This Week in Pauper: Feb 4- Feb 8

The Rundown

    Welcome to the first ever issue of Standard Pauper Weekly.  If you haven't already guessed, this is a weekly blog focusing solely on the weekly standard pauper tournaments hosted by the generous and dedicated members of Magic Online's thriving standard pauper community. These hosts, to be given proper credit with each tournament synopsis, have been the backbone of a burgeoning community of magic players dedicated to the standard pauper format. This blog will recap the tournament week and hopefully provide solid footing in the format's meta-game for both weekly tournament participants as well as casual players of the format not able to compete in the tournaments on a regular basis.
    It is my intention to present a weekly, editorial style review of the week in standard pauper as well as my interpretation of the constant ebb and flow of standard pauper's ever changing meta-game.
    This blog will not contain any deck building tips.  Minds infinitely more creative than mine spend vast amounts of time with this aspect of the game and to tread upon their territory would be foolish of me.  This is merely one man's opinion and observations on a wonderfully fun format and I hope you enjoy my weekly presentations and maybe even learn something along the way.
    Currently, there are three major player run tournaments in the standard pauper format.  MPDC held on Mondays, SPDC held on Thursdays and a weekly tournament hosted by and for the Pauper Krew clan on Wednesdays.  The PK tournament is open only to Pauper Krew clan members, but has a robust following rivaling the other two major tournaments, which is why the results will be reviewed on this blog.  If anyone knows of any other standard pauper tournaments please let me know, I am always interested to hear other fans opinions and reviews of the format.  As always, I look forward to your opinions and comments about the current state of standard pauper and hope to find many new friends through this blog.  So without any further delay, lets get to the tournaments.



MPDC 19.13

    Since the introduction of Frostburn Weird into the common card pool with the release of Return to Ravnica, the Izzet colors have seen a resurgence in popularity, as evidenced by host Malum's victory piloting his version of Izzet Delver in Monday's tournament.  This particular brew, however contained some interesting creature choices such as Hinterland Hermit and Wingcrafter.  Along with Pursuit of Flight, this deck takes to the skies to defend itself against the rampant WW decks in the format.
   As with most red-based decks, it features a suitable compliment of burn spells to take care of the lower toughness creatures in the current meta, but it's sideboard is what mostly interests me.  In situations where a ton of burn is either not needed or not effective, this deck can load up on Essence Scatterand Negate to turn the deck into a counter heavy threat to fend off the mirror matchup as well as Black Flag and those pesky Seraph's.  This deck packs a lot of punch and it's easy to see why.  With a curve topping out at two it can get by with only eighteen lands, leaving plenty of room for both burn and counter.  Quite a deadly combo indeed as Malum's 6-0 performance would indicate.
    Runner up Chipp's GWR Naya deck showed how well a truly balanced deck can perform.  Equal parts creature threat, burn and pump, with a little mana fixing thrown in, this deck has no problems finding exactly the mana it needs at exactly the right time.  Splatter Thug is a surprisingly balanced card for red that I thought would see a lot more play than it has, but fits perfectly into this deck.  Placed alongside Attended Knight, two creature slots with first strike can be a daunting obstacle, especially when considering the help they get from Trusted Forcemage and Travel Preps.
    It's well known that pauper contains a lot of good, cost-effective removal and most decks running white, black or red usually have access to multiple ways to kill or maim those pumped up first strikers.  However, this deck runs a full compliment of Seraph's, making it difficult to waste burn or lockdown spells early in the game when you know you have such a big threat taking to the skies soon.  With Spiders and  Scarecrows keeping the skies clear and the ability to hate on enchantments, this deck seems to have an answer for everything.  Almost everything, that is.  This deck's only two match losses came to control decks.  A straight control deck in swiss and Malum's blue heavy Izzet Delver in the finals.
    Black Flag made an appearance as well in Monday's tournament, this time played by Adner. Despite their shortcomings, I've always held a special place in my heart for aggro decks and Black Flag is no exception.  They may not always be tournament viable, but they sure are fun to play.  Every non-creature in this deck list is a kill card with the exception of a single well-timed(hopefully) Undying Evil.  Highborn Ghoul makes his re-entrance into the deck after being hated on for too long by the early meta.  With almost no black creatures running around these days he is a ghastly early play that must be dealt with.
    Not to be outdone, or outnumbered, White Weenie made two appearances in the top eight.  Both Gordani's and Aladar ran nearly identical builds, but I do like Gordani's sideboard better.  The Farbog Explorer becomes an all star against the growing number of decks beginning to use a few swamps and Ajani's Sunstriker gives a great chump that will trade with nearly any ground pounder in the current meta and puts its controller one turn further away from death when it's eventually sacrificed to it's cat god. Either way, WW is still a force to be reckoned with due to it's leader, Attended Knight.  The proof of how great this card is remains the fact that it gets struck down so quickly and consistently.  If the opponent has something to destroy a creature with, a 2/2 first strike is usually the first to go.  
   The defining characteristic of this tournament, and those to follow as we shall see, is the multitude of Izzet decks.  WW has finally met its match and it will be fun to see how the meta develops to counteract both of these highly efficient strategies.



