The Power of Pauper: The Spies of 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 talking all about Spies! That's right, it's a coverage of Spy Combo. We don't yet have the full spoilers for Commons for Secrets of Strixhaven, so we'll be doing that set review next week when it's more likely we have the whole set to look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Oops, All Spies
Since we are waiting another week to look at Strixhaven spoilers, I feel like it's a good time to talk a bit about a deck that's being talked about a lot by the Pauper community as a whole, and that's Spy Combo.
The primary game plan of this deck is rather simplistic enough, and it has a lot of similarities to another Balustrade Spy combo deck from Legacy known as "Oops! All Spells". Both of these decks are simply trying to get to four mana and cast a card that self-mills so they can use Dread Return to try to win the game. However, these are the only realistic similarities between the two decks. Oops is a deck that cheats on mana and also cheats on actual lands (by using MDFC lands) to go off quickly on Turn 1-2, and has a very clean win condition in Thassa's Oracle.
Spy Combo in Pauper is very different from Oops in that part. The amount of cheating on mana it is doing is trying to use mana dorks (namely Overgrown Battlement and other cards with Defender like Gatecreeper Vine and Saruli Caretaker) and Lotus Petal, but the biggest downside of the deck is that it does have to play actual lands in the deck and can't cheat on lands like Oops does. There are no MDFC lands at common rarity (and let's hope they literally never do this ever) which imposes a very potent downside on Spy Combo. Part of the deck's game plan involves actually having to try to pull those lands out of the deck. This is achieved in a number of different ways, either through land cycling creatures like Generous Ent, spells like Land Grant and Winding Way, and hard casting creatures like Gatecreeper Vine.
Once Spy Combo is able to cast Balustrade Spy (the literally only way this deck has to self-mill itself like this), the deck flips into the graveyard until it hits a land (which is pretty realistic here, given that it's unlikely to have gotten all four lands out of the deck before going off. The deck is certainly capable of doing this, but not consistently) and then uses Dread Return to get back Lotleth Giant. However, it's worth noting that in order to do this, the deck has to have three legitimate creatures in play when it casts Balustrade Spy. This is very much unlike Oops, which has access to stuff like Narcomoeba and Poxwalkers. More than likely you have three creatures in play when you do this, but an opponent removing cards could keep this play in check.
This is where the major similarities between this deck and Oops tend to fall apart. Oops has plenty of free interaction, Spy Combo has to try to play through interaction. Keeping a Spy player from playing its cards, either by forcing them to discard key spells or by countering their key spells can put them off balance and prevent them from winning the game. There's also a lot more free and relevant graveyard interaction in Pauper that is very difficult for Spy to beat, often having to rely on cards like Mesmeric Fiend to try to get rid of them.
One clever thing that Spy Combo does have going for it is that the deck can often try to push the graveyard combo to the side if things look bleak, and it can try to shift to a more midrange style deck, casting cards like Avenging Hunter and the creature half of Sagu Wildling. However, going for this route often opens the deck to plenty of creature-based interaction that Pauper is well known for being able to deal with, and often ends up being a little slower. Oftentimes the deck can sideboard additional midrange elements like Writhing Chrysalis in order to go deeper on this game plan in matchups where it makes sense to abandon the combo elements for a midrange deck.
Overall, I think the gameplay experience of this deck is a bit better than something like Oops is in Legacy. The reliance on having to fetch lands from the deck, having to generally wait until at least turn 3-4 to try to go off, the opponent having time to set up for the deck, and all the various pain points that could prove an edge case for beating the deck makes it much more interesting to play both against and with. Having to make firm decisions to shift roles in a matchup is more dynamic, and for now, I think it's great that the format has this deck. It's a deck that certainly feels right in line with Pauper's level of power.
Weekly MTGO Recap
Starting this week, I'm only going to be covering a Challenge event if the event itself looks like it is interesting to cover. This is mainly to be able to reduce the amount of raw decklist clutter as well as to reduce a lot of the sameness of events. However, with that, we are going to have these cool little weekly MTGO recaps where we talk about what did well over the week and provide all the links to all the events for the week.
Here is the link to the weekly recap sheet. One thing I would like to pose is some discussion on the macro archetype classifications. If you see something you think should be different, please let me know!
We had the following events this past week:
| Event Name | Top 32 Link | Data Sheet Link | Number of Players |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pauper Challenge 32 4/2/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 56 |
| Pauper Challenge 32 4/3/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 65 |
| Pauper Challenge 32 4/4/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 57 |
| Pauper Challenge 32 4/5/2026 | Top 32 | Data Sheet | 88 |
This was a pretty normal week with no extra MTGO events, with just around 266 decklist entries total. This tracks because Pauper was not a Premier Play season event until the beginning of Season 2 on MTGO. We'll see the first major addition of this on May 10th with the first Pauper Showcase Challenge of the season.
With that being said, let's look at the graph data from this past week's events.
Overall Pauper still seems to be pretty centralized on aggro decks, but drilling down into the individualized decks shows a slightly different story.
At a solid 35 copies, Mono Red Madness made up the most played deck for the past week, and while the deck had some good individual event results, the overall win rate of the deck wasn't very good at a 46.7% non-mirror win rate. I think this is largely because the deck is so popular that people will just pick it up and try to jam it. It's reasonably cheap enough for an MTGO deck and it can have good results if you really know what you're doing with it, but a lot of people playing it will drag down the win rate because while the deck looks straightforward on the surface, it does have its learning curve and sequencing that really matters.
