Pauper; Going Infinite?
So, a common question I have heard asked by many people in my streams is, "Is MTGO free?" Because I don't want to lie to them, I give them the truth, no. That said, I do mention it's feasible to go infinite. So, to prove this, I am going to track the cost of playing pauper from today, Monday, September 30th until the end of the year. I shall keep track of all of my pauper matches/leagues to show how much one can earn/lose when grinding pauper. Many of you might now be wondering, "why should we care?" Well, the short answer is, it might help some newer players decide if they want to get into MTGO or pauper in general, and others might be able to treat it as a benchmark/goal when they are attempting to earn tickets. Regardless, the main reason I bring this up is that I will be keeping a spreadsheet that will go alongside weekly updates, sharing my take on the current meta, the challenges, a summary of gains/loses, and deck tech. The deck will (ideally) be fan-submitted, but barring that I will just pick a deck I have either been enjoying or having issues with and dive into it slightly. This is effectively the first entry in this 'research journal.'
State of the Meta
With the introduction of Arcum's Astrolabe and Ephemerate the deck to beat has become the deck now called 'Skred,' even if it feels like Jeskai Tempo would be more accurate when naming it. As that description might help you guess, this deck has a very grindy/card advantage based plan. It uses a combination of enter the battlefield effects, removal, and card draw to keep the opponent from being able to end the game while inevitably the flyers will do the job. I could go further into this deck, but I think I will save that for after I have played a league or two with it myself and post it next week.
Speaking of what I am playing, I will be streaming pauper every Monday (right after the MTGGoldfish stream) and on Wednesdays on my channel. Monday's will more often than not be off the wall or submitted decks that I will likely lose some tickets on, with Wednesdays being more of a "what meta deck am I feeling" kind of deal. So, for today, look forward to a fun little deck called 'Mono Red Stax,' submitted by Chuubii to Seth, who was kind enough to forward it to me.
Looking at the deck, I have high hopes. A few cheap threats backed up with a great removal package and a devastating amount of land destruction. If I am right, this feels like it will run like Mono-Black Land Destruction but with a much faster clock and no ways of drawing more cards. Time will tell though, and I look forward to testing it out.
Final Words
The link for the database can be found here and I will gladly offer it to anybody that asks. If you have any ideas on how to enhance the experiment, let me know and I am looking forward to finding out just how profitable Pauper can be while hopefully learning more about the format and meta.
