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 a fast combo deck in Pauper called Five Land Spy! In addition we have some Challenges to look at from last week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
I Spy Some Fast Combo Wins
I've always enjoyed keeping an eye on certain cards in Pauper to see what they're doing. One of those cards is a favorite of mine in Dread Return. I've played a lot of Dredge and cast this card a lot, so I always like seeing what it's doing in Pauper, because for the longest time I was indeed a little worried about this being downshifted.
That being said though I do think the card is being used in some interesting ways. Early on in its life, we saw it used quite a bit in a deck utilizing Balustrade Spy called "One Land Spy" or as it's commonly known in other formats "Oops! All Spells". This version is not quite one land, but is more like Five Land Spy.
The goal of this deck is fairly simple enough. You want to be able to get a Balustrade Spy on the board and then kill your opponent with a lethal Lotleth Giant off Dread Return. This deck has a number of different ways that it can jump your basic lands in the deck back into your hand so that when you do cast spy, you are more than likely to mill your entire deck. Cards like Sakura-Tribe Elder, Gatecreeper Vine, Many Partings, and more pull those lands right out, and then Dimir House Guard can transmute for the Spy.
Once your library is in the graveyard, you can use stuff like Songs of the Damned to make a ton of black mana cast stuff like Crawl from the Cellar or unearth Dregscape Zombie to be able to get the fodder to sacrifice to Dread Return. Another fun one is being able to use Food tokens to get back Cauldron Familiar.
In a pinch, if you really need to, you can use stuff like Conjurer's Bauble to put cards back into your library so you can try again. It's super clever really. Once you cast Dread Return then you're basically just hoping you have enough creatures in the graveyard for lethal damage off Lotleth Giant. This deck plays 29 creatures, so your chances of this are extremely high.
This is certainly a neat deck, and I think it's interesting. It's sideboard also includes some juke action as it can try to go deep on the midrange plan of "cast Writhing Chrysalis", which is a plan that's generally pretty good. If you're looking for something unique to try out, check out this deck, because it is definitely unique.
Pauper Challenge 32 5/9/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 47 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Bogles | 1st | PedraStone |
| Elves | 2nd | Beicodegeia |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | outZEROo |
| Ephemerate Tron | 4th | ziofrancone |
| Burn | 5th | _against_ |
| Mono Blue Terror | 6th | Luminati |
| Burn | 7th | MisterTwin |
| Mono Blue Terror | 8th | oskiyaa |
Fair amount of Burn and Terror here, but at the end of the event it was Bogles that won.
Pretty solid looking list here. The splash into red in the sideboard is nice for things like the blast effects, but realistically Flaring Pain is such a good sideboard card for these kinds of decks as more often than not it's damage prevention like Fogs and Prismatic Strands that can be rough for Bogles, and getting a single turn attack in to win helps a bunch.
In Second Place we had Elves.
It seems like Salt Road Packbeast was a flash in the pan and lists are back off of it. New cards will be new cards, that's for sure.
Also in this Top 8 we had Ephemerate Tron.
I do believe that Tron hasn't been so overpowering that I do think when we get to the end of the trial unban window in June that Prophetic Prism will remain unbanned. It doesn't seem like it's so incredibly domineering and there's so much else you can do in Pauper now to counteract Tron.
Pauper Challenge 32 5/10/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 43 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Inside Out Combo | 1st | Nnapi |
| Jund Wildfire | 2nd | Walker735 |
| Izzet Terror | 3rd | 8salazzar8 |
| Walls Combo | 4th | Terminus0 |
| Turbo Fog | 5th | IvernOP |
| Burn | 6th | Treserker |
| Burn | 7th | CounterTopGarchomp |
| Elves | 8th | Beicodegeia |
This is a pretty diverse Top 8. At the end of the event it was INSIDE OUT that won (not the movie, although that movie and its sequel were awesome).
So the big point of this deck is to use Inside Out to switch the Power/Toughness of Tireless Tribe, which does a really weird rules thing with its ability. When you discard a card to give it +0/+4, with Inside Out's effect then applied the creature essentially gets +4/+0 instead. Then you can use something like Escape Tunnel or Wedding Invitation to make it unblockable and one shot the opponet. It's a super sick deck and I love it.
In Second Place we had Jund Wildfire.
This deck really mainly rose in prominence to beat up on the big decks of the format prior to the bannings, but the core of the deck is still very strong, and the Cleansing Wildfire business is very good. Krark-Clan Shaman and Toxin Analysis is insane at cleaning up board states.
Also in this Top 8 we had Walls Combo.
This is certainly a deck I love (because I own it in paper), and this is a sweet list. Mirrorshell Crab in the sideboard is a super sick card, and Scholar of Athreos is a sweet way to get around damage prevention effects.
Pauper Challenge 32 5/11/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 64 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Turbo Fog | 1st | IvernOP |
| Grixis Affinity | 2nd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Burn | 3rd | Captain_Tsubasa |
| Jund Wildfire | 4th | totemsilence |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 5th | Valimoth |
| High Tide Combo | 6th | PNascimento |
| Ephemerate Tron | 7th | ziofrancone |
| Black Sacrifice | 8th | SavageSamba |
This is also a really solid and diverse Top 8. At the end of the event it was Turbo Fog that won.
I love that this deck still exists in this form. Losing Deadly Dispute was certainly a blow for sure, but it's cool that it continues to look like a super interesting (well, interesting so some of us) deck that is also very intricate to play.
In Second Place we had Grixis Affinity.
Not much new here to go on, and really the deck hasn't changed too much since the Dispute ban. Dispute didn't really hurt this deck too much because it more cared about the game object (the token) from the draw spell and Fanatical Offering helps that quite a bit.
Further down the Top 8 we ahd High Tide.
Speaking of decks that I don't believe will get re-banned... High Tide has functionally settled into the format it seems like, and it's just proven that it's reasonably good but not so insanely overpowering that it is breaking the format and is by default the best thing to do. It's honestly refreshing to see that a spell-based combo deck can succeed in this format and not be domineering.
Around the Web
- Pauperganda is playing KOBOLDS. Check it out here.
- The Common Cold Snap has a new episode. Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook has a 5-0 with Cycle Storm. 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!
Mono White Heroic, this time with MORE ARMADILLOS.
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!
