By the time this article goes live, Stronghold will be released to the world of Magic Online. This set, the second in the immensely powerful Tempest Block has a few gems for Pauper. However, these gems shine incredibly bright.

Every so often, cards come along that fundamentally change the way Pauper is played. Back in the days of PDC, some milestones include the release of Betrayers of Kamigawa, as that set gave Pauper Ninja of the Deep Hours. Now decks had a reliable way to draw card without sacrificing a full investment of a spell. These cards were also important in that they allowed Pauper decks to reuse Pauper's most vital resource: creatures with comes into play abilities. Time Spiral pushed the appeal of such cards even further with another format warping card in Momentary Blink, and by that time, Okiba-Gang Shinobi had caught on to a level on par with Deep Hours at the Blue beater's height.

The Karoos, from Ravnica, changed the game. Decks were able to play more expensive spells while also allowing for easier splashing. Control benefited from the late game mana advantage while aggro benefited from the ability to play greedier spells. Again, cards that changed the format. In that same block, Guardian of the Guildpact forced us to rethink how to deal with creatures.

Most recently, there has been the blue flying fish, Mulldrifter. This card caught on easily with the Blink decks and then picked up steam in Mono-Black Control as a way to refuel. Now, it sprouts up just about any where Islands are found.

Stronghold has a card that could shape Pauper much as these cards have shaped the format before, and that card is Tortured Existence.

For the criminally low investment of a single Black mana, you can get an Enchantment that allows Black the ability to get creatures back from the Graveyard.

Yawn, tell me something new.

Okay, well, unlike some other cards, this one will not go away. Enchantments are not a common target in Pauper, meaning that this card will stick around. Unlike Grim Harvest, this requires a minimal mana investment. Running just one of these cards will give creature based Black decks a potentially overwhelming long game plan. Think about any sequence involving a Gravedigger: Your 'Digger dies, so you chuck away a Ravenous Rats to get the Zombie back, only to cast the 'Digger to get back the Rats.

You see where I am going here?

Existence does have its limitations, however. You need to be running a creature heavy deck and must be willing to part with some of them for an advantage. In MBC, I can see a commonly occurring game state where I would not want to be holding a Chittering Rats- your opponent has no cards in hand- but an early cycled Twisted Abomination would be handy. Existence does this.

Yet people are not running Grim Harvest at the moment, so why should they find space in their decks for this card? Personally, I feel that decks should be running Harvest, as it provides an absolutely dominating late game advantage. The Stronghold Enchantment provides a similar advantage, and is even stronger in tandem with the Cold Snap spell. However, that might take up a few too many slots in most decks, leaving Existence for those with creatures to spare and abuse and Harvest for those with a few heavy hitters.

So then, how does Tortured Existence fail, as a card? It requires a rather severe investment in that creatures must be discarded. As I have said, in some decks it is okay to toss away creatures that have less utility late. However, this requires you be running a significant number of creatures you are okay with getting rid of late, or are Gravediggers. In Black, this is not hard to do, but is still something that must be considered during deck building.

Of course, there are quite a few ways to turn the investment with Existence into an advantage. While only a scant few Madness creatures in Pauper, there is only one that can seriously abuse Existence's existence, and that is Grave Scrabbler.  With this card, each activation turns into a double dog Raise Dead, and that, my friends, is some very important card advantage. Pauper battles are those of attrition (not counting combo), and the ability to draw two cards can be game breaking. Early versions of MBC would run Urborg Uprising for such an effect and currently I advocate Recover for the same ability. Except with this little combo you will always be drawing a creature, and you get to choose. Must. Be. Nice.

Perhaps the most obvious creatures are those with Dredge. Golgari Brownscale would allow the caster to fill their yard with goodies and then tutor for whatever is in the yard all with the added benefit of two life. Stinkweed Imp, perhaps with the alternate art, would be even better for filling the yard, but does not have the same incidental advantage of gaining two life. However, a deck featuring this suite of cards could conceivably fetch any one creature out of their yard for the low low cost of a tapped Swamp.  This interaction is not one we have seen in Pauper, ever.  Yes, there have been Dredge decks but those have been of examples gross action trying to use Haunting Misery as a kill card. This type of deck would be much more scalpel like surgery. Of course, with the rise in use of (Relic of Progentius), this could all be a moot point.

The last obvious application is with Unearth creatures. I imagine a chain of drawing less than useful creatures and chaining them into more cards with Viscera Dragger as a pseudo-Undead Gladiator. Very psuedo. Even so, being able to get the right card back and still have some punch coming back later is never a bad thing.

