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By: SteveJeltz, Rev. David Wright
May 29 2017 12:00pm
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Which of these cards is better?

Lightning Bolt Flame Slash

 

When I first became a Pauper home brewer, I would easily get puzzled by choices of card inclusions, especially when two cards seemed so similar.

 

Sometimes a choice is obvious: why ever play Cancel when you have access to Counterspell? Sometimes though, knowing the correct choice seems almost impossible. Say I want to play six two-mana counterspells in my new two-color deck. Which of these should I choose?

 

Counterspell Mana Leak Miscalculation Deprive Essence Scatter Negate Condescend Daze Prohibit

 

The answer, of course, is context.

 

What is your goal? Are you trying to tempo your opponent out like the current Izzet Delver deck tries to do? Are you trying to establish a combination of cards that will overpower your opponent, like Tron builds do? Are you trying to win a war of attrition and outdraw your opponent?

 

All of these goals like to wildly different answers to the simple question, “Which Counterspell should I play?”

 

An extreme example to this question is the Blue-Green Turbo Fog deck. The goal of this deck is to mill the opponent out via Jace's Erasure, but to get there the deck tries to negate their opponents’ strategies through an endless stream of Fogs.

Arcane Denial

The deck’s counterspell of choice is Arcane Denial, a card that normally is horrible in a fair, two-player constructed match and is usually relegated to the world of Multi-player Commander since the car provides inherent card disadvantage for the caster. But in Turbo Fog, giving the opponent extra draws actually advances you towards your goal, both by bringing the opponent up to two cards closer to an empty library while also refilling your hand for extra Fogs. What a bizarrely perfect scenario for this card!
 

Let's examine our other options we listed:

 

Two-Mana Counterspells

 

  1. Counterspell - The gold standard. Usually the decision needs to be framed, “Why would I not choose Counterspell?” Good reasons not to might include: a. You can't reliably get to UU; or b. You want more utility from your counters. If the answer is a., then chose a soft counter like Mana Leak. If b., then look at cycling counters, situational counters or even 3-mana options like Exclude.

 

  1. Mana Leak - This card is actually a hard counter for turns 1-5 in almost all circumstances. So if you're running a 2-color tempo deck that's lighter on blue, it's a great consideration.

 

  1. Miscalculation - While its range is even narrower than Mana Leak, it makes up for it by happily cycling away. I like this card in a flexible control deck that runs a variety of metagame specific answers like UR Control.

 

  1. Deprive - Some decks run like as Counterspells 5-8 albeit with a slight drawback. But in other decks, the return a land clause can actually provide utility. How? In Mono-blue Delver, a Deprive played on your turn, say in response to removal, can actually help you replay a land when you might not have had one, actually reducing its cost to U. And in a UB control deck, Deprive allows you to return utility lands to your hand that might be more valuable there than in play, such as a cycling land, a Radiant Fountain to gain 2 more life or a Bojuka Bog.

 

  1. Essence Scatter. Now if you really want to talk about variable staple effects, we can ask why run this over Remove Soul or False Summoning. The primary reason to run cards like Essence Scatter is because you’re soft on removal or because your opponent’s ETB effects would give them a 2-for-1 if the creature resolved and you killed it. Since only 30% of the most commonly played creatures in Pauper cost more than 2-mana, you’re likely using this to hedge against ETB creatures.

 

  1. Negate - Most commonly this is a sideboard card since in Pauper it’s actually three cards rolled into one: Annul, Dispel and Envelop. If you have room in your sideboard to play these situational cards, often they are better. If not, Negate is a nice catch-all.

 

  1. Condescend - This card is gas. If you can reliably have more mana than your opponent and you can afford to leave extra mana up, being able to scry 2 on your Power Sink is very powerful. Tron decks like this card since it’s light on colored mana and heavy on colorless mana which is their strength. In fair decks, I’d be wary of cards that ask me to situationally require so much open mana to reliably counter my opponent’s spell.

 

  1. Daze - Pauper’s Force of Will. Kind of. Of all the two-mana counter choices, this is by far the least flexible even though it comes with two effective modes: as a two-mana Force Spike or as a zero-mana Force Spike that returns an island. Where this card shines is in decks that fight a lot over spells, like in combination with Spellstutter Sprite and Ninja of the Deep Hours. In those decks, returning a land is a small price to pay for gaining a massive tempo and sometimes additional substantial card advantage. Count the games though where this card rots in your hand or your opponent either knowingly plays around it, or worse, willing plays into it, and you’ll see how limiting it really is.

 

  1. Prohibit - Similar to Mana Leak, this card is has something of a shelf-life. However, while Mana Leak has a taxing effect and thus gets worse in a long game, Prohibit still retains some utility in a long game so long as you can pony up the extra two mana. I will kindly note however that Mode 1 of Prohibit still allows the caster to counter 41 of the 50 most played cards in Pauper since they all cost 1 or 2 mana. The downside? The best you did was trade evenly or down on mana. Think of this card as an early game play with a late game hedge in a 2-color control deck.

