The Power of Pauper: Dredging to Victory
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 some new changes to Dredge in Pauper. In addition we have a few Challenges to look at from last weekend. Some issues on MTGO prevented the third Challenge of the weekend from firing, unfortunately.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The New Face of Dredge
Ever since the downshift of Dread Return, people have been looking to figure out how the card would be good in graveyard-centric shells. Downshifted at the same time was Lotleth Giant, which primarily made the decision of what to Dread Return much easier.
Over time, a Dredge deck has developed, primarily centered in Black/Green colors. This deck utilizes cards like Satyr Wayfinder and Malevolent Rumble to get cards in the graveyard, and Dredge cards like Stinkweed Imp to keep up the self-mill.
Weirdly enough that it took a few months after Aetherdrift for a card from that set to enable a new version of Dredge, one that is more centered in Red/Black, with a splash into Blue (a splash it is unlikely to ever be actually casting) for Sneaky Snacker. That card is Magmakin Artillerist.
This version of Dredge gets to lean heavily on cards that have been long time staples of Dredge decks in other formats. Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Insolent Neonate, and Burning Inquiry have been heavy staples of many other format's versions of a "Dredge" style deck. The game plan is still very much the same. Deploy cards that help you put cards in the graveyard and be able to recur threats that can be sacrificed to Dread Return in order to get back a Lotleth Giant. It's kind of sweet.
Magmakin Artillerist though, is the real linchpin that ties together parts of this strategy. Its triggered ability is absolutely insanely powerful when you're discarding 2+ cards off a spell. Burning Inquiry with one or more of these in play is very powerful by dealing three damage. And this can trigger multiple times a turn, so chaining Faithless Lootings or Inquiries can be absolutely devastating. Following that up with a Dread Return on Lotleth can then be just lethal. In addition, the deck also gains access to Molten Gatekeeper to continue to push the damage.
What this deck does versus the other Dredge builds is that it is absolutely 100% more aggressive. It pulls together part of the game plan the other Dredge deck had with the Lotleth play, but combines that with ultra-aggressive evasive threats like Sneaky Snacker and the hard to interact with Magmakin Artillerist into one neat package that can also play well through graveyard hate by simply deploying threats and using the draw spells as damage.
It's definitely a deck to keep an eye on, and it's a deck I'm very interesting in building myself, honestly. It looks like a ton of fun.
Pauper Challenge 32 4/11/2025
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the Friday event. This event had 53 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Madness Burn | 1st | ziofrancone |
| Ephemerate Tron | 2nd | Kampo |
| Ephemerate Tron | 3rd | RClint21 |
| Bogles | 4th | Sailor_Moon |
| Elves | 5th | __forge__ |
| Burn | 6th | _Batutinha_ |
| Mono Blue Terror | 7th | discoverN |
| Ephemerate Tron | 8th | A_AdeptoTerra |
Very Tron heavy, sprinkled in with some other decks. At the end of the event it was Madness Burn that won.
Very clean and straightforward list here. Grab the Prize has certainly proven to be a solid card in this deck. Most of the time you cast it, it's going to be doing two damage to the opponent because you always want to be discarding your burn spells or Madness creatures.
In Second Place we had Ephemerate Tron.
I think it's nice to have Tron back, but I am curious if having eight copies of the Prophetic Prism/Energy Refractor effect is a bit too much. It will be interesting to hear what the PFP thinks about this come June when the next B&R occurs. I don't fully think we are there just yet with the deck being too powerful though. It's certainly good.
Also in this Top 8 we had Elves.
Hallow is kind of a sweet damage prevention spell, specifically targeting various direct damage spells. It can also target and prevent spells from killing your Elves, which is wild. The big usage here is versus Breath Weapon, where you're preventing a whole lot of damage but also gaining a ton of life out of it too. Pretty sick tech.
Pauper Challenge 32 4/12/2025
The final Challenge event of the weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 51 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Faeries | 1st | Denisevich |
| Alchemist Burn | 2nd | medvedev |
| Madness Burn | 3rd | SanPop |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 4th | Mirozel1 |
| Burn | 5th | edgo |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 6th | Banduz |
| Rakdos Affinity | 7th | Muka33 |
| Mono Blue Terror | 8th | Luminati |
A big presence by Mono Blue and Mono Red decks in this Top 8. At the end of the event it was Mono Blue Faeries that won.
Kind of interesting to see main deck copies of Bind the Monster here. The card is very good at locking down specific creatures, which is what really helps Faeries keep its own critters in play for getting through evasively. Especially tapping down something like Writhing Chrysalis is big.
In Second Place we had a sweet take on Burn.
This is more of hard left on the more Goblin heavy aggro variants of burn as it seeks to want to deploy something like Kessig Flamebreather or Thermo-Alchemist and use their triggered abilities plus their burn spells to push the opponent even closer to defeat. It's basically speeding up the clock a bit with these effects, and it gets the benefit of being able to use cards like Manamorphose even though they don't do direct damage on their own because the triggered ability is helping there too.
Further down the Top 8 we had Rakdos Affinity.
This is a much more aggressively slanted build of Affinity. Stuff like Glaze Fiend, Reckless Fireweaver, and Pactdoll Terror all push the aggro aspect of the deck very hard. Honestly, it's kind of a cool way to approach the deck.
Around the Web
- Heartyshow has some Elfball content. Check it out here.
- The Common Coldsnap has a new episode. Check it out here.
- Pauperganda has a video on Mono Black Aristocrats. Check it out here.
- kalikaiz has a video on Ruby Storm. 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!
Salt Road Packbeast in Elves is kind of sweet.
This Guttersnipe "Ruby Storm" deck is kind of sweet.
FIVE. LAND. SPY.
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!