The other card that Stronghold gives Pauper is Mulch. I know that some people may underrate this card, but think about it starting this way: in the right deck, it says draw four cards for 1G and in another deck, it gets you five cards towards Threshold.

I just drooled a little.

Okay, so the chances of either of those things happening on a regular basis are slim to nil. The applications of this Sorcery, however, can yield extremely potent results.

Let us take a look at a card like Raven's Crime. This card actively wants to be in the graveyard while also feeding off of Lands in your hand. Flipping over a Crime and some Swamps could do some serious damage to an opponent's hand. This style of deck is also likely to feature some sort of recursive elements, making any creatures flipped over an incidental loss. Any deck built featuring Mulch is just as likely to feature Raise Dead effects to help utilize the graveyard as a personal toolbox.

Keeping on the Retrace mode, Flame Jab is a card that has popped up from time to time in aggressive decks to help turn those late game dead land draws into extra damage akin to a Wild Mongrel with an activation cost of R. One deck that benefited from such an interaction was RG Thresher, a “slow” version of RG aggro focused on Threshold creatures, Gathan Raiders, and had a weak long game plan with Firebolts and Battlefield Scrounger. Flame Jab eventually found its way into the deck, but the deck then fell off due to its lack of speed in the Pauper, not PDC, meta. Mulch, however, could give the deck new life. Flipping over cards to fill the yard could turn on Werebear and Springing Tiger a few turns earlier, allowing Thresher, which already had impressive damage output to accelerate the lowering of life totals by a full turn. Combine that with the fact that Jab + Lands is good beats, and Mulch might be able to breathe new life into a deck that is currently on its Pauper death bed.

I've made a few mentions of Werebear in the past, simply because I love undercosted fatties. One of my favorite styles of decks do a whole bunch of Work to cast virtual spells. Often referred to as Velocity by M.J. Flores and BDM, Velocity, loosely, is when all cards interact with each other to create a sum greater than its parts (think Quirion Dryad in Gush Vintage decks). The idea is that you make one investment, but every subsequent investment yields more output. A deck featuring Mulch and Werebear is one such deck. Individually, these cards have a specific job and do it well. Combined, however, they feed off of each other making the combo rather potent, allowing for Affinity like turn two 4/4s. To make a Working Werebear deck, complimenting the beater with Blue is the best option, as that color gives you the opportunity to dig through your library for little investment and has the ability to use the 'yard as a resource with cards like Aether Burst, Deep Analysis, Think Twice, and Oona's Grace. One of my personal favorites in this style of deck, however, is Mage's Guile, which functions as a creature protection spell AND cycles when you just need to beat down as well. Threshold style decks are vastly unexplored in Pauper, mostly looking like Deep Dog knock offs (mostly because I am protective of my Simic puppy), but this style of deck is one that should be investigated, as cheap creatures and disruption are a hard combo to beat. Also, there's Daze, which is always sexy.

As I was composing this ode to cards from one of my favorite blocks, Alara Reborn spoilers started trickling out. How appropriate, as there were a group of cards that I expect to make a huge impact in Pauper, as well as one of the best Pauper creatures printed to date. I am going to look at the latter first, to make sure the suspense kills you all.

Qasali Pridemage was originally spoiled to the world as a 2/2 creature for the low low cost of GW that could Naturalize if you paid 1 and sacrificed the Cat. PDCmagic.com exploded (well, not exploded, as it seems that the site has fewer vocal posters these days...wake up people!) as how this was insane, and likely to not be a common as it was just, well, too good. Green-White aggro had just placed in the top 8 of a Premier Event, and this card seemed to slot very well into the Haterator that featured more Affinity hate. No, everyone said- this had to be an uncommon at least.

We were wrong on two counts. Not only is Q-Cat (a cool cat indeed) a common, but he is coming with an extra line of rules text: Exalted.

And the Paupers celebrated their very own Watchwolf.

