Hello everyone. With Khans of Tarkir already shaping up eternal formats thanks to someseriousEternalstaples (two of which we have available to great use), and the cycle of life gaining dual lands opening the path to slower, multicolored decks, I think it's time to re-evaluate the Pauper scene.
Historically, The Rock has been a deck that mixed elements of disruption, removal, utility creatures and sturdy beaters to slowly grind the opponent out of the match by 1-for-1'ing them and eventually getting the upper hand with your bigger creatures. So both Abomination and Guide fit the criteria as fat, curve topping creatures in order to finish the game. I built a GBW rock deck based on Abzan Guide, but I believe a BUG list with Abomination + Cruise and lots of cantrips, counters and library manipulation plus some Exhume to bring back a fatty could be definitely plausible. Without further ado, here's the decklist:
I know what you might be thinking: 3-color decks in pauper are a no-no. But, we're in Green, which means we have access to superb mana fixing, AND we are gaining a ton of life with the lands and some other spells, so the tempo loss of the first 1-2 turns are negated. Quick explanation throughout:
Creatures
- Abzan Guide: He's the cornerstone of the deck. Yes he costs a whole lot, but since we're aiming for grinding and the long game it doesn't matter anyways. Once he's down, we are in a very good shape: he's out of both Lightning Bolt and Doom Blade range, he gains us life on the race, he's a sturdy wall, and he can be played as a bear on the early turns. Overall solid and flexible.
- Hooting Mandrill: Rock-solid beater that we will cast on turns 3-4 overall. Has evasion, he's easy to cast, dodges Bolts like a champ and trades with Affinity's biggest dudes. Very, very efficient creature.
- Putrid Leech: Another extremely efficient creature, Putrid Leech is a great T2 play, since we can start stonewalling aggro decks as soon as it touches the battlefield. Immune to Doom Blade, Lightning Bolt, and even Victim of Night, this is one card that you want to see in big quantities in the early-to-mid game to help establish board presence.
- Aven Riftwatcher: Alongside with Leech, this is the other all-star of the deck. Comes a turn after, gains us the life we might spend on Leech, negates some blows, and clogs the skies. Pretty good creature at holding the ground against aggro decks.
- Mesmeric Fiend: Disruptive creature that lets you look at their hand while taking one card regardless of type or color for 2 mana. While they can recover their card, this also makes Fiend the perfect lightningrod: wasting your removal in a 1/1 against an attrition deck is not the best thing you could do.
- Crypt Rats: 2 of these make for a great sweeper. If board state goes out of hands, Rats are a great reset button. Since all of our creatures have big butts and we will be gaining lots of life, it doesn't do much damage to us. Don't let the deck being tri-color cloud your judgement: you will most of the time blow this for just 2, and with all the fixing that just means that you just need one black mana source more besides the one you used to cast it.
Disruption:
- Duress: Standard go-to disruption. Costs just 1, lets you see their hand and takes the best non-creature spells. All decks in pauper rely heavily on non-creature spells: Tron needs to find their engine while removing your threats, MBC has plenty of kill spells, Delver has counters and card draw, Eye Candy is entirely supported by non-creature spells, Bogles has Auras, Infect has pumps... you catch the drift. 2-of seems ok.
- Raven's Crime: This gives use to late game land draws by turning them onto "B: Target player discards a card". Good as a 1-of to grind controllish decks.
Removal:
- Diabolic Edict: Helps with Bogles, Infect, Eye Candy, and overall hard-to-deal with creatures.
- Disfigure: Cheap instant speed removal that allows us to wipe most of paupers threats; every Delver card except Spire Golem, Kiln Fiend, pre-metalcraft guys, and practically any weenie under the sun.
- Oblivion Ring: Generic card that answers anything that isn't a land and can be cascaded from Captured Sunlight. 1 of this seems fine.
Card Advantage:
- Read the Bones: Scry 2, then draw 2 for 3 mana and 2 life is a very powerful effect. Allows us to filter cards and then replenishes our hand in wars of attrition, something Sign in Blood does not do (and it's also harder to cast in a 3-color deck).
- Recover: Practically another Divination: brings us a dead creature like Avens, Leeches, or Guides that we played as morph in the early turns and also draws us a card.
- Krosan Tusker: Yes, I know it's a creature, but I included it for CA purposes mainly. Instant speed, uncountereable Divination in our colors that always gets us a land for fixing. Since we're playing a war of attrition and we lack Blue, we need some sources of card advantage and this fits the bill, while also feeding Delve. It also doubles as a huge lategame beater if it's needed.
