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By: Thatic, James Bates
Jul 05 2009 11:11am
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Everyone who seriously plays magic has a pet deck, a deck that they love regardless of how bad it is in the current format or what have you. I have a friend who’s obsessed with R/B beatdown, he plays it in every format, from standard all the way down to pauper. Now we make fun of him for it, but I’ve recently come to realize that I have the same love of a much different deck.

Once upon a time there was a boy learning to play magic. The format was around invasion block, and degenerate combos were the norm. Well this boy was really good at trashing his friends with his Shivan dragons and Force of Natures, so he thought he’d shuffle up and see how he did against the big kids. His dad took him down to the card shop and he played in his first tournament. Needless to say, he didn’t do so hot. But it was there he first saw one of two cards that would warp his magic playing experience years later.

 

Phyrexian Plaguelord

 

He saw the Rock. No, not the wrestler, but the actual Rock. Now back in the day this deck was all about using the hermit tokens (along with other token generation) in order to dominate its opponent’s field using Phyrexian Plaguelord, who was “The Rock”. Eventually the deck evolved and started running the absurd (Soulgorger). Needless to say, this sound trouncing made the boy leave magic for a few years.

Nearly ten years later, he picked it up again as the (Arguably slightly degenerate) Lorwyn block rotated in. Now he had a love for all things white and weenie, so Kithkin were more his style, but that’s not the topic of this article. End story.

The point is, I’ve come a long ways from slinging little hobbits across the red zone and praying to whatever god is listening that they don’t unleash their wrath upon my dudes. Now I don’t even play the same format in constructed. Pauper is where it’s all at, and that’s what this article is all about.

Now a lot of naysayers will say that The Rock is not viable in pauper, and they’re mostly right. The lack of any kind of really effective fat creature at common rarity does a lot to neuter the effectiveness of such a deck (Though I argue that all you need are Twisted Abomination and Krosan Tusker), But that’s only if you keep your mind inside the little tiny box it’s in now.

Let me tell you another story. This one is about last year’s Extended season, and the one rogue-ish deck that caught my eye. Life from the loam has long been an abusable engine to generate ridiculous card advantage in extended, but usually it stood alone in dredge style decks. The deck I saw some new Synergies with it. It was unquestionably the rock, as it sapped every bit of card advantage possible from each card it played, but this deck was different from the way people thought the rock ought to be. It was different because THIS was the rock:

Death Cloud 

This time around the rock wasn’t a creature. It was spell. Arguably, the entire deck was the rock, as Death cloud was only effective due to the synergy it shared with Life from the Loam and (Raven’s crime). The rock wasn’t some phyrexian whacko, it was a whole deck.

Some of you might be asking where I’m going with this, well now I’m getting there. Flash forward back to now. I now play almost exclusively pauper (with a healthy amount of drafts thrown in there). One of the things I’ve long tried to do is increase the number of viable decks that there are in what some people see as a very “broken” format due to the “overwhelming” power of decks like affinity and Mono-black control. At first I worked with the domain mechanic and the powerhouse of rolling thunder in order to try to combat both aggressive and controllish strategies. This didn’t work so well. Then I tried a whole deck quilt around Grim Harvest. That also wasn’t so hot, but it got me thinking about my old love of The Rock. I started tinkering around, and then I found this excellent list by our very own Spike over on the PDC forums.

 

 

 

Now we were talking. I played the deck extensively for a few days, but it seemed like something was missing. One of the things The Rock had always had going for it was its extreme resilience. It was a deck that given time was going to kill you, and there was nothing you could do about it. The problem with this deck then, was that they could do something about it. Something rather large:

Relic of progenitus

Yeah, that hurts. While the deck COULD win through a relic, it generally wouldn’t as most of it’s synergies died along with it’s graveyard. This relic was the paper to my rock. And thus I let this deck die while I went back to working on other things. But then the PE was just around the corner, and I had no real deck to play. I’d tried U/B teachings but I just couldn’t get the feel for it. Even my old love, the mono-black orzhov blade deck as perfected by Christd just wasn’t agreeing with me. So what now? Then I played a game with a chatty Husk player who let me in on their deck after I told them of my love of The Rock. Here it is:

 

The Rock
AS presented by Fatguyinatinycoat and M E L K O R
Creatures
2 Guardian of the Guildpact
3 Aven Riftwatcher
4 Blind Hunter
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Sakura-tribe elder
4 Putrid Leech
25 cards

Other Spells
3 Unmake
2 Echoing Decay
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Momentary Blink
11 cards
Lands
8 plains
4 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Island
5 Swamp
6 Forest
24 cards

Putrid Leech

 


Now I think this deck is excellent, and there are a few things about this list I’m going to highlight before I get into my changes to it:

1.       It’s a home for one of the single most aggressive creatures in pauper, Putrid Leech. Right now, this card doesn’t have much love as the few decks that play both Black and Green are generally controllish, and don’t have much of a need for the leech.

2.       What this deck might lack in outright power, it definitely makes up for in versatility. It has answers for most questions in the format. Maindecked Qasali Pridemages and Unmakes give Cloak a headache as Pridemage can destroy the cloak if it’s on a Silhana Ledgewalker, and Unmake deals with the otherwise difficult to remove Guardian of the Guildpact.  Oblivion Ring has long shown itself to be a remove-all for whatever problem might be ailing you. The inclusion of the blink package also helps this deck have a decent (If not outstanding) late game.

