The Power of Pauper: Common and Wild
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 taking a look at what treasures are in store for Wilds of Eldraine for Pauper! In addition to that we've got two Challenges to look at from this past weekend.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Wildly Common - Wilds of Eldraine for Pauper
We've got another Standard expansion coming imminently, with Wilds of Eldraine dropping this month. This set has one returning mechanic in the form of Adventure and two new mechanics in the form of Bargain and Role Tokens. Bargain is a new mechanic that gives a bonus effect if you sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or token when you cast the spell. Role Tokens are enchantment Aura tokens that get attached to creatures.
With that being said, let's look at what cards could be Pauper playable.
Brave the Wilds
This card is really good. Bargaining in Pauper is pretty easy because a lot of decks can run cards like Ichor Wellspring and stuff like that. This is another card that makes Bridge lands into creatures, and while it doesn't give evasion like Kenku Artificer it's really solid. The fact that it also nabs a basic land at the same time is really reasonable.
Candy Trail
I don't think this is much better than Lembas since that card shuffles in and always draws you a card, whereas this has to sac to its ability to draw. Still, it's nice to have options.
Not Dead After All
There isn't much of a "Scam" archetype in Pauper where this is insane like it is in Modern. It's probably just another Undying Evil and not good enough.
Rimefur Reindeer
While Bogles/Mono White tend to push through their damage through evasive means, tapping down blockers seems reasonable enough in those decks.
Slumbering Keepguard
This can possibly be another big creature for Bogles/Mono White, and it can be a sneaky combat trick too since activating it can be done at instant speed.
Snaremaster Sprite
This card seems incredibly reasonable in the Faeries decks if you can repeatedly put it in hand with Ninjutsu. It can definitely catch an opponent off guard.
Spell Stutter
I don't believe this is super playable as the Faeries decks very much want you to be able to be playing creatures and Counterspell is just sort of way better in those decks given that UU is never hard for them to make. The downside of the payment here is too high.
Troublemaker Ouphe
I like this one. It's cheap and effective and can easily answer a Bridge land that's been animated or something else busted. Bargaining again is really easy in Pauper (mainly because artifact lands exist) and it's trivial to enable this card's triggered ability.
Unruly Catapult
Your Thermo-Alchemist of the set. Unfortunately it is an artifact and I feel that makes it even more fragile.
New Cards Coming to MTGO with Eldraine Update
We did get an announcement that there's going to be some backlog cards added to MTGO with the Wilds of Eldraine update. You can read the full announcement here.
The biggest thing here is some of the Unfinity cards, namely Embiggen and _____ Goblin are being added. The latter has some interesting things to denote as it requires a bit of a workaround to it, as Daybreak has confirmed that sticker sheets are one of the things that can't be added to MTGO at the moment.
It's definitely interesting and I don't think it's perfect implementation, but Daybreak has noted that they are open to tweaking it going forward.
Pauper Challenge 8/26
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 58 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Castle of Commons Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Burn was the most represented deck, and it had a good win rate here. Mono Blue Terror did very very well while Boros Synthesizer and Bogles did poorly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Golgari Gardens | 1st | NickNorman |
| Familiars | 2nd | EhDM |
| Golgari Gardens | 3rd | Leobertucci |
| Dimir Terror | 4th | Mogged |
| Burn | 5th | ElkVinci |
| Dimir Terror | 6th | _Batutinha_ |
| Mono Blue Terror | 7th | _DissonancE_ |
| Burn | 8th | INickStrad |
Lot of Terror decks here among other things like Burn and Golgari. At the end of the event it was Golgari that won.
This deck certainly does a lot of powerful things, and I think that having the land cyclers even at just one copy is very helpful. This deck boasts a ton of removal so it's definitely doing some strong stuff.
In Second Place we had Familiars.
Murmuring Mystic seems quite good in this deck, given that it wants to cast a lot of cost-reduced spells. Meeting of Minds is still a super groovy card for sure.
Also in this Top 8 we had Dimir Terror.
Crawl from the Cellar is a kind of cute thing when you consider that Gurmag Angler is a Zombie. Very amusing for sure.
Pauper Challenge 8/27
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the Sunday event. This event had 57 players in it thanks to the data collected by the Castle of Commons Discord.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Dimir Terror was the most played deck but it had a poor win rate overall. There was a good spread of decks across the reset of the event with the Azorius Affinity deck doing very well.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Azorius Affinity | 1st | Oceansoul92 |
| Jeskai Gates | 2nd | twister66 |
| Mono Blue Terror | 3rd | Beicodegeia |
| Jeskai Gates | 4th | Gn42 |
| Mono Green Aggro | 5th | Ixidor29 |
| Gruul Ponza | 6th | LasVegasChaos |
| Mono White Aggro | 7th | jwaves |
| Grixis Affinity | 8th | msskinbolic |
Reasonable spread of decks here. Some Gates decks, some Aggro, and the end of it all the Azorius Affinity deck continues to do well.
All That Glitters enabling an entirely different version of Affinity to exist is pretty interesting for sure. This one gets some additional boosts from the fact that it can play Moon-Circuit Hacker, so that is cool.
In Second Place we had Jeskai Gates.
I love how straightforward and powerful this shell really is. It definitely feels like you can put a lot in this shell and have it work as long as you have the Gate backup plan.
Further down the Top 8 we have Mono Green Aggro.
Oh man I love this deck a bunch. Very clean and just highly aggressive. Plus it has Bayou Groff in it, the best Plant Dog!
Around the Web
- Pauperganda has a video on Illusions! Check it out here.
- Our good friend Alex Ullman has an article on the first four weeks of Commander Masters. Check it out here.
- Kalikaiz has a video on Azorius Affinity. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
When you mix Walls with Cascade decks.
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!
