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By: NVOtosReborn, John Mayer
Jan 04 2016 1:00pm
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 Welcome back! Today we'll be dipping into the Pauper format, where your deck contains only commons. Pauper was recently given a league format, which is sweet due to the format losing support in daily events and such. 

I've played pauper for a long time, I actually played a key role in the banning of Temporal Fissure and Frantic Search by designing a broken deck that was rather miserable to play against.  

Since then, I've played a few matches with the Ghostly Flicker combo that tried to replace Fissure, but that deck is actually just miserable to pilot. There's too many clicks and interactions, and your opponents won't scoop because it's fairly easy to make a mistake and it's also extremely time consuming. I managed to scrape a 3-2 performance in a league with the deck, and I told myself every time I was winning the game that I was just not having fun.  

I went back to a deck that I had always been a fan of. It was absurdly powerful, had some absolutely busted nut draws, and was difficult to interact with. Unfortunately, the deck is fairly inconsistent and the hate cards can just wreck you big time. I'm talking about GW Hexproof. 


I took this list into a pauper league and went 5-0. You can see my list featured on the Mothership if you're interested in seeing it, but it's the same as the one I just listed. 

The deck is pretty simple, you play a 1/1 Hexproof creature, slap some pants on it, and attack. Silhana Ledgewalker is particularly threatening because they're difficult to block. The deck has major redundancy with Utopia Sprawl and Abundant Growth to fix and ramp your mana, giving you the necessary white sources to cast your big stuff. The other enchantments are just the best way to power up your guys, with both Ethereal Armor and Ancestral Mask being absolute powerhouses. Lastly, you have Insight to refuel and Gnarlid can be a large beatstick by itself even with just a handful of enchantments on your lands. Speaking of lands, the reason for the Khalni Garden is that it helps against edict effects, which are traditionally a pain to deal with. 

Out of the sideboard, we have Lifelink for burn and aggressive decks, Journey for decks trying to play early Ulamog's Crushers and other large things, Fog is great against Kiln Field decks as well as Stompy, Scattershot Archer is wonderful against any deck with Spellstutter Sprite or Cloud of Faeries, and if you resolve two, they're good against Delver as well. Young Wolf is a way to handle edict effects, giving you multiple sacrifice outlets, and Sabotage/Ray are for the mirror, or any Affinity style decks. 

During the tournament, I won a game vs burn at 35 life, I won a game where my opponent played a turn 2 Ulamog's Crusher on the play, and I killed a Tron opponent on turn 3. 

Sometimes you just get there.

I played a second league with an updated version of the deck and went 4-1.

I realize the deck above was outdated, so I wanted to see what the meta was like before making any changes. Just as before, there's a lot of people playing Mono Blue, UB Delve/Teachings, Burn, Grixis Reanimator, and Tron. I didn't see any Affinity decks, I didn't see the mirror or any RW Kudoltha aggro decks, and I surprisingly didn't play against Flicker Combo, but I know it's popular.  

Updated list: 


The update includes moving some of the fringe, expensive cards to the sideboard. Insight and Gnarlid aren't usually needed in game 1, bring them in against the grindy decks when you need more late-game effects. I trimmed a land cause I felt like I was getting flooded more than I'd like to be, and I was naturally getting mana screwed in the second league I played in. Not sure what's the correct count here. Umbra is great because you want more ways to have your dorks survive Shrivel, Electrickery, and any combat tricks. I wondered if cutting the Blossoming Sands would be a problem, and it wasn't for the most part, but there were a few games (one of which was the match that I lost) where I had a few Forests in play and a grip full of White cards. I drew a Manamorphose and it was countered, and I just didn't have any offense after that, letting my Teachings opponent overwhelm me. I'll have to test more to see what's best, as Manamorphose is a great way to filter mana and draw through your deck, but it is just a one-trick pony. Generally, that's enough, but you have a lot of white cards, especially post-board, and you need a reliable way to cast them.  

As for the other changes, Fists of Ironwood is just something I'm trying out, as I didn't see many edict effects in either league. Before, Mono Black was EVERYWHERE and you needed to be ready. Now, not so much.  

Anyways, hope you enjoy, thanks for reading! 

Oh, here's something fun I started toying around with after writing the article about the Modern banned list. I had always thought Simian Spirit Guide was secretly absurd, so I was curious to see what kind of stuff I could come up with. While talking to some friends about how dumb Grishoalbrand is, this came up: 

Turn 1: Island. End of your turn, exile two SSG, Exarch, tapping your land.

Turn 2: Land, exile two SSG, Twin, gg. 

After saying this, one of my friends said I should build that deck, and play it until I hit that sequence.  

Well:

 

I had the extreme pleasure of killing my opponent on turn 2. It felt really good. 

I'm not endorsing this deck by any means, I think it's a hilariously fun pile of cards, but any interaction and you're stone dead. You have 0 ways to beat a Spellskite unless you assemble Exarch and Kiki. Obviously you can build the deck differently, but what makes that any better than traditional UR Twin or any other variant? I built this for the laughs, and I had my share of them. Great way to pass time in the practice room, that's for sure! 

Until next time.

Thanks for reading!

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