The Power of Pauper: I Spy With My Little Eye
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 an archetype bolstered by not one but two brand new downshifted cards from Commander Masters. That deck is "2 Land Spy" and the new additions have made the deck a little more powerful in the current format. In addition we've got two Challenges from this past weekend to look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Spying for the Win
This week we're focusing on a combo deck in the format that has long existed, but very recently got a very big shot in the arm from downshifted cards in Commander Masters. This deck is commonly referred to as "Two Land Spy" or "One Land Spy", but can also now be referred to as Pauper "Oops! All Spells" as its win condition is now just very similar to the Legacy deck of the same name.
This deck used to win via a complicated loop of milling the opponent using Balustrade Spy and destroying the opponent's lands with Destroy the Evidence. The deck could also use Haunting Misery to deal a bunch of damage to the opponent.
With the downshifts from Commander Masters however, the deck's game plan allows it to perform a very Oops-like impression by milling itself with Balustrade Spy and then Unearthing copies of Dregscape Zombie in order to cast Dread Return and get back Lotleth Giant to win the game off of.
Let's look at a list.
Because this deck plays so very few lands, it utilizes fast mana spells like Lotus Petal and spells that search up lands like Land Grant to get out the land in the deck to make Balustrade Spy work. Ritual effects like Dark Ritual / Cabal Ritual and Songs of the Damned allow the deck to make a bunch of mana so that it can do all the things it needs to do to cast its spells and unearth its creatures.
We have a great video on this deck from Bryant Cook that really showcase the power of this deck.
This deck does put a lot of pressure on other decks to interact with it, and there is a lot of interaction that makes the deck kind of fall apart. Cards like Faerie Macabre and other graveyard hate spells can interact with the deck in a positive fashion as the deck doesn't have a ton of interaction to deal with those effects. One such sideboard plan the deck can adopt here to beat cards like Faerie Macabre is Haunting Misery as exiling the creatures from the graveyard with the spell is an additional cost of casting the spell.
The primary downside of this deck is finding the consistency aspect of it. Every opening hand should be prepared to do something strong if possible to win as quickly as possible before the opponent can get off the ground. Because of that and the nature of a linear combo deck, the deck does mulligan a lot, but it gains a lot from the London Mulligan in being able to shape / sculpt its game plan.
This is a deck to keep an eye on. While it's easy to interact with, it does a lot of powerful things very quickly and the fact that the win condition is far more simplified means that the deck is much more playable on Magic Online, so folks will definitely start seeing the deck show up there more and more.
Pauper Challenge 8/12
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the Saturday event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. There was no data for this event so we don't know the number of players overall.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Gruul Ponza | 1st | LasVegasChaos |
| Affinity | 2nd | Mogged |
| Jeskai Gates | 3rd | Tsubasa_Cat |
| Izzet Terror | 4th | SpockVidaLoka |
| Mono Blue Terror | 6th | discoverN |
| Bogles | 7th | KingHairy |
| Izzet Terror | 8th | boytriton |
Very interesting things going on here. Good amount of Terror decks for sure. At the end of the event it was Gruul Ponza that won.
This deck gets so much more powerful with Generous Ent, as it allows the deck to always be able to find its lands to ramp and accelerate with.
In Second Place we had Affinity.
This Azorius Affinity list playing All That Glitters is a very interesting shift from the traditional Grixis Affinity lists we're used to. Makes this much more of an aggro list for sure.
Further down the Top 8 we have Bogles.
All That Glitters is definitely very powerful in multiple shells and it's definitely strong in these Bogles decks.
Pauper Challenge 8/13
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the Sunday event.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. There was no data for this event so we don't know the number of players overall.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Terror | 1st | discoverN |
| Dimir Terror | 2nd | Oscar_Franco |
| Mono Blue Terror | 3rd | NinjaGamer76 |
| Affinity | 4th | Beicodegeia |
| Gruul Ponza | 5th | mattsoree |
| Jeskai Gates | 6th | twister66 |
| Bogles | 7th | rasvd |
| Jeskai Gates | 8th | outZEROo |
Quite a bit of Terror decks and some Gates. At the end of the event it was Mono Blue Terror that won.
Delver of Secrets makes this deck incredibly interesting because it has a lot of ways to flip, and Lorien Revealed gives the deck a land and a draw spell. The addition of Cryptic Serpent here really boosts this strategy a lot.
In Second Place we had Dimir Terror.
This deck continues to remain quite strong in the current format, as the power of black removal spells and free spells like Snuff Out seem quite strong.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Jeskai Gates.
This deck is super strong and got such a boost from stuff like Lorien Revealed. I love it.
Around the Web
- The Card Market deck of the week is a super sweet one. It's Cephalid Breakfast in Pauper?! Check it out here.
- Our good friend Alex Ullman has a recap of this past weekend's events. Check it out here.
- TeasdaleMTG has a video on Dimir Murmuring Mystic! Check it out here.
- Pauperganda has a video on One Land Spy. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
You can find this past week's 5-0 deck lists over here.
This is another take on one of the lists in the link above on Cephalid Breakfast. It's Cephalidless! One thing that is kind of goofy here in that you can gain a bunch of life by sacrificing a very large Daru Spiritualist to Devour Flesh to gain as much life as you want.
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!