- Captured Sunlight: A great card to have overall. Since we're a goodstuff deck, we might as well mimic Jund playing Bloodbraid Elf and use this. We gain 4 life, which shores Aggro matchups and gives us tempo, plus another card of the top (which can be set thanks to Read the Bones). On top of better to worse:
Other options:
Besides from more removal diversification on the black spots, if the decks needs a little bit more speed, I was thinking on replacing Krosan Tusker with Sakura-Tribe Elder, Duress with Cry of Contrition and fit in some Fume Spitters and maybe Carrion Feeder or Doomed Traveler to ensure Cry's haunt triggers. If there's space for this shell, Blind Hunter could come in too. I mean, it's a 2/2 flying body that gets a 4-point life swing when he enters and another one when the haunted creature dies.
If Mesmeric Fiend proves too problematic, we could go for Liliana's Specter. I had it before, and double black is not that hard to achieve. Wickerbough Elder is the epitome of a rock creature: resilient, beefy, and oozing utility. And finally, Funeral Charm makes for an extremely versatile spell: it's instant speed discard, so it can be considered disruption, a cheap kill spell to kill X/1's, a combat trick when you're blocking to kill larger creatures, the final 2 points of damage, or simply going unblocked through MBC's big butt blockers.
I really like this list! It looks like a very strong deck and I really love the creature package here.
Would Zombie Cutthroat have a place here? I feel it would. It dodges all the same removal as the Leech, it has a body that's on curve for Morph and it adds another Morph creature to keep them guessing if it's the Guide or not. It's free Morph can also blank out TheUsualSuspects that would target him while he's face down which would really hurt control.
It seems like a really good idea, but what would you take out? I also think that 5 life is a pretty steep cost, but if testing proves I can handle the lifeloss from Leech + Zombie + Read the Bones, why not.
What I want right now is to diversify a little more my removal since it seems pretty straightforward. Suspects I'm considering are Unmake, which is very flexible to cast (Double black isn't that difficult to get), or, if testing proves I can handle taking 1/4 of my life out in one hit, 1-2 Ashes to Ashes, which seem beast when cascaded.
Also, would a singleton of Moldervine Cloak be good? I mean, it boosts Fiends, which have a rather pathetic body, while also curving directly from Leech, having a devastating 5/5 that could pump to 7/7 as soon as turn 3 and that could dodge most common removal. Even face down creatures could carry it no problem and still beat face later in the game. Cloaked Guide seems rather scary.
Cutthroat would be good as a 1 or 2-of so maybe we can drop 1 Leech for him? I'm not sure though since it seems that there isn't anything to cut. Maybe a Captured Sunlight?
Ashes to Ashes could be nice, but if you really want to use it then I'd forget about using Cutthroat since that would be too much life loss. Snuff Out might also be good choice since it's a free spell, but it only hits one target unlike Ashes.
Moldervine Cloak would definitely add some big power to the deck. I was thinking about it earlier but didn't mention it because you don't have a lot of GY interaction (outside of Recover) but in the end it doesn't matter since it doesn't Dredge a lot anyway. A Cloaked Crypt Rats would be completely bonkers against some decks since the Rats would survive anything below 4 damage!
Captured Sunlight is too good of a card to pass up. It offers card advantage, shoots down land pockets that could have been on top of the deck, filters expensive spells that you can't cast at the moment, and tacks 4 life onto other powerful effects.
I'm probably going to redistribute my removal suite, and I will have to take out something. I'm thinking in Recover. Although it's card advantage and it's good at recovering threats, and flipping it with a Captured Sunlight is great value, it has no impact when cast, and it costs way too much mana for being a sorcery speed card. This is the deck so far:
Since I took out Recover, I added 1 more Read the Bones for card advantage. Are 1-2 Stinkweed Imp worth it? They are recursive removal that can wear a cloak and block fliers, and they can be cascade, but I don't want to turn this into a full dredge shell because the optimal way to play that is Dead Dog. I might also want the Recovers back at some point, and I'm missing the two MB Disfigure. Are there any graveyard shenanigans creatures lying around that could give us some sort of card advantage or could be efficient / fall into Cascade range?
There has been a cycle of common Wedge creatures in morph, some of which I think have potential in Pauper, be it because they have great built in value, are evasive, fat and provide some utility, or are downright sturdy and resilient. The last two ones are the most interesting for this build.
