Welcome to the final entry 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

Interestingly, Mono Red has become a thing again. And actually, this time around, it’s not just Burn, which i played against three times this week, but also Red Deck Wins / Goblins, which i played against a total of five times this week. Considering that Hydroblast exists, RDW is slightly easier to adjust for than Stompy, but thanks to Goblin Bushwhacker and burn spells, it’s also much easier to mess up against. Having outs to Stonehorn Dignitary, Fog effects and not getting stomped by Elves are also relevant characteristics of the deck.

Other than that, i played against a bunch of UB Control decks, for whatever reason. I haven’t ever been impressed by UB Control in Pauper, and with the advent of Arcum’s Astrolabe and Ephemerate, those decks seem even worse – Boros felt good against UB already, now White Midrange has Mulldrifter + Ephemerate on top of that and its artifacts are half-off.

Interestingly, there were also a bunch of people still playing Faeries (2 UR, 3 Mono Blue). I don’t think Faeries are great against Kor Skyfishers, but they’re certainly not awful against Skyfishers either, especially when you consider how much value Spellstutter Sprite has against the typical Astrolabe deck.

To close out the metagame, we have Stompy and Affinity just over 5%. Elves are still around, but don’t seem to be able to cross the 5% mark anymore.

Next Week’s Metagame?

This looks deceptively diverse – both UB Control and Elves sit at 4.5%, just outside of the 5% it takes to be included here. If both were included, 80% of the metagame would be covered by just eight archetypes.

Neither the decks nor their order of popularity has changed from last week and my perspective is still the same as well: You should play either Tron, Kor Skyfishers or an aggressive deck that can exploit those decks’ clunky early games. Right now, Stonehorn Dignitary out of Tron is on the rise, so something with access to burn spells (or straight up Fling) seems like a good idea – Bogles, Red Decks Wins or Affinity. I’m not sure how much hate for Affinity players are packing right now, but i played a bunch of Bogles and had the impression that most of my opponents were underprepared for the deck. That may change over the course of the next week or two though.

What I Played This Week

For my first five leagues this week, i played the Bogles list i have featured previously. This took me to 20 straight leagues with the deck and i figured it was time to change it up a little. All i knew was that i wanted to play with Ephemerate. I considered UW Familiars, but didn’t feel like it. I ended up playing one of last week’s intriguing decks instead:

(Dignitary Tron by Hellsau, 3rd Place in the 28/07/19 Pauper Challenge)

I still don’t like Dignitary Tron. I went 3-2, winning the mirror twice and beating UB Alchemy while taking losses to Mono Blue Delver and Snow Ephemerate. I really didn’t like this deck’s manabase, which is what caused me to lose games two and three against the Ephemerate deck. It’s criminally low on coloured mana sources and doesn’t have great flood-insurance. Getting your spells countered can hurt a lot and it’s hard to even pull ahead without getting Mnemonic Wall plus a flicker effect online.

So for the first time this season, i actually switched off a deck before playing at least five leagues with it. Instead, i played Modern_Monkey’s Ephemerate Faeries list that i featured two weeks ago. For my first league, i dropped the two copies of Leave no Trace in favour of two Mox Monkeys:

I easily won my first three matches, against Stompy, Affinity and Elves. Then i played against Giraffe on Snow Ephemerate, where i got outplayed game one, had a close call game two where playing very aggressively paid off and got destroyed by Mulldrifter + Ephemerate game three, which my Kor Skyfisher and Spellstutter Sprite couldn’t keep up with – my Ephemerate countered a Skred on my Spellstutter Sprite, Giraffe’s Ephemerate drew four cards. That one wasn’t very close. In my final match, i ended up making several questionable plays and lost against Infect.

For my next league, i switched from Brainstorm to Ponder, cutting a land in the process to make room for the full playset:

This time around, i lost my first two matches to Snow Skyfisher and Mono Black Control, then won out to finish 3-2 again, beating Mono Blue Delver, Goblins and UR Faeries. The loss against Mono Black Control made me realise that Faerie Seer wasn’t pulling its weight the way Miscreant used to in UR Faeries and Mono Blue Delver. Seer being bad also made Spellstutter Sprite significantly worse against Mono Black – i always wanted to board out Seers (which i actually did after that match), but against MBC, this made Sprites unreliable and i’m not sure i managed to counter a single spell throughout the match.