I am not going to go into detail about why this card is amazing, as utility dudes like Q-Cat always find spots in deck: the arguably worse Kami of Ancient Law is often maindeckable as just a 2/2 that sometimes nukes an Oblivion Ring, and this guy is bigger. More than that, he could help push Exalted into the realm of competitive decks. Aside from Green-White Hate, GW weenie rush pops up from time to time in the Pauper meta as a way to combat other aggro while simultaneously presenting strong hate options from the sideboard. These decks win the combat phase with superior creatures and better pump, a la Thrill of the Hunt or an arcane package of Blessed Breath and Kodama's Might, as these packages simulate card advantage. In a metagame that features a lack of sweepers, GW can simply present a massive army that has a hard time being blocked effectively. Packing a deck full of cheap Exalted creatures like the Squires Aven and Arkarsan alongside Q-Cat, pump, and creatures like Skarrgan Pit-Skulk and Blade of the Sixth Pride could present a potent curve that would present a difficult to deal with beater every turn. Finally, this deck would also provide new life for a former limited staple from Onslaught Block (and a trick I learned from my Pauper's Cube) in Krosan Vorine. The combo of K-Cat, or any creature with Provoke, and Exalted...well, the results are not pretty.

However, the cards I am most excited about are the Borderposts. This cycle of allied colored artifacts are costed at 1CD, where C and D are allied colors. They come into play tapped and tap for either C or D. However, they have an alternate cost of 1 and returning a basic land to your hand for a pseudo-tapland. This is big news, as this provides the potential for turn two access to two-colors out of two lands and helps to smooth mana-drops, as you can cheat a post into play on turn one and replay the same land turn two.

The cards that these are drawing the largest comparison to, and rightly so, are the Ravnica Block Karoos. While both return a land to your hand, the similarities really end there. The Karoos accelerate you by turning an investment of one land drop early into a yield of two mana each additional turn, but these lands force a severe tempo loss if dealt with because doing so negates two land drops: the land returned and the Karoo itself. Borderposts are not land, and therefore only cost you one land drop if dealt with. These cards, can, like Karoos, help ensure a deck hits their lands drops. Like Karoos, they also take the place of other lands in your deck. Unlike Karoos, drawing one late does not mean losing a land drop as they can be hardcast. Finally, the Borderposts allow for a different style of mana base than those currently allowed in Pauper.

Before Karoos, mana had to be delicately balanced. Cards that value colorless mana and abilities like Morph ruled the day as they allowed players to cheat their mana bases. Numerous cards were cast aside in two color decks because the commitment to their cost would have been too great a strain on the mana base- cards that could get the job done for the investment of a single colored mana ruled the day. This, in turn, led to PDC leaning towards the aggressive builds. Before Ravnica, Red decks were the rule of the day for a significant stretch of time. Once Ravnica hit, however, the flexibility of the lands allowed all sorts of great things. Players could play spells that had more colors in their cost and also were more expensive, as Karoos generated a long term mana advantage. However, due to the fact that they always tapped for two different colors meant that decks had to be built to adjust. This was one such reason that Chittering Rats took so long to catch on in Orzhov-Blink- until the advent of Terramorphic Expanse, it was incredibly difficult to have the BB early enough to make the Rats matter with just the Karoos The Borderposts do something just as important, but very different.

The Borderposts allow a deck to increase the density of colored mana symbols across two colors. Looking at the RG deck that I proposed for the PE, it made a sacrifice to its Red cards in order to successfully cast Jolrael's Centaur. While Posts are not a right fit for that deck, (due to the importance of the one drops), having access to them in that deck would mean an ability to cast the color intensive Centaur alongside the also color intense Noggle Bandit (as an example). With the Karoos, this was not always the case. A Forest and a Gruul Turf, no matter how hard you try, will never cast a Bandit. However, a Forest, Mountain, and Firewild Borderpost will be able to cast the Bandit or Centaur on turn three. Dimir Aqueduct will never be able to cast Counterspell, but and Island and a Mistvein will easily allow you to follow up that Tidehollow Strix with a turn to protect it with a hard counter, and then allow you to easily cast Agony Warp a turn later. What the Posts give up mana advantage, they make up for in flexibility.

The trade-off, however, is a drastically increased vulnerability. They are spells, meaning they can be countered, and they are Artifacts, which means in a meta featuring Affinity there will likely be a bevy of ways to deal with that turn one play. If the Posts catch on, I suggest packing cheap ways to deal with Artifacts such as Overload and Ingot Chewer (the latter is criminally underplayed as is. Seriously, a turn one answer to an Artifact Land is huge and a 3/3 that eats an Enforcer late is nothing to sneeze at). All that being said, however, the Posts should provide a shot in the arm to two-color aggro decks that have curves starting at two, allowing them to run stronger cards (of which Alara Reborn seems to be stuffed with) without sacrificing consistency.

I saw this a lot, but we are living in exciting times for Pauper.

Keep slingin' commons-

-Alex