Welcome to Season 3 of Weekly Pauper Recap! This time around, i will only be playing 25 matches per week. (Note that i’m playing Friendly Leagues because i dislike waiting for matches.) Because of the low sample size, we’re only going to look at the four week metagame, although i will still link to the complete data. Since i’m playing less, i’m no longer going to play one new deck per week. Don’t worry though, Intriguing Decks will still be included in these articles!

Metagame Recap

(google spreadsheet)

For those unfamiliar with my grouping conventions, Mono Red is Burn + RDW; W/x Monarch encompasses Boros Monarch, Kuldotha Boros, Boros Bully, Orzhov Monarch and Orzhov Pestilence; Blue Tron is everything with Ghostly Flicker; Faeries is UR Faeries + Mono Blue Delver; UB Control is everything from UB Alchemy to Teachings. Check out the Google Spreadsheet linked above for more detailed data.

Although on a very slight downward trend, Mono Red (almost exclusively Lavarunner Burn at this point) continues to be the most popular archetype. Like last week, W/x Midrange and Tron share second place. While W/x Midrange had an off week last week, Tron has steadily been on the rise. Don’t take my word on this, but usually when Tron starts approaching 15% metagame share, it starts going down again. In the past, this meant that Faeries would become more popular, but i’m not sure how true that is given that UB Delver has taken over a good chunk of Faeries’ metagame share.

But maybe that’s not true anymore, considering that Faeries is actually ahead of UB Delver now. This makes perfect sense to me, considering that both flavours of Faeries are favoured against UB and fare better against Tron as well. At least that’s my impression from playing these matchups.

Interestingly, UB Control, which last week seemed to be on the come-up, has started dwindling again. It came from nowhere and then it went nowhere. Well, it probably still lingers around, but i faced it a good amount weeks two and three and then i didn’t see it once this week.

Last week, our final deck was Affinity. But i only faced it once in the past three weeks, so it’s out. Instead, we have Mono Black Control. I’m going to be honest, i wouldn’t count on facing Mono Black very frequently. I played against Corrupt Control once this week and had four matches against Mono Black in week two. This means Mono Black is guaranteed to make it in next week as well, despite the fact that it probably isn’t particularly popular. Fortunately playing against Mono Black or UB Control doesn’t make that big of a difference for most decks, so if you metagame for one of them, it’s likely you also have the other one covered.

What would i play in this metagame? The same as always, pretty much: Faeries, Blue Tron or UB Delver. Boros might be a consideration if you have a decent plan for the Tron matchup. Since i haven’t played the deck recently i don’t know how much hate people are packing right now, but Bogles might be worth a try. This might totally backfire though, considering how well Bogles has done in the Challenge two weeks ago.

What I Played This Week

(deckstats.net link)

Changes from previous list:

Maindeck:

-1 Stormbound Geist

-1 Ash Barrens

-1 Snow-Covered Swamp

+1 Spell Pierce

+2 Terramorphic Expanse

Sideboard:

-1 Augur of Bolas

-2 Annul

-1 Spell Pierce

+2 Ill-Gotten Inheritance

+2 Dispel

Let’s talk about the mana first. This deck doesn’t need untapped black mana a lot; having good Brainstorms seems more important to me. No Ash Barrens and only one Swamp also increases the range of keepable hands, although not by much. On occasion, i would like to fetch a second Swamp (mostly against Faeries, but sometimes against Boros as well), but the deck very much functions with only one.

Ash Barrens is the card i miss more. Drawing Expanse or Evolving Wilds with Foil in hand and not being able to pay the alternate cost hurts. There are also times that i’m digging for a black source specifically (as opposed to land in general) and having to wait a turn before casting Angler or a removal spell can be the difference between winning and losing. Fortunately, this doesn’t come up very often. I think Evolving Wilds looks better, so i would slowly start replacing copies of Terramorphic Expanse with Ash Barrens and see where i end up. Given how much i have played this deck though, it seems likely that i’m moving on to something else entirely before figuring this out.

Now, let’s talk about spells. Last week, the matchup that gave me the most trouble was UB Control. I already had Augurs and Stormbound Geists to protect my Anglers from Edicts, but that didn’t feel like it was enough. I wanted another threat that was hard to remove and Ill-Gotten Inheritance is exactly that. I cut a Geist and an Augur to make room for two copies. I figured those were the cards i would miss the least because i only want the third Augur in matchups where i want Ill-Gotten Inheritance and it’s similar for Stormbound Geist (although i also want the third copy against Faeries).

Notably, the enchantment is worse than Delver of Secrets against Burn. The lifegain is not significant enough to offset the relative clunkyness. Delver is more flexible and effectively gains more life by virtue of being a fast clock.

The two copies of Annul were cut because i’m just not using them. I didn’t even bring them against Affinity! I really don’t like playing them just for Bogles, which is practically non-existant.

I wanted the two copies of Dispel mostly for Tron, but they’re also slightly better than Pierce in the mirror and having some extra countermagic against Burn isn’t too bad either.

The worst card in the deck is probably the singleton Curse of Chains, which i don’t really think i need. Gurmag Angler and countermagic are slightly more flexible answers to opposing Gurmag Anglers.

If you’re interested in my decision making process with the deck, i am posting one opening hand from each of my league runs to twitter: @JonLX. If you think i’m a crazy person for keeping all those loose hands, i generally try to pick either the worst hand i kept or the best hand i shipped.

Intriguing Decks

(Tribe by Entropy263, 2nd Place in the 10/03/19 Pauper Challenge)

I know, i already featured Tribe last week. But this is practically an entirely different deck. Tethmos High Priest is great technology in a deck based around instants that cantrip and target creatures. The sideboard has even more great synergy: Ronom Unicorn + Tethmos High Priest? Please, Bogles already can barely beat this and shutting down Journey to Nowhere against Boros is pretty neat as well. But i’m not even going to pretend i understand everything that’s going on here. This is one of the rare cases where i really want to watch someone play the deck they came up with.

(Tron by PauloCabral_Br, 5-0 from this week’s League Results)

I’ve wanted to find an excuse to play Reap and Sow for ages and i think this deck pulls it off. This list seems well set up for pretty much anything, but i would want to play the Faeries and Delver matchups myself before jumping to conclusions. I’m not absolutely sold this is the best version for the Tron mirror, but i might be wrong. Crop Rotation + Ulamog’s Crusher has traditionally been pretty good in the mirror, and normally that isn’t backed by Reap and Sow plus potentially Dinrova Flicker. I very much respect every design decision here.

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

j