I also realised that Swirling Sandstorm wasn’t a card that i ever wanted to cast and that Ninja wasn’t exactly great either. I wanted to extract more value out of Ephemerate and have my lategame centered around Archaeomancer instead. I cut Seers, Ninjas and the Essence Scatter (which wasn’t necessarily bad, just unexciting) to make room for Mulldrifters, another Archaeomancer and Custodi Squire, which is one of my favourite cards to play with. In the sideboard, i moved from Sandstorms to Stone Rains, thinking i was too low on cards for Tron:

I won my first match against Tron 2-0 because my opponent stumbled on mana both games. I never did anything exciting. In my second match, i was up against Burn. I lost the first game casting a total of two spells – Kor Skyfisher and Arcum’s Astrolabe. The second game was close, but my draw wasn’t great so my opponent ended up being able to burn me out on turn nine when i had Spellstutter + Ephemerate, but they decided not to draw any CMC 1 burn spells. I then lost a long game one to Elves where my opponent had Viridian Longbow turn two and i could never find Skred for their Elvish Vanguard or a second Ephemerate to allow me to block with my Archaeomancer, which was always too busy getting flickered for Counterspell. Game two i just did nothing and lost. I then won 2-0 against Snow Ephemerate because my draws lined up well against my opponents and got revenge on Burn, winning 2-0 as well.

I did not think there was much i could have done about my loss to Elves, but i figured i was set up well enough against Affinity to not need the Gorilla Shamans, so i cut them for a pair of Aven Riftwatchers to have more game against Burn, while incidentally improving my Burning-Tree Emissary matchups:

(deckstats.net link)

I beat Stompy in my first match, largely thanks to the newly added Riftwatchers. In my second match, i got revenge on Giraffe; this time i had my own Mulldrifters and Custodi Squire on top of that. Then i lost two quick ones against Tron without actually doing anything (well, i cast Stone Rain once, but my opponent had Ghostly Flicker). In my final match, i was up against Mono Green land destruction, which made for a very unexciting match – i got destroyed game one, was on the play and destroyed them game two and won because my opponent missed their third land drop game three. So, another 3-2.

I think the deck is good at what it does, but it notably does not beat Tron. It’s also close against Snow Skyfisher/Ephemerate, which means it isn’t necessarily a good choice in the current metagame. I think it’s servicable and if you feel like playing it, it is at least reasonable. I’m not sure there’s anything i would change about the list. Custodi Squire is very hit or miss – i lost only one game where i actually cast it, but i had it rotting in my hand a bunch of times. Given how reactionary i was with adjusting the list, it’s very possible that my performance was worse than it could have been had i done some testing before taking it to the league, but i don’t usually do any testing anymore these days, i just enter leagues and try to work from there.

I would like to have a plan against Tron, because i’m sure Stone Rain isn’t cutting it. It’s possible that just running Seeker of the Way would be more impactful, but it’s also possible that the matchup just isn’t very great. It doesn’t help if your Tron opponents always have Prophetic Prisms when you have Spellstutter Sprites and then have Astrolabe/Map draws when you don’t. That’s the cost of running Sprite without any other Faeries though. Anyway. The deck is one of the more entertaining ones i have played post-Modern Horizons.

Intriguing Decks

(Goblins by rodeo, 5-0 from last week)

I have played like one league with this last year. It was fun, not great. Sometimes frustating. There were a lot of removal spells in the format at the time, which is no longer the case. It is very good against Tron in my experience.

(AtogFling by N3nne, 6th place in the 04/08/19 Pauper Challenge)

I have no idea how this actually plays out, but it’s pretty cool. Atog is a scary card.

…

And that’s a wrap for Weekly Pauper Recap Season 4. I went straight from S3 to S4, but i think i need a longer break from Pauper again. I haven’t really been enjoying the format ever since the bannings in May and i think the series suffered from that, especially towards the end of the season. I’m not sure what i’m doing with my free time from now, but there’s a good chance i’ll come back to Pauper at some point. Thanks for sticking with me!

j