Welcome to the final entry of Weekly Pauper Recap Season 3! I’m not sure what’s next for this blog, but you can help me decide by voting in a strawpoll linked at the end of this article. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the final 50 matches i played.



Metagame Recap

(google spreadsheet with the complete data)

For those unfamiliar with my grouping conventions, Mono Red is Burn + RDW; Boros is an aggregate term for Monarch, Bully and Kuldotha variants; Orzhov encompasses all the Orzhov midrange decks; Flicker & Marauder Tron refer to lists with Ghostly Flicker & Fangren Marauder, respectively; Faeries is UR Faeries + Mono Blue Delver; UB Control is everything from UB Alchemy to Teachings; creature combo means Tribe and Izzet Blitz. Check out the Google Spreadsheet linked above for more detailed data.

Why are there two charts? Because i’m playing twice as much! From now on, i’m treating each week’s matches as two seperate blocks of 25 matches. I think this is a decent middle ground between overreacting to recent developments and ignoring them. I’m going to post the mid-week chart to twitter (@JonLX) each week. My analysis will mostly focus on the second chart, but i’m including both for completeness’ sake.

What has changed since last week? UB Delver has fallen behind Elves and Faeries. And that’s it.

One thing i have experienced over the past few weeks is that the metagame, while not necessarily excessively diverse, is very wide. Many matchups feel lopsided and swingy and it feels like there are hard counters to every deck. How acceptable it is to play a deck that has glaring weaknesses (such as Boros vs. Tron, Bogles vs. Tribe or Elves vs. Burn) depends on how much you play. If you only have the time to play a league every couple days, i recommend playing something with even and interactive matchups, such as UR Faeries, Priest Tribe or UB Delver. Unfortunately, these are also decks that you need a certain level of familiarity with in order to perform well, but at least you’ll be able to take responsibility for your losses.

If you play Bogles, Elves or Tron, it’s quite possible that you run into awful matchups three matches in a row and have a miserable time with little room to influence the outcome of your matches. I would recommend Bogles if you have the time to play multiple leagues per week (note that leagues with Bogles also go faster than with the more interactive decks).

Boros variants are somewhere in the middle. They’re interactive, but they also have some pretty bad matchups (mostly Tron). I think UR Faeries, UB Delver, Boros and Bogles are the best choices currently. I think UB and Boros have a higher floor than the other two, whereas Bogles and Faeries require more experience in order to do well.

What I Played This Week

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

-1 Oblivion Ring

-1 Electrickery

-2 Plains

-2 Battle Screech

+1 Aven Riftwatcher

+1 Prismatic Strands

+1 Reaping the Graves

+2 Ancient Den

+1 Boros Garrison

Sideboard:

-2 Flaring Pain

+1 Aven Riftwatcher

+1 Electrickery

I only played my first league of the week with Boros. I liked the list, but i wasn’t really feeling it. Cutting Battle Screech to make room for Riftwatcher and Reaping the Graves is something i have done before. I don’t think you’re worse against Faeries, Delver or control, but you’re better against Burn and in the mirror. I’m not sure how much i like the third Prismatic Strands over a removal spell, but cutting one removal spell for an extra land seems good. Speaking of lands, i was considering cutting the two Secluded Steppes for an extra copy each of Bojuka Bog and Radiant Fountain. I am going to play this deck again.

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

no changes

Sideboard:

-2 Gorilla Shaman

+1 Coalition Honor Guard

+1 Holy Light

In a way, this deck did what it was supposed to do. It beat the decks it was supposed to beat, but it lost to the decks i didn’t expect to be able to beat. Unfortunately, i played more matches against decks i wasn’t expecting to be able to beat (Elves, Tribe, Tron) than i faced off against Burn, UB Delver and W/x midrange decks (i played against none of them). I’m sure i could have just stuck with the deck for longer and this would have evened out, but i was too frustrated to not move on. I’m likely to play this deck again if the metagame calls for it.

(Elves by c_is_for_cookie, 24th place in the 07/04/19 Pauper Challenge)

So my opinion on Elves hasn’t changed: It’s great if you dodge Burn. For the past two months Burn was the single most popular archetype in Pauper Leagues though. When i started playing against Burn less and less, i decided to try Elves again. I played against Burn in my first three matches. By the second match i decided to just finish the league and pick another deck. I don’t enjoy the deck enough to play it again before Burn is much less common.

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

-1 Aura Gnarlid

+1 Cartouche of Solidarity

Sideboard:

-1 Cartouche of Solidarity

-2 Cartouche of Strength

-2 Dawn Charm

+3 Standard Bearer

+2 Gut Shot

This is what i played the majority of my matches with this week. As of right now, there’s nothing that i really want to change about the list. I wouldn’t mind another creature in the main deck, but i go up to 14 in almost every single matchup anyway and i think the fourteenth maindeck creature would be less impactful than any of the cards i already have. I am going to play this deck again.

Intriguing Decks

As was the case last week, only one decklist was published that i haven’t featured or played this season:

(UR Erasure by Raptor56, 5-0 from this week)

I like this list. I’m not sure how much of an issue Pyroblast is and if there shouldn’t be an alternate win condition, but i would have to play this first before being able to say anything. I like that Raptor56 respects Burn enough to play Circle of Protection: Red in the sideboard.

What Next?

As i mentioned earlier, this is the final chapter of Weekly Pauper Recap Season 3. I always planned for this season to have nine articles, but i don’t think i ever mentioned that. Whoops.

Anyway.

I don’t have definite plans moving forward. I am going to take the next week off from playing. I’ve been playing at least five Pauper leagues per week for twelve weeks and i need a short break. After that, i’m going to play something for another twelve weeks. Here are the options:

Weekly Pauper Recap Season 4. If i’m doing this, i’m likely going to take an extended break from Pauper afterwards. Weekly Pokémon VGC Recap + Pauper Challenges. This option would have me playing Pokémon VGC for twelve weeks and write articles similar to this one for weeks 4-12. I would also play in the Pauper Challenge and write reports every week. Weekly Pokémon VGC Recap + Pauper Set Reviews. As with option 2, i would play Pokémon VGC every week and write about that, but i would also write Pauper set reviews for old sets every two or three weeks.

To make things easier, i have created a strawpoll. You can vote here. The vote will be open until some time next week and i’m going to post an update to this blog when it’s finished. I’m also posting a Pauper set review for War of the Spark next week, so stay tuned for that.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading and see you soon!

j