Welcome to Season 4 of Weekly Pauper Recap! As always, we’re going to start 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. Note that i’m playing in the Friendly League until the new system is introduced. 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)

Last Week’s Metagame

This Week’s Metagame

We don’t have much to build on, but still, let’s take a look at the metagame’s progression.

The top three decks were the same, but this week, Tron was almost four times as popular as it was last week. Sure, the sample size is small so we shouldn’t take these numbers too seriously, but i think it’s fair to say that Tron is picking up steam. I think it’s worth noting that about half my Tron opponents this week were playing Reap and Sow, presumably for the mirror.

Mono Red stayed in the same range it almost always does: just under 20% of the metagame. From what i can tell, the loss of Gitaxian Probe barely affects the deck.

The White Midrange decks were rather evenly split last week (5 Boros Monarch, 5 Bully, 4 Orzhov), but this week, it was 4 Boros Monarch, 1 Boros Bully, 1 Orzhov Monarch.

Faeries, UB Control and Bogles were at most one match off from where they were last week, but Stompy was off by five. I hadn’t faced it since well before the bannings, but this week, i played against it in every other league. It’s definitely a deck you should keep an eye on for the next few weeks.

As a side note, my method of preparing for every deck that crossed the 5% threshold last week had me prepared for 33 out 50 matches i played this week.

So what am i expecting to play against next week?

Next Week’s Metagame?

Looking at all the data we have gathered so far, we get the same archetypes above 5% as we do with only this week’s data.

There is only one deck that i like against all of W/x, Mono Red and Tron, which is Bogles. I recommended it last week and i’m going to do so again. If you don’t mind playing excrutiatingly grindy games against W/x, UR Faeries might be the deck for you. If you don’t mind playing the mirror a lot and are fine having an unfavourable Burn matchup, Dinrova Tron seems decent as well. I feel like everything else just loses too hard against at least one of the top three decks to be a good choice.

What I Played This Week

(deckstats.net link)

My starting point was actually ssWakizashI’s list that i featured last week. After reflecting on the metagame and testing against Burn, i concluded that i needed to rework the sideboard though.

I initially tried to beat Tron and ran the full four copies of Relic of Progenitus. In hindsight, i should have trusted my experience from the other side of the matchup. It sometimes looks like Orzhov can win games and it certainly can be annoying to play against, but what it does is never quite enough.

This list does not try to beat Tron. It’s certainly possible that there is a decent approach to the matchup (running bunch of land destruction spells in the sideboard, for example), but i don’t think it will be worth the slots.

The White Midrange mirrors seem slightly favourable. Pestilence has the best lategame, but it can get overrun by both Boros versions. I’ve also had games where i failed to get significant lifegain going and ended up getting burned out from a double-digit life total. Especially against Bully, where you’re under more pressure to assemble Guardian + Pestilence, the deck’s reliance on Chainer’s Edict is a glaring issue.

I think my list is favoured against Burn, but not by much. It’s almost impossible to win without Talisman, Inheritance or Circle, and just one of the lifegain permanents is not always enough. And while the incremental lifegain is great, it doesn’t help that Pestilence’s manabase is inflexible and clunky. I considered playing Ash Barrens over Scoured Barrens, but if you’re still reliant on Basilica, the problem will likely still be noticeable. Not to mention the few extra points of life you’re missing out on each game.

Against UB Control variants, you’re not winning off creatures and decking is a real risk. I board out all my creatures and the -2/-2 removal for everything except Circle of Protection: Red. Resolving your lifegain spells is very important, as you can’t always remove every creature on sight. You usually win either by decking or chaining multiple copies of Pestilence as makeshift Fireballs. If you’re trying to deck your opponent, keep track of their deck size. You can’t always afford to cast your draw spells and i’ve actually had someone discard multiple copies of Accumulated Knowledge to hand size rather than casting them. These matchups don’t play out very intuitively. I think you’re slightly favoured, but matchup experience is a big factor and you should be able to steal games from inexperienced opponents.

Against Faeries, you kill their creatures early (especially try to never let them connect with Ninja; kill every Augur of Bolas you see) and then use some combination of Talisman, Guardian and Pestilence to wrap up the game. I like to say that nothing beats Faeries, but Pestilence is one of the decks that i think allow you to outplay your Faeries opponents.

When you’re up against Bogles, it depends on how your draws line up – some Bogles draws get destroyed against Edicts, some struggle against Pestilence and sometimes discard is rough. Especially the combination of discard and Edicts can be annoying for Bogles to face off against.

Against Stompy and Elves, your reliance on Edicts to bridge to the mid-late game is a big problem; both of them are well equipped to ignore Edicts. If you draw enough spot removal and untapped mana sources, you can still beat their lesser draws though.

Overall, i’d say the biggest issue with Orzhov Pestilence is the mana base. You want every skull symbol you can get, but often you can’t get very many of them. Only being able to activate Pestilence three times in one turn often falls short. Spending the first two or three turns just playing tapped lands costs you many games. The same goes for the deck’s removal suite, which is typical for black decks: You have a plethora of options, but none of them are great. They’re all decent, but not without glaring issues. Unmake is the only one that kills both Timberwatch Elf (or a suited up creature from Stompy) and Gurmag Angler.

Would i recommend this deck? No. And i don’t think i will play it again without significant changes to either the mana base or removal suite. However, with Modern Horizon’s Defile and Arcum’s Astrolabe, that might actually happen soon. If i’m being honest, had these two cards been spoiled just a few days earlier, i would have held off on playing Orzhov until they were legal.

Intriguing Decks

(Priest Tribe by Entropy263, 14th Place in the 02/06/19 Pauper Challenge)

If i’m being honest, i don’t think Tribe is still a deck without Gush. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Tethmos High Priest is dead. And it doesn’t mean that the Tribe combo no longer perfectly fits into a Tethmos High Priest deck either. Running Gigadrowse is also a surefire way to get my attention. I would be willing to play this for a few leagues.

(Stompy by SOTA_NAKAJIMA, 5-0 from last week)

How much is there to say here? Stompy is decent against Tron and Burn, but pretty bad against Prismatic Strands. I’m not sure Wild Mongrel is enough to solve the deck’s Boros problem, so i would probably test the matchup before deciding to take this through some leagues. If you’re not worried about Boros though, this is a pretty good deck to play.

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

j