The Power of Pauper: Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
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 a little about a card from Bloomburrow that has found its way into Pauper, and that's Carrot Cake! We are waiting for full spoilers of Duskmourn to finish up, so we'll be doing those either next week or the week after.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Carrot Cake Tastes Good!
While we've got another set imminently coming soon, I feel like we haven't had a lot of time to really dig into Bloomburrow between that and the looming specter that is Modern Horizons 3 cards that have irrevocably changed the format in a lot of ways. Thankfully, our deck for this week digs pretty hard into Bloomburrow and one of its signature mechanics of making Food tokens! That's right, our deck to peer at this week is a wildly interesting take on Abzan Gates, utilizing new cards Carrot Cake and Bakersbane Duo with Cauldron Familiar and Mirkwood Bats.
Food-Gates? Gates Food? You decide. I like Blackberry Pie with a Side of Carrot Cake.
There are so many things that are incidentally Food, not just in Bloomburrow, but in general for decks like this to have a strong payoff. Cards like Gingerbrute and Lembas also being Food is pretty huge. You can easily sacrifice a Cauldron Familiar to a Deadly Dispute and then use the Lembas to recur it back to play, which is groovy. Carrot Cake gives you two bodies, one where it enters and a second where it gets sacrificed (and this wording is super important because it lets you get the 1/1 when you sacrifice it for Deadly Dispute).
Bakersbane Duo is a two mana 2/2 that makes a Food but also becomes a 3/3 when you expend 4 (i.e. when you spend your fourth mana in a turn to cast spells). The making of the Food is the big draw here, with the power boost a slight upside to it.
Running all of this on the Gates shell seems smart to me. You fix your mana with the Gates, but you also have a really strong end game with Basilisk Gate being able to slam home the game.
I like this deck and I hope to see more of it. It seems cool and fun, and gets to play new cards that aren't automatically MH3 (even if it is playing Thraben Charm, but that card is really sweet).
Pauper Challenge 32 8/30
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the Friday event. This event had 57 players according to the decklist data published by MTGO. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Affinity | 1st | LuffDoChapeuDePalha |
| Mono Blue Terror | 2nd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Jund Gardens | 3rd | Pavelval |
| Mono Blue Terror | 4th | _Batutinha_ |
| Mono Blue Terror | 5th | carrot_eater |
| Burn | 6th | klien7 |
| Dimir Faeries | 7th | barff |
| Grixis Affinity | 8th | outZEROo |
Lot of Terror here, but at the end of the event it was Grixis Affinity that won.
Affinity continues to be one of the top tier decks of the format, and honestly Refurbished Familiar is the big reason why. The shift in the deck's ability to land this Turn 2 off artifact lands and a Candy Trail is pretty gross.
In Second Place we had Mono Blue Terror.
Incredibly straightforward deck here. Sleep of the Dead is kind of a cool card that is interesting.
Also in this Top 8 we had Jund Gardens.
Writhing Chrysalis seems like a really good reason to be in Jund colors for this deck. It's just an insane card that does some super-powerful things.
Pauper Challenge 32 8/31
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 47 players according to the decklist data published by MTGO. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Terror | 1st | discoverN |
| Burn | 2nd | Purgatory_01 |
| Burn | 3rd | klien7 |
| Grixis Affinity | 4th | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Gruul Ramp | 5th | IvernOP |
| Jund Gardens | 6th | Villela |
| Jund Gardens | 7th | Pavelval |
| Jund Broodscale | 8th | Muka33 |
Big spread of Gardens, Burn, with some sprinkling of other decks. At the end of the event it was Mono Blue Terror that won.
The thing I love the most about this deck is the fact that the manabase is the cleanest manabase ever. No need for anything but 16 Islands.
In Second Place we had Burn.
Very straightforward and low-to-the-ground list here. Literally, no cards that cost above two mana. The curve is flat!
Further down the Top 8 we had Gruul Ramp.
On the opposite end of curving out, this deck continues to look really good right now. Really any deck playing Writhing Chrysalis seems very good.
Pauper Challenge 32 9/1
The final Challenge event of the weekend was the Sunday event. This event had 54 players according to the decklist data published by MTGO. There was no data for this event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Affinity | 1st | Mogged |
| Jund Broodscale | 2nd | Muka33 |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Burn | 4th | _a.c.a.i_2007_ |
| Grixis Affinity | 5th | MisplacedGinger |
| Dimir Faeries | 6th | Hamuda |
| Dimir Faeries | 7th | Brivenix |
| Dimir Terror | 8th | O_danielakos |
Good amount of Affinity and Faeries. At the end of the event it was Affinity that won.
Interesting list here. More traditional off the bat, as cards like Metallic Rebuke find their way in. Tithing Blade in the sideboard is neat.
In Second Place we had Jund Broodscale.
Again, Writhing Chrysalis makes the world go 'round. Also the Cleansing Wildfire package here is pretty sweet.
Further down the Top 8 we had Dimir Faeries.
Pretty sweet deck. Using The Modern Age to pitch your Sneaky Snacker and get it back is super groovy if you can manage it. Usually, you can though. Kitchen Imp is also sweet here.
Around the Web
- Heartyshow has a video on Pauper Zoo. Check it out here.
- Our good friend Alex Ullman has an article on Pauper's Fundamental Turn. Pretty great info here. 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!
Gates-Fog?
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!
