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By: SpikeBoyM, Alex Ullman
Dec 20 2010 3:57am
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There exists a love-hate relationship with Pauper at the moment. The feelings that exist for the format have not changed, as my time playing with commons has made me a better player overall, but currently, something is not right (this will be addressed).

After time off to draft in real life, a return to MTGO seemed like a great idea. Never one to immediately play what was out there, an old stalwart came to the forefront- Mono-Black Control. However, there was desire to eschew some of the slower cards that were the hallmark of Swamps, namely Tendrils of Corruption and Corrupt, as they strike me as far too slow in the day and age of Upheaval you.

Consequentially, it became apparent why Mono-Black has fallen out of favor. Back in the early days (in other words, two years ago), the variety was so great that having any sort of end-game trump gave any deck a significant advantage. It did not hurt that MBC also had the tools to combat control (in discard) and creatures (in removal). Access to the a reliable sweeper did not hurt either. Staying alive in this situation was the hard part, but became a cake walk when you could cast 3B Instant: Take two extra turns (one turn on the cast of said creature, another on the life you just gained back). However, with the advent of Goblins, Tendrils became terrible in light of Mogg Raider and Goblin Sledder, and with that, MBC began its slow walk away from the spotlight.

This did not deter me. Change the removal suite- make it cheaper and more definite.Combat the format in the way it is today, not how it was back then. That was, of course, before the shiny objects became a distraction.

Glimmerpost had the Pauper community, for lack of a better term, stoked. With access to 8 Posts, decks could do all sorts of things, like generate tons of mana, or hard cast Ulamog's Crusher, or cast Rolling Thunder for a lot of damage.

In actuality, there is not a lot that can be done with the abundance of colorless mana provided by the Locus engine. The most successful of the Post decks are UR with Mystical Teachings (flashback enabled due to Prophetic Prism. These decks aim to Thunder or Crusher the opponent into submission, and have lots of big mana cards in the sideboard (like Earth Rift for attacking combo lands).

If only this had been as apparent three weeks ago. Instead, UR Post lists, similar to the one featured here, filled the time:

 

 

 

 

Remembering MBC, the goal was to achieve the zen of Reese's:

 

 

 

 

Black seemed like a natural fit. Disturbed Burial and Grim Harvest, when combined with colorless mana, enabled the deck to rebuy creatures at a slow pace, but to great effect. Combined with Moriok Replica, and Big Black can draw a ton of cards, albeit at a high cost, including life payments. Mournwhelk becomes downright cheap in the Post deck, and forcing an Unburden is far from bad.

This list, however, has a lot of cute cards; doubly troubling since the entire list is predicated on a cute concept. Ichor Slick is just bad. There is hardly a time when Doom Blade or Grasp of Darkness would not be miles better. This is even more true today when Affinity can summon gobs of 4/4 monsters early. A 2-2 record in a daily is enough evidence of that, with losses almost entirely due to bad answers (Dave Price was right, y'know).

With so many Posts and Karoos, and so few Mountains in the best Goblins decks, the time seemed right to attack the mana of the format. Chats with Numdiar, he of Goblin fame, led to a series of decklists, all based around mana denial in the form of everyone's favorite aura from Standard: Spreading Seas.

A quick note about the following decks: They are not finished products. They are starting points rather, based upon practice games in Tournament Practice. Do not expect to take this sixty and start dominating the queues and Daily Events. It is not going to happen.

Spreading Seas is a card worthy of investigation. With specialized and light mana bases, knocking out even one land has the potential to be a huge swing. The first list to come out of the brew session was designed to fight other big mana decks. Using a the Locus engine, Blue Post wanted to power out Crushers and fully charged Halimar Wavewatches while stalling the bad guys with Seas. This deck is a great way to invest a lot of time in losing, however.

 

 

 

 

Blue Post did just about nothing, aside from draw cards. This is great in attrition matchups, but in the world of combo and aggressive decks, drawing cards that have no real impact on the battlefield shattered the glass jaw. The Post engine generates a ton of mana, but there was no good sink (although Wavewatch makes a lot of sense in the sideboard of such decks as a way to take out opposing Island mages).

There were some useful takeaways, however. Spreading Seas would often buy a lot of time, wherein more action would be drawn and put to use. Combining Seas with additional mana denial was an obvious direction to take, and led to a UR deck that could draw cards AND use them (what a concept)!

