The Power of Pauper: Zuberrrra
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 look at a sweet combo deck from Pauper, Zubera Storm! In addition to that we've got Challenges from last week to look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Firing Up the Zuberrrra Cannon
Pauper has no shortage of sweet combo decks. A vast majority of those decks are very reliant on the usage of creatures to make them work, and this week's deck is no exception to that. Zubera Storm is a weird duck, because it focuses all of its effort on two very specific cards.
The Zubera cycle is a very weird cycle of cards from Champions of Kamigawa that all did a thing when it died, looking at the number of Zubera's that died that turn as well to determine how many times that thing occurred. Floating-Dream Zubera for instance, draws a card for each Zubera that died that turn. Thankfully, Pauper has a million ways to sacrifice creatures, but it also has a bunch of ways to get them back into play easily as well using technology that was often seen in decks like Modern Scam, etc.
Cards like Feign Death, Unearth, and Not Dead After All serve largely as a big basis of this deck's ability to recur a creature back to play immediately, and because these cards all use black mana, effects like Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual allow you to make that mana in large quantities to use again and again. The deck is able to win simply by recurring Floating-Dream Zubera a bunch of times using these effects (while also getting to draw a bunch of cards in the process as each Zubera death is multiplied exponentially) to get to a point where it can sacrifice Ember-Fist Zubera to deal a boat load of damage to the opponent.
It's a really interesting and unique way of approaching a combo deck for sure. It attempts to cheat on mana in a big way, utilizing lands like the depletion lands that we typically see in a deck like Poison Storm, ritual effects, and Lotus Petal so that it can muscle out its combo quickly to allow it the ability to win the game. The amount of cards the deck draws is immense, making finding the win condition very easy.
If you'd like to see the deck in action in 2025, you can check out a video recently posted by Bryant Cook below. This is a super sweet deck and I find it to be incredibly fun.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/7/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 56 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 Control | 1st | barff |
| Burn | 2nd | boom_bust |
| Golgari Broodscale | 3rd | Qu4 |
| Grixis Affinity | 4th | Miaycle |
| Golgari Broodscale | 5th | trubalo |
| Bogles | 6th | QueMario |
| Izzet Terror | 7th | SpockVidaLoka |
| Burn | 8th | PNascimento |
This is a pretty reasonable Top 8. At the end of the event it was Dimir Control that won.
This is a pretty interesting list. It's not quite Faeries because it's not really using the Ninjutsu elements common to Faeries, but is instead using Spellstutter Sprite and Sneaky Snacker as more controlling elements to pave the way for threats like Murmuring Mystic and Thorn of the Black Rose. I dig it. It's a fun list for sure.
In Second Place we had Burn.
Fast and clean is the name of the game here. This deck continues to do what it wants to do best: BURN THINGS DOWN.
Also in this Top 8 we had Izzet Terror.
I love how strong this looks. It's got a lot of removal and lot of control elements with a solid top end of slamming down Terror and winning the game.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/8/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 44 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Affinity | 1st | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Bogles | 2nd | Sailor_Moon |
| Golgari Broodscale | 3rd | Kampo |
| Turbo Fog | 4th | Hampuse1 |
| Dredge | 5th | galeogiao |
| Grixis Affinity | 6th | hetare_ane |
| Izzet Terror | 7th | Al_bertoR |
| Burn | 8th | medvedev |
Another fairly diverse Top 8. At the end of the event it was Grixis Affinity that won.
Hunter's Blowgun is a really slick card in this deck honestly. Slapping it onto a Myr Enforcer seems pretty gross and it has multiple applications for being good with both every other creature as well as disgusting with Krark-Clan Shaman.
In Second Place we had Bogles.
Very clean looking list here. I love how good Malevolent Rumble has become in multiple decks across the format. It's such a great piece of card selection for Pauper.
Further down the Top 8 we had Turbo Fog.
It's interesting how much this deck shifted off of the Basilisk Gate aspect and moved more into using the Gates plan for Heap Gate to make Treasures to sacrifice to things like Deadly Dispute and Eviscerator's Insight if you need to, as well as keep generating a steady flow of mana to use for its spells. Kind of neat really.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/9/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 47 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Familiars | 1st | Gregoriusil |
| Walls Combo | 2nd | Luddrox |
| Mono Blue Terror | 3rd | Xx420blazeitxX |
| Mono White Aggro | 4th | jwaves |
| Burn | 5th | vini_torres |
| Grixis Affinity | 6th | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Burn | 7th | PNascimento |
| Dredge | 8th | TiagoFuguete |
This is also a fairly diverse Top 8. In fact the end of the event was toppled by Familiars.
Familiars is a deck I really enjoy seeing around. It's got a lot of really interesting gameplay to it, and it firmly sits in this weird combo/control space that is what I like personally out of decks. Main deck Coalition Honor Guard is kind of sweet, especially if you're running up against Broodscale, they have to remove it first before trying to deploy Sadistic Glee.
In Second Place we had Walls Combo.
This is yet another deck I really love. It's one of the decks in my box of paper Pauper decks because it's just so unique and interesting.
Also in this Top 8 we had Mono White Aggro.
I love seeing this deck too, because its such a cheap Pauper deck, but at the same time it's incredibly powerful and aggressive. The singleton Steadfast Unicorn is sick because of it can push through damage and give everything vigilance.
Around the Web
- StompyMTG has a video on Gruul Monsters. Check it out here.
- Casting Commons has a new episode. Check it out here.
- TeasdaleMTG has a video on Gruul Ramp. Check it out here.
- Kalikaiz has a video on Seize the 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!
If Persistent Petitioners combo isn't spicy, I don't know what is.
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!
