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The Power of Pauper: Cycling Through the Motions


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 Cycle Storm! This is a sweet deck in Pauper that is a ton of fun. In addition to that we'll be looking at another weekly round of Challenges.

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Cycling Cycling Cycling

Pauper has plenty of interesting combo decks in it, but of those decks Cycle Storm is a very interesting deck because of how it generally is seeking to win games. Cycle Storm as its name implies is based entirely off of the Cycling mechanic, which allows you to generally pay mana to discard a card from hand that has Cycling and then draw a new card to replace it. At surface glance this doesn't seem insane, but the deck has plenty of cards that have triggered abilities that occur whenever you cycle or discard a card.

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Primarily the biggesrt of these are Drannith Healer, Drannith Stinger, and Horror of the Broken Lands.

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All of these cards do something whenever you cycle, allowing you to do things like damage your opponent, gain life, or create a really big threat. Because all of the cycling costs in this deck (outside of Street Wraith) cost mana to activate, you need a lot of fast mana to make the deck work. This is where cards like Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, and most importantly Songs of the Damned come into play. Songs gives you a black mana for each creature in your graveyard, and it's worth noting that all of the cycling cards in this deck are creatures.

In addition to all of this going on, you need a way to refill your hand and keep going at some point. One way to do this is to use Reaping the Graves after casting a bunch of spells to return a bunch of cycling creatures to your hand. Then you get to keep going! Because of how flexible this deck is with the cards that do things when you cycle, you can win the game a number of different ways or you can even combine ways to win. For example, a Drannith Stinger and a couple Horrors can close the game out quickly with even just a few cycling activations. Drannith Healer can gain you a lot of life and keep your opponent from ending the game, giving you time to win.

This is a super fun deck, and it's very powerful and intricate to play. If you're looking for something combo oriented, but different, consider giving this one a shot. It is a bit on the upper end of Pauper decks in paper, due to the prices of Lotus Petal, but it's a super great deck if you already own these cards.

Pauper Challenge 32 1/17/2025

The first Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 50 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.

You can find all of the decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.

Deck Name Placing MTGO Username
Turbo Fog 1st IvernOP
Grixis Affinity 2nd LuffyDoChapeuDePalha
Mono Blue Faeries 3rd VingadorMTG
Mono Blue Faeries 4th BuddyTheFrog
Burn 5th PanisNaSingkamas
Burn 6th boom_bust
Jund Broodscale 7th Hamuda
Gruul Ramp 8th Tiomax

Fairly reasonable Top 8. Bit of Burn and Faeries. At the end of the event it was Turbo Fog that won.

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This is a slick list. The Turbo Fog variants seems really all over the place as of late. We're either on the Golgari plan or the Simic plan and it's just cool to see. I love Frantic Inventory here as well.

In Second Place we had Grixis Affinity.

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Hunter's Blowgun is a wildly interesting card. Being able to equip it to something and give it Deathtouch during your turn, especially if that card is Krark-Clan Shaman, is super gross.

At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Gruul Ramp.

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Very interesting to see this version completely abandon cards like Annoyed Altisaur and Boarding Party, but realistically, the power of Writhing Chrysalis is so very real, especially when you combine it with Nyxborn Hydra. Pretty absurd really.

Pauper Challenge 32 1/18/2025

The second Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 50 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.

You can find all of the decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.

Deck Name Placing MTGO Username
Dimir Faeries 1st Niederschatten
Izzet Terror 2nd Foresterf
Turbo Fog 3rd Heisen01
Burn 4th msskinbolic
Grixis Affinity 5th PedraStone
Cycle Storm 6th Tyerube1618
Mono Blue Faeries 7th Purgatory_01
Jund 8th maribves

Super varied Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Dimir Faeires that won.

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Sort of surprised to not see Sneaky Snacker here, but it feels like that card is now just waxing and waning in playability around the format and isn't always 100% good in everything. I also really like Extract a Confession in these kinds of decks.

In Second Place we had Izzet Terror.

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This is a very clean looking list. All of its spells are doing something redundant, and that's a really good place to be for a Control/Tempo strategy like this.

At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Jund.

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I think we just should call this deck Jund Modern Horizons 3 Constructed almost. Pretty much most of the best cards in it came from MH3.

Pauper Challenge 32 1/19/2025

The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 63 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.

You can find all of the decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.

Deck Name Placing MTGO Username
Grixis Affinity 1st PedraStone
Dredge 2nd karatedom
Burn 3rd boom_bust
Izzet Terror 4th Ale_Mtg
Dimir Faeries 5th Beicodegeia
Golgari Broodscale 6th Sisifo94
Gruul Ramp 7th Ixidor29
Turbo Fog 8th Heisen01

Another pretty varied Top 8. At the end of the event it was Grixis Affinity that won.

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Fairly stock looking list here. Not really many frills. But hey, this is a great deck to consider for Pauper right now.

In Second Place we had Dredge.

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I enjoy the fact that Dread Return just didn't explode Pauper. It's nice to see that it's made space for new decks to flourish without feeling overpowered, and that's a great place to be for downshifted cards.

Also in this Top 8 we had Golgari Broodscale.

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This is a cool way to approach this, by integrating some of the Gardens stuff like Khalni Garden. Broodscale is another really strong deck in Pauper right now, so it's worth checking out.

My Video for the Week

I decided to drop a little into the realm of Pauper this past week for my "What Does This Deck Do?" series! So, have a video on Affinity!

Around the Web

  • Kalikaiz is doing some Altar Tron. Check it out here.
  • Kirblinxy has a video covering their 2024 content. Check it out here.
  • Pauperganda is playing some Tokens. 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!

Speaking of Altar Tron...

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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!



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