I wasn't much into it in the first place to be honest, because I am one of those lucky bastards who decided to join the club exactly when Treasure Cruise hype was strong and when Wizards decided to nerf pauper dailies. So it wan't very interesting to begin with.
But now the dust has settled and I'm back for more!
Now, I have a few questions:
1) What can I expect from Pauper metagame currently exept the "play Gurmag Angler or die"?
2) I have zero idea how the new ticket-something-something-points tournament system works. Can I have a brief explanation?
3) Currently I'm interested in playing two decks: Cloudshift-Morph-something, and Freed from the Real combo. Can I have some curently relevant lists of those decks? Or some place where I can find relevant Pauper decklists for something exept Delver?
2) Tickets cost a US dollar from the in-game store, or you can win them from events. Players can trade them like cards, or spend them on event entry. That's pretty much the ticket system in a nutshell.
Oh, you think the losers' bracket is your ally, but you merely adopted the scrub tier. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t 4-0 an FNM until I was already a man; by then, it was nothing to me but an extra pack to sell for store credit!
Ye, I saw this thingy, but it is filled with different variations on Delver, some other stuff and has almost nothing I'm interested in, sadly.
They even don't have the seemingly popular Tortured Existence decks in there.
2) Tickets cost a US dollar from the in-game store, or you can win them from events. Players can trade them like cards, or spend them on event entry. That's pretty much the ticket system in a nutshell.
And the Player Points thing? You use Tickets to enter tournaments and Point to enter tournaments, and then Points get kinda redundant?...
10 Points = 1 Ticket but are untradable. You win points from tournies instead of tickets now.
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The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
10 Points = 1 Ticket but are untradable. You win points from tournies instead of tickets now.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
Any freed deck is going to based on abusing the mechanic with Ravnica dual lands and probably Kaervek's Torch as a finisher. I've seen some decks running it with Axebane Guardian and some defenders, but I don't like those as much because they require multiple defenders. Whereas, Voyaging Satyr is enough with just the Ravnica Karoo lands and you're probably running the Karoo lands in a 3 color deck anyway.
As such, you're probably going to be Temur as your combo requires Freed from the Real, Voyaging Satyr, and Kaervek's Torch. Wind Zendikon has fallen out of favor, but personally if I was going for the combo, I would want it for redundancy. Fortunately, the best one mana dig Ponder and Preordain are both legal. So that's 24 core cards plus 21ish lands, probably 8 of which are Ravnica Karoo lands. The other 15 or so slots are open but you probably want some counters to protect the combo. You can also add in stuff such as Fertile Ground, Fierce Empath, Ulamog's Crusher, and Aurochs Herd.
I've seen people running a Trinket Mage package as Trinket Mage can find singletons of both Lifespark Spellbomb and Viridian Longbow both of which are poor man's finishers plus the artifact lands making it a functional Civic Wayfinder and 1x Darksteel Citadel because it's indestructible for your Zendikons. However, as Lifespark Spellbomb is worse than Wind Zendikon as it requires mana to activate and Viridian Longbow is more difficult to combo with, I'm skeptical of that package.
Instead I would test Drift of Phantasms and Muddle the Mixture along with 1x Rolling Thunder. Drift is a decent blocker that can find your Freed from the Real and that's the main bottleneck because the Karoo lands and stuff that can untap them are more prevalent. Muddle is a decent counter to have as you're predominantly running counters to protect your counters and the sort of cards that disrupt your combo are instants and sorceries. As such if you're running 4xDrift of Phantasms, and Muddle the Mixture plus their tutor targets, that's going to be your list. I prefer Drift of Phantasms and Muddle the Mixture over other tutor spells because Drift and Muddle are the two cards that come closest to being real cards outside of the transmute ability.
Personally, if I'm going to run a combo deck, I want to go "all-in" on the combo. I would run 4x of all the combo pieces and wouldn't run Aurochs Herd type cards because when I do "go off" I want to abuse the infinite nature of the combo and not just put in multiple copies of a creature. I would run high on combo pieces and low on general "good stuff" type cards.
At least that's the way I would do it. You're not going to find any sort of stock list because it's not a very popular deck and therefore subject to more variation. Max the combo pieces, tutor, draw, and counters to protect the combo. Any sort of defensive cards such as Electrickery are sideboard cards imo. Having access to both Hydroblast and Pyroblast is relevant out of the side.
As for Cloudshift style decks, there are similar Momentary Blink decks. I think it is fair to state they are tier two, but reasonably common. Before M10 rules change regarding damage, they were a lot more popular so if you dig deeply enough into the past you can probably find one that works for you.
