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.

Metagame Recap

(google spreadsheet with the complete data)

Metagame Going Into The Week

This Week’s Metagame

To little surprise, White Midrange and Tron, the biggest beneficiaries of Arcum’s Astrolabe, were the two most popular decks this week. My algorithm also went back to working properly this week, correctly predicting my matchups for 39 of the 50 matches i played. I count that as a win, despite the fact that i personally won a little less than usual this week.

It should probably be mentioned that i group the various new Kor Skyfisher + Arcum’s Astrolabe decks under White Midrange. I don’t think we’re at a point yet where we can really differentiate them the way we do Boros and Orzhov variants, but there is a lot of overlap anyway.

Most notable about the metagame at large are probably the continued downfall of Burn and the emergence of Affinity. Coincidentally, the two decks are very similar; matches don’t take very long and they’re both favoured against Tron and Elves. Or at least used to be, considering that Tron picked up Weather the Storm for the Burn matchup. They also have shared weaknesses, namely against Boros, Faeries and UB Control, although Burn’s nemesis, Bogles, is a favourable matchup for Affinity.

Further, they’re both relatively easy to hate out but quite powerful against underprepared opponents.

Next Week’s Metagame?

I’m not sure Bogles should be on your radar as it keeps getting worse thanks to the metagame shifting, but other than that, you should have a plan for all these matchups, especially the top five.

Maybe it’s because of the list i played – i have no doubt it’s one factor – but the Tron vs. Kor Skyfisher matchups felt nowhere near as lopsided as they used to. With the tools the new manabase offers in opening up all five colours and cheaper creatures by virtue of Arcum’s Astrolabe, i wouldn’t be surprised if Tron wasn’t even the favourite anymore, at least against the faster Boros versions and potentially also against the grindier Jeskai+ versions.

This brings us to my recommendations. If i’m being honest, i don’t have any. The baseline is probably straight Boros with Glint Hawks. The problem is that i don’t know just how much the deck has improved. Nor have i played the grindy versions with Mulldrifter and/or Ephemerate. They’re the most popular decks right now and don’t know their matchup spreads yet.

Other than that, Elves seems quite powerful now that it has the very simple and elegant draw engine of Winding Way + Lead the Stampede and its worst matchup, Burn, is dying out. However, as i mentioned before, i don’t know enough about the new Kor Skyfisher decks; they may or may not be favoured against Elves.

There’s also Mono White Tron. The deck would need a major overhaul though and most likely not be mono white anymore. I also don’t know what to do about the Elves matchup, although i’m fairly certain there are good options now that you can easily support all five colours in the deck.

What I Played This Week

(deckstats.net link)

I originally started with a manabase consisting of Tron, the two black sources and 10 Islands, with only Blue, Green and Black spells in the maindeck; similar to the version Entropy263 won last week’s challenge with.

I had two issues with the deck. First and foremost, it just felt like a weaker version of Dinrova Tron when compared to my previous lists with Reap and Sow or Elvish Rejuvenator. Another issue was the increasing popularity of Elves, which i ran into a little too often to be comfortable having a bad matchup against. I figured Arcum’s Astrolabe still had merit and offered something to the deck that it hasn’t had before: The deck can now reliably cast spells in all colours early in the game.

My big issue with old Murasa Tron lists was how they always had terrible mana. They clearly had better spells than Dinrova Tron, but ran nowhere near as smoothly. I figured Arcum’s Astrolabe could bridge the gap, and as it turns out, it actually can. This list has pretty solid mana and the way it’s set up with Ash Barrens, the one-off Mountain and the two black sources, it can generally cast removal early (when it matters most), enable flashback when it matters and cast green spells just in time before your life total gets reduced to zero.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the deck does not have problems. As mentioned above, the various Kor Skyfisher decks are very strong these days. If you stumble, you lose. It’s especially bad if you’re up against the blue versions that somehow can support Counterspell in their manabase that should be stretched very thin but somehow makes it look like casting spells of all colours is trivial.

Affinity can easily overrun this version given how poorly its removal lines up against 4/4s. Unfortunately, Electrickery and Fire // Ice are rather important against Elves and Faeries (both solid matchups, by the way), so it’s hard to make room for Flame Slash.

And then there’s the mirror. Out of all the Flicker Tron lists i have played, this one is by far the worst in the mirror. Although that’s not necessarily because this version is bad, but more of a function of my previous lists always having that extra bit of ramp or permission. In my experience, the mirror is won on mana advantages and this list doesn’t have anything that other lists don’t.

If you want to play this deck, i can say that i don’t hate it, but it hasn’t impressed me either. Going forward, i would cut the Serene Heart and one or two Hydroblasts for another Moment’s Peace, Weather the Storm and maybe also another Pulse of Murasa. Other than that, the list feels good for what it does, although i think i would prefer a Rejuvenator list right now overall. Maybe that would be too bad against Elves, but i think it’s better in the mirror and against White Midrange, so it might still be worthwhile.

Intriguing Decks

(Snow Skyfisher by sakkra, 5-0 from last week)

(Boros Midrange by ecobaronen, 6th Place in the 23/06/19 Pauper Challenge)

I need to become familiar with these decks if i want to succeed in the current meta. These lists seem like good starting points; one maximum aggressive and the other heavy on card draw and value creatures.

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

j