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

I think it’s outrageous that White Midrange being 18% of the metagame is average in the post-Gush metagame. It doesn’t help that i don’t enjoy playing against the deck very much, but let’s focus on what’s important: There was a lot of Elves this week. Well, in the first half of the week at least.

All the Elves opponents i faced were in the first five leagues of the week, while all of the White Midrange opponents came in the second five leagues. You would think that left little room for me to play multiple matches against other decks, but the metagame was very condensed this week; over 80% of the metagame was covered by the 5% or more decks.

Likewise, my metagame predictions worked out badly, but only for the first half of the week. In my first 25 matches of the week, i was prepared for only 9 of my 25 opponents, very close to the number of Elves players i faced. For the second half, the rate went back up to the usual 18 out of 25. I think it’s rather peculiar that the change coincided with my switch from Tron to Affinity (more on Affinity below, i don’t think i’m done with Tron yet and i don’t want to present an unfinished decklist).

The decks themselves were not unusual. Boros, Burn, Bogles, Faeries and Tron have been above 5% for the entirety of the season. Stompy was non-existent in week one, 10% in week two, non-existent again in week three and now back up to 10% in week four. The only real outlier here is Elves. I’m curious to see if it’s going to stay a factor in the metagame or just fade away again.

Ironically, Tron would have been a great choice for the second half of the week, while Affinity would have been great in the first half. Unfortunately, i played them in the opposite order.

Next Week’s Metagame?

We’re finally back up to the full 200-match metagame post-ban… and it’s not very interesting. Boros Monarch, the most popular deck, might very well be the best deck right now. Two weeks ago, i would have been hesitant about saying this, but i think with the added speed and extra options it gets from Arcum’s Astrolabe, it might actually be able to beat Tron a significant amount of the time, which was its only bad matchup out of the most common decks.

As a matter of fact, when there isn’t as much Elves as there was this week, i also still like Bogles in this metagame. UW-based Familiars also seems pretty good, but with the advent of Astrolabe in Boros and the decline of bouncelands in the metagame, it might be time to move the Aven Fogbringers to the sideboard. Which is unfortunate, because that would mean that the Tron matchup got significantly worse. Maybe it’s time for Dinrova Horror? I’ll try to figure something out and get back to this next week!

What I Played This Week

(deckstats.net link)

I played Affinity because i think it’s one of the few decks that are legitimately good against Elves. I also think it’s good against Bogles (with the right sideboard at least) and Stompy. The Tron matchup is pretty good if they’re not on Gorilla Shaman as well. Burn is relatively even in my experience. I wasn’t sure about White Midrange and Faeries. Last year i played two copies of Deep Analysis in the sideboard in order to keep up with UB Control, but i figured i’d try my luck without them.

My plan did not work out at all – i did not play against Elves even once, but i ran into Boros eight times. Unfortunately, my Boros opponents came prepared and were pretty good at casting Gorilla Shaman early. That’s what you get for knee-jerk reactions to short-term metagame trends, i guess.

It didn’t help that it took me a few matches to figure out how to approach the Boros matchup either.

If you’re not losing anyway because they have Gorilla Shaman, it’s pretty easy to run out of threats against their massive removal suite. This means that Atog is generally your most important card. The issue is that you can’t always have enough artifacts to Fling your opponent for a game-ending amount, but if you have to go the Temur Battle Rage road, you’re opening yourself up to removal spells.

In total, i went 2-6 against Boros, which seems about right if they’re prepared. Not all my opponents were though, and i definitely lost a few games without any help from my opponents. If you want to pick up Affinity for a few leagues, i recommend playing this matchup a few times before you face them in a League and have no idea what to do.

The Burn matchup seems to mostly be a question of how your draws line up. If you get to cast one or two 4/4s and interact with them (through removal or countermagic), you should be favoured. That doesn’t always happen though, and sometimes they’re just too fast. On the flip side, sometimes you get to Atog them and there’s nothing they can do. I went 2-2 against Burn.

The only other matchup i got to play more than once was Bogles. The games were pretty simple. I lost the preboard games and won all the postboard games i could cast more than two spells in. Affinity does have very impactful sideboard cards; i especially like Krark-Clan Shaman.

Overall, the mana was a bit of a problem. Unless you draw multiple copies of Thoughtcast or have Atog + Fling/TBR, the minimum amount of lands you need to function and the maximum amount of lands you can afford to draw makes for a pretty small range. You can also have issues with your colour requirements, but that seems to be the lesser problem.

The way things played out, i wouldn’t want to repeat my experience, although i did 5-0 my first league – the least convincing 5-0 i’ve ever had, for the record. Before playing the deck again, i would like to come up with a good plan against Boros. Maybe your best bet would be to become an Atog + Fling combo deck after sideboarding, especially now that Boros plays fewer lifegain lands thanks to Arcum’s Astrolabe.

I also think the deck is pretty tricky to play, so a bit more testing would be great next time – i hadn’t played Affinity since August before i jumped into my first league and didn’t do any testing inbetween leagues either.

It’s hard for me to not compare Affinity to Bogles, so let’s go ahead and do that. First off, i don’t think Affinity is without merit. As mentioned before, not auto-losing to Elves is great. I also think Affinity lines up much against decks packing Edicts. Although generally not the case, for Tron specifically, it’s harder to hate out Affinity than it is to hate out Bogles – Gorilla Shaman might be a massive blow-out, but it’s not trivial for Tron have red mana, so it might come down too late. That being said, i think Bogles also has pretty decent options against Tron in Dispel and Flaring Pain.

For most other decks, it’s much easier to hate out Affinity than it is to hate out Bogles. Where most Bogles hate is reactive – killing their creatures, blowing up their enchantments – Affinity hate can be used quite proactively – destroying their lands. Sure, Affinity also has counterplay, but it’s under much more pressure to find its protective spells.

I don’t want to recommend Affinity, but i certainly don’t want to discourage you from trying it either. It seems like a deck that just doesn’t work for anyone and it’s possible that i’m one of the people it doesn’t work for. It’s one of those decks some people are just amazing with, and who knows, you might be one of them.

Intriguing Decks

(Snow Go by Raptor56, 5-0 from last week)

(UB Teachings by CyrusCG, 29th Place in the 16/06/19 Pauper Challenge)

This is just the mood i’m in, countering spells and blowing up some Elves.

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

j