The world of Pauper was turned upside-down on April Fool's Day, as the latest update to the banned list went live and the MTGO budget format's players were no longer allowed to take the Treasure Cruise to value town. With the format's previously dominant decks taken down a peg, it was anyone's guess what deck would lead the field in its first week of daily event play. I managed to watch three events (Thursday afternoon, Friday afternoon, and Saturday evening), note down which decks were played and which ones won, and generally get a sense of what was happening.

At a first impression, the ban seems to have improved the format's diversity, at least for the moment. There were more different decks than I remember seeing in a long time, and while Island-Delver of Secrets and Island-Preordain remained popular openings, it didn't feel like I was seeing them from both sides of the table in half the matches I watched.

By far the most popular decks in the three events I watched were Mono Black Control, with 26 appearances, and UR Fiend, with 24 appearances - between them, they made up nearly 30 percent of the decks. Affinity, Delver, Stompy, and Cloud of Faeries Combo (in four variants) were the other decks to pass the 5 percent threshold, with 14, 12, 11, and 10 appearances, respectively. These six decks, taken together, made up a bit more than half of the metagame.

Before I reveal how the decks did, let's check out our six contenders:

Mono Black Control is a deck that lives off of controlling the board and grinding out card advantage using powerful removal spells like Victim of Night and Chainer's Edict and two-for-one cards like Chittering Rats and Phyrexian Rager. The deck follows this plan up with a huge haymaker in Gray Merchant of Asphodel, which often drains for six, eight, or even more. The deck usually runs a set of Cuombajj Witches, which deal with pesky 1/1s, particularly the unflipped Delvers and Faeries that populate the Delver deck. The witches also fill the two-drop slot in the deck, which otherwise doesn't have much to do on turn two, especially if the opponent hasn't put out a creature to remove. Crypt Rats give the deck the most powerful board-clearing spell in the format, and Fate Reforged gave the deck one of the format's fattest bodies in Gurmag Angler. The deck fared poorly during the Treasure Cruise era, as one cruise could undo multiple turns' worth of grinding, but most players expected it to return to the top tier once Cruise made its exit.

UR Fiend (or Izzet Blitz or any number of other names) is an Aggro-Combo deck that aims to win on turn three by sending a Kiln Fiend into the red zone with ten power and double strike. This is achieved by combining a zero-cost spell like Gitaxian Probe or Gush, a one-cost spell like Ponder or lightning bolt, and Temur Battle Rage. The deck used to use assault strobe for the double-strike effect, but most versions switched to the new Fate Reforged card, which always provides its ferocious bonus when there's a Fiend or Nivix Cyclops on the board. Battle Rage's trample effect means that the deck can do without unblockability spells like shadow rift and artful dodge, using Battle Rage and Apostle's Blessing, which can also protect the deck's very few creatures, to force damage through blockers. The deck also runs four Delver of Secrets; its high proportion of spells means the little guy is very likely to flip, and a 3/2 flyer backed by burn spells is too fast a clock for the opponent to ignore. The deck proved to be a top contender during the Treasure Cruise era due to the ease with which it filled its graveyard with meaningful spells.

Affinity is a deck that leverages the artifact lands from Mirrodin, along with Affinity creatures like Myr Enforcer and Metalcraft creatures like Carapace Forger, to rapidly deploy a large number of giant threats and overrun the opponent. The deck's very powerful plan B relies on either swinging in with a giant Atog, or simply Flinging it at the opponent's face. The deck overcomes its awkward four-color mana base with fixing artifacts like Springleaf Drum and Chromatic Star and refills its hand with 1-mana Thoughtcasts. Some versions also use Perilous Research and Ichor Wellspring to draw even more cards; other variants slam in even more creatures, recruiting fatties like Quicksilver Behemoth and Auriok Sunchaser to help apply the beatdown. The deck managed to remain competitive during the Treasure Cruise era despite not generally running Cruise.

Delver is the deck everyone loves to hate; a tempo deck that relies on dropping a turn one Delver of Secrets and beating down with it while using Counterspell and Spellstutter Sprite to counter anything meaningful the opponent attempts to do. Cloud of Faeries can join in the fun on turn two while leaving two blue mana untapped and helps to power up the Spellstutter. The deck refills its hand with Ninja of the Deep Hours and Gush and uses Spire Golem as its late-game trump card; few pauper cards can beat through the golem's 2/4 flying body. Delver is generally considered to be the best deck in the format; "Can this beat Delver?" is the most important question any pauper deck designer needs to ask him or herself.

