I tweaked the deck and the sideboard a bit to have better game against the match-ups you mentioned. Life gain really helps against aggro and Storm. Mono-black control is a problem because usually the deck wants to get to the end game, where it will nearly always have the best spells available. But if they hit several Corrupts, things can be difficult. Guardian of the Guildpact is a nice target for Terminate.
Thanks, guys. Hammer, I hope you enjoy my latest predator deck which made two top 8s in two tries this past weekend. I think the Sunday version is much stronger than my zoo lists above. Saturday was my first time testing it, so forgive the bad build. In my opinion it should either replace or go along side the zoo deck in the decks to beat section.
I mocked up the winning deck and think it may have just been good vs the particular field. My first three matches I lost to grapeshot combo, MBC, and a WUr deck featuring GotG. I think it has a lot of work before it can compete with the top decks.
Javasci, playing the same deck, I always wanted combo matchups every round (although, unlike you apparently, I don't consider Dredge to be combo). The fast clock plus the extreme amount of hate is very good. Necro is the hardest of the combo decks to beat, and I still consider it slightly favorable (as also evidenced by their attempting to eschew Necro plans and transform into GoyfStalker beatdown).
I'm not the biggest advocate of the singleton Cursed Scroll advocates these days with this deck. Either it clogs up your deck early, it is useless vs. combo, or it is typicall a win-more card when it does work, or, when you really need it, vs. an aggro-control or control deck, they might just counter it or nullify it with Explosives (and Needle is a bad answer for them, but still an answer). Scroll is best vs. the 1:1 decks like black aggro-discard, and I'm never unhappy to draw Cursed Scroll but I'm now more likely to tutor for Scepter of Scepter/Chant, for Halo (if I would be losing to The Rack), Jitte or Bitterblossom. Scroll is not going to be a premier tutor target with these options.
I totally agree with respect to your Krosan Grip statement. The Counterbalance deck is a natural foil to this one. I really like your comments about the deck's finesse - a succinct noun to summarize this deck. This was a good read.
With respect to the blue goblin's comment, the point is Zoo has many, many reasons to run Orim's Chant especially when storm was being played more. If you can agree with that reason, and the fact that you are running Enlightened Tutor productively as has been well shown, then a singleton (or two) copy of Isochron Scepter is a wonderful addition. It says "Sorry, I accidentally unfairly beat you with my random combo." I usually take Scepter out against the combo and the true control matchups since it is unlikely to resolve or even work effectively if it does. But being able to lock out burn (with Helix imprinted), aggro decks of all types, and Dredge is very awesome for a singleton that can be tutored for effectively.
zoo has no business running scepter chant. I've said it once, and I'll say it again, GAEA'S MIGHT GET THERE IS GOLDEN! Alara's Mighty Morphin Power Ling of Thorn will doooooom you!
Thanks for the comments. The best performing decks are the Esper Control ones but here is a less controlling one that took 2nd place, played by twistedspine209
I was just wondering do you know any good Esper Builds (that could actually win tournies?
Cause I have some, also from your articles but I can't get them to work... maybe Im not using good strategy or something...
While I appreciate the kind words, I am definitely nothing more than a "mere mortal". I was basically just casting red spells and hoping for the best =)
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the variance either. For example, what I find attractive about Pauper is the price and the card pool. I'm less overwhelmed with Pauper than I am with the full Classic pool. (Although I still love Classic too.) I'm not at all attracted to Pauper because it has a lower power level.
Pauper is supposed to be cheap, so it willingly gives up Necropotence and the duals. Block Constructed is supposed utilize the most powerful cards or themes from a block, so it gives up everything else, even core sets. Extended is supposed to make the feeling of "aw, mydeck just rotated out" hurt less. And in exchange for that you have to update your Standard deck to deal with new cards. But Singleton, to me, seems like weakening yourself for no reason. In exchange for agreeing to the singleton rules you gain... the feeling of being a new player who plays a deck of every card they own? I don't think that's fun. Someone who likes Singleton should tell me why the format exists.
This is also why I never got into EDH. Why can't I build a tight 60 card deck with a general? I don't know what my 45th favorite magic card is, and I don't want to play it.
A+ playing by Steve, as always.
