Welcome to a new chapter of Weekly Pauper Recap! As always, we’re going to start with a Metagame Recap, then we’re looking at the Decks I Played This Week and finally there will be two Intriguing Decks from this week’s published decklists, one of which i am going to play next week.

Metagame Recap

If you’re just interested in the raw data, refer to my Google spreadsheet. If you’re also interested in what i have to say about the data, let’s get to it!

Faeries continues its reign as the most popular deck in the format, with Mono Red and W/x Midrange on its heels. Tron has actually made it in this week, but apparently it’s back to being a fringe archetype, rather than the omnipresent deck it was a few weeks ago.

Bogles has this weird thing going on where it either doesn’t make it in or hits 10%.

The biggest story here is probably UB Delver, which has seen a massive spike in popularity thanks to the new, streamlined list. I wouldn’t be surprised if the deck continued to be relevant. I haven’t gotten around to play it myself, but it did seem strong and reasonably consistent in my matches against it.

Affinity hasn’t made it in for the second week in a row, which is reflected in the four week metagame:

To make up for the loss of Affinity, Bogles has made it in for the first time in a while.

Other than that, there’s not much to talk about here. Tron continues its descend from the top tier of popularity towards the mid tier, where it hovers just above UB Control.

At this point, i feel like it’s finally reasonable to play W/x again, which i actually did. If you’re in the market for shorter games, i like Bogles. This also looks like the kind of metagame UW Familiars should do well in, so maybe it’s time for me to complete my run with the deck. And of course there’s always Faeries, even though personally won’t play it because i have already played it too much in the past.

Decks I Played This Week

(UB Crypt Rats by habakiri, 5-0 from last week)

I played four Leagues with this, 3-2, 3-2, 2-3 & 3-2. Notably, i lost one of my games (and, in consquence, the match) to Spinning Darkness, which Magic Online randomly doesn’t let you cast for its alternate cost. To make up for that, whenever it does allow you to exile cards from your graveyard, you can exile any Black cards from your graveyard. This deck would be much better if you could just always cast Spinning Darkness for zero mana.

After my fourth league with the deck, i decided that it was too mediocre and monotonous for me to continue playing. It’s a fine deck, don’t get me wrong, but matches tend to take just a little too long for my liking. Like all the other UB Pristine Talisman decks, this is a deck i will play every now and then when i feel like it, but i don’t see myself sticking with it for longer stretches of time.

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

-1 Oblivion Ring

-2 Battle Screech

+1 Kor Sanctifiers

+2 Faithless Looting

Sideboard:

-2 Standard Bearer

-1 Patrician’s Scorn

+1 Kor Sanctifiers

+2 Seeker of the Way

I played six leagues with this: 4-1, 3-2, 3-2, 4-1, 3-2, 3-2.

Let’s talk about the changes i made.

I didn’t miss Battle Screech and Kor Sanctifiers was a great replacement for Oblivion Ring. I really, really liked having the two Sanctifiers after sideboarding, although i could see myself replacing one of them with a copy of Patrician’s Scorn or Leave No Trace. Those don’t deal with artifacts, of course, nor can they be rebought with Kor Skyfisher, which came up a decent amount.

Faithless Looting and Seeker of the Way, on the other hand, were massively underwhelming. Pretty much every time i drew Looting, i wanted to have a Boros Garrison instead. Even in the late game, i didn’t really want to discard my lands nor my spells. One scenario that stuck with me was when i cast Looting to dig for lands, discarded the cards i drew off Looting and was down a card for no reason.

The problem with Seeker was that it wasn’t reliable enough against Burn, where you really need the lifegain. The matchup where it’s best, Stompy, is so good that you don’t need them anyway, so the card just feels like a Standard Bearer that doesn’t do anything against Bogles or Inside Out combo.

I still feel like this is a good deck to play right now though, so stay tuned for an updated list.

Intriguing Decks

I played too many long games recently, so i decided to pick some decks that will hopefully let play shorter games:

(RB Reanimator by FIJI95, 28th place in the 09/09/18 Pauper Challenge)

(RB Tron by FalseMufn, 5-0 from this week)

I don’t think either of these is particularly strong, but i hope whichever i pick will let me do ridiculous things often enough to keep me entertained.

Thanks for reading and see you next week!

j