Welcome to Season 3 of Weekly Pauper Recap! This time around, i will only be playing 25 matches per week. (Note that i’m playing Friendly Leagues because i dislike waiting for matches.) Because of the low sample size, we’re only going to look at the four week metagame, although i will still link to the complete data. Since i’m playing less, i’m no longer going to play one new deck per week. Don’t worry though, Intriguing Decks will still be included in these articles!

Metagame Recap

(google spreadsheet)

Well, Burn. What’s up with that? I don’t really know, to be honest. I haven’t played Burn against UB Delver, but i know that i don’t like it against Boros or Faeries. It is very much a decent deck though, and you can get through matches quickly. That’s certainly appealing to some people and if they don’t play until they have completed X matches but rather until Y amount of time has passed, you’re going to face Burn disproportinately often.

Next up, there’s W/x Monarch, which presumably sees play because it’s good against everything that isn’t Tron. I haven’t spent enough time on Orzhov to say how it compares to Boros. But i do know that it works. What’s holding Orzhov back is probably the fact that it’s infinitely more complex than Boros. And i don’t mean that it’s harder to play, that’s subjective anyway. But Orzhov is much harder to build than Boros. Red offers Bolts and Blasts, those are easy. You can clearly tell which burn spell does the most damage. But when you’re building Orzhov, you suddenly have to worry about removal splits with 10+ viable options.

Then we have UB Delver, which was nothing more than flavour of the month before my break from Pauper. Then Foil got printed and UB Delver replaced Faeries as the most popular blue deck and the “ban blue”-crowd’s biggest enemy. I don’t think the deck is very exciting, but Gurmag Angler has never really been my thing. Angler is only one of several powerful cards in the deck though, and those tend to win games.

The fourth most popular archetype is, somehow, Affinity. This is one of those decks that i would never recommend to anyone. Not because it’s bad, but if you want to do well with it, you kind of have to be an Affinity person. And if you are an Affinity person, chances are you’re already playing it, so no reason to recommend it to you.

In fifth place we finally have Faeris, which is by far the lowest it has been since i started keeping track of the Pauper metagame. I have theories for both why it’s fallen and also why it’s still relevant. I think many of those who like Delver of Secrets have migrated to UB Delver, which is much more of a Delver deck than Faeries is. However, Spellstutter Sprite and Ninja of the Deep Hours are still strong cards and if you like playing with them, UB Delver is not much of an alternative. I suspect both flavours of Faeries are favoured against UB Delver, but UB has a much higher floor, in particular against W/x Monarch.

Just below Faeries (or above, depending on how you want to group the decks), we have various flavours of Tron. Tron is good against Boros, isn’t bad against UB Delver and can be built to stand a chance against Burn. It’s also an archetype that can be played reasonably well on auto-pilot. I like Tron in this metagame. I’ve said this a few months ago already, but it’s worth repeating whenever Tron becomes relevant: Tron is not for everyone. No matter how good the deck is, it simply doesn’t feel right for everyone, so it won’t ever become too popular.

Finally, there’s Elves. I don’t like Elves at all against Burn and Boros is also rough in my experience. UB Delver is probably good though, and Tron is as well. And of course, Elves is the one deck some players are just outrageously good with and sometimes seem incapable of losing with.

What do i like in this metagame? The safe choice is always Boros. I just don’t like the Boros mirror, which is why i’m not currently playing the deck. I also like Dinrova Tron (which i did in fact play for a week or so), but Tron sometimes just loses because of its mana and that can be discouraging. In theory, Bogles is also very good in this metagame, but when i played it, it seemed all my Boros opponents were quite prepared, which made me put the deck down. If you’re down to play something very ugly though, check out what i’ve been playing since dropping Dinrova Tron:

What I Played This Week

(deckstats.net link)

My initial reaction to the current metagame was confusion that there was no Rhystic Tron at all. I wanted to play the deck, but then i realised that i find playing with Rhystic Circle unbearable. I considered Boros, but as mentioned above, i dislike the mirror. Orzhov was my next thought, but i couldn’t settle on a list. I was looking for a Kor Skyfisher Deck that would beat opposing Kor Skyfisher decks. My initial list was pretty much Boros without red cards, complete with Alchemist’s Vials, Glint Hawks and the full four Thraben Inspectors.

That version didn’t have Crushers and had the one off Scour from Existence as its sole removal spell. It was basically a very helpless version of Boros. I almost gave up on the deck after one league, but i decided to make some changes and give it one more shot. I ended up with almost exactly the list you see above.

I feel like the list is pretty simple and self-explanatory, but i’ll try to answer some questions that might arise.

First off, Boros. So far, i am under the impression that i have succeeded in making a Kor Skyfisher Deck that beats other Kor Skyfisher decks.

Burn. I’m satisfied with that as well. The list looks better against Burn than it actually is though. A little under half the games are cakewalks that i finish with 20-ish life. That’s when i assemble Tron and chain lifegain triggers. When that doesn’t happen, games tend to be quite close. And unfortunately, sometimes the Burn player has an unanswered Thermo Alchemist and just runs away with the game.

Against UB Delver, i feel like my average draws are slightly favoured against their average draws, but their good draws are slightly favoured against my good draws. My deck is unusually consistent for a Tron deck though, which helps a lot in this matchup. The Faeries matchups play out similarly.

Elves seems hard. I’m not even sure i should devote sideboard space to the matchup, but Evincar’s Justice is also pretty nice against Bogles. I might cut one copy for a second Holy Light, which is much better against Faeries.

Izzet Blitz and Tribe combo are much better than with other Tron decks, but still unfavourable. For a Tron deck, this has a ton of removal. It’s just annoying that Chainer’s Edict requires black mana to cast, which sometimes means it’s too slow. It’s probably still the best choice though, mainly because of its application against Bogles.

Affinity is alright. They can nut-draw you, but we have Gorilla Shaman to make up for it.

Against blue Tron, this deck is atrocious. It’s slow to assemble Tron, doesn’t have any other ramp, only has two Crushers and is very one-dimensional. Enchantment-based removal is also incredibly bad against Dinrova Horror and Ghostly Flicker. Many things can and will go wrong. My initial list had some Earth Rifts in the sideboard, but those are too slow. I would reconsider if i had Signets, but i don’t really want to play Signets.

Are there changes that i want to make? Outside of the Tron matchup, i don’t see any glaring issues. I’d like more card draw in the main deck, but there’s nothing that i’m willing to cut. I know that the deck isn’t optimised, but at least it doesn’t run cards that i don’t want to run. The mana works and there’s nothing specific that i feel like i’m missing. I might want an extra white removal spell for the Burn matchup, but that’s all i can think of.

Intriguing Decks

(UB Delver by Condescend, 1st place in the 17/02/19 Pauper Challenge)

(Orzhov Pestilence by Amoras27, 5-0 from this week’s Competitive League results)

What can i say about these decks? Not much, to be honest. UB Delver has been on my bucket list before my break, but then my break happened. As much as i dislike it, something from the deck might get banned so there might not be all that much time left for me to try it. Pristine Talisman is one of my favourite cards in the format though, so even between these two decks it would be hard to decide.

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

j