While Cloudpost
has long been dead (Can we unban it just for a little while? It won’t be oppressive I swear and hope), that doesn’t stop many Pauper players from trying to play old Cloudpost like archetypes.
Mono Green Post was a ramp deck that played land destruction spells such as Thermokarst
and Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
to slow your opponent down, then to win the game it played big creatures like Ulamog’s Crusher
and Aurochs Herd
to finish the game off. While the deck was straightforward, at the time it was quite powerful.
Today I want to talk about a Selesnya list that is trying to do much of the same thing, just with different cards. The list we will look at got 3rd in the Pauper Challenge that was posted on 4/24/2022 and was piloted by the player HinaHara. Cloudpost may be dead, but some of the decks it created will never die! Lets rock!
Arbor Elf
– This deck plays Utopia Sprawl
and Wild Growth
so it is no surprise that Arbor Elf makes an appearance. Yes Arbor Elf is easy to remove, but it gives you extremely strong openings that can lead to easy wins and your opponent isn’t going to have the removal spell every time. (Unless it is me, then they always do)
Elvish Visionary
– If you are a midrange green ramp deck, this is pretty much a staple for those archetypes.
Sarulf’s Packmate
– One of my favorite creatures of late. This is also a staple of green midrange decks it seems. This has great stats, draws a card and can come down on turn 3. Overall, definitely a great card.
Annoyed Altisaur
– I am annoyed to only see 1 copy in the main but that is because I just love this card. This isn’t a Cascade based deck and you have a lot of bad hits so it doesn’t surprise me to see only 1 copy in the main.
Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth – Here are your main ramp cards. Rather than go with the usual Wildfire and indestructible artifact lands strategy, this deck goes for a much faster strategy.
Thermokarst and Mwonvuli Acid-Moss – Ah yes, the land destruction strategy. Pauper is a format where decks get a bit greedy with their manabase in terms of playing fairly low amounts of land and sometimes bounce lands. This deck wants to take advantage of that. Being able to play Thermo on turn 2 and then Acid-Moss on turn 3 can usually win the game by itself as you slam one of your win conditions. This strategy isn’t good against every deck in the format, but against control decks or a combo deck like Familiars, it can slow them down long enough for you to just run away with the game.
Harmonious Emergence
– Now this one is spicy. For 4 mana, it turns one of your lands into a beefy 4/5 creature that is extremely hard to get rid of for almost any archetype (Be afraid Myr Enforcer
, be very afraid) and can attack through almost anything. What is really cool is that it has vigilance and that means you get to attack and still play more cards and/or threats which will put a ton of pressure on the opponent. I honestly hope we see much more of this card in the future.
Journey to Nowhere
– One of the best removal spells in the format.
Imperial Oath
– Not going to lie, this one took me by surprise. It might not look like much, but giving you 3 tokens to attack and/or block with, plus being able to Scry 3 cards deep is quite a lot of card advantage. Against control decks, this is 3 separate targets they need to deal with and against aggro this creates 3 blockers while letting you Scry. Is this card the real deal? I am not sure on that yet, but it does seem interesting.
The Manabase is very straightforward and it should be because your 8 ramp spells need specifically Forests to be able to use them and you aren’t trying to make the game go long. This is why we see Arctic Treeline
as the dual land. I like this manabase and wouldn’t change it.
The Sideboard
Annoyed Altisaur – There are going to be matches where you need extra win conditions and this a damn good one. It is also good against decks where you would side out your land destruction.
Calming Verse
– Hi there hexproof. It would be a shame if all of your enchantments went away.
Dust to Dust
– We need answers to our robot overlords.
Penumbra Spider
– This is devastating for Delver and aggro decks.
Relic of Progenitus
– For the graveyard shenanigans you will definitely come across.
Weather the Storm
– No one likes losing to burn decks and so we see 4 copies of this card for that reason.
Overall Thoughts and Conclusion
This deck is certainty interesting and is actually quite fun when it gets going. This list can lead to a lot of free wins if you get the right opening hand and even then when you have to play a regular game it still has a good shot because the threats this deck has are quite good.
My general thoughts on this deck is that this was built to beat a specific meta game. The creator of the deck said on twitter that they were tired of getting their spells countered by Spellstutter Sprite
(no one can blame them) and I am sure there were many other thoughts in mind.
This list has big threats that are really hard for Faeries to deal with if they resolve. The land destruction is quite good against Familiars and Tron (as well as well as faeries because they can be land light). Harmonious Emergence followed up by land destruction should be a good against almost anything and your Affinity matchup should be pretty decent. The one matchup I am unsure about is Boros, but that depends on your draw and the Boros build you are up against.
Do I think you should play this deck? A deck like this, in my opinion, will always be a coin flip. As I said, I think it was built to beat a specific meta. If you face the decks you specifically prepared against and things go well, you can easily put up results, but this is not a fool proof plan.
I think this deck might do better in a challenge where you are expecting to face specific archetypes as where in leagues where it will be more random, you might not do as well. This deck might help you spike a weekend, but time will tell if this list can put up consistent results against the established archetypes.
However, with all this being said, as always, do remember my words are not gospel. I will always encourage you to try a deck that I bring you despite my personal feelings. Remember that results will vary and always remember to practice!
Would you like to compete in a free Pauper tournament with some great prizes? Head on over to Gatherling.com on Tuesday nights at 8pm EDT and play in our weekly Pauper Classic Tuesday's event! Join the chat #PCT to chat with us and feel free to find most of the competitors on Discord!
Thank you so much for reading. Best of luck to you in your next tournament and I’ll catch you all next time!