Historically, The Rock has been a deck that mixed elements of disruption, removal, utility creatures and sturdy beaters to slowly grind the opponent out of the match by 1-for-1'ing them and eventually getting the upper hand with your bigger creatures. So both Abomination and Guide fit the criteria as fat, curve topping creatures in order to finish the game. I built a GBW rock deck based on Abzan Guide, but I believe a BUG list with Abomination + Cruise and lots of cantrips, counters and library manipulation plus some Exhume to bring back a fatty could be definitely plausible. Without further ado, here's the decklist:
3 Abzan Guide
4 Aven Riftwatcher
2 Crypt Rats
2 Hooting Mandrills
3 Krosan Tusker
2 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Putrid Leech
1 Oblivion Ring
Instant (5)
3 Disfigure
2 Diabolic Edict
Land (23)
3 Blossoming Sands
4 Forest
4 Jungle Hollow
3 Plains
3 Scoured Barrens
6 Swamp
3 Captured Sunlight
2 Duress
1 Raven's Crime
3 Read the Bones
2 Recover
I know what you might be thinking: 3-color decks in pauper are a no-no. But, we're in Green, which means we have access to superb mana fixing, AND we are gaining a ton of life with the lands and some other spells, so the tempo loss of the first 1-2 turns are negated. Quick explanation throughout:
Creatures
- Abzan Guide: He's the cornerstone of the deck. Yes he costs a whole lot, but since we're aiming for grinding and the long game it doesn't matter anyways. Once he's down, we are in a very good shape: he's out of both Lightning Bolt and Doom Blade range, he gains us life on the race, he's a sturdy wall, and he can be played as a bear on the early turns. Overall solid and flexible.
- Hooting Mandrill: Rock-solid beater that we will cast on turns 3-4 overall. Has evasion, he's easy to cast, dodges Bolts like a champ and trades with Affinity's biggest dudes. Very, very efficient creature.
- Putrid Leech: Another extremely efficient creature, Putrid Leech is a great T2 play, since we can start stonewalling aggro decks as soon as it touches the battlefield. Immune to Doom Blade, Lightning Bolt, and even Victim of Night, this is one card that you want to see in big quantities in the early-to-mid game to help establish board presence.
- Aven Riftwatcher: Alongside with Leech, this is the other all-star of the deck. Comes a turn after, gains us the life we might spend on Leech, negates some blows, and clogs the skies. Pretty good creature at holding the ground against aggro decks.
- Mesmeric Fiend: Disruptive creature that lets you look at their hand while taking one card regardless of type or color for 2 mana. While they can recover their card, this also makes Fiend the perfect lightningrod: wasting your removal in a 1/1 against an attrition deck is not the best thing you could do.
- Crypt Rats: 2 of these make for a great sweeper. If board state goes out of hands, Rats are a great reset button. Since all of our creatures have big butts and we will be gaining lots of life, it doesn't do much damage to us. Don't let the deck being tri-color cloud your judgement: you will most of the time blow this for just 2, and with all the fixing that just means that you just need one black mana source more besides the one you used to cast it.
Disruption:
- Duress: Standard go-to disruption. Costs just 1, lets you see their hand and takes the best non-creature spells. All decks in pauper rely heavily on non-creature spells: Tron needs to find their engine while removing your threats, MBC has plenty of kill spells, Delver has counters and card draw, Eye Candy is entirely supported by non-creature spells, Bogles has Auras, Infect has pumps... you catch the drift. 2-of seems ok.
- Raven's Crime: This gives use to late game land draws by turning them onto "B: Target player discards a card". Good as a 1-of to grind controllish decks.
Removal:
- Diabolic Edict: Helps with Bogles, Infect, Eye Candy, and overall hard-to-deal with creatures.
- Disfigure: Cheap instant speed removal that allows us to wipe most of paupers threats; every Delver card except Spire Golem, Kiln Fiend, pre-metalcraft guys, and practically any weenie under the sun.
- Oblivion Ring: Generic card that answers anything that isn't a land and can be cascaded from Captured Sunlight. 1 of this seems fine.
Card Advantage:
- Read the Bones: Scry 2, then draw 2 for 3 mana and 2 life is a very powerful effect. Allows us to filter cards and then replenishes our hand in wars of attrition, something Sign in Blood does not do (and it's also harder to cast in a 3-color deck).
- Recover: Practically another Divination: brings us a dead creature like Avens, Leeches, or Guides that we played as morph in the early turns and also draws us a card.