 

 

Stone Seas
 
Creatures
3 Scroll Thief
4 Mulldrifter
7 cards

Other Spells
4 Preordain
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Spreading Seas
2 Counterspell
2 Arc Lightning
4 Firebolt
4 Stone Rain
4 Prohibit
2 Deep Analysis
30 cards
Lands
10 Island
9 Mountain
2 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Evolving Wilds
23 cards
 
Spreading Seas

 

 

The deck presented here is still in the early stages of development, but shows promise if the format ever slows down. Having action on turn one, either through Preordain, a fetch land, or removing a turn one creature with a Bolt sets up the following turns to blank their lands. This sequence is rather common with the deck:

Turn 1: Preordain, putting gas on top

or

Turn 1: Mountain go, end of your turn remove a block

Turn 2: Spreading Seas their land, draw a card

Turn 3: Stone Rain another land

Turn 4: Scroll Thief with removal back up

Turn 5: Remove blockers with protection

 

The Thief, if left unmolested can absolutely bury someone. Drawing two cards a turn, especially when many of those rips draw more cards can be absolutely devastating. Having more cards makes up for your lack of threats as you simply have the answer most of the time, thanks to the extra draws.

This is a fine deck to take into the Tournament Practice room, but do not get all giddy and enter a 2-Man of a daily with it just yet. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Frantic Storm is stupid good. No, better than that. The goal here is to remove Cloud of Faeries and Mulldrifter while also neutralizing their Karoos and then smashing face with flying fish. Your draw helps here, but only so much. Look to fill your sideboard with additional cheap counters and removal that are able to take out Familiars.

Goblins is the same threat it always was. Take out anything that hits the board and do your best to neutralize their lands. Since Goblins tends to be land light, one Seas and one Rain is often enough to ruin their day. Arc Lightning is gold here, but you are going to have to lean heavily on your sideboard to win these matches.

Affinity is not as bad as it looks, as they are land light. Counter early cogs and try to stick a Seas on a non-Synod land. Keep Atog off the board at all costs. Between cards like Gorilla Shaman, Smash to Smithereens and Overload, this concoction can put a crimp in the machine's plans.

MUC-Fae. Well, this one is not a good time at all, considering the Seas are dead (not totally, but Quicksand is not so terrible for you). Bide your time with counters to protect threats. This fight could be the reason to go with Flame Slash over Lightning Bolt in the main, as the Instant speed option matters once in a great while, and the Lava Spike option occur even less frequently.

Testing has shown promise, and while it is not ready to tackle daily events, it is a nice change of pace from grinding it out over and over with Frantic or Goblins. A preliminary sideboard might look something like this:

 

3 Calcite Snapper

3 Smash to Smithereens

4 Pyroblast

2 Gorilla Shaman

2 Hydroblast

3 Subterranean Shambler

 

The last look at Spreading Seas today is the least refined. Influenced heavily by the old Magnivore deck of Ravnica-Kamigawa Standard, this stack just wants to keep the bad guys off their planned pace:

 

 

Blue Seas
 
Creatures
4 Scroll Thief
3 Ophidian
3 Calcite Snapper
10 cards

Other Spells
2 Liquify
4 Spreading Seas
4 Counterspell
4 Boomerang
1 Fade Away
4 Eye of Nowhere
4 Preordain
4 Daze
26 cards
Lands
23 Island
23 cards
 
Eye of Nowhere

 

 

Make an Island, bounce a land, bounce a land, counter everything, attack slowly for the win.

 

Before this wraps up, it would be remiss not to discuss the current state of Pauper. Since the release of Urza's Legacy, a new breed of combo has arisen that abuses the Planescape Familiars combined with Ravnica Bouncelands and the “free” spells from Urza's Legacy to generate a large amount of mana and spell count, and wins by using Temporal Fissure to bounce every possible permanent, resulting in what amounts to an one-sided Obliterate. This deck is highly resistant to hate as the threat it produces has no natural foil in Pauper. Empty the Warrens has sweepers galore and Echoing Truth whereas Grapeshot has Prismatic Strands, Flagbearers, and Benevolent Unicorn. Temporal Fissure, however, has no competitive natural enemy.

The deck is good, but this is not the total sum of the problem. Rather, the only deck that can beat it with any degree of consistency in Goblins. The Red menace is just fast enough to win under Frantic's clock, and the addition of Pyroblast and Raze after game one make the fight that much easier.

And here is the rub: the decks that can beat Goblins regularly are totally cold to Frantic.

There is one other deck worth discussing here, and that is Affinity. Energized with the new Myr Enforcer in a half-shell, Carapace Forger, the machine can vomit up threats like never before. The real damage comes with Master's Edition IV. Now that Atog is online as a common, this deck has the speed to fight Frantic and keep pace with Goblins, especially with Disciple of the Vault as a very real, and very deadly threat.

And lest we forget, Pauper also has Fling.

