Welcome to Season 3 of Weekly Pauper Recap! This time around, i will only be playing 25 matches per week. I came to the conclusion that playing more matches (and consequently playing more decks) makes for better content, so i’m switching back to 50 matches per week for the rest of the season. (Note that i’m playing Friendly Leagues because i dislike waiting for matches.) I won’t be playing one of the Intriguing Decks every week, but i’ll try one of them every now and then.

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.

Finally, something is happening at the top – Mono Red is no longer the most popular archetype. Burn is still the most popular deck, of course, but we’ll get there. Well, probably not, but this is a good start.

I think it’s notable that Mono Red was already in second place in the mid-week metagame, despite having the same metagame share as last week. Still, this is the first time this season that Burn is below 15% of the metagame and that’s great.

Tron still came in third, but UB Delver and Elves both have gone up and overtaken Faeries, which has gone down. Notably, of the 15 matches i have played against Elves over the past four weeks, 10 were in the past two weeks. I am certainly going to keep that in mind for my deck selection next week.

Lastly, while absent in the mid-week metagame, creature combo made it in again. This is predominantly Priest Tribe at this point, but i also play against regular Tribe combo and Izzet Blitz about once each per 100 matches. Previously, grouping Tribe and Blitz together made sense, they had similar matchup spreads – favoured against Tron and non-blue, non-red creature decks, unfavoured against most blue and red decks. Priest Tribe changes that dynamic significantly, being much better against blue decks specifically while being worse against Tron (especially Dignitary Tron) and Elves.

What do i consider a good choice right now? I think Bogles is pretty good if you can dodge Elves. Keep in mind that your matchups have massive impact on your success with Bogles though; the deck is very high variance if you only play it for one or two leagues, but it should even out if you play more.

UB Delver is the opposite of Bogles, just a very solid pick overall. I personally don’t think UR Faeries is that bad against Boros either, but i don’t like the prospect of playing the matchup over and over again. It’s much more taxing to play than it is with UB in my opinion.

If you’re looking for something more unusual, the Mono White Tron list i played a few weeks ago is very good against both Burn, UB Delver, Faeries and all flavours of W/x midrange. It is very bad against Elves and opposing Tron decks though. I’m willing to believe one of those matchups can be solved, considering that the deck has about ten sideboards slots to play with.

What I Played This Week

(Orzhov Monarch by lampalot, 6th Place in the 31/03/19 Pauper Playoff)

The problem i have with Orzhov Monarch is that it feels great. You have great tools for almost all matchups (the big exception being Tron). However, with so many tapped lands and clunky removal spells, the deck often has problems getting going. If you get to turn four without being behind, you will generally be able to stabilise and wrap up the game. You just don’t have great odds getting there.

For what it’s worth, i also tried a list with more untapped lands and four Prophetic Prisms to make the deck more flexible and allow me to take advantage of Kor Skyfisher in non-Burn matchups more often, but that list did not meet my expectations either. In theory, this deck is better than Boros because it has more powerful spells, but in practice Boros Monarch is simply more consistent and consequently has better matchups. I don’t think i am going to play this deck again unless either the format slows down or the deck speeds up.

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

-1 Lifelink

+1 Dispel

Sideboard:

-2 Gorilla Shaman

-1 Dispel

+1 Obsidian Acolyte

+1 Flaring Pain

+1 Lifelink

This deck does what it’s supposed to do: Beat Burn, Boros and UB Delver and not be awful against Tron and Faeries. It is pretty bad against Elves and Tribe though, and until i started playing against those decks at least twice per league, things were going well.

I went 17-13 overall, but six of those losses were to Tribe and Elves, which you should only face about half as much in total. I also only faced Burn three times in those 30 matches. To make up for that, i played Burn three times in my first league after switching off Bogles.

I’m not telling you this because i need to vent, but to outline a very real problem with Bogles: Your matchups are going to be the most important factor in determining your success. You can almost flowchart most of the lines you have to take with Bogles. There are always combinations of cards you frankly can’t play around, let alone beat. With more interactive decks, there usually is a way to maneuver through obstacles and scramble together wins, but Bogles does not seek to interact and having a firm grasp on the sequencing basics with this deck is what counts.

Of course, even though the deck is that simple to play, it’s as easy as it might seem. It’s only easy once you’ve gotten used to it, which is the hard part.

I don’t think there is much i would change about the list. The issues are Elves and Tribe, which fundamentally beat what this deck is trying to do. Dawn Charm wasn’t necessary, but there wasn’t anything i felt i was missing. Standard Bearer is decent if you expect to play the mirror, but i don’t think it’s particularly helpful against anything else. The most impactful card you could run is probably Fling, which can help beat Stonehorn Dignitary.

I am going to play this deck again, but maybe not soon.

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

no changes

Sideboard:

-1 Inside Out

+1 Lignify

I only played one League with this. Tron has a similar problem to Orzhov Monarch; it has powerful cards and a decent number of favourable matchups, but it has consistency issues. No matter how good certain matchups are when you manage to assemble Tron before being terribly behind, there are still going to be games where your mana doesn’t cooperate or you draw a bunch of Mnemonic Walls without meaningful targets.

I always tell myself to stop playing Tron because of how frustrating it can be, but somehow i keep coming back to it, blinded by the high powerlevel of its cards.

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

no changes

Sideboard:

-2 Stormbound Geist

+1 Viridian Longbow

+1 Think Twice

One thing i noticed when i played this is that i haven’t really touched it since Ghitu Lavarunner entered the format. Between Lavarunner, Curse of the Pierced Heart and Thermo-Alchemist, your Hydroblasts are being stretched very thin. From the way it plays, i prefer this to UR Faeries, but i think we’re approaching the point where missing out on hard removal is a dealbreaker. I’m not confident we’re there yet, but we’re close.

As for the list, i was mostly happy with it. Except for Mutagenic Growth, which didn’t do enough for me. I liked Flayer Husk in the past, but i think i’m going to try Vulshok Morningstar next.

I brought in Think Twice every game. I think up to two copies of Curse of Chains in the 75 are reasonable. The third Longbow might not be necessary, but there isn’t anything else i want to run anyway.

I’m not sure when, but i am going to play this deck again.

Intriguing Decks

(Izzet Blitz by Amoras27, 2nd Place in the 07/04/19 Pauper Challenge)

Out of all the decklists published this week, this is the only archetype i haven’t played or featured already this season.

I like Blitz, it’s fun. I don’t think it’s very good overall, but it does have good matchups. Boros and Faeries are rough, but it’s great against Tron, UB Delver and all the green decks.

Because there’s only one new deck this week, let’s take a look at alicodendrochit’s Grixis Control list from last week again:

(Grixis Control by alicodendrochit, 5-0 from last week)

Yep, still sweet.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, see you next week for the final chapter of Weekly Pauper Recap Season 3!

j