2. Really enjoyed this article Jason – a lot to unpack and contemplate.

    I completely agree with your suspicion that Return to Ravnica might be a dangerous or trapping set for Pauper players. Brewers will get all excited over the Gate lands and try to shake up the format with either new multicolored decks, or existing decks with overzealous splashes until people realize that the Big 3 Pauper decks are still just better (UR Post, Storm, Delver).

    UR Post just gets better and more consistent with Return to Ravnica and will likely become more popular an dominating than it already is. I think you are right that addition of Electrickery is pretty huge. The flexibility of it being a 5th Flame Slash (albeit mini sized) or a cheap Rolling Thunder is so sweet, and the sweeper overload effect is so much powerful than I initially thought when that card was spoiled. There are so many X/1 that are crucial to almost every deck in Pauper. I was doing a mental inventory how many things this kills and it’s staggering when you think about it

    Vs Delver: Unflipped Delver, spellstutter sprites, cloud of faeries, etc
    Vs Storm: gives you another key out to Empty the Warrens
    Vs Monowhite: Benevolent bodygaurd, Icatian Javelineers, squadron hawks, standard bearer, etc
    Vs Infect: Blight Mamba, Ichorclaw Myr, Blistener elf, etc
    Vs Stompy: Quirion Ranger, Skarrgan Pit-skulk, Silhana ledgewalker, Young Wolf, etc
    And the list just goes on and on. I think Electrickery is going to be one of the most important Pauper cards we’ve seen in a while.

    Your Grisely Existence Deck also looks really sweet. Seems like such a synergistic and interesting deck to play as opposed to so many pauper decks right now that are just smash-go and boring. I really hope some graveyard deck is viable and good, but I’m very worried they just won’t quite get there. I hope so badly that I am wrong though. Gnaw to the Bone is such a fun card to play – the Innistrad spider spawing archetype in Innistrad was my favorite thing to draft ever and it was just so satisfying to completely turn races by gaining like 14 life out of nowhere.
    My real concern with the Grisely deck is that it’s just going to be to slow out of the gates – it seems like the removal might be to slow against aggro decks like stompy, infect, or monowhite. Unless you have one of your 2 Echoing decay, you won’t have removal until turn three or four, and your gnaw to the bone probably will come to late if at all to stabilize. I hope its good but I just have my doubts.

    I also hope the Bant Auras decks is horrible for the sake of the format. It just seems like it would lead to the least interactive and fun games of magic ever. Either I win because I’m faster or he doesn’t get enough auras out, or I lose because he gets an Armadillo cloak or 2 going and I can’t interact with his board whatsoever. I think pauper needs more variety of gameplay, and this just isn’t helping.

  3. Alex – Thanks for reading. Mask could be fine, but it is filling the same role that Ethereal Armor does in the deck, so I wouldn’t play both. It’s also another three-drop, and I think playing too many of those is a common trap with these auras decks.

    Rancor I don’t like, because Cloak already provides trample, and you want your auras to boost the toughness of those tiny hexproof people.

    Concord – You made a lot of good observations. I would add War Falcon to your list of Trickery victims though. Seems like White Weenie would be greatly rewarded by utilizing my Veteran Armorer tech these days!

  4. I think UR Cloudpost benefits from the consistency of running Izzet Guildgate enough to warrant more than one maindeck.

    Otherwise I don’t think this set will have any major effect on Classic Pauper.

    As I’ve tried brewing a million different Synergy/Midrange/Non-Cloudpost Control decks, I feel that there are four Macro archetypes that form the pillars of the format: Aggro decks, Disruptive decks (Delver and Mono Black), Cloudpost (UR being the best due to Earth Rift) and Storm.

    Building a new mid-range deck that is disruptive enough to not autolose to Storm decks means you generally can’t race / contain the aggro decks. (Which are in my experience the most populous type of decks.)

