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By: BlastodermMan, Carl E Wilt
Dec 08 2015 1:00pm
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Sometimes, we all need to blow off a little steam. Let our hair down, relax, and have a good time. Many of us are either grinders, wannabe grinders, or just take Magic way too seriously. It's almost like we forgot why we first started playing this game in the first place...because it was fun and we enjoyed it. 

Look, I'm not here to say that grinders can't have fun, or don't have fun. They do...of that I am positive. But not all of us have that mentality. Not all of us necessarily have fun in a "win or nothing" atmosphere. Sure, we can do that for a while, and even achieve some success along the way. Out of the thousands...hell, millions...of players out there though, those players are a rather small percentage overall. I admire those players. I admire the pros. They do what I cannot. I have different goals and desires that trump Magic. I'm not willing to "pay the price" or "make the sacrifice" to earn and achieve the same level of success they do. There's really nothing wrong on either side of that coin. 

I find myself in a rather odd spot right now. Sure, I could play Standard outside of FNM, but there is no point. I have no large events coming up where that is the format I need to be testing for. By the time I play in my next competitive Standard event, it will be SCG: Columbus and the next set will have hit the shelves. While it may not completely shake up the format (we won't see that until we get back to Innistrad), I'm sure there will be changes or differing decks that spawn from it, so I'm not dedicating time to "new Standard" yet. 

I have a month until I plan on attending the next SCG: Cincinnati, which will be Modern. I'm rather well-versed on my deck of choice, and probably won't stray far from my Green Moon strategy that carried me to a Top 4 in a 120+ person event at SCG: OKC and a 6-3 mark at GP: Pittsburgh. I could possibly tune the sideboard a little, swapping a lone card or two, but otherwise, I'm pretty happy with it. 

With no pressing testing needs, what is there to do? Probably time to hang back, and have a little fun. It's time for an irrelevant format that I can casually play and not worry about tremendous investment costs. Now, back in the day, I had two formats I played, in paper only, that filled that need. There was a Creature Feature format I played, which required you to play a deck that contained 40%, minimum, of a particular creature type, with no other creatures permitted that were not of that type, and there was Peasant. Peasant is very much like Pauper, in that it is all commons, with the exception that it permitted up to 5 total uncommons between the maindeck and sideboard. Since I always played with paper, I never thought of these fun formats in the context of MTGO.

That is, until leagues started. And specifically, the Pauper Leagues starting a couple weeks ago. Suddenly, in my Lull from competitive testing and formats, I had something fun I could jump in on and play. Admittedly, I'm still somewhat of a newb to the Pauper world online, but I'm having fun. In a short period of time, I went from no Pauper decks to having over 10. One of the main benefits of the format as a whole is the overall inexpensiveness. While there are cards that can be a bit cost prohibitive, especially for commons, overall the format is really cheap. There is also enough random overlap between many decks, that a lot of times, those costly cards are actually used across numerous decks. And when compared to Standard, or Modern, the cost of any Pauper deck simple pales in comparison. 

As I jumped into the format, I spent some time looking for decks that seemed to appeal to me as a player, or appeal to my play style. Here are a couple I jumped on right away: 

I've always been a fan of various Elves decks. From the currently Modern Elves decks, to the old school Elves Beatdown decks built around Elvish Champion and Imperious Perfect. In fact, back in the day, I actually made Top 8 at one of the old WotC States events with a Lorwyn Elves deck. Obviously, this deck would have an immediate appeal for me. After watching Evan Erwin stream several matches with it, I was hooked, and went on a search for the list.

Funny enough, back in my Peasant days, I would have never played Elves or Goblins or any other linear creature deck built around a bunch of 1/1's. A fun format where every deck that can splash for Engineered Plague did pretty much put an end to those shenanigans. 

I've played this deck in the TPR so far, but not in any leagues yet. While I plan on it, and I've had fun playing it, the deck I have seemed to always pick above it is Stompy: 

Way back when, during the days when Rancor first roamed the mean streets of Standard, there was a 10-land Stompy deck that was a go to of mine at the time. Other than Rancor, you had Rogue Elephant, Pouncing Jaguar, Wild Dogs, and Ghazban Ogre, among other cheap, under-costed creatures with random drawbacks, and other temporary pump spells. The deck was really fun to play, and could be blisteringly fast. Again, that was a different era, with different threats. These were the day with spells were significantly better than creatures, but a deck like this could take advantage of the format since all their 1-drops could get under the 2-cost counters. 

In many ways, this deck is a tribute to that deck and that era. Sure, the cheap creatures have gotten better, and the curve is a little higher than the old 1.23 Average Casting-Cost from the original, but the sentiment and the value is very much the same. This is a deck I could almost play in my sleep, and if I just want to grind out league matches and get in 10-12 in a single afternoon, this is my weapon of choice. The list here is a basic configuration. But, if you wanted a taste of the old days, the previously mentioned elephants, jaguars, and dogs are legal cards in Pauper. Feel free to take a walk on the old school side. 

As a reminder, don't forget that Land Grant is a completely viable card if you want to cut lands and add more threats. 

Another deck I stumbled across in pursuit of decks is also one of the few tribal decks in the format that actually has available lords: 

It's hard to not like the "Merfolk of Pauper" if this type of deck in in your wheelhouse. It always seemed unfair to me that the non-creature color (Blue in case there is any doubt as to what I am saying) had the best and cheapest lords, at 2 mana, while Red and Green, both much more viable creature-based colors, had almost all of their lords cost 3 mana. It's nice to be able to play a creature strategy, with lords, that are in the correct color and reasonably costed.

This deck has been fast and consistent for me when I've played it. I do wonder if maybe Metallic Sliver could be shoehorned in there somewhere, but my overall lack of experience with both the deck and the format, I don't think I'm ready to make too many modifications to a solid deck that has performed well to date.  

All of these decks, though, did bring up a lot of memories from way back when. Old cards and rejuvenated memories made me want to take a few cracks at creating a deck of my own. Here is one of those attempts: 

This deck is somewhat of a mash up between and old gating/fading deck I played back in the day, minus such hits as Shivan Wurm, which is not legal in the format, but including all-time favorites like Blastoderm, Skyshroud Ridgeback and Horned Kavu, and a Red/Green Aggro list. I filled in the remaining non-gating/fading guys with a bunch of strong 2-drops, and rounded everything out with some pump and burn.

I am willing to concede that this is probably not the best deck, nor is it properly built. I can easily see that I may be better off with some decent 3-drops to follow a curve and be more mana efficient, as well as maybe grabbing some of those previously mentioned 1-drops over the Ridgeback. There are several common Bloodthirst creatures, like Blood Ogre and Lurking Crocodile at three. If I go with this as a sub-theme, I could also justify Karplusan Wolverine and Skarrgan Pit-Skulk as 1-drops that are not horrible returns Horned Kavu, especially considering I can play the Skulk on turn one, trigger my Scab-Clan Mauler and return it with the Kavu the following turn. I'm also guessing that burn spells should replace Colossal Might, which has been a bit under whelming in the deck. 

None of these ideas may pan out, and I could just simply be walking a path that leads nowhere. Regardless, I'm going to have a little fun with it, and see where it leads me. Maybe I'll stumble on to something really good. Maybe I'll just dink around with it for a few weeks, realize it is bad, and move on to other decks. In the end, I'm just here to enjoy myself and take a break from the grind. Sometimes, you just need to get back to the fun games.

Peace,
Carl Wilt