1) "Uh.... new format.... not enough literature...."
2) mono red aggro it is
3) 0-2 start
4) 4-2 ending, profit
Mere mortals go "oh two drop". Steve goes "oh two five packs" in a new format.
I played my custom build WW to a T4 finish, losing only to the other T8 decks (1x RBg Goblins and 2x UB control) after a 4-0 start and always won at least one game. A huge amount of prot red/black creatures and the ability to switch on defense/lifegain helps against the meta, but of course you are a dog to straight control and UG unless you can finish them off before the lategame.
I dont think SBs for Singleton are a good idea, it is actually kinda refreshing to not have to bother and then pray that you actually draw your boarded in cards. And most SB cards would only be pure hate anyway, further increasing the luck factor. All decks have to be balanced enough to not auto-lose against single MD cards.
Yes, there will be draws which are nearly unbeatable because one does not draw any removal at all or something like that. But then again that is better then a newbie-unfriendly format where one deck (type) can dominate every other.
The biggest hurdle for newcomers to the format is indeed the deck building process, not everyone gets a kick out of scanning every color-fitting card in the deck editor and then trimming 200 cards down to 100. Although that can teach you a lot, an easy to copy deck database is needed to get more players into the format.
I would, from experience, say that thunderblade charge (if i recall the name correctly) is better than hammer as you don't spend as much mana trying to get the 3 damage (5 as compared to 8) and it shouldn't be too difficult to get creature damage in. =)
I'm surprized Hammy didn't mention this in his article, but information on the metagame for both 4-man and 2-man queues, as well as info on Pauper in general, can be found in abundance at www.pdcmagic.com. Look in the General Discussion forum, and the Classic forum. And many thanks to Giraffe and Sensei, who do a lot of the keeping up with this!
I mostly just played limited formats and collected cards, but the pauper queues have sparked my interest in constructed again (from a looong looong time ago).
My burn deck is fun, and even wins vs blue or blue/black control. But it just rolls over to storm (it seems to be just a turn too slow to beat storm consistently).
My threshold deck wins vs storm but tends to lose vs burn... (haven't faced control with it yet)
My elf deck just seems to lose (sigh), but it's still fun to play.
It's nice to really have some options in different decks and see all the variations out there.
The only thing I'd really like to have is some kind of way to get a real meta-game analysis from the 4-mans.
It seems those are really private and can't be reviewed after the fact (if there's a way and I just don't know it, please tell me how :) )
Excellent as usual. Along the same lines, I think it might benefit your individual card graphs to have dates like the standard/ext/classic graphs.
Also, when you chart the different formats, how do you determine what cards count for classic and extended? I always assumed it was the cards that can only be in classic are the ones that comprise the classic list, while the cards that can be in extended and classic make up ext, and standard as the only cards that could be in standard. But upon actually thinking about it, this logic does necessarily NEED to be true. Especially when Extended was lower than Standard it makes sense, but I just thought I'd ask.
Really like the charts of the specific cards over time Ham. Helps to show the demand over a few seasons. If at all possible think we could see the fetch lands together over a couple of season would help show when the demand spikes from extended season effected them.
Tell you the truth the change is very nice, now it does make me feel new in a sense. Its an exciting format where money does not matter for the time being. I highly doubt any of the commons will become 10 dollar cards anytime soon how ever I can see some of the harder to find ones becoming 5 dollar ones. Its just refreshing to have a tipsy turny format where all those dust covered commons have a purpose. Standard and Extended to some degree just feel way to defined to me, and there is nothing wrong with that but when I jump in the pauper que the mystery of what I will face is very fun and exciting. I have seen a mix of decks and rarely face the same one in any four man. Kudos to WOTC on this one, and all those who pushed and helped this turn about.
I know personally Pauper and 100 card singleton have revived my interest in Magic and I can only play MTGO. The diversity of the formats is great, where I find Standard and Block to be too formulaic. I love Pauper; I'll celebrate with you. That's 15% in jest.
I tweaked the deck and the sideboard a bit to have better game against the match-ups you mentioned. Life gain really helps against aggro and Storm. Mono-black control is a problem because usually the deck wants to get to the end game, where it will nearly always have the best spells available. But if they hit several Corrupts, things can be difficult. Guardian of the Guildpact is a nice target for Terminate.
