The Power of Pauper: Start Your Engines!
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 revving the engines for Aetherdrift! In addition to that we've got some Challenges to discuss.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Aetherdrift for Pauper
We've got a new Standard set on the way, and this means new cards for Pauper! Aetherdrift is rolling off the presses and soon will be hitting the track. This set has a few returning mechanics like Vehicles, Mounts, and Cycling. It also adds a few new mechanics such as Exhaust (using an ability once per game) and Speed (a new mechanic that tracks when it starts from 1 speed and only increases once per turn when an opponent loses life up to a max of 4 speed).
We're not going to take a look at every Common in this set, but there are a few worth talking about.
Avishkar Raceway
I have to imagine this isn't fantastic, as gaining speed only happens once per turn and you can only start activating this ability with max speed. At bare minimum this happens on Turn 3. Probably very slow.
Beastrider Vanguard
This performs a similar function to Vivien's Grizzly in Walls combo, where you get to filter and nab a permanent. The nice thing about this one is that it also finds other permanents besides creatures and you get to look at three cards at a time.
Engine Rat
This is yet another card that slots into something like Broodscale Combo where the mana can be used to make the opponent lose two life a bunch of times. Would not be surprised if this one sees play because the mana cost of it is quite low.
Grim Bauble
This card seems incredibly good for a lot of reasons. Getting to -2/-2 something is super solid, but then being able to cash in the card later on for surveil 2 is solid. This is cheap and effective and spread out over turns it's a solid card. I would not be surprised if this saw play somewhere.
Lightwheel Enhancements
So the important thing to remember about gaining speed is that it happens independently of the card that starts the engines, so when you play this you only need to make your opponent lose life every turn and then you can use its max speed ability. This could realistically replace or come in addition to Sentinel's Eyes in Bogles, because it does functionally the same thing, but you don't need to escape to recast it from the graveyard later on. This is definitely a card I expect to see.
Midnight Mangler
It's a bit of a weird design, but having a "creature" that's not a creature on your turn is wild. I don't think this goes anywhere but it is a cool design (and the showcase art for it is sick).
Pactdoll Terror
Any time any card says "whenever this creature or another artifact you control enters" I am given slight pause just a bit. I'm sure there's some way to abuse this thing.
Spectral Interference
Kind of a neat card, only for the fact that it hits either an artifact or a creature spell. That kind of versality is nice to have in your soft counters.
Wreckage Wickerfolk
Surveil 2 on a 1/3 body with flying for 1B is kind of neat honestly. This might go somewhere because it does some interesting things, and being a 1/3 is reasonable stats.
Pauper Challenge 32 1/31/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 49 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Bogles | 1st | Ixidor29 |
| Dredge | 2nd | galeogiao |
| Naya Bully | 3rd | elvis10 |
| Mardu Synthesizer | 4th | NMT_Sco94 |
| Burn | 5th | boom_bust |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 6th | BuddyTheFrog |
| Dimir Faeries | 7th | cicciogire |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 8th | Purgatory_01 |
Pretty varied Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Bogles that won.
We talked a little about this deck earlier. I'm excited for it to get a new toy to try out, and it's nice to see that it's still a deck that can put up a result in this metagame.
In Second Place we had Dredge.
I really enjoy that there's a deck like this in the format. For the longest time, the only major "Dredge-like" deck was Tortured Existence, but that deck has long since become outclassed because of how slow it can be. Having a full on Dredge deck is a great addition to an already diverse format.
Also in this Top 8 we had Naya Bully.
"Naya" is a bit of a misnomer since the only green card here is Writhing Chrysalis, but it's one heck of a great reason to splash into that third color for sure. The top end of Chrysalis holding down the game is quite strong.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/1/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 39 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 | outZEROo |
| Dimir Faeries | 2nd | Beicodegeia |
| Mono Blue Terror | 3rd | Luminati |
| Bogles | 4th | Ixidor29 |
| Burn | 5th | Mirozel1 |
| Grixis Affinity | 6th | HelioLima |
| Jund Broodscale | 7th | PNascimento |
| Jund Broodscale | 8th | CounterTopGarchomp |
Another very reasonable Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Mono Blue Faeries that won.
This is a super clean list and very powerful. I love stuff like Snaremaster Sprite because it has a strong effect, and it can also come down on Turn one to set up a Ninjutsu activation. That in of itself is pretty neat.
In Second Place we had Dimir Faeries.
This version of the deck gets to be a bit more midrange-y than the Mono Blue version, since it gets to have lots of removal effects as well as some bigger threats.
Further down the Top 8 we had Grixis Affinity.
Fairly stock looking list here. I've been excited to see if there are new opportunities for this deck to continue evolving with newer cards for sure. Hopefully Aetherdrift may have something of that nature.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/2/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 61 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Faeries | 1st | cicciogire |
| Golgari Broodscale | 2nd | trubalo |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 3rd | shyguyy |
| Burn | 4th | boom_bust |
| Golgari Broodscale | 5th | A_AdeptoTerra |
| Mono White Aggro | 6th | jwaves |
| Grixis Affinity | 7th | renato_tadeo |
| Jund Wildfire | 8th | Walker735 |
This is another nice Top 8. The event ended up being won by Dimir Faeries.
Extract a Confession is a really sweet card honestly. It's easy to enable with this deck to collect the evidence on it as well.
In Second Place we had Golgari Broodscale.
Integrating the Gardens technology with Khalni Garden isn't exactly new to this deck, but it is strong and gives the deck some additional fodder to feed to its array of "draw two" effects it plays.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Jund Wildfire.
This deck is very much a strong "good stuff" style deck. It plays a lot of really strong packages of cards that are common to Pauper, such as Dispute and Cleansing Wildfire with the bridges, while also having new cards from MH3.
Around the Web
- TeasdaleMTG is trying out Cycle Storm! Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook is playing some Zubera Storm. Check it out here.
- kalikaiz has a Ruby Storm video. 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!
Temur Skred?
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!