PK Standard 2.04

    Pauper Krew, the largest pauper clan on MTGO, holds their pauper standard tournament on Wednesdays at 5 p.m Eastern/10 p.m GMT and is hosted currently by Fabio S.  As of 2.04 this is a single elimination tournament, making for an exciting sports playoff style feel.
  There was a small change of pace for the meta in the PK tournament, with only one true Izzet deck making top eight.  Top honors goes to Andres 1995 with his WGB Midrange Junk deck.  Riding on the backs of Centaurs and Seraphs this deck is able to recover well from an early beating with a strong arsenal of removal  and ample lifegain, both as traditional creature abilities and Centaur Healer's  ETB lifegain.
    The all-star of this deck, despite the removal bombs it sports, is the oft overlooked Abundant Growth.  Much more efficient than Transguild Promenade, Abundant Growth replaces itself, doesn't require extra mana to cast and can be used it's first turn in play.  More specifically to this deck, it allows for a much broader array of lands and permits the use of only two plains despite the double white cost in the Seraph.  Most decks in current standard don't use as many lands as Midrange Junk, opting for a more aggressive curve early, but Andres' deck has proven worthy of waiting for a couple turns in order to knock out some bigger creature threats.
    The land distribution in this deck is crucial and Abundant Growth helps smooth out the prolific amount of double mana costs.  There are five unique cards in the deck among three different colors with double mana symbols in their cost.  It is not only critical to hit a land drop every turn with this deck, but also to get the right kind of mana, which Andres was capable of in his 4-0 tournament win on Wednesday.
    The only mono colored deck we're used to seeing in standard pauper is usually WW.  It was surprising then to see Mygalaxy's mono green, creature heavy deck take runner up.  It features thirty creatures with the possibility of even more due to the use of Haunted Fengraf.  Featuring Aerial Predation and Prey Upon in it's limited suite of removal, the Greeniyeah! deck is able to keep the skies absolutely clear with the help of the deadly spiders Kessig Recluse and Deadly Recluse.  Sprinkle in some evasion with Orchard Spirit and Somberwald Dryad and Mygalaxy was able to overrun most of his opponents.



SPDC 19.14

    Thursday's SPDC seems to herald a change in the meta.  Only one Izzet deck made top eight, Germansmurf's Watercourser.  This deck features Watercourser as opposed to Frostburn Weird and sports many more non-creatures than creatures.  Only one WW made top eight, though it was a wonderful second place finish by Garlan.
    PK23 took the trophy with a tri-color control deck, something not seen regularly since the days of Zendikar/Scars; ironically a very aggressive format. We will have to wait to see if control is something back en vogue, but PK23 showed what a truly balanced, synergistic deck with a refined mana base can do in a creature heavy format like the current meta.
    All of the deck's creatures are true threats including Frostburn Weird, Seraph of Dawn and Stitched Drake, but unlike most standard pauper decks these creatures can't be reached until late game.  The multitude of control spells in the deck, most notably Amass the Components, Pillar of Flame and Essence Scatter, allow this deck to at least tread water until the big boys can come online.  Then it's only a short time before the Archaeomancer can retrieve some of the instants and sorceries like Brimstone Volley and Ghostly Flicker needed to finish off the opponent who is most likely top decking or stuck behind a wall of flying menaces.
     In my opinion, the most noteworthy introduction(or re-introduction) into the format is Orzhov Exalted.  Two decks of this style made top eight this week and it's easy to see why. Using an arsenal of exalted creatures and the evasion of a couple Tormented Souls and Sewer Shamblers, Millhouse02 was able to pilot his deck to a second place finish.  Featuring a full compliment of removal the deck is a classic swipe and slaughter style deck; swipe out the opponents creatures in the early rounds and slaughter him with exalted in the "middle" rounds, which more often than not end up being the late rounds for the opponent.  I believe this will be the deck archetype to watch in the coming weeks as some critical Gatecrash cards make their debut next week.  The addition of Orzhov Guildgate along withBasilica Screecher, Deathcult Rogue, Kingpen's Pet and Syndicate Enforcer could all make the rounds in this deck.



Final Thoughts

   There is always variation throughout each week of standard, but I feel this week marked a particularly strong and fast change.  This change may be indicative of a dedicated reaction to Izzet and WW or it may be in preparation for the upcoming changes we will see when Gatecrash floods the card pool.  My favorite time in the standard season is on the horizon.  It is a time when nearly all decks are rogue decks(perhaps even Rogue decks, as in the creature type) and the meta gets thrown out the window while dedicated playtesters hone their game and build ever more daring and experimental decks.  It's going to be difficult to examine the meta-game in a proper way for the next few weeks, but that's part of the fun.
    I encourage everyone to give comment and criticism and please check www.pdcmagic.com for decklists from the above tournaments as well as upcoming player run events. Please visit www.pauperkrew.com to join the largest and most dedicated pauper community online.  I look forward to comments and always welcome a friendly hello on MTGO.  See you next week!