The Power of Pauper: You Know It's Poison
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 talking all about current builds of POISON. In addition we're covering last week's events along with last week's Pauper Championship Finals event!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
You're Feeding Me Poison
It's literally no surprise that I love Poison Storm out of all of the decks in Pauper. This deck truly captures my attention and keeps me curious about it because it's such a cool and interesting deck that doesn't need to play creatures to win the game. Sound familiar? We just banned a card out of the format in a deck that played no creatures. My immediate thought on the banning of High Tide was "How good is Poison now and what does it look like?"
Let's see what's happening with it, and with that we have a solid Top 4 from the Pauper Championship Finals on the deck.
I really like this list a lot. A deck that has to play four copies of Weather the Storm main deck is my jam. What I love about this deck is how truly patient it requires you to play. You have to really build on your manabase and then convert that into some pretty broken turns, but all your lands ETB tapped basically so you have to really lean on stuff like Weather to keep you alive in the early turns. It's a really sweet deck and does some really cool things.
For those that don't understand what this deck is trying to do, it's basically trying to give the opponent a Poison counter via Infectious Inquiry and then proliferate that up to 10 to defeat the opponent. There's a ton of ways to do this, via cards like Contentious Plan or Experimental Augury. The nice thing about Proliferating is that it also increases all the counters on your mana like your depletion lands and Pentad Prism. You protect yourself using Weather the Storm and Snap to keep your life total up and problem permanents off the board.
It's a super cool deck, and to see it do so well in a large event is great. I will leave you with a video on the deck, because it's so sweet.
Pauper Championship Week Finals 11/15/2025
This past weekend was the culmination of the Pauper Championship Week Finals! This event acted a lot like a Super Qualifier in terms of prizes (with the exception of invitations or leaderboard points), and was enterable either with a Pauper Point (earned by doing well in Leagues, Prelims, or Challenges), 40 Tickets, 400 Play Points, or 2 Mythic Event Tokens (i.e. the All Access Tokens). The Top 32 of the event also receives an exclusive Pauper avatar of Clockwork Percussionist. This event had a solid 188 players in it, which is really great to see.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Terror | 1st | newbarola |
| Spy Combo | 2nd | Todeshorst |
| Poison Storm | 3rd | scipios |
| Mono Red Madness | 4th | MahThor |
| Dimir Faeries | 5th | Infinitalove |
| Grixis Madness | 6th | Ed_Elric |
| Jund Wildfire | 7th | seasonofmists |
| Jeskai Ephemerate | 8th | BrunoGuerra |
Honestly, I think this is a great Top 8. Lots of diverse representation across multiple archetypes, and some solid looking lists. At the end of the event it was Mono Blue Terror that took down the crown.
It's not a bad place to be if the winner in a big event like this is a fair deck that wins by deploying creatures and countering spells and then turning said creatures sideways. It's realistically one of the best places to be. Nullify in the sideboard is hype too.
In Second Place, we had Spy Combo.
This is a deck that got a lot of callout in the BnR announcement as a deck the PFP is absolutely keeping an eye on. I think what would really push this deck hard is if they ever printed any common MDFC lands (please DON'T Wizards). That would probably make the deck a bit too busted.
Pauper Challenge 32 11/12/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Wednesday event. This event had 32 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jund Gardens | 1st | Paul16 |
| Grixis Affinity | 2nd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | PedraStone |
| Grixis Affinity | 4th | SpockVidaLoka |
| Mono Blue Terror | 5th | Luminati |
| Mono White Heroic | 6th | wolf777 |
| Jeskai Midrange | 7th | viashinoperuano |
| Mono White Aggro | 8th | HughC |
Quite a bit of Affinity here, but at the end of the event it was Jund Gardens that won.
Really the only major red spells are Writhing Chrysalis (which only requires red mana and isn't actually red), and sideboard cards. Otherwise this is basically straight Golgari.
In Second Place we had Grixis Affinity.
Affinity seems like a great pick in the post-High Tide ban world. It's a strong midrange deck with a lot of value and new cards like Black Mage's Rod allow it to do some very proactive things. I'm pretty happy to see something like this do well.
Pauper Challenge 32 11/13/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 50 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Terror | 1st | Luminati |
| Jund Wildfire | 2nd | kuldothared |
| Jund Wildfire | 3rd | cicciogire |
| Glintblade | 4th | Hoarse_Duck |
| Jeskai Gates | 5th | mnaga |
| Burn | 6th | SaculSueahtam |
| Spy Combo | 7th | wand_thief |
| Mono Red Madness | 8th | MisterTwin |
This is a very varied Top 8 here, honestly. A lot of diversity for sure. At the end of the event, it was Mono Blue Terror.
Incredibly straightforward list here. Super clean and seems very strong.
In Second Place, we had Jund Wildfire.
This is another deck that I don't think was doing too bad during High Tide era, and I think it does get better as well. It's really a basic spread of some of the best cards and synergies in the format, which has always been what Jund's core is.
Pauper Challenge 32 11/14/2025
The third Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 66 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Golgari Gardens | 1st | __Noob__ |
| Mono Red Madness | 2nd | Denisevich |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Spy Combo | 4th | sai199orz |
| Spy Combo | 5th | Mikhathara1994 |
| Jeskai Gates | 6th | hjc |
| Tron | 7th | ziofrancone |
| Dimir Faeries | 8th | Beicodegeia |
Also not a bad Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Golgari Gardens that won.
Very focused list. I am loving the playset of Cuombajj Witches in the sideboard. What a classic Pauper card of olden days.
In Second Place, we had Mono Red Madness.
You can't get cleaner than how good the math is on this deck. Three Fireblast? Three Faithless Looting? Yeah, the math has been done here and its glorious.
Pauper Challenge 32 11/16/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 67 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Jund Wildfire | 1st | _blaze66 |
| Grixis Madness | 2nd | DOOMfinite |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Mono Red Madness | 4th | PNascimento |
| Golgari Gardens | 5th | orbuletto |
| Jund Gardens | 6th | Lamela |
| Spy Combo | 7th | sai199orz |
| Izzet Terror | 8th | Kiki-Gigi |
So many midrange piles! At the end of the event, it was Jund Wildfire that won.
I really like Troublemaker Ouphe. Bargaining it is so easy in this kind of deck because you're making so many artifact tokens with things like Blood Fountain that it's so simple to make happen.
In Second Place, we had Madness Burn.
Some interesting things here. A copy of Wekhdu, Midnight Hunter is kind of sweet as a flying threat that doesn't get blown out by Cast Down (since it is Legendary). I'm digging it for sure.
Around the Web
- Heartyshow has a video on Mono Blue Delver. Check it out here.
- The Common Coldsnap has a new episode. Check it out here.
- Pauperganda is playing with Pangolins. (Is there Guinea Pigs and Churros too?) Check it out here.
- Our good friend Alex Ullman has some High Tide thoughts. 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!
Let's go INSIDE OUT.
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!