    If you are both defensive and disruptive enough to hold a decent percentage against both Aggro and Storm, then congratulations, you are a Cloudpost deck!

    Or you are a non-’Post control deck that autoloses to Cloudpost (second most popular deck type in my experience) and has a bad matchup against the Disruptive decks.

    I really think that Cloudpost has to be banned before any real change happens in Pauper…

  5. I dont think Electrickery is better then Seismisc Shudder.

    You cant use Muddle the Mixture to tutor it up.

  6. Ramela – Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I do think it’s possible to play a midrange decks that deals with aggro (by going slightly over the top of them: Simon Goertzen has a cool video about this concept in the context of Sealed), though Post would almost certainly be the most difficult archetype to beat from there.

    bilo – I haven’t really seen people doing that, especially when they have Mystical Teachings as a better option.

  8. “I also hope the Bant Auras decks is horrible for the sake of the format … it would lead to the least interactive and fun games of magic ever.” Concord

    Come on… You think Bent Aura is the least interactive and fun? Seriously?!

    Storm -> Yeah… The famous turn 1 or turn 2 kill. Where you can at most interact with one of their cards per turn… And it won’t make a difference, in fact they will laugh at your pity attempt to stop their storm while increasing the storm count by one… If you do not have a good sideboard card in your hand, or in play (as suture priest) you’re toast.

    Infect -> Even more lucky based than Storm, but it can be pretty consistent and you have to fight against a mechanic that DOES NOT have defenses. Infect bypass lifegain, they have a trillion cards with trample and untargetable… It was so consistent that players used the deck to farm dailies, even without having fun…

    Cloudpost -> I agree with ramela that cloudpost should be banned. Enough said.

    Blue/delver decks -> So many “free” cards, all the fairies, gush… The only interaction you will have will be your spells being countered. And in the end you get chewed in a slow painful death to a 3/2 flying – 1 mana cost. Or the game will drag for several minutes to end in a semi-infinite combo like flicker-draw or capsize-buyback.

    Black -> You can interact a lot. But you will be very frustrated with the insane discards and the ‘make your opponent to practically lose a turn due to un-draw”. So, interactive yes. Fun? no.

    White weenie/Affinity/Burn/Goblin/Stompy -> Very interactive and can be a fun game in a lot of cases…

    Now,

    Aura Bant -> Can be pretty unfun for the opponent if you draw the right cards and end the game in turn 2. But you need more lucky than Infect and Storm for that! There’s a thousand ways for the opponent to interact with you: Counter the right spells – like ancestral mark and (now) Ethereal Armor, do good blocks with creatures, destroy your enchantments…

    Pauper has some very overpowered decks that are ruling the metagame, and I do not think that a strong Aura Bant deck will make things worse… It will add diversity, and will give a breath of fresh air for the opponent!

  10. I don’t think the Aura Bant deck is the diversity I want added to the metagame. I agree with most of your points Alex Matto -> that there is several other decks that are less or equally not interactive than the Aura deck. Certainly Storm and Infect are very difficult to interact with, but I disagree with your definition of “fun” decks to play or play against.

    In my post I should have clarified the statement “least interactive and fun game” because those can be two very different things. I think playing against storm decks can be fun because it really tests your sideboard and while it can be luck based, I like playing mono black control which is a fun matchup vs storm where you are trying to disrupt the combo at the right time which can be really interesting and interactive. Certainly storm is not fun to play against for other decks though, like white weenie that just has to pray to draw a suture priest or some other sideboard tech.

    I guess I am just used to the crappy non-interactive decks by now and I don’t like the idea of adding another non-interactive deck where they get one guy to stick on turn 2 or 3 that is a 5/5 hexproof and its just GG. You are right though Alex – there are a lot of not fun or interactive decks that dominate the metagame now and I completely agree Cloudpost should be banned to shake things up.

  11. Another awesome article Dime. I have a question for the MTGAcademy site though… why do the cards look like they were scanned? This also happened in Michael’s article.

