terms. As I’m sure you’re aware, there was an official explanation of the bans:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/pr/232&dcmp=ilc-mtgrss#84614
The key reasons outlined there there were that “the interactivity of the games suffered over the last couple years. The Storm decks that finished with Empty the Warrens and Grapeshot were becoming oppressive and Infect decks with access to Invigorate were ending games of Pauper before there was any game to be played.” Non-interractive and too fast are touchestone criteria for WoTC banning things across all sorts of formats, and although I (and many others) would nitpick re: ETW on that front (although ETW could technically be faster than grapeshot, T1-2 going off was highly feasible), it’s awfully difficult to argue with the fact that invigorate and grapeshot lead to decks that were both too fast and not interractive enough in this format.
Given that Post is being kept in reasonable check by 3 other good decks (delver, stompy and affinity), I can’t necessarily see any further bans in the immediate future. I could be wrong though.
Perhaps you’re right, I’m often trying to stay out of details, but fall in however in an article discussing the new metagame it is important to address issues I’ve seen others discussing with regards to how things lie. There are numerous regular grinders who were not happy about the change and several people who no longer play the format as a result. What I did was attempt to take their arguments and provide detailed information to see if they were indeed true or if they were biased. For example there was a lot of buzz over fissure variants and so I did my best to show that while it may have felt like it was all anyone was playing (and I too felt this way for awhile) the breakdown was more balanced than you think.
I’m not going to dive down into your comments on pro/con the ban because I don’t think there is a point because my opinion is clearly different. The change was made and whether anyone agrees or not its going to stay. I will say that I know what the company line was on the change, however that doesn’t mean I believe it. I discussed this a little bit in my article last week and this week, but again doesn’t mean much going into too much detail because it is here to stay.
What I was trying to show/discuss at the end was the fact that we’re currently seeing a still (hopefully) unset metagame. I don’t think anyone could successfully argue that its a good thing for any format, Pauper or otherwise, to be made up of four decks.
I think that this article could and perhaps should have elaborated more on Elves and Delver Fiend(what you call WeeFiend for some reason) since these 2 decks have just recently(post BnR) come to power and are neither Temporal Fissure nor 8 post based. All the other decks like Stompy, Affinity, MUC, Delver Blue, etc have all been around for ages and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon unless there will be new BnRs.
What I find interesting with Elves is that it functions in the same way that Affinity does, it can win games very fast like other aggro decks but it can also fall back onto a combo or pseudo combo, infect style if you want. Affinity does this by getting a bunch of 4/4s very early on and if that fails fall back onto the Atog+Fling+possibly Disciple of the Vault, Elves do it by emptying their hand incredibly fast with mana elves and Quirion Ranger shenanigans to get a ton of power on the board on turn 2 or 3 at the latest and beat down the opponent with your Elves and some pump spells and if that fails fall back onto the powerhouse Elves to either get massive life gain, give a massive pump to an unblocked creature, generate tons of Elf tokens, etc.
Delver Fiend on the other hand is a much simpler deck, and is currently the only combo deck that still tries to kill you fast rather than just bounce all your permanents and than slowly beat you down with 1 or 2 power creatures. The interesting part about Delver Fiend is that it is an extremely fast deck, with the possibility to win as early as turn 3 with a good hand, and it is surprisingly resilient to creature removal with Apostle’s Blessing giving you protection to whichever removal spell is being used. The deck is still somewhat vulnerable to counter magic obviously but once you have 1 of your non Delver creatures in play and a bunch of spells in hand you can go off at any turn, so counter magic will only delay you in most cases. Now, given that counter magic is mostly incorporated in control decks, you can afford to take a few counters early on and still beat them before they get their finishers. Delver Blue is the only fast deck with reliable counter magic, and you have answers to it with your own creatures and burn spells.
Between the 2 above mentioned decks, all the various 8 post and Temporal Fissure variants, Delver Blue, Stompy, Affinity, etc there are plenty of powerhouse decks to choose from under the current meta, and while you will see either 8 post or Temporal Fissures, oftentimes both at once, in a lot of matches, you will also see plenty of other major contenders both old and new favorites.
Lastly, considering that WotC’s weak argument for the BnRs was to hamper excessively fast and non interactive decks, I think that WotC has failed to accomplish that. Delver Fiend is as uninteractive a deck as you can come across that can still pull off turn 3 wins with some regularity. All the Temporal Fissure decks aren’t interactive either, just give you more time to slow them down by removing their creatures or fragile land base, be it Ravnica bounce lands or locust lands, but not being able to completely shut them down like you would if you prevented TPPS/Infect to go off early.