Welcome to Season 4 of Weekly Pauper Recap! As always, we’re going to kick things off with my Metagame Recap. My goal is to play 50 matches per week and analyse 200 matches worth of data. You can read about my process here: Weekly Pauper Recap Season 4 Overview. Next is the What I Played This Week section, where i’m going to feature a different deck every week. To wrap things up, we’re going to look at two Intriguing Decks, one each from the most recent Pauper Challenge and the most recent League results.

In case you missed it, i also wrote a Pauper set review for Modern Horizons last week, which you can check out here.

Metagame Recap

(google spreadsheet with the complete data)

Last Week’s Metagame

This Week’s Metagame

The decks that had a metagame share of 5% or more over the previous two weeks made up 33 of my 50 matches this week as well. This is not a bad rate at all – the same as last week, actually – but i’m sure we can do better once things settle down.

Tron and Burn, the two most popular archetypes last week, were slightly less common this week than last, while White Midrange and UB Control both stayed at 12%. Stompy, which i played against five times last week, faded back into irrelevancy; i only faced it once this week.

Curiously, i played against three different land destruction decks this week (Mono Black, Blue/Green and Blue/Red), likely a counter-measure to the heavy presence of Tron last week. And that’s pretty much all that’s noteworthy about this week’s metagame.

Next Week’s Metagame?

Now, let’s take a quick look at the combined metagame of the past three weeks. For those new to the series, this is the metagame i actually prepare for (well, i usually use the four-week metagame, but we only have three weeks worth of data since the bannings).

Conveniently, the decks that crossed 5% over the past three weeks are the same decks that crossed 5% this week, although White Midrange is still in first place thanks to its massive metagame share of 30% in the week right after the bannings, more than twice as much as in the following two weeks.

Traditionally, the only deck that i liked against all of the top three archetypes (which make for almost half of the metagame) was Bogles. As of this week, there’s another one, but let’s focus on Bogles for now. Granted, it’s only favoured against Boros and Tron as long as players don’t run too many cards for the Bogles matchup – between Stonehorn Dignitary, Coalition Honor Guard and Serene Heart in Tron and Leave no Trace, Standard Bearer and Krark-Clan Shaman in Boros, they certainly do have the tools.

There’s also Orzhov Midrange, which is grouped under White Midrange, but is certainly harder to beat for Bogles than Boros is. Seeing as UB Control variants are in fourth place now, Edicts and sweepers (Nausea, Evincar’s Justice, Pestilence) are seeing a rise in popularity as well, making things a little harder for the Bogles players.

I could see Bogles’ position getting worse over the next few weeks, given that it’s seemingly becoming more popular, but for now, i still think it’s a great choice.

All that said, Tron is also a valid option, considering that it a) got a great new tool against Burn in Weather the Storm and b) is one of my favourite decks to play against Tron. And of course, there’s always my standard recommendation of UR Faeries. Now let’s move on to the other deck i think might be a real contender in this metagame:

What I Played This Week

(deckstats.net link)

My starting point was the same as last week: Take a deck that’s naturally good against Burn and White Midrange, then try to find a way for it to beat Tron. With Orzhov Pestilence, that did not quite work out, but i think i actually succeeded this time.

My initial plan was to play an Esper version of the deck that made use of Dinrova Horror. I ran that build into my 4 Simic Signet / 4 Reap and Sow Tron list to realise that exactly those cards were problems. But i figured that a) not everyone plays Reap and Sow and b) i am pretty much the only one that runs four Signets. Given that even the games against that version of Tron were close, i decided to give the Familiars deck a shot.

But before i actually took it to a league, i ended up cutting the Horrors and the singleton Reaping the Graves that i was playing. Between Aven Fogbringer, two copies of Capsize and the full playset of Hoodwink i had in my original sideboard, i thought i should have enough potential for tempo plays against Tron while getting slightly smoother mana.

Other than that, i did not experiment much and barely deviated from the original draft. Hoodwink #3&4 became two Custodi Squires to improve my matchups against White Midrange, UB Control and Faeries. For my first two leagues, i also kept one or two copies of Dimir Aqueduct from the Esper list, just to have some extra bounce lands. I ended up cutting them for more Islands because they produced too many unkeepable hands. In general, the bounce lands are either amazing or a massive liability. That’s fine when it comes to spells (Aven Fogbringer comes to mind), because you can just board them out for more impactful cards, but i’m not running extra lands in my 75 just to sometimes have slightly more explosive draws.

In practice, the Tron matchups turned out exactly as i expected – i had very close games (that i felt unfavoured in) against the Reap and Sow version while my games against versions without Reap and Sow seemed slightly favourable for me. As far as sideboarding goes, Dispel and Hoodwink are easy replacements for God-Pharaoh’s Faithful, which usually has little impact.

Against anything with Ravnica bouncelands (mainly UB Control and Boros/Orzhov midrange), i felt quite favoured. If i could sneak in an early Fogbringer against a bounceland, that usually gave me enough time to allow me to set up a rather favourable board state with both mana and card advantage. The sideboarded Custodi Squires were especially brutal here.