Affinity used to be held in check thanks to the power of removal, like Tendrils of Corruption. With 8 4/4's (and Atog, and Quicksilver Behemoth potentially), Tendrils lacks the same impact and stalling power.

What follows is speculation, but from this vantage point, it appears as Pauper is edging closer and closer to a three deck metagame, with Frantic taking the pillar of Combo while Goblins and Affinity jockey back and forth for the Aggro and Control. Other decks cannot compete with these due to the mana. Goblins wins by running just Mountains; Affinity has lands that generate two mana and has spells that allow mana to never really empty; Frantic is the slow deck here, and even it can win as early as turn four.

From this window, the format is approaching a place that is not healthy. Yes, there will be a top tier of competitive decks, but Wizards has shown in the past years that they are striving to move away from formats where there are only a few viable options- formats that stifle creativity.

Pauper is in the midst of an identity crisis. What started out as a way to be competitive on a budget has morphed into an Eternal format. One of the allures of Eternal Magic is to be able to play with “all” of your cards. However, if Pauper continues on this path, a smaller percentage of cards will actually be playable in this format.

The question then becomes, what to do? Wizards should not print cards to solve the problem as commons need to be balanced well for limited. Rather, Pauper needs to be examined- there is two years of data out there, after all- and something needs to change. There exist three distinct options:

1) Do nothing.

2) Ban offending cards. While the deck is called Frantic Storm, the offending card is Cloud of Faeries which when combined with Snap is a Storm and mana engine. Taking away the Cloud would have minimal impact on other decks. If this step was taken, Goblins and Affinity would have to be under notice, as the balance would be upset. This option appears best if Pauper is to remain Eternal.

3) Change Pauper to an Extended rotation. This is a drastic measure, but would alleviate many of the problems with adding older power cards. Having the format rotate would keep it healthy and also lower (the incredibly low) threshold for entry. However, this would change the nature of the format. Part of Pauper's allure is getting to play with the great limited commons of the past, the Karoos for example, and taking away that aspect could anger people who invested money in a set of Rancors or Dazes. Additionally, it could hurt Wizards profits, as Pauper gives an outlet for the majority of cards released from the pre-Invasion sets.

The answer is not easy, but if Wizards wants Pauper to maintain long term health, something has to be done.

No matter what though,

Keep slingin' commons-

-Alex

 

12 Comments

Funny you should title this by JMason at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 06:24
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Funny you should title this spreading the love when you take such a negative tone. I thought the health issue had been debunked a few weeks ago when it became clear that storm actually wasn't dominating any top 8's.

Welcome back! :D I really by PiDave at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 07:37
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Welcome back! :D
I really missed your articles. On to the actual reading now. ;)

...and back. Nice analysis. I by PiDave at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 08:15
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...and back.

Nice analysis. I think the best solution would be the inclusion of Pauper Formats (as in Standard, Extended and Classic), but I doubt that Wizards will ever do it.

Splitting off by SpikeBoyM at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 11:34
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I has a discussion like this with the fine people at Wizards during the 1st Community Cup in 2009. As it stands, Pauper is not populated enough to fragment the player base. As it stands, we are pulling between 30 and 50 for an event on average recently, and offering two "new" formats could kill the sanctioned events as we know them currently.
Additionally, Standard has far too small a card pool to develop a healthy metagame, and I am not sure if current Extended has enough either. I made that suggestion simply because I believe The "double-Standard" model does provide quite a few cards and the opportunity to try new ideas fairly regularly.

-Alex

I am not a pauper player so by Paul Leicht at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 08:34
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I am not a pauper player so my own take on this may be suspect. However I do not see the danger here. Just because a new threat hasn't emerged in a while to unsettle the top tier decks doesn't mean it won't. Surely with thousands of cards to choose from there are enough decks out there that can be built? It may be that some puzzle piece is missing. I am not a huge fan of banning cards for a couple of reasons but mainly because bans afflict us with an artificial environment. (Yes I know all magic environments are man-made but still. Freedom of choice is important.) Also it seems a relatively short time since SOM arrived. Surely there is not enough time here to say the sky is actually falling this time? Glad to see you are back in the mix of things Alex.

Nice to read you again! by veralucis at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 08:39
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4

Hi Alex,
it's nice to see you again here on pauper and I hope you keep writing about good articles about pauper. It seems to me that there are few pauper articles on the site for the last weeks. Does it?

Regarding this article I like some of the fresh ideas you have brought and I want to have some spare time to test them and see what they can do. Your highlight on spreading seas reminds me that some weeks ago I tried a merfolks list based on it and arquitech's will and some islandwalkers but it wasn't near competive, even being so fun.

Last I would like you to explain a little deeper what you mind with the third option to improve pauper. Isn't it possible to play extended pauper now? Are you talking about wizards supporting that?

