The Power of Pauper: Inspecting Some Pauper
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 diving into some of the League results and see how Murders at Karlov Manor is impacting Pauper in general. In addition to that we've got only one Challenge to look at from last weekend due in part to some of the major issues that occurred on MTGO on Sunday.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The Inspection Begins!
Murders at Karlov Manor is now available on Magic Online and we get to see the start of how the set is starting to impact the Pauper format. There weren't a ton of results from over the weekend and with some of the MTGO issues on Sunday, things were a bit sketchy there, but we did get a look at some of the cards that seem strong early on.
One of the bigger cards that I really figured would see a lot of play at least right off the bat was Novice Inspector. Having redundancy in effects is generally always really good, and having eight of this effect between it and Thraben Inspector has proven to be quite strong, especially in shells able to leverage the extra card draw well.
Multiple Inspectors to bounce with Kor Skyfisher is quite powerful, but also redundantly creating Clues to eat with Kuldotha Rebirth seems very strong. In addition, generating Clues also helps work towards artifact count for things like Affinity.
Being able to create more artifacts in play is very good for Affinity purposes and for All That Glitters. I expect to see this card a lot going forward due to the sheer value and redundant effect it provides.
Another card that's been showing up quite a bit is Demand Answers, another card that was noticed for Pauper usage.
Instant speed draw is always great and while other effects do this at this rate, the ability to sacrifice an artifact is really what has made this huge, given the rampant amount of sacrificing of artifacts that occurs in Pauper.
This card works great in this kind of shell simply because there isn't a real shortage of artifacts to feed to the card to get more cards. This is something I expect we'll see jump back and forth in numbers as players figure out how best to utilize it.
One other card that I kind of blanked on during spoiler season was Rubblebelt Maverick.
Primarily I missed how good Surveil 2 is on a one mana card, especially with that card being a creature. Where else are we seeing this but Dredge?
A one mana graveyard enabler seems strong, but then the ability to use any copies in the graveyard to boost your other creatures. An exciting card.
Murders doesn't seem to have been an extremely impactful set overall, but it is very good it seems for certain archetypes in the format, some more mainstream and others more niche. Time will tell but I'm enjoying how things are shaping up.
Pauper Challenge 2/10
The only Challenge event that fired this weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 54 players in it thanks to the data provided by Daybreak Games.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Burn was the most popular deck of the event, but its win rate was really bad. Golgari Gardens did quite well as did Jeskai Ephemerate.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Goblins Combo | 1st | Hamuda |
| Boros Synthesizer | 2nd | Kirblinxy |
| Azorius Familiars | 3rd | ziofrancone |
| Golgari Gardens | 4th | BoosterPacks13 |
| Dimir Terror | 5th | abijhavs |
| Ephemerate Tron | 6th | kasa |
| Jeskai Ephemerate | 7th | cicciogire |
| Jeskai Ephemerate | 8th | DenisevichAlexey |
Very interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event, it was Goblins Combo that won.
Mesmeric Fiend is kind of a cool tool here, letting you take answers out of your opponent's hands so they can't interrupt your combo with them. It also helps that it can be brought back with Unearth in case it gets destroyed.
In Second Place we had Boros Synthesizer.
As we discussed earlier in the article, having eight Inspectors that generate Clues is pretty crazy good it seems. Rites of Initiation is also a super sweet card.
Also in this Top 8 we had Azorius Familiars.
I like this build of the deck. Merchant Scroll is a really strong card and worth having a single copy of and the game plan of Murmuring Mystic is really strong.
Further down the Top 8 we had Golgari Gardens.
This deck is very strong and has a lot of midrange functionality to it. It deals with the board state quite well and is super fun to play.
Around the Web
- Kalikaiz has a video on Demand Answers in Burn. Check it out here.
- Alessandro Moretti has a video on Grixis Affinity. Check it out here.
- Kirblinx has a video on Boros Rites. Check it out here.
- PauperBrews has a sideboarding article on Dimir Faeries. 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!
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!