I took this list to a 4-1 finish in a league recently. As League is very competitive I'll chalk that up to a success. I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it can provide a foundation for tweaking if you want to run some sort of Cloudshift, Momentary Blink type engine. One change I would make is cutting the Viridian Longbow for a land.
I've seen people running a Trinket Mage package as Trinket Mage can find singletons of both Lifespark Spellbomb and Viridian Longbow both of which are poor man's finishers plus the artifact lands making it a functional Civic Wayfinder and 1x Darksteel Citadel because it's indestructible for your Zendikons. However, as Lifespark Spellbomb is worse than Wind Zendikon as it requires mana to activate and Viridian Longbow is more difficult to combo with, I'm skeptical of that package.
It actually sounds like Darksteel Citadel and Wind Zendikon will serve as a second win condition, with Zendikon being on double-duty. The exact reason why I didn't like the deck much is that it is vunerable to removal and useless if you can't go the Freed from the Real route. This idea seem to fix it. Great, thanks for suggestion!
I took this list to a 4-1 finish in a league recently. As League is very competitive I'll chalk that up to a success. I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it can provide a foundation for tweaking if you want to run some sort of Cloudshift, Momentary Blink type engine. One change I would make is cutting the Viridian Longbow for a land.
I'm kinda not sure I want to run U/W colors, that is one of the problems. How will you deal with Stompy, Affinity, WW and other swarmy decks, without Crypt Rats?
I'm not sure only Sunlance and Journey to Nowhere is enough. So I wanted to go B/W, but not sure how the deck look like?...Well, exept 4x Crypt Rats, obviously ^^'.
Also, what Morph creatures you would choose? There are a lot of them, and I have no idea whitch of them are good against current meta in Pauper?
In my experience, the deck I posted fairs extremely well against swarmy decks. The way the games play out is that you have similar curves with the exception that your creatures predominantly have ETB abilities so you win in an attrition match. Lone Missionary and Sylvok Lifestaff are also great at buying you time. I don't think I've ever lost a match to WW or Burn. Stompy and Affinity are probably 60/40 in your favor preboards and you have more to sideboard against them than they have against you. The best way to look at it is that it is a control deck that instead of using a Teachings draw engine and removal as answers, uses two for one creatures, and lifegain as answers. As cards such as Lone Missionary are straight up two-for-ones against aggro while Chainer's Edict is a one-for-one and sometimes doesn't even do what you want it to do, the deck has a favorable matchup against aggro, certainly better than does Teachings control. The deck also can't lose to MBC as all of your creatures are two-for-ones, rendering removal useless, and you have more card draw in the end game.
The deck can struggle against combo or other decks where you need to answer something or die such as IzzetBlitz. Atog in Affinity has an element of this to it as well, bu you lean heavily on things such as Hydroblast and COP: RED in that regard post-boards. Other than that decks that have a more powerful end game such as Teachings and Temur Tron are the problem matchups.
It's interesting that you mention Crypt Rats as that card has nearly entirely fallen out of favor in the Pauper community. It's generally too slow to be great against aggro. It costs 3 to cast and generally at least 2 to wipe the board, meaning 5 total mana. Also, when you are playing against aggro the life loss is a big downside. Evincar's Justice has replaced it in Teachings deck as it costs 4 instead of 5+ and you have the option to use its rebuy ability as a finisher in conjunction with a manabase that gains a ton of life.
The deck has weaknesses, but aggro certainly isn't one of them.
I wouldn't run a BW deck because the lack of blue card draw is too much of a loss to make it worthwhile. Nothing in black appeals to me for Pauper as it's main strength is removal but spot removal is much much worse in Pauper simply due to the fact that most creatures in Pauper are relatively weak. So you'll have to ask someone else.
In my experience, the deck I posted fairs extremely well against swarmy decks. The way the games play out is that you have similar curves with the exception that your creatures predominantly have ETB abilities so you win in an attrition match. Lone Missionary and Sylvok Lifestaff are also great at buying you time. I don't think I've ever lost a match to WW or Burn. Stompy and Affinity are probably 60/40 in your favor preboards and you have more to sideboard against them than they have against you. The best way to look at it is that it is a control deck that instead of using a Teachings draw engine and removal as answers, uses two for one creatures, and lifegain as answers. As cards such as Lone Missionary are straight up two-for-ones against aggro while Chainer's Edict is a one-for-one and sometimes doesn't even do what you want it to do, the deck has a favorable matchup against aggro, certainly better than does Teachings control. The deck also can't lose to MBC as all of your creatures are two-for-ones, rendering removal useless, and you have more card draw in the end game.