Thanks and greetings

I admit that I am very new to by Adam W at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 11:05
Adam W's picture

I admit that I am very new to the Pauper format. However, it seems to me that Frantic Storm decks can't work without the mana advantage that the Urza block untap spells create when combined with bouncelands and Familiars. Therefore, one would think that a permission control with Spreading Seas might be the answer here - cheap counters like Force Spike can prevent them from resolving an early Familary and buy you the time you need to establish a winning board position.

Have you tried Lotus Petals or other mana accelerators in the LD decks - perhaps even a UG build with Thermokarst and mana elves?

"...shows promise if the by deluxeicoff at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 16:14
deluxeicoff's picture
4

"...shows promise if the format ever slows down." That's some BIGTIME optimism! I don't see pauper as ever slowing down, only speeding up. Nor is it unhealthy, every week is a mash up of a dozen or so decks, that all take turns at winning via rock/paper/scisors etc..., Mathamatically, pauper is only going to get meaner/faster with each new expansions - it's magic at its purest imo.

Blue seas is a great start - but be warned, I've played similar decks in the decades past, and it makes people HATE magic :) The snapper is a nice touch, and to make a point...the snapper this time last year wasn't anything more than a file in the filecabinets of wizards.

I'm not pointing fingers at you Alex, your great for the game and everyone loves your stuff - - - I just don't like the opinions of "Chicken Little." Wizards, or should I say Wizard$ has rubbed a lot of players the wrong way, but lets not forget how INSANELY hard it is to have a balanced format like pauper with so many THOUSANDS of cards in existance. I think this format alone prooves how capable Wizards is. Had they known from the start pauper would exist it would still be impressive, but to have it created on the sidelines and it STILL holds up as well as it does...well it really proves they know what they're doing on the creative side of things. Now if they could only fix their software :)

Oh and welcome back too!

As someone who was around by brandonQDSH at Mon, 12/20/2010 - 20:09
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As someone who was around when they first banned Cranial Plating, it just seems stupid that that card is banned now. Pauper has evolved from a simple PRE format with a limited number of commons (Invasion block, Odyssey block, Onslaught Block, Mirrodin block and two Core sets). I think Cranial Plating got the axe either just before or after the release of Kamigawa block. Affinity was just the best mechanic out by far, at common. With so many sets in the mix now, newer broken mechanics, and older broken cards, the B&R List definitely needs to be updated.

I don't know how anyone can make a Pauper deck that someone could play against and not hate Magic. Sure a U/R Ponza style deck is bound to irk some people. But it's not like playing against Discard, Countermagic, Burn, or Storm is any more enjoyable.

I was having a great time with Pauper Prismatic Singleton until they decided to axe the Prismatic format for a format that no one plays.

The card pool for Pauper is insane. Sure people get to play some of the most powerful throwbacks. But as you already pointed out, only a very small subset of cards is being played, so trying to keep the format diverse by allowing all sets to be legal is actually having the opposite effect. A lot of really good commons are unplayable because the format is so fast. But I really doubt WOTC cares enough about the format to give it the overhaul it needs to be non-ultra Spikey again.

I think this was one of the by Xaoslegend at Tue, 12/21/2010 - 01:06
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5

I think this was one of the first article series I read about a year ago, I never did get very good at pauper but it made me give it a chance for awhile. I like the writing style as it's intelligent and flows nicely and having several deck lists to see the way you brainstorm is always really nice.

X-

I liked your article. But I by jcf at Wed, 12/22/2010 - 23:33
jcf's picture

I liked your article.

But I really don't think spreading seas can work out of casual decks.

I agree frantic storm is harsh, there is no good answer to it.

If you are playing control, you can burn the familiars and try heavy countering against the draws, often that plan fails when deep analisis gets cast.

Creature removal + LD can work out against frantic, but LD seems to be bad against almost everything else. Also the lack of good mass removal is a problem for LD.

Frantic storm really narrowed the metagame, I do think Wizards should print some hate against it. Maybe some low cc instant saying your permanents can't be targeted until eot, Idk.

Part of the problem might be due to the fact that the meta didn't find out a good way to fight frantic yet.

That doesn't mean I can't beat it, I guess I win around 50% with my deck, what is frustrating is that there is no really efficient sideboard card vs it. I don't like to play goblins so, what can I do ? =)

Overall, cloudpost decks are a lot of fun, I been trying to tune a UR build.

I think this archetype really has potential.

Stompy with by deluxeicoff at Wed, 12/22/2010 - 23:51
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Stompy with Ledgewalkers/Vines give Temporal storm deck fits, all variants except the traditional build (no familiars/pitchlands)in my experience.