If you’re unfamiliar with the Pauper format, it would be reasonable to assume that aggressive decks would win every tournament. After all, many of the game’s greatest cheap creatures (Wild Nacatl, Mogg Fanatic, Wild Mongrel) and best burn spells (Lightning Bolt, Fireblast) have been printed at common. Pauper Aggro decks have a few less options than their pricier counterparts in other formats, but from a distance they look pretty much the same. Plus, some of aggro’s greatest enemies — mass removal like Damnation and Firespout and game-swinging fatties like Baneslayer Angel or Meloku, the Clouded Mirror — are almost completely absent from Pauper.
Despite all of that, Pauper’s Tier 1 Aggro decks have been at times plagued by inconsistency and stymied by well-positioned Control decks. As we start to look at the Pauper format, we’ll trace the evolution of Aggro decks from the first Pauper PEs to the present. The dominant trend of successful Aggro players has been to forgo a small amount of explosiveness in favor of greater consistency.
When Pauper was inducted as a sanctioned format, the presumptive number one deck was Affinity. Literally only a few cards away from its Extended counterpart, the Pauper Affinity deck even commanded a pre-emptive (at least in terms of sanctioned results) banning. Cranial Plating remains the only common card not legal in Pauper. But despite its obvious potential, the Pauper Affinity deck failed to post results in the first few PEs. It wasn’t until the third that Sarcasto broke through with this build:
Affinity piloted by Sarcasto
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt formatThis deck has arguably the best nuts draw in the format, capable of dumping multiple Myr Enforcers into play on Turn 2. But its faults are equally glaring: much of the time you’ll be forced to mulligan to find a playable grip, or keep a speculative hand and fail to draw the right pieces. In this build, planning to cast four copies of a conditional 5-mana draw spell off of 16 lands seems particularly optimistic. Additionally, the deck is light on legitimate red zone threats — only Myr Enforcer and Somber Hoverguard are genuinely scary in the short term. Often a flurry of early game action will run into a removal spell or two, leaving behind nothing more than a glum gathering of Frogmites, Krark-Clan Shamans, and Springleaf Drums.
(To load a .txt deck into Magic: Online’s Deck Editor, click “Load”, select “Local Text Deck”, find the location of the downloaded deck file and double-click the deck.)
None of which diminishes the sheer terror of Affinity’s best draws. This deck is probably one card away from being truly dominant. Throw in Arcbound Ravager and you have the Extended version of the deck. Glaze Fiend is an option worth exploring; it’s fragile, but adds offensive firepower and contributes some very fast goldfish draws. For the time being, Affinity remains equally dangerous to its pilot and the rest of the field, and most Aggro players have moved on to other options.
The next deck to inherit the Aggro mantle was green-white Slivers. Here’s Belette’s winning build:
G/W Slivers piloted by Belette
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt formatSlivers wants to assemble a plus-sized army with Muscle Sliver and time-shifted clone Sinew Sliver. With greater threat density than Affinity, it can put together a playable draw a little more often, but suffers from consistency issues of its own. The first is the manabase: with an even split between Green and White cards, there’s no guarantee you’ll draw both colors of mana. Attempts to increase consistency with Terramorphic Expanse or Selesnya Sanctuary also slow the deck down. The second issue is that the deck relies heavily on the Muscle/Sinew Slivers, and can end up looking pathetic when they go down to spot removal or never show up at all. The rest of Team Sliver are a sad bunch without their beefy brethren.
The Lotus Petals in this list are an unusual attempt to patch up the deck’s mana issues while maintaining its explosiveness. But they have their own risks: if you draw an opener with multiple white spells and a Petal as your only white mana source, do you ship it back, or keep and hope for the best? If I were running Slivers, I would probably just go with a manabase of 11 Forest/11 Plains and cross my fingers.
By this point you can probably see how appealing it would be to find a mono-colored deck capable of the explosive starts of Affinity or Slivers without their inherent consistency issues. That deck finally appeared in Goblins. Here’s a list samus_ssp took to victory:
Mono Red Goblins piloted by samus_ssp
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt formatGoblins runs a slew of its namesake creatures backed up by a handful of efficient burn spells, usually Lightning Bolts and sometimes Chain Lightning or Fireblast. The deck really took off with the addition of Goblin Bushwhacker from Zendikar, which gave it a realistic turn four goldfish draw without leaning on inconsistent pump spells like Rites of Initiation or Song of Blood. It might not be quite as explosive as Affinity, but it’s close in that regard and far more consistent. Despite its name, the deck does not rely heavily on goblin synergies, so efficient non-goblins like Jackal Familiar and Keldon Marauders are perfectly legitimate options.
The full eight-pack of Goblin Sledder/Mogg Raider looks redundant, but is actually crucial to the deck’s success. There are a limited number of ways Pauper decks can deal with a horde of goblins staring them down on turn two or three, and the pump goblins go a long way towards nullifying all of them. They let you run over annoying blockers. They can fizzle an Echoing Decay or Tendrils of Corruption by sacrificing the targeted creature in response. They can mitigate the damage of a Nausea or Tremor. They’ll even leave half of your team standing after a Crypt Rats or Martyr of Ashes activation. They won’t necessarily put you ahead, but they’ll keep your opponent from coming back once you’ve seized the lead.
Goblins remains a strong choice and even won the most recent PE as of this writing. The last deck we’ll look at is the least explosive, but makes up for it with consistency and hatefulness. White Weenie, by Deluxeicoff:
White Weenie piloted by Deluxeicoff
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt formatShade of Trokair and Soul Warden don’t strike fear into the hearts of opponents like Myr Enforcer and Muscle Sliver, but White Weenie will manage to curve out with some dork or other pretty much every game. More to the point, it has a dastardly array of hate cards for just about every opponent. Dust to Dust for Affinity, Crimson Acolyte (main!) and Holy Light for Goblins, Order of Leitbur for MBC, Prismatic Strands/Standard Bearer/Benevolent Unicorn for Storm. I don’t know if Palace Guard and Crimson Acolyte is the best way to stop a horde of Empty the Warrens tokens, but it’s certainly one of the funniest. This list doesn’t run every card I just mentioned, but that’s kind of the point: White’s hate cards are numerous and devastating enough that you won’t know what to expect against any given opponent.
To put it in Mixed Martial Arts terms, if Goblins is the guy who knocks you out with a kick to the head in the first ten seconds, White Weenie is the guy who seems to be losing the whole fight only to tap you out with an arm bar in the closing seconds. Its creatures aren’t particularly scary, but you’d better hope it’s not running a card that leaves you cold.
That does it for this week. We’ve covered the most important Aggro decks in the format and I’ll be back in a few weeks with a look at Pauper from another angle.
See you then,
Nathan Solon
Great Article!
I hate that guy in MMA who loses the whole match and wins from a lucky submission