Thanks to Magic Online’s Format Challenge tournaments, we have a wealth of information about Pauper’s open metagame. Twelve weeks in, as of the August 6 Challenge, we have wins by 12 different players piloting decks of 8 different archetypes: Izzet Delver (x3), Murasa Tron (2x), Blue Delver (2x), Midnight Presence, Boros Monarch, Izzet Puzzle, Stompy, and this week’s winner, Dimir Reanimator.

Affinity Makes Good

This week’s top 8 was a sharp break from prior tournaments. For the first time, no delver decks made it to single elimination, and three Affinity decks made the quarterfinals. While the field has always included several Affinity decks, they have mostly unperformed until this week where 3 of 9 Affinity decks in the top 32 made the cut (28% of the field to 37% of the top eight). Before last week, more than one Affinity deck had never made the top 8, even when there were lots of Affinity decks in the top 32 (as in week 7). The metagame has seemingly shifted in favor of Affinity.

Alex Ulman has suggested that Affinity is thriving because non-combo red decks are waning, and without such decks the field has less access to Gorilla Shaman, perhaps the most disruptive anti-affinity card. This makes some intuitive sense. As seen above, except for a slight uptick in burn variants and Matra’s RG Tokens deck, red decks have ticked down. Not only the retreat of once-dominant Izzet Delver, but also all Boros decks, which have been conspicuously completely absent from the top 32 the last two weeks after being a mainstay for the previous ten (and Lord_Beerus’ Boros Monarch deck winning week 3 outright). Where did the Boros decks go? Maybe they were done in by the Tron decks last week, which have very favorable matchups against Boros. This makes a tidy story. Tron caused the extinction of Affinity’s natural predators.

Most Players Play Similar Decks Every Week

I am skeptical of this theory because most players appear to play the same deck week-to-week. For example, Hrymfaxe, who won outright last week with a Stompy deck failed to make the top 32 this week. I am not sure whether Hrymfaxe played Stompy this week, but it stands to reason he did–he’s played this deck for seven finishes in the top 32 including 5 showings in the top 8, which is the current Pauper Challenge record. Much of the week-to-week variance could simply be random noise from favorable matchings.

Here are all the players who made at least two top 8s or one win and the decks they played every week that they appeared in the top 32:

Player Top 8/32s (Best) Deck(s) Played (Champions in Bold) Hrymfaxe 5/7 (1) Stompy Mathonical 3/7 (1) Midnight Presence mlovbo 3/6 (1) Izzet Control (wk 4-6), Izzet Puzzle (9-10) redler 3/6 (1) Izzet Delver kungfutrees 3/3 (1) Izzet Delver (1), Murasa Tron* (4), Dimir Exhume (9) TheMagePower 3/10 (3) Izzet Delver Brivenix 2/4 (1) Mono U Delver Mundisv 2/2 (2) Dimir Flicker 3minem 2/4 (2) Izzet Delver TaotheNinja 2/6 (2) Dinrova Tron K_Prinz 2/2 (3) Izzet Blitz andersongouvea 2/2 (4) Affinity pproteus 2/4 (4) Stompy __CH1 2/3 (5) Affinity RodrigoPinheiro 2/3 (6) Dimir Angler PhilMTGO 2/2 (7) Boros Monarch goyo315 1/2 (1) Izzet Delver Xto2 1/5 (1) Murasa Tron (3-6); Izzet Control (11) BERNASTORRES 1/3 (1) Mono U Delver SamuelBeckett 1/1 (1) Dimir Exhume Lord_Beerus 1/1 (1) Boros Monarch Pietart 1/1 (1) Izzet Delver

(*Note, I have classified kungfutree’s week 4 deck as Murasa Tron because it played more Pulses than Horrors, but kungfutrees sees them as being distinct subtypes. That may be, but if they are distinct, kungfutrees seems to be the only one to have brought a UG Tron deck to a top 32 finish, and I don’t want to slice the archetypes too thinly.)

Many players have taken the same archetype to Pauper Challenges 4, 6, and even 10 times (TheMagePower) that can be verified by the top 32 lists. By my count, 82 players have made the top 32 list more than once, and 50 of these players have used the same archetype every time they did.

Perhaps players on the bottom half of the field vary their decks more frequently, trying to find something that works, but if this is the case, we can’t really say that Affinity thrived due to a lack of non-combo red decks–at least not without doing a lot more legwork, because Wizards does not release deck lists below 32.

Burn/RG Tokens Make Top 8

While three Affinity decks in the top 8 was surprising, week 12 also featured two new archetypes for the top 8. A straight-up mono-red Burn deck piloted by elevatorrider finally made the cut and beat Affinity in the first round before losing to the champion Dimir Exhume deck. Burn makes the top 32 frequently enough, but has never before made the top 8. This version used both Thermo-Alchemist and Firebrand Archer.

Matra, last seen finishing on week 6 with an RG Tokens deck in 15th place, took a similar deck to 4th place this week, also defeating Affinity, but losing to Mundisv’s Dimir Flicker deck (which itself beat andersongouvea’s Affinity deck, which had won 6 perfect matches in Swiss). Matra has been the only top 32 finisher with such a deck in the Challenges; unclear whether it will be more widely adopted.

Dimir Reanimator For The Win

The final match between Mundisv (Flicker) and SamuelBecket (Dimir Exhume) was a rematch of a game they played in the first round. SamuelBecket lost his first round match 0-2, but the rematch turned out different, with the reanimator winning 2-1.

SamuelBeckett’s deck seems to be the real deal, having notched wins against MBC, Dimir Angler, Stompy, Izzet Puzzle, Burn, and–in the rematch–Dimir Flicker. (He also beat two players who did not rank in the top 32.)

Interestingly, SamuelBeckett played no matches against Affinity decks–at least not any that made the top 32. In contrast, Mundisv played 4 matches against Affinity, winning against andersongouvea in the quarterfinals, manyasone, and PlunderBot, having earlier lost round 2 to andersongouvea. Mundisv also beat RG Tokens (semifinals), Burn, and Izzet Blitz. Except for both facing medvedev’s burn deck (which Mundisv beat and SamuelBeckett lost to in round 1), the finalists played top-32 players with completely different archetypes over the tournament.

Would SamuelBeckett have done as well against an Affinity-heavy gauntlet like Mundisv faced? I’m not sure about Dimir Exhume’s match-ups, but the huge disparity in match-ups suggests to me that Pauper Challenge is an “Any Given Sunday” kind of event, where pairings make a huge difference to the field seen by any player.

Don’t get me wrong: skill is obviously very important, as the repeated top 8 appearances of players like Hrymfaxe demonstrate. I simply think we may be reading too much into the winning deck and maybe even the top 8 of each event.

That being said, I think Dimir Exhume probably deserves more attention. The ability to effectively spend one card and play a turn two 5/5 hexproof Striped Riverwinder adds a lot of gas to a deck that plays with some of the most efficient creatures and removal in the format. Kungfutrees previously finished in the top 8 with this archetype (week 9), and SamuelBeckett’s win suggests the deck will be here to stay.