I think what really matters most here is the deck that sits in the second position... Dimir Terror.
Terror is an incredibly solid deck in Pauper right now, and as of past this week the variant with the best performing variant of Terror was Dimir Terror at a 58.6% non-mirror win rate. Terror decks in general are in a pretty solid place, but Dimir to me on the surface seems like a great variant due to the plethora of answers it gets to deal with the aggro decks of the format. Having actual sweepers that function against those decks is quite strong, but black also opens up a bunch of other options against the rest of the format.
Compare this result with Mono Blue Terror which only had a 49.3% non-mirror win rate here. Granted this is only a weekly result, so sample size is a thing. Whether these results sustain week to week is another thing.
Elves was also very popular this past week, and while it did have a smattering of Top 8s, its overall win rate was around 48.4% non-mirror, so it didn't quite perform as well overall. This is another deck that to me seems like it's pretty popular for people to pick up and it is currently a lot cheaper in tickets than a lot of other decks in the current format, so it appeals to players getting into Pauper with a relatively competitive deck and cheaper than most decks. Elves is another deck where the sequencing really matters, and knowing when to go for certain lines is super important.
Jund Wildfire is another fairly popular portion of the past week's metagame, and it also fell into a similar space as Elves where it had a solid smattering of results, but overall fell just below 50% at 48.9% non-mirror. It doesn't feel too abnormal for this deck to be in this space. It can do well some weeks and some weeks not, but still have some good results. It's a solid pile of some of the best cards in the Jund colors in Pauper, and learning how to play it can be quite rewarding over time.
One of the format's newer rising stars and rounding out the Top 5 decks of the week is Mono White Aggro. It didn't perform super well this past week at a 47.5% non-mirror win rate, but players definitely have their eyes on this because of how much Leonardo, Big Brother has pushed the deck into a much more competitive space. Leonardo being a legitimate Lava Axe that makes every combat step you don't block a creature a spot where you could take a huge amount of damage can be very powerful, and having that threat be unanswered by cards like Cast Down even more so. Still, it seems players are figuring this deck out, and learning how to combat it.
Overall this week's results seem pretty healthy for Pauper. The format feels very reasonable and most decks feel right in line with the rest of the format. Lots of different decks are doing well, and that's a good place for it to be.
Pauper Challenge 32 4/2/2026
The first Challenge event we're covering was the Thursday event. This event had 56 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Both Elves and Jund were the most played decks, and Elves did pretty well, while Jund didn't do that hot. Dimir Terror did extremely well, as did Mono Red Madness.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Boros Moxite | 1st | viashinoperuano |
| Rakdos Madness | 2nd | grajtow |
| Elves | 3rd | olati |
| Mono Blue Terror | 4th | Luminati |
| Dimir Terror | 5th | Ben_Matocha |
| Dredge | 6th | Bungi |
| Mono Blue Terror | 7th | jessy_samek |
| Dimir Terror | 8th | Purgatory_01 |
Quite a bit of Terror lists here, but at the end of the event it was Boros Moxite that won.
This deck is rather sweet. It's pretty cool how strong Melded Moxite is at churning through your deck when you can bounce it and replay it. Also, a sort of amusing include from TMNT is Dimension X, the RW gain tap land as just Wind-Scarred Crag number five.
In Second Place we had Rakdos Madness.
Very clean and straightforward list here. Swirling Sandstorm is a pretty groovy sideboard card, given that most of the creatures in this deck fly. The only one that doesn't is Voldaren Epicure and honestly it does its thing on ETB.
Outside of the Top 8 we had Naya Gates.
This is pretty cool. It's a lot of cards that are generally very good in the format, mixed with the Gates package. I absolutely dig Malevolent Rumble in these lists because it's so good at digging through your deck.
Pauper Challenge 4/5/2026
The final Challenge event we're covering was the Sunday event. This event had 88 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here and the data sheet here.
Mono Red Madness was the most played deck of the event, and despite a strong finish its overall win rate was less than 50%. Dimir Terror did very well here, while Grixis Affinity and Mono Blue Terror didn't do too hot.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Dimir Terror | 1st | Orochi-Mario |
| Mono Red Madness | 2nd | jessy_samek |
| Dredge | 3rd | seasonofmists |
| Jund Wildfire | 4th | AlessandroPiraccini |
| Orzhov Glintblade | 5th | pepeteam |
| Azorius Gates | 6th | HelioLima |
| Dimir Terror | 7th | bb7 |
| Golgari Gardens | 8th | __Noob__ |
This is a pretty reasonable Top 8. At the end of the event it was Dimir Terror that won.
Sneaky Snacker seems very easy to enable with cards like Thought Scour and Mental Note to get it into the graveyard. Abandon Attachments is also just a really fun card here. I like this list a lot, it looks super interesting to play.
In Second Place we had Mono Red Madness.
Super clean and straightforward list. Being able to push damage on every instant and sorcery you cast with cards like Kessig Flamebreather and Guttersnipe is very strong.
Also in this Top 8 we had Orzhov Glintblade.
This is super interesting. It's kind of cool to bounce something like Refurbished Familiar with Sneak to put in Oroku Saki, Shredder Rising and then recast the Familiar to get an extra piece of discard out of it while also getting to draw a card. A lot of cool synergies you can get out of this list.
Around the Web
- The Common Coldsnap has a new episode. Check it out here.
- Heartyshow has a video on Pauper Elfball. Check it out here.
- EIGHT WHOLE RATS.
- GiorgioCombo has a video on Pizza Combo. 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!