  13. Muddle the mixture gets rolling thunder, where Teachings does not. Muddle is better than Dizzy Spell because Shizzy spell is not a card. I do still like Electrickery. It is strictly better than every other option as Jason nicely illustrated above. Muddle won me games as a counter and as a muter. Happily I don’t have to worry about that because I am not chasing the post dragon any longer…

    Ban Cloudpost Wizards! Everyone unite and contact wizards today!

  14. Gnarlesbury – Thanks for the comments, we’ll see how Post affects the metagame from here. I’m pretty sure the Dizzy Spell comment was a joke. I also think that Teachings is still a better/more versatile option. Getting Capsize/whatever instant you need affects the game much faster than tutoring up a Turn 20 win condition at sorcery speed. I’m not saying the card is bad, but it clearly sees 15x less play than Teachings does.

  15. Thanks for replying Jason. I agree with you that teachings is needed in the deck. I used to run 1 muddle and 2 teachings. If I happened to draw teachings, a lot of times one of my fetch targets was muddle… It was rather durdly but it was a straight line to the win. I believe every deck that runs rolling thunder should have one muddle. It has won me countless matches, and especially mirror matches where the mana gets big fast. Whether you need a counter or an uncounterable tutor, muddle’s your card…

  16. Gnarlesbury – That’s pretty interesting. Any thoughts on which of these decks I should try out once RTR is available online?

  17. One thing that came to mind for me is axebane guardian and horncaller’s chant. I’ve seen some mono-green post decks that play overgrown battlement and wall of roots, then ramp into things like reap and sow, ulamog’s crusher, and aurochs herd. Horncaller’s chant provides the same power as a crusher, but pushes through damage with trample and is also not as vulnerable to spot removal. Axebane guardian provides colored mana and could make splashing red for something like kaervek’s torch easier.

  18. hehe I see many post haters here, huh ? hehe

    Jason, i ever like your thoughts, posts, etc, ever a good job. For you guys that think cloudpost should be banned: we have at least 1 side card against the cloudpost land for each color but no for white. Green come with Thermokarst( which isnt for a Infect that end a post deck easy or a stompy that have many protection for his guys). So, with that said, we can see blue with Spreading Seas. Red with Raze, Stone rain, Molter Rain etc. Black with choking sands, rancid earth, icequake. Now we have white( white weenie ) deck that doest have a answer for the land, but can easy use crimson acolyte to try protection( which could easy be shut up by post’s arrows, but just saying ), not to mention the benevolent bodyguard. I actually win a urpost deck in a champ IRL here in my city with my weenie falcon deck, even after electrickery comes out, i was 2 prismatic strands main and 2 side, backed by crimson acolyte, ops…

    Posts decks have a big problem with: Infect, unless you got a curfew and blue mana on turn 1-2 and not face 2 or even 3 guys ona infect field plan…, Storm, we can see that Storm is not a good match for post at all, sometimes a post player doest have his red mana before a turn 2 prism, or even if he got a prism ;/ Post decks not tend to play more than 5 counters usually, so is hard to counter the key storms draws/cancripts, not to mention that sometimes, counter is not enough. So Delver, Delver is okay match, but not at all too, if you see delver flipping fast, backed by daze, counter or even by your mana getting screwed, you just die LOL. So we’ll see Stompy, Stompy i have a good experience against it, with my own urpost. Sometimes( and it happens not a lot, but enough to make you sad against it) You face a turn 1 Nettle Sentinel, turn 2 Silhana and turn 3 you kill a Sentinel or just a Young Wolf, and he droop a Hunger of the Howlpack on his Silhana and you cant kill all his board to make a happy Curfew ^^ ( assuming you have Curfew in sideboard ^^)
    Soo, you big post haters, stop crying!!! And try to play MTGO with no tears hahahaha

    Thank you Jason Moore for ever make a good job, and again, keep doing it!!!