I've been very pleased with the results, special thanks to MikeG for forwarding the link to this article. :)
I'm glad you guys are having fun, I expect it to continue!
Worth
Thanks, guys. Hammer, I hope you enjoy my latest predator deck which made two top 8s in two tries this past weekend. I think the Sunday version is much stronger than my zoo lists above. Saturday was my first time testing it, so forgive the bad build. In my opinion it should either replace or go along side the zoo deck in the decks to beat section.
Add 4x Mogg Fanatic to Burn and you will get more crazyness!
Excelent article!
Sakura tirbe elder is much better than Elvish Visionary.
and i think 8 5 drops is too much. But the deck seems very nice;)
Great article Ben. Very informative and really well written. This was a very enjoyable read. Good luck in the Player of the Year Race!
I mocked up the winning deck and think it may have just been good vs the particular field. My first three matches I lost to grapeshot combo, MBC, and a WUr deck featuring GotG. I think it has a lot of work before it can compete with the top decks.
Javasci, playing the same deck, I always wanted combo matchups every round (although, unlike you apparently, I don't consider Dredge to be combo). The fast clock plus the extreme amount of hate is very good. Necro is the hardest of the combo decks to beat, and I still consider it slightly favorable (as also evidenced by their attempting to eschew Necro plans and transform into GoyfStalker beatdown).
I'm not the biggest advocate of the singleton Cursed Scroll advocates these days with this deck. Either it clogs up your deck early, it is useless vs. combo, or it is typicall a win-more card when it does work, or, when you really need it, vs. an aggro-control or control deck, they might just counter it or nullify it with Explosives (and Needle is a bad answer for them, but still an answer). Scroll is best vs. the 1:1 decks like black aggro-discard, and I'm never unhappy to draw Cursed Scroll but I'm now more likely to tutor for Scepter of Scepter/Chant, for Halo (if I would be losing to The Rack), Jitte or Bitterblossom. Scroll is not going to be a premier tutor target with these options.
I totally agree with respect to your Krosan Grip statement. The Counterbalance deck is a natural foil to this one. I really like your comments about the deck's finesse - a succinct noun to summarize this deck. This was a good read.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
With respect to the blue goblin's comment, the point is Zoo has many, many reasons to run Orim's Chant especially when storm was being played more. If you can agree with that reason, and the fact that you are running Enlightened Tutor productively as has been well shown, then a singleton (or two) copy of Isochron Scepter is a wonderful addition. It says "Sorry, I accidentally unfairly beat you with my random combo." I usually take Scepter out against the combo and the true control matchups since it is unlikely to resolve or even work effectively if it does. But being able to lock out burn (with Helix imprinted), aggro decks of all types, and Dredge is very awesome for a singleton that can be tutored for effectively.
zoo has no business running scepter chant. I've said it once, and I'll say it again, GAEA'S MIGHT GET THERE IS GOLDEN! Alara's Mighty Morphin Power Ling of Thorn will doooooom you!
Thanks for the comments. The best performing decks are the Esper Control ones but here is a less controlling one that took 2nd place, played by twistedspine209
4 Arcane Sanctum
3 Esper Panorama
6 Island
6 Plains
6 Swamp
25 land
4 Ethersworn Canonist
4 Master of Etherium
4 Sanctum Gargoyle
3 Sharuum the Hegemon
4 Tidehollow Strix
4 Tower Gargoyle
23 creatures
4 Esper Charm
4 Executioner's Capsule
4 Oblivion Ring
12 other spells
4 Cancel
1 Plains
4 Punish Ignorance
2 Relic of Progenitus
4 Tidehollow Sculler
15 sideboard
Hope that helps!
Nice Article!
I always love them :)
I was just wondering do you know any good Esper Builds (that could actually win tournies?
Cause I have some, also from your articles but I can't get them to work... maybe Im not using good strategy or something...
Well, Thanks anywayz :)
I just want to say, that while the deck has definitely evolved, this is the same deck you used to give me crap about :). Good article.
fantastic and even though i got my list from you i still leartned a lot about the deck from this readthru.