There is a point also that the deck I have in mind seems more like a combo deck rather than a grindy one. And I actually would like it to be combo'y...
Basicly I just feel that deck I have and mind and the one you posted are very different, although they use the same engines. Well, at least partially.
It's interesting that you mention Crypt Rats as that card has nearly entirely fallen out of favor in the Pauper community. It's generally too slow to be great against aggro. It costs 3 to cast and generally at least 2 to wipe the board, meaning 5 total mana. Also, when you are playing against aggro the life loss is a big downside. Evincar's Justice has replaced it in Teachings deck as it costs 4 instead of 5+ and you have the option to use its rebuy ability as a finisher in conjunction with a manabase that gains a ton of life.
Huh. That seems kinda strange, with all the good lifegain pauper has (holy sh** Sylvok Lifestaff is common) and that Evincar's Justice is an overcosted Pyroclasm that doesn't kill everything you would want, while Crypt Rats does and also tears your opponents face off in the coffe breaks.
Well then...
You can try the UB Trinket Mage deck with Lifestaff and Crypt Rats if you want. It's not a tier one deck but it can win games.
There's a Sultai version of the deck too. It adds Krosan Tusker and Brindle Boar. Its...good? I don't know. Its fun that's for sure but the stock list I've found, the mana base needs a massive over hall. That list loses to its own mana base more than the other deck I've found. The deck is super fun and has a great late game. The early game can be kind of meh but overall I do like the deck.
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But now the dust has settled and I'm back for more!
Now, I have a few questions:
1) What can I expect from Pauper metagame currently exept the "play Gurmag Angler or die"?
2) I have zero idea how the new ticket-something-something-points tournament system works. Can I have a brief explanation?
3) Currently I'm interested in playing two decks: Cloudshift-Morph-something, and Freed from the Real combo. Can I have some curently relevant lists of those decks? Or some place where I can find relevant Pauper decklists for something exept Delver?
Thanks in advance everyone!
2) Tickets cost a US dollar from the in-game store, or you can win them from events. Players can trade them like cards, or spend them on event entry. That's pretty much the ticket system in a nutshell.
3) I see those decks around from time to time, but I don't know much about them. Here's an interesting Freed deck: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pauper-freed-control#online
Ye, I saw this thingy, but it is filled with different variations on Delver, some other stuff and has almost nothing I'm interested in, sadly.
They even don't have the seemingly popular Tortured Existence decks in there.
And the Player Points thing? You use Tickets to enter tournaments and Point to enter tournaments, and then Points get kinda redundant?...
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
As such, you're probably going to be Temur as your combo requires Freed from the Real, Voyaging Satyr, and Kaervek's Torch. Wind Zendikon has fallen out of favor, but personally if I was going for the combo, I would want it for redundancy. Fortunately, the best one mana dig Ponder and Preordain are both legal. So that's 24 core cards plus 21ish lands, probably 8 of which are Ravnica Karoo lands. The other 15 or so slots are open but you probably want some counters to protect the combo. You can also add in stuff such as Fertile Ground, Fierce Empath, Ulamog's Crusher, and Aurochs Herd.
I've seen people running a Trinket Mage package as Trinket Mage can find singletons of both Lifespark Spellbomb and Viridian Longbow both of which are poor man's finishers plus the artifact lands making it a functional Civic Wayfinder and 1x Darksteel Citadel because it's indestructible for your Zendikons. However, as Lifespark Spellbomb is worse than Wind Zendikon as it requires mana to activate and Viridian Longbow is more difficult to combo with, I'm skeptical of that package.
Instead I would test Drift of Phantasms and Muddle the Mixture along with 1x Rolling Thunder. Drift is a decent blocker that can find your Freed from the Real and that's the main bottleneck because the Karoo lands and stuff that can untap them are more prevalent. Muddle is a decent counter to have as you're predominantly running counters to protect your counters and the sort of cards that disrupt your combo are instants and sorceries. As such if you're running 4xDrift of Phantasms, and Muddle the Mixture plus their tutor targets, that's going to be your list. I prefer Drift of Phantasms and Muddle the Mixture over other tutor spells because Drift and Muddle are the two cards that come closest to being real cards outside of the transmute ability.
Personally, if I'm going to run a combo deck, I want to go "all-in" on the combo. I would run 4x of all the combo pieces and wouldn't run Aurochs Herd type cards because when I do "go off" I want to abuse the infinite nature of the combo and not just put in multiple copies of a creature. I would run high on combo pieces and low on general "good stuff" type cards.
