Welcome back to Faithless Looting, my weekly look at budget lists and budget formats.

This week we are just cruising through. In other words, still no contests this week. Also, I’m going to keep telling you about [c]Treasure Cruise[/c] until you stop me. Seriously, have you seen this card? It’s only like THE ONLY CARD that anyone who talks about Magic is talking about; you’re getting tired of it, yes, but some of you are also still trying to tell me that it’s not a thing.

It is a thing. It is a thing in every format. There are no exceptions.

Pauper Daily Events

We didn’t get lists from the Pauper Daily events this past weekend. Thankfully Tom the Scud foresaw the future and magically tracked the entire metagame over the weekend. No lists, but we do get to see who placed. First off, go friend Tom on Facebook and say hi from us. Follow him on Twitter too.

He’s got posts for each daily and then a summary for the weekend, which is what we’ll look at for the sake of brevity. I’ll even make a chart, since he asked nicely on Twitter for someone to do so and give him credit.

So what does this tell us?

Frankly, the takeaway seems to be that you should NOT be playing MBC, Affinity, or WW Tokens. Delver, which almost always gets the top spot in the meta anyway, really has a stranglehold at the moment. Lists that beat Delver (or at least can claim 50/50 against it), including U/R Fiend, Goblins, and Stompy, are solid choices. If your name is obZen or someoldguy, U/B Control remains a solid choice; otherwise you should probably steer clear.

Standard Pauper Events

I’m going to scoop Brennon slightly, but only because I totally called a top Standard Pauper list before it won an SPDC, and I want to brag. When Dan asked in his recent Extra Life stream what list he should play for the Standard Pauper league, my snap response was U/R Cruise. Obviously Dr. Chris Baker DC was listening in (because U/R Cruise isn’t *at all* obvious), because he went and won the November 2 SPDC with just that deck.

Oh, yeah, and then Mundisv won MPDC the next day with a similar if not identical list. Congrats to both players and my thanks for proving me right.

I like being right.

Extra Life

Want to know what is even more powerful than [c]Treasure Cruise[/c]?

Nothing. That was a trick question. Well, the answer is actually [c]Ancestral Recall[/c] and nothing, but since nobody really ever gets to play Ancestral Recall, I’ll stick with nothing. I can name you a close second, though.

Donating money to local children’s hospitals is totally almost as awesome as refilling your deck with a [c]Treasure Cruise[/c] and then blowing out your opponent. And where everyone who is anyone is doing the latter, you can be one of the elite few doing the former, and donate to our efforts to support Extra Life.

Dan, Peyton, and I each spent some time streaming over the last couple weeks, trying to raise money to support this supercool charity. If you can afford to donate even $1, we’d really appreciate you taking the time to go donate and support our efforts.

You can search on the site for MagicGatheringStrat or, since I’m obviously your favorite, donate on my profile. All of the money raised goes to support local children’s hospitals where, one assumes, white mages cast [c]Healing Salve[/c]s on [c]Reckless Waif[/c]s.

Our goal is to raise $200 as a group by the end of the year. It’s not a lot, but every little bit helps, and you can help us make that difference.

Donate now.

If you need convincing, here are all three streams from our Extra Life fundraising efforts.

Until next time, keep the faith!

/bava