Stompy is the format's most consistent true aggro deck, combining some of the format's best one-drops in Nettle Sentinel, Skarrgan Pit-Skulk, and Young Wolf with the many pump spells that green has been blessed with over Magic's history. The deck aims to simply overwhelm the opponent by going on the aggressive while the format's reactive and combo-oriented decks are still getting set up.

If Delver is the deck everyone loves to hate, Cloud of Faeries Combo is the deck everyone just plain hates. The classic Esper version of the deck uses untap effects like Cloud of Faeries and Snap along with "Karoo" lands like Azorius Chancery and mana cost reductions from Sunscape Familiar and Nightscape Familiar to generate large amounts of mana, setting up a combo in which Ghostly Flicker is repeatedly cast on the Cloud and a Mnemonic Wall, generating infinite mana. The mana allows the player to also flicker card-draw creatures like Mulldrifter and Sea Gate Oracle, eventually finding a Sage's Row Denizen and milling the opponent out. Other versions of the deck cut white (and sometimes black) in favor of red and use the infinite mana for a lethal Kaervek's Torch instead. One version that appeared this week used the Dragons of Tarkir card Impact Tremors as its win condition, allowing it to flicker infinitely with only one Karoo land instead of the two needed to generate positive mana. The deck is very difficult to interact with, due to its large amount of card draw and the fact that Flicker and Snap can be used to save its crucial creatures; it is also very difficult to play on MTGO, as all of that flickering takes time. Newer players often end up timing themselves out before they can finish executing their combo to win the game.

The Results

So with the players in place, how did they do? A full listing of the results, including various rogue decks, is available at my pauper spreadsheet, which I'll be updating over the course of the DTK season.

Mono-Black Control, despite being the most popular deck, fell flat on its face in its triumphant return to Pauper; the 26 entries managed only six 3-1s and one 4-0, and the average deck returned 1.8 packs to its player (as compared to the average pauper deck, which yields 2.2 packs). The deck managed a total record of 40-44 versus the field; some room for improvement there.

Delver and the Cloud of Faeries Combo decks also had a rough opening weekend; Delver managed just 1.5 packs per entry and a 16-21 match record, while the Fae decks combined for 1.8 packs per entry and a 15-17 record. Delver's cousin, the Mono-Blue Control deck, which leaves out the Clouds of Faeries and Spellstutter Sprites in favor of yet more counterspells and card-draw spells, managed to earn more packs (23) with four entries than Delver's 18 packs in twelve entries.

UR Fiend and Affinity both more than held their own, returning slightly more than 2.4 packs per entry to their players. UR Fiend turned in a dead-even 38-38 match record, while Affinity pushed a bit past .500 with a 24-22 record.

The big winners among the top six decks were the little green men from Planet Stompy. The deck managed a cool 3.7 packs per entry, with six of the eleven entries coming home as winners. The deck recorded a 27-15 record for a winning percentage close to 65 percent.

A bit deeper

Having identified the decks from the three events, I was also able to check how the top decks performed against each other. Again, a lot more information can be found in a spreadsheet. The results for the top six decks against each other, and against the rest of the field, are as follows:

Deck vs. Affinity vs. Delver vs. Fae vs. MBC vs. Stompy vs. UR Fiend vs. the field Affinity 1-1 2-2 2-0 4-5 0-3 4-4 11-7 Delver 2-2 1-1 1-0 4-5 0-3 3-5 5-5 Fae Combo 0-2 0-1 0-0 5-2 0-1 4-3 6-8 MBC 5-4 5-4 2-5 8-8 3-3 2-4 15-16 Stompy 3-0 3-0 1-0 3-3 1-1 2-5 16-4 UR Fiend 4-4 5-3 3-4 4-2 5-2 5-5 12-18

With such a small set of games to work with, small sample sizes are clearly a potential issue. Still, a couple numbers stand out for me.

One is Stompy's record against the field - a gaudy 16-4. While many of the decks that make up "the field" are quality opponents, there is some trash out there. This result suggests that Stompy might have picked up a few more wins than usual against under-baked brews, which might account for part of its strong record on the week.

The other is Mono-Black Control's 2-4 record against the UR Fiend deck. This is a small sample, but it's still shocking that a deck that specializes in removing creatures failed to come away with a winning record against a deck that only runs 12. That says to me that the MBC players out there might be running a bit too high a mana curve in an effort to hit the Gary jackpot, and might want to think about tightening things up and returning to their core mission of destroying all creatures everywhere.