The Power of Pauper: Dread Returning

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 sweet look at very cool deck that's popped up recently. In addition to that we've only got one Challenge to look at from last weekend as the Sunday event did not fire.

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Dredging Up Fun and Profit

While we got Dread Return and Lotleth Giant as downshifts in Commander Masters earlier in 2023, there wasn't much work done on most archetypes that would use these cards outside of decks like One Land Spy. However, as of recent we have seen some results pop up with a neat looking "Dredge"-like deck.

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This deck utilizes a lot of cards that self-mill, allowing the player to fill the graveyard with cards. Cards like Satyr Wayfinder, Mire Triton (another Commander Masters downshift), and Blanchwood Prowler fill up the yard with creatures, while flashback spells such as Acorn Harvest and unearth creatures like Scrapwork Mutt create enough creatures to sacrifice to Dread Return to get back a Lotleth Giant. In addition to having these kinds of cards, spells like Gnaw to the Bone can be flashed back from the graveyard to gain life to keep apace of the opponent's game plan, and the land cycler creatures in Generous Ent and Troll of Khazad-dum also give the deck cards it can pitch to the graveyard that are also lands and count for Lotleth Giant.

This is a super interesting and cool deck for sure, and it has a really strong game plan. Post board you gain access to off-color options like Flaring Pain (for dealing with Prismatic Strands based decks) and Ancient Grudge (for dealing with Tormod's Crypt, etc.).

It's always fun for me to see a new deck emerge out of new cards, and this one looks like a ton of fun for a Dredge-like style gameplay that can also be exceptionally aggressive.

Pauper Challenge 12/30

The Challenge that did fire this past weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 51 players in it thanks to the new postings by Daybreak Games.

You can find all the decklists for this event here.

Burn was the most popular deck of the event, but it's win rate was dragged down quite a bit. Azorius Gates did quite well here.

Let's take a look at the Top 8.

Pretty solid Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Azorius Gates that won.

Very strong and straightforward list overall here. Highly clean and powerful.

In Second Place we had Jeskai Affinity.

The Jeskai variants of this deck definitely seem to be gaining a lot of traction, namely based on the power of Galvanic Blast, but cards like Experimental Synthesizer also make these builds great.

Also in this Top 8 we had Mono White Aggro.

Search Party Captain is kind of a sweet card! This deck just really is very aggressive and very cool.

At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Golgari Gardens.

I really like how these lists are shaking out with the addition of Fanatical Offering and Tithing Blade from Ixalan. It just looks like such a powerful deck.

Around the Web

• StompyMTG has a Mono Blue Terror video. Check it out here.
• Kalikaiz has a vide on Pirate Familiars. Check it out here.

The Spice Corner

Now that Leagues are posted every day, I'm going to be pulling from all the League postings!

Familiars WALLS.

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!