Burn felt favourable, but they can steal games with Thermo-Alchemist. With Faithful, two Familiars, Flicker, Island and Wall or Archaeomancer, Familiars can generate arbitrary amounts of life though, so you do have a massive advantage in the late game. And that does not even mention the regular Faithful draws where you just chain draw spells, the games they can’t beat Coalition Honor Guard or the games you naturally out-value them with Hydroblast-recursion and Prismatic Strands.

Against Faeries, you can sometimes draw too many Fogbringers before sideboarding, but you can also draw a bunch of Faithfuls and Mulldrifters. After sideboarding, you get to replace the Fogbringers with Custodi Squire and Prismatic Strands though, both of which are excellent cards. I think you’re slightly behind in game one and then solidly ahead in postboard games.

Against Bogles, you can get overrun, but you also have an infinite life combo, Capsize (which can notably interact with enchantments) and a very good suite of sideboard cards. I always find it scary to play against Bogles, but i did feel favoured.

Those were the decks i prepared for, and i only dropped two matches against them – one against Reap and Sow Tron and another to Faeries, where i got bored while cooking and decided to play some Magic on the side… let’s just say i ran into issues with the timer and had to make some pretty awkward plays because of that.

I did drop a few matches against decks i did not prepare for, however. Most notable are probably the various land destruction decks i played against. This is where the bouncelands were a massive liability and cost me a few games when basic lands might not have. I wouldn’t worry about them too much though, this seems like a flavour of the month thing where Tron gets hyped up a lot and players take drastic measures.

Another problem was what i would call “enhanced aggro”. I went 0-1 each against Elves, Affinity and Izzet Blitz. Especially Elves seems like a really bad matchup. I was able to win game one because i managed to assemble Familiar, Wall, Archaeomancer, Flicker, Snap and bounceland (allowing me to bounce all their creatures for free) against my opponent’s slow draw, but games two and three were pretty hopeless.

Blitz seemed somewhat reasonable, but after narrowly winning game one thanks to Archaeomancer, double Familiar, Faithful and Flicker, my mediocre draws in the postboard games failed to get there. I would say Blitz is the least bad matchup out of the three.

Affinity is always rough if you don’t have countermagic. My clunky six card hand got steamrolled in game one and when i was at 25 life with a reasonable board on turn five in game two, i was hopeful to take that game. Well, my opponent had other plans and brought me to exactly zero life with Galvanic Blast, Atog and Fling. I had already used a Hydroblast on an earlier Atog, so there was nothing i could do.

Going forward, i don’t know that i would change much about the list. I did consider trying a UB list with Dinrova Horror and Mystical Teachings, but i like God Pharaoh’s Faithful and the White sideboard cards a little too much to give them up.

I can honestly say that i was happy with how the deck performed and can’t see any glaring issues. I would like to test Deep Analysis over Compulsive Research at some point, but it’s not like i thought Research was bad.

I’m not entirely sure about the Archaeomancer / Mnemonic Wall split. Wall doesn’t die to Lightning Bolt and blocks much better, but Archaeomancer doesn’t require confirmation on its recursion-trigger, which actually won me a match against Bogles where i had to pull off excessive Flicker-loops to win game one. I ended up winning game three with thirteen seconds on the clock.

If you plan on playing this deck, the clock is something you should definitely get used to. It doesn’t happen all that much with this version, but sometimes you do have to Flicker a lot. As i mentioned, Flickering Archaeomancer requires fewer clicks than Flickering Wall, so you should do that whenever possible.

If you’re up against Tron or your opponent has played an early bounceland, don’t be afraid to use Snap as a makeshift ritual to power out an early Aven Fogbringer. The same goes for Capsize; it’s perfectly fine to bounce a land turn three if that’s what it takes to pull ahead on board.

If you’re interested to see some of my decision making with the deck, i will post a few opening hands to my twitter throughout the week. I think the deck is good and i am likely to pick it up again at some point, once i have figured out what to do with Arcum’s Astrolabe.

Intriguing Decks

(Elves by A_Adepto_Terra, 9th Place in the 09/06/19 Pauper Challenge)

Now, i’m not going to say that this build is better than the traditional Distant Melody version, but it certainly is more intriguing to me. Except for the deck’s lands, draw spells and Longbows, everything is a creature. That’s some interesting design, although probably a little overdone. What i find particularly clever about this list is the inclusion of Trinket Mage. I wonder if an extra copy over the third Longbow might be reasonable.

It might be different in the challenge, but judging from the League metagame, this list seems to have a Burn problem that should be addressed. Maybe some copies of Weather the Storm could help.

(Burn by Nammersquats, 13th Place in the 09/06/19 Pauper Challenge)

Well, it’s Burn. Depending on how popular Tron gets and how the matchup plays out with Arcum’s Astrolabe and Weather the Storm, i might actually end up playing this at some point.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, see you next week!

j