 

Now let's look back at our original red dilemma:

 

One-Mana Burn Spells

  1. Lightning Bolt - Utility and efficiency make this card shine. Equally successful at trading evenly on cards and mana with 80% all the commonly played creatures in the format as it is at closing out a game with three to the face. There's a very good reason Bolt is the most played card in all of Pauper. And yet, situationally, certain cards we’ll see are much, much better.

 

  1. Flame Slash - Because it trades so efficiently with some of the most commonly played “large” creatures” in the format without sacrificing a lot of utility against smaller creatures, Flame Slash is an excellent main deck inclusion in a midrange or control build or a sideboard card in an aggressive deck. Since most of Pauper’s creatures are either x/1s or 2/2s, Affinity’s two big 4/4s can be a real problem if all your packing is Lightning Bolt. And it will still at least trade for a card most of the time against Stompy and Delver. Just watch out for Spellstutter Sprite.

 

  1. Chain Lightning - Most of the time this card is played as Lightning Bolts numbers 4-8 since it's the only other one mana red Burn spell than can do a full three to creatures or players. It does come with two downsides: Sorcery speed and the ability of the opponent to copy the spell. My experience is that the former is a bigger drawback than the latter. Decks that want 4 bolts include Goblins, RDW and of course Burn.

 

  1. Magma Spray - Once strictly Sideboard material, this exile effect is now finding its way into 60 card list particularly because of two cards: Young Wolf and Stormbound Geist. The exile bonus is also relevant against White Weenie which plays self-recursive cards like Loyal Cathar and Doomed Traveler as well as breaking loops in Dimir Flicker decks.

 

  1. Electrickery - One of Pauper’s premier sideboard cards, this card works on 3 axes: as a token or x/1 sweeper, as a way to hit hexproof creatures since it doesn't target, and in a pinch as a single target spell against important early plays like Delver of Secrets. Because it's so punishing against many lists including Elves, Delver, Tokens, and Hexproof it deserves the play it gets.

 

  1. Galvanic Blast - The only card in Pauper that can deal 4 damage to a creature or player for one mana at will (as in not using the miracle mechanic), Galvanic Blast is a huge payoff for decks running the artifact lands. Now the risk of running these lands is also real given their vulnerability to Gorilla Shaman. Kuldotha Boros runs less risk than Affinity but is also a less synergistic deck. The fail-safe scenario of this card as a Shock is also not too much to lose with the upside it presents.

 

  1. Gut Shot - Wow. This is one of those amazing cards we got as a gift from a Modern Masters downshift in rarity. The only “free” Burn spell on our list, this gives a color breaking effect to non-red decks, especially green lists like Hexproof whose only answers to non-fliers used to be Hornet Sting. Ironically, it is mostly used against fliers and if you are looking to hit fliers we’re recently received a load of new green one-mana spells to hate out small fliers. But that's for another list. Don't underestimate either the “zero” cost: like Daze, this card is the answer you know about that isn't obvious to your opponent.

 

  1. Skred - The success of Izzet Delver has brought this card back into the light where it once only saw play in fringe decks like “Snow-Go”. There is only reason to run this card and that is because you need a way to kill 4 and 5 toughness creatures at instant speed, which Skred can do for a mere one mana provided you're deep enough into the games. But the price of this card is that the deck can't effectively run the Khans of Tarkir gainlands like Swiftwater Cliffs and is forced to fetch out basics to maximize its snow-land count. Because both cards require basic lands, Skred plays quite well with Gush, except that the caster resets their land count. So think about the largest target you anticipate needing to hit in each match as you sequence your land drops for Skred.

 

Now I also wanted to mention that the cards I've listed above do not represent an exhaustive list but only the cards that regularly see play. There are a wide variety of other red burn spells you should consider based on your needs, most of which have found a spot in a pauper deck sometime before depending on the particular metagame. These other options include:

 

  1. Electrostatic Bolt - Great against Spire Golem and Myr Enforcer.

  2. Flame Jab - Highly reusable thanks to the retrace mechanic.

  3. Lava Dart - Zero mana flashback? Wow!

  4. Lava Spike - Idiot proof Lightning Bolt for Burn decks counting to 20.

  5. Pillar of Flame - Like Magma Spray, but you trade sorcery speed for a fail safe.

  6. Death Spark - A Gatling gun that runs on dead Goblins.

  7. Burst Lightning - Shock early, Galvanic Blast late. Scaling = Utility.

 

Generally speaking, the baseline power level for a Burn spell to be Pauper playable is for it to be stronger than Shock. Not every card can be Lightning Bolt, but many other cards add utility or fit a niche that either compliment the Bolt or is preferable to Bolt in the Right deck or metagame.

 

Next week we’ll look at two more groups of staple effects in Pauper: Black kill spells and two-color mana fixing.
 

Keep having fun out there. It’s Pauper.


SteveJeltz