3.       The Sideboard has great cards to deal with some of the biggest decks in pauper, as well as being able to shore up some of this decks weaknesses. Armadillo Cloak is an absolutely amazing card that helps this deck decimate Mono-red burn decks game 2 and 3. Duress is excellent against Teachings and MBC, while Echoing Decay kills every creature in affinity outside of Myr enforcer (Who will rarely win the game on his own). Against Slivers one can bring in the full set of guardians as well as the cloak in order to give the sliver player a run for his money.

But while I definitely admire this masterpiece by fatguyinalittlecoat and M E L K O R, I needed to give it my own spin and shore up some problems I have as a player.

First of all, I couldn’t justify the inclusion of Phyrexian Rager in this list. I understand that the designers wanted it to play aggressively, but just because you have a vision for a deck doesn’t mean you can outright ignore a better card for a slot. While Rager is unquestionably one of the strongest creatures in pauper, he doesn’t fit too well into this deck as it already has plenty of early drops and in a deck running momentary blink Mulldrifter is clearly a much stronger choice as it provides more card advantage and a flying body. I respect their decision to run Rager, but  disagree.

-4 Phyrexian Rager, -1 Swamp

+4 Mulldrifter, +1 Island

The second major change was one that I arrived at after a substantial amount of testing with the list. Like I said earlier, I love decks that have multiple facets to them and can win outright through versatility. While this deck can beatdown early or stall late, I found it’s late game to be lacking against decks like Grand Entrance or traditional Orzhov Blink. My answer to that was to include my favorite card in pauper, Grim Harvest. I think it’s simply a natural fit into this deck, as it allows you to abuse almost every creature in the list to its utmost. Sakura-tribe Elder and Grim Harvest together are a regular nightmare, and harvesting a Qasali Pridemage repeatedly will quickly spell the death of an affinity player. My main justification to adding Grim Harvest to this deck, though, was that it was simply gravy, not the main course. This deck is more than capable of winning without it with its aggressive curve and the staying power provided by the regular powerhouse of Momentary Blink, but when it does draw a Grim Harvest it almost completely assures victory. I’ve lost one game when I’ve had a harvest, and that was the result of my own mistakes, not the decks.

-1 Qasali Pridemage

+2 Grim Harvest

So here is the completed list that I had planned to take to the PE (Before life and a nasty glitch kicked me out of it):
 



My changes to the sideboard were just personal changes, and are as follows:

-4 Duress, -1 Guardian of the Guildpact

+2 Circle of protection: Red, +3 Dust to Dust

I found that Duress was a mostly irrelevant card in my new list, because I only ever found myself siding it in against MBC and Entrance decks, both of which I easily dominated without it in testing due to my Grim Harvests. The fourth Guardian of the Guildpact got the boot because I simply never found myself siding it in. 3 Felt like a comfortable number for me. I added Circle of Protection Red to the deck simply because I had a lot of trouble against Mono-red burn in testing, but that was probably due more to their luck and my lack of it than anything else. Whatever the case, COP: Red is basically an unanswerable threat for them that requires that they jumping through hoops like Flaring Pain in order to answer. Together with Prismatic Strands, COP: Red assures that this deck has no trouble with Red now. Finally, I added a personal favorite Affinity hoser in Dust to Dust, as it is simply overwhelming against them.

So that’s The Rock. Not a single rock, but more like an ocean of pebbles that together form a mountain. Or something like that :p. The Deck is a blast to play, and it’s synergy usually makes it resistant to attempts to stop it’s gameplan. It has outs against every deck in the format, and has done a god job of upping my tix count while I haunt the Two man’s.

I hope you enjoyed the journey through my mind, as well as my journey in reinventing rock in pauper. Until next time,

8 Comments

Mana Issues by Nick (not verified) at Sun, 07/05/2009 - 17:02
Nick's picture

The deck seems like it would have a lot of mana issues. With only 4 swamps, a putrid leech can't be reliably played on turn 2, and even with mostly plains and forests a turn 2 qasali pridemage will probably be a stretch at times. Given how greedy some of the card choices are, like unmake, maybe running some borderposts would be a good idea. I could see a few of the green-white borderposts being very beneficial.

Personally, I think your by Anonymous (not verified) at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 02:33
Anonymous's picture

Personally, I think your changes to the deck are quite bad: you're losing consistency and raw power in the first turns to play cards too dependant on momentary blink and slow cards like grim harvest, going back, again, to being more weak to graveyard hate. Also, getting 4 guardians T2 can kill too many decks, IMHO they should stay. Nice article however, I loved the old rock days of plagualords, never understood why that deck died in legacy.

I think you can accomplish by ArchGenius at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 15:11
ArchGenius's picture

I think you can accomplish much of the same consistency with only the original 2 colors using Tortured Existence instead of Grim Harvest.

Tortured Existence and Golgari Brownscale can gain life faster than Aven Riftwatcher and Blind Hunter combined. Add in Wild Mongrel, Grave Scrabbler, and Crypt Rats, and you've got a Rock deck in two colors that is much more consistant.

I'm thinking a four color deck can't really be aggressive in pauper due to mana issues.

Sorry, didn't see this before by TopBossUltra (not verified) at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 17:07
TopBossUltra's picture

Sorry, didn't see this before I posted my comment. I endorse this suggestion though, obviously.

It seems to me that the best by TopBossUltra (not verified) at Mon, 07/06/2009 - 17:06
TopBossUltra's picture

It seems to me that the best way to build the rock would be to stick to b/g and throw in Tortured Existance. Some possible creatures for a more aggro style Rock using TE are Wild Mongrel, Basking Rootwalla, Jolrael's Centaur, Krosan Tusker, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Putrid Leech, and Golgari Brownscale.

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