The Power of Pauper: AGGRO!
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of The Power of Pauper! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be talking about all the wonderful aggro decks in Pauper. In addition we've got some Challenges from last week to look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Aggro Decks, Aggro Decks
Pauper is definitely very creature-centric, and that often lends itself to the concept of Aggro decks. Aggro decks are traditionally defined by their ability to put creatures on the ground quickly and start turning sideways to try to get the opponent's life total to zero quickly. More often than not however, the most popular Aggro deck in Pauper has traditionally been decks like Burn, but there's other ways to approach aggro that aren't Burn. Let's take a look at a few of them that can be interesting ways to be aggressive.
Mono Green has traditionally been a very aggressive way to approach deckbuilding, going back a really long time in Magic's history, given that Mono Green Stompy was a long standing way to play. This particular list takes that idea and approaches it with a go-wide token strategy that also lets you go tall on the creatures it does play as both Cloakwood Swarmkeeper and Glimmer Bairn both function with token creatures. It's a really sweet way to go deep on an aggressive strategy.
Speaking of Mono Green, another way to be aggressive is to make your opponent's life total 10 hit points with Infect.
There's some sweet things you can do with Infect creatures. Infect is interesting because it functionally cuts your opponent's life total in half, which often cuts down the clock needed to put the game away. The problem with this strategy is that if your opponent can clear away your Infect creatures and you can't get back on board with them you're often not doing actual damage to where your opponent can lose that way. It's a give and take scenario with this deck, but the deck does come packed with a bunch of ways to boost its Infect creatures to get the job done.
Another fun way to be aggressive in Pauper is an old school strategy in SLIVERS.
Slivers is a super neat way to be super aggressive in Pauper. You get to play a bunch of really cheap aggressive threats that all get bigger with other Slivers in the deck. All the cards in this deck top out at three mana, so you can't get any more aggressive than this.
There's loads of other ways to get aggressive in Pauper! What's your favorite aggro deck? Let me know in the comments below.
Pauper Challenge 32 4/25/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 66 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Walls Combo | 1st | brukidm |
| Mono Blue Terror | 2nd | MelanzaOfficial |
| Gruul Ramp | 3rd | Trailovsky |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 4th | Mirozel1 |
| Burn | 5th | vini_torres |
| Dimir Faeries | 6th | outZEROo |
| Gruul Ramp | 7th | mrman12136 |
| Bogles | 8th | PedraStone |
There was a pretty reasonable spread of decks here, honestly. At the end of the event, Walls Combo won.
Scholar of Athreos as one of the win conditions is pretty neat. It lets you regain some life as well, which is never bad in Pauper. Being a 1/4 you can even play it out and use it to gain life over time, and it's not going to die to a Bolt.
In Second Place we had Mono Blue Terror.
Very clean list overall here. This deck has a gameplan and it knows what it wants to do.
Also in this Top 8 we had some Gruul Ramp. Let's look at the higher-placing one.
This is a solid-looking list. No frills, just big ramp and midrange beats. Bannerhide Krushok is a sweet mana sink too.
Pauper Challenge 32 4/26/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 43 players in it, thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Turbo Fog | 1st | IvernOP |
| Elves | 2nd | gaahei1 |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 3rd | Banduz |
| Bogles | 4th | Sailor_Moon |
| Grixis Affinity | 5th | outZEROo |
| Madness Burn | 6th | Niederschatten |
| Walls Combo | 7th | apas72 |
| Burn | 8th | John1111 |
This is a pretty diverse Top 8. At the end of the event it was Turbo Fog that won.
I honestly think it's pretty cool that this version of the deck survived the Dispute ban. It's a really sweet version of Fog, and I think it is super fun to play.
In Second Place, we had Elves.
This list is much more straightforward and also straight on mono green. Wrap in Vigor is a super sweet card to get around damage-based sweepers.
Also in this Top 8 we had Madness Burn.
I like Stormshriek Feral as a discard / draw spell that also can be a creature late game if you really need it (after to re-draw it, of course since Omen shuffles).
Pauper Challenge 32 4/27/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 78 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Affinity | 1st | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Bogles | 2nd | PedraStone |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | outZEROo |
| Turbo Fog | 4th | IvernOP |
| Ephemerate Tron | 5th | Alleyezonme |
| Dimir Terror | 6th | O_danielakos |
| Burn | 7th | sebastianpozzo |
| Dredge | 8th | kaikas |
This is another really solid Top 8. At the end of the event it was Grixis Affinity that won.
This is a nice-looking list. It is nice that Affinity still seems to be a "good" deck, but also doesn't feel incredibly overpowering like it was with Dispute in the format. Dispute really was pretty insane.
In Second Place we had Bogles.
Ram Through is a pretty sweet card with Bogles, where you can slam through a blocker but also a good part of evasion is trample so you get to not only clear the blocker but also deal excess damage. If you're doing this after blockers are declared, you can get rid of the blocker and still deal your trample damage in combat.
Further down the Top 8 we had Ephemerate Tron.
Looping Stonehorn Dignitary is kind of nutty, not going to lie.
Around the Web
- Bryant Cook has a video on Goblins Combo. Check it out here.
- The Common Cold Snap has a new episode. Check it out here.
- Kalikaiz has a video on High Tide! Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
As League results are now spread out across the week, let's dig in and find something spicy!
Turbo Reanimator Initiative is kinda sweet.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week, folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Pauper!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGPauper Discord Server.
Until next time!