- Krosan Tusker: Yes, I know it's a creature, but I included it for CA purposes mainly. Instant speed, uncountereable Divination in our colors that always gets us a land for fixing. Since we're playing a war of attrition and we lack Blue, we need some sources of card advantage and this fits the bill, while also feeding Delve. It also doubles as a huge lategame beater if it's needed.
- Captured Sunlight: A great card to have overall. Since we're a goodstuff deck, we might as well mimic Jund playing Bloodbraid Elf and use this. We gain 4 life, which shores Aggro matchups and gives us tempo, plus another card of the top (which can be set thanks to Read the Bones). On top of better to worse:
Other options:
Besides from more removal diversification on the black spots, if the decks needs a little bit more speed, I was thinking on replacing Krosan Tusker with Sakura-Tribe Elder, Duress with Cry of Contrition and fit in some Fume Spitters and maybe Carrion Feeder or Doomed Traveler to ensure Cry's haunt triggers. If there's space for this shell, Blind Hunter could come in too. I mean, it's a 2/2 flying body that gets a 4-point life swing when he enters and another one when the haunted creature dies.
If Mesmeric Fiend proves too problematic, we could go for Liliana's Specter. I had it before, and double black is not that hard to achieve. Wickerbough Elder is the epitome of a rock creature: resilient, beefy, and oozing utility. And finally, Funeral Charm makes for an extremely versatile spell: it's instant speed discard, so it can be considered disruption, a cheap kill spell to kill X/1's, a combat trick when you're blocking to kill larger creatures, the final 2 points of damage, or simply going unblocked through MBC's big butt blockers.
Thoughts?
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
Would Zombie Cutthroat have a place here? I feel it would. It dodges all the same removal as the Leech, it has a body that's on curve for Morph and it adds another Morph creature to keep them guessing if it's the Guide or not. It's free Morph can also blank out The Usual Suspects that would target him while he's face down which would really hurt control.
What I want right now is to diversify a little more my removal since it seems pretty straightforward. Suspects I'm considering are Unmake, which is very flexible to cast (Double black isn't that difficult to get), or, if testing proves I can handle taking 1/4 of my life out in one hit, 1-2 Ashes to Ashes, which seem beast when cascaded.
Also, would a singleton of Moldervine Cloak be good? I mean, it boosts Fiends, which have a rather pathetic body, while also curving directly from Leech, having a devastating 5/5 that could pump to 7/7 as soon as turn 3 and that could dodge most common removal. Even face down creatures could carry it no problem and still beat face later in the game. Cloaked Guide seems rather scary.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
Ashes to Ashes could be nice, but if you really want to use it then I'd forget about using Cutthroat since that would be too much life loss. Snuff Out might also be good choice since it's a free spell, but it only hits one target unlike Ashes.
Moldervine Cloak would definitely add some big power to the deck. I was thinking about it earlier but didn't mention it because you don't have a lot of GY interaction (outside of Recover) but in the end it doesn't matter since it doesn't Dredge a lot anyway. A Cloaked Crypt Rats would be completely bonkers against some decks since the Rats would survive anything below 4 damage!
Since I'm getting in a Moldervine Cloak I'm now looking at graveyard cards other than Hooting Mandrills, mainly Crippling Fatigue. A removal suite consisting in Cripplin Fatigue / Ashes to Ashes, Disfigure, Oblivion Ring and Unmake on top of some Edicts can be really great, since both Fatighe and Ashes are really good at winning attrition wars since they are essentially a 2-for-1.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
4 Putrid Leech
4 Aven Riftwatcher
3 Abzan Guide
3 Krosan Tusker
2 Hooting Mandrills
2 Crypt Rats
2 Mesmeric Fiend
1 Moldervine Cloak
1 Oblivion Ring
Instant (4)
3 Diabolic Edict
1 Unmake
Sorcery (11)
3 Captured Sunlight
2 Duress
1 Raven's Crime
1 Ashes to Ashes
4 Read the Bones
4 Jungle Hollow
3 Blossoming Sands
3 Scoured Barrens
4 Forest
3 Plains
6 Swamp
Since I took out Recover, I added 1 more Read the Bones for card advantage. Are 1-2 Stinkweed Imp worth it? They are recursive removal that can wear a cloak and block fliers, and they can be cascade, but I don't want to turn this into a full dredge shell because the optimal way to play that is Dead Dog. I might also want the Recovers back at some point, and I'm missing the two MB Disfigure. Are there any graveyard shenanigans creatures lying around that could give us some sort of card advantage or could be efficient / fall into Cascade range?
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!