Something like
4 Drift of Phantasms
1 Flamewave Invoker
4 Wind Zendikon
4 Freed from the Real
4 Muddle the Mixture
4 Counterspell
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Kaervek's Torch
1 Rolling Thunder
2 Mountain
2 Forest
2 Evolving Wilds
4 Izzet Boilerworks
4 Gruul Turf
2 Simic Growth Chamber
At least that's the way I would do it. You're not going to find any sort of stock list because it's not a very popular deck and therefore subject to more variation. Max the combo pieces, tutor, draw, and counters to protect the combo. Any sort of defensive cards such as Electrickery are sideboard cards imo. Having access to both Hydroblast and Pyroblast is relevant out of the side.
As for Cloudshift style decks, there are similar Momentary Blink decks. I think it is fair to state they are tier two, but reasonably common. Before M10 rules change regarding damage, they were a lot more popular so if you dig deeply enough into the past you can probably find one that works for you.
3 Trinket Mage
4 Lone Missionary
4 Mulldrifter
3 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Sylvok Lifestaff
1 Bonesplitter
1 Viridian Longbow
2 Momentary Blink
4 Counterspell
4 Journey to Nowhere
4 Sunlance
4 Brainstorm
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Ancient Den
2 Seat of the Synod
7 Island
4 Tranquil Cove
4 Dispel
3 Hydroblast
2 Muddle the Mixture
1 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Circle of Protection: Black
1 Circle of Protection: Green
1 Wispmare
1 Curse of the Bloody Tome
1 Relic of Progenitus
I took this list to a 4-1 finish in a league recently. As League is very competitive I'll chalk that up to a success. I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it can provide a foundation for tweaking if you want to run some sort of Cloudshift, Momentary Blink type engine. One change I would make is cutting the Viridian Longbow for a land.
It actually sounds like Darksteel Citadel and Wind Zendikon will serve as a second win condition, with Zendikon being on double-duty. The exact reason why I didn't like the deck much is that it is vunerable to removal and useless if you can't go the Freed from the Real route. This idea seem to fix it. Great, thanks for suggestion!
I'm kinda not sure I want to run U/W colors, that is one of the problems. How will you deal with Stompy, Affinity, WW and other swarmy decks, without Crypt Rats?
I'm not sure only Sunlance and Journey to Nowhere is enough. So I wanted to go B/W, but not sure how the deck look like?...Well, exept 4x Crypt Rats, obviously ^^'.
Also, what Morph creatures you would choose? There are a lot of them, and I have no idea whitch of them are good against current meta in Pauper?
P.S. Sylvok Lifestaff is common, holy cow.
The deck can struggle against combo or other decks where you need to answer something or die such as IzzetBlitz. Atog in Affinity has an element of this to it as well, bu you lean heavily on things such as Hydroblast and COP: RED in that regard post-boards. Other than that decks that have a more powerful end game such as Teachings and Temur Tron are the problem matchups.
It's interesting that you mention Crypt Rats as that card has nearly entirely fallen out of favor in the Pauper community. It's generally too slow to be great against aggro. It costs 3 to cast and generally at least 2 to wipe the board, meaning 5 total mana. Also, when you are playing against aggro the life loss is a big downside. Evincar's Justice has replaced it in Teachings deck as it costs 4 instead of 5+ and you have the option to use its rebuy ability as a finisher in conjunction with a manabase that gains a ton of life.
The deck has weaknesses, but aggro certainly isn't one of them.
I wouldn't run a BW deck because the lack of blue card draw is too much of a loss to make it worthwhile. Nothing in black appeals to me for Pauper as it's main strength is removal but spot removal is much much worse in Pauper simply due to the fact that most creatures in Pauper are relatively weak. So you'll have to ask someone else.
There is a point also that the deck I have in mind seems more like a combo deck rather than a grindy one. And I actually would like it to be combo'y...
Basicly I just feel that deck I have and mind and the one you posted are very different, although they use the same engines. Well, at least partially.
Huh. That seems kinda strange, with all the good lifegain pauper has (holy sh** Sylvok Lifestaff is common) and that Evincar's Justice is an overcosted Pyroclasm that doesn't kill everything you would want, while Crypt Rats does and also tears your opponents face off in the coffe breaks.
Well then...
I'll definitly look into it, thanks!
There's a Sultai version of the deck too. It adds Krosan Tusker and Brindle Boar. Its...good? I don't know. Its fun that's for sure but the stock list I've found, the mana base needs a massive over hall. That list loses to its own mana base more than the other deck I've found. The deck is super fun and has a great late game. The early game can be kind of meh but overall I do like the deck.
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A tiny update: Suddenly there is a blue 1 mana Cloudshift as in Essence Flux. Huh. What was the fuss about U/B Trinket something-something?...