MTG Salvation

Alright, I rediscovered pauper recently after getting a bit tired of the limited formats currently available. After looking through some decklists this seemed to be the most fun and I decided to just learning by doing, jumping into pauper leagues and have now played my first 50 games with the deck.

While I can't claim to be happy with a 58% win-rate (29-21) considering the circumstances that has to be considered good enough and this deck is certainly viable in the format right now.

This is what I've been working with, and main deck has stayed more or less the same but sideboarded has evolved a bit trying more and more to improve the black matchup, but more on that later.



As a general comment I think what's important to realise is that you're playing a combo-deck, and knowing where to 'go for it' or even knowing when to play and when to hold your creatures is one of the most important thing and of course heavily dependent on the match-up.

Now take the statistics for the different matchups for what it is, some of the games I've been drunk, some of the games my opponents has played really bad and even not accounting for this 50 games isn't that many if you want to do any sorts of statistics on it. However these are all league games and should give you a good sample of what the 'average' and not only the 'top' metagame looks like.

I'll do the matchup in frequency order.

Most played, and also by far the worst matchup is:

Dimir Control (2-7)
This matchup is so bad, they have so much removal and combines it with card advantage and can even disrupt the little protection you have. Game one I think the best strategy is to just glass-cannon, try to be as fast as you can and just hold your thumbs that they have a terrible draw. With this sideboard it improves a bit after sideboard but honestly not that much, strategy is to not wait for a big turn but getting in as much damage as possible every turn and try to fly in for the victory.

SB: +2 Dispel, + 2 Spell Pierce, + 3 Mogg War Marshal, + 2 Stormbound Geist, + 1 Burst of Speed
-4 Bolt, - 1 Gut shot, -4 ponder, -1 Gush

Things gets better though because then we get to the second most played matchup and that is a walk:

Mono Green Aggro (7-0)
Yes, I've still to loose to this deck. We are faster than they are, and on top of that we have disruption for them but they don't have any for us (ok Vines of Vastwood actually has a suprising interaction but well it's not much). Just play your creatures out, wait until you have a way to get through, Temur, Apostle's or Shadow rift all works fine usually even if Temur is of course the easiest way to kill someone. But honestly if you're loosing this matchup you're doing something wrong.
SB: +2 Electrickery, +2 Flame slash, -4 Delver

Affinity/Metalcraft (3-4)
This should probably be several different decks, but I wasn't too familiar with the meta when starting to play and can't remember which variants I played. It's however a very fun match-up with lot's of different interactions. Basic truth I think is that the more controllish they are the worse it is for us, I much rather see a tog then a chainers edict so to speak.

Mono Blue Aggro (4-2)
I think this is also a good matchup, and that is even without any pyroblast in the sideboard (that is a very good sideboard card against them). Gtaxian probe really shines in this game because it can be very hard to know if you're aggro or control. The singleton gutshot can shine if it kills a counter fairy with trigger on stack. This game is also a bit different then many others since they don't really have much removal Snap/Vapor snag can set you back but it's not removal in that sense. So in this matchup the most important thing is to get a creature down as soon as possible, then find a spot to go for it, usually when you have a lot of interactions. Watch out for getting ninjaed though, that can run away with the game. Again I don't think Delver gives us much since they have too many flyers to block it anyway and I rather go for a combo kill.

SB: +2 Dispel, +2 Elecktrickery +2 Flame Slash, +2 Spell pierce, -4 Delver, -1 Mutagenic growth, - 2 Ponder, -1 Gush

Monoblack (3-3)
This matchup is also not good, but I think I've managed to get it under control with this heavy sideboarding. The upside compared to UB control is that they don't have so much card advantage, so you can actually go long and grind them out with your edictproof sideboard creatures and some removal. The combo again is more of a threath than something you often gets to go for, but getting the damage in when you can and have more creatures on the board then they do is the way to go. Depending on what you see it might be worth to keep the dispels in.

SB: +2 Flame Slash , + 2 Spell Pierce, + 3 Mogg War Marshal, + 2 Stormbound Geist, - 1 Gut shot, -2 Dispel, -4 ponder, -1 Gush, -1 bolt

Burn (3-1)
Another really good matchup, if they don't kill our creatures we are faster than they are and when they start throwing burn at our creatures we are likely to win anyway, especially with a well-timed blessing or so. Nivix is so much better than Kiln here so try to get him into play if at all possible.

SB: +2 Dispel, +2 Spell pierce, +1 Hydroblast, -1 Gut shot, -4 Lightning bolt

RDW/Goblins (3-0)
Very similar to the mono green matchup in that we have a good matchup on the grounds of being faster. This time depending on their build they might have some burning disruption but again Nivix is so good against that and the red decks as well as the green and the blue decks is a reason to play our deck.

SB: +2 Electrickery, +2 Flame Slash, +1 Hydroblast, -4 Delver, -1 Ponder

Other decks (4-4)
Hasn't played any other matchup more than twice so hasn't really too much to say about them, noteworthy is that I only played the mirror once so it doesn't seem like this is a very popular deck right now.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading and please tell me if you think I'm playing or sideboarding wrong, I always like to learn.

Found this thread and with the increasing popularity decided to try it out (using the decklist at the end) on Modo. I played my first 20 games now (2-mans and 8-mans) and while I've fairly good results overall I realise I must be doing something wrong. My matchresult so far (from best to worst matchup) are:
BG 3-0
Jund 2-0
Affinity 1-0
Storm 1-0
Boggles 1-1
Fairies 1-0
Scapeshift 1-0
Zoo 1-0
Mirror 0-1
AngelPod 0-1
UWtron 0-1
UWR 1-4

Making a total of 13-7, but what stands out to me is that I can't seem to be winning against UWR and really only lost to control matchups. My sideboard strategy for UWR has been a bit varied but something like: +2 Combust, +2 Counterflux, +2 Spellskite, + 1 Bloodmoon, -1 Pillar of Flame, -1 Electrolyze, - 1 Peek, -1 Vapor snag, -1 bolt, -2 spell snare. As you can see a bit all over the place, thoughts on the strategy here? Also what's the key to this matchup? I guess I have to try being aggresive since even with a couple of Combusts and fluxes I don't really see myself winning the long game, but if I do go aggresive paths and bolts eats me up, if I play it slower I feel I'm not getting enough pressure before they can wrath.