To "Anonymous" regarding being able to track 4-man meta data.
Some of us have been tracking 4 & 2-man metagame information on the pdcmagic.com forums.
Check out these threads:
4-man:
http://www.pdcmagic.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2556
2-man:
http://www.pdcmagic.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2682
Feel free to participate. :-)
While I appreciate the kind words, I am definitely nothing more than a "mere mortal". I was basically just casting red spells and hoping for the best =)
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the variance either. For example, what I find attractive about Pauper is the price and the card pool. I'm less overwhelmed with Pauper than I am with the full Classic pool. (Although I still love Classic too.) I'm not at all attracted to Pauper because it has a lower power level.
Pauper is supposed to be cheap, so it willingly gives up Necropotence and the duals. Block Constructed is supposed utilize the most powerful cards or themes from a block, so it gives up everything else, even core sets. Extended is supposed to make the feeling of "aw, mydeck just rotated out" hurt less. And in exchange for that you have to update your Standard deck to deal with new cards. But Singleton, to me, seems like weakening yourself for no reason. In exchange for agreeing to the singleton rules you gain... the feeling of being a new player who plays a deck of every card they own? I don't think that's fun. Someone who likes Singleton should tell me why the format exists.
This is also why I never got into EDH. Why can't I build a tight 60 card deck with a general? I don't know what my 45th favorite magic card is, and I don't want to play it.
A+ playing by Steve, as always.
1) "Uh.... new format.... not enough literature...."
2) mono red aggro it is
3) 0-2 start
4) 4-2 ending, profit
Mere mortals go "oh two drop". Steve goes "oh two five packs" in a new format.
I played my custom build WW to a T4 finish, losing only to the other T8 decks (1x RBg Goblins and 2x UB control) after a 4-0 start and always won at least one game. A huge amount of prot red/black creatures and the ability to switch on defense/lifegain helps against the meta, but of course you are a dog to straight control and UG unless you can finish them off before the lategame.
I dont think SBs for Singleton are a good idea, it is actually kinda refreshing to not have to bother and then pray that you actually draw your boarded in cards. And most SB cards would only be pure hate anyway, further increasing the luck factor. All decks have to be balanced enough to not auto-lose against single MD cards.
Yes, there will be draws which are nearly unbeatable because one does not draw any removal at all or something like that. But then again that is better then a newbie-unfriendly format where one deck (type) can dominate every other.
The biggest hurdle for newcomers to the format is indeed the deck building process, not everyone gets a kick out of scanning every color-fitting card in the deck editor and then trimming 200 cards down to 100. Although that can teach you a lot, an easy to copy deck database is needed to get more players into the format.
I would, from experience, say that thunderblade charge (if i recall the name correctly) is better than hammer as you don't spend as much mana trying to get the 3 damage (5 as compared to 8) and it shouldn't be too difficult to get creature damage in. =)
I'm surprized Hammy didn't mention this in his article, but information on the metagame for both 4-man and 2-man queues, as well as info on Pauper in general, can be found in abundance at www.pdcmagic.com. Look in the General Discussion forum, and the Classic forum. And many thanks to Giraffe and Sensei, who do a lot of the keeping up with this!
Another great one, Hammy!
Any reason why people don't play Hammers of Bogardan? It seems like it's not too bad in singleton, since sometimes the games reach the late game.
I have to agree.
I'm loving the pauper queues.
I mostly just played limited formats and collected cards, but the pauper queues have sparked my interest in constructed again (from a looong looong time ago).
My burn deck is fun, and even wins vs blue or blue/black control. But it just rolls over to storm (it seems to be just a turn too slow to beat storm consistently).
My threshold deck wins vs storm but tends to lose vs burn... (haven't faced control with it yet)
My elf deck just seems to lose (sigh), but it's still fun to play.
It's nice to really have some options in different decks and see all the variations out there.
The only thing I'd really like to have is some kind of way to get a real meta-game analysis from the 4-mans.
It seems those are really private and can't be reviewed after the fact (if there's a way and I just don't know it, please tell me how :) )
Excellent as usual. Along the same lines, I think it might benefit your individual card graphs to have dates like the standard/ext/classic graphs.
Also, when you chart the different formats, how do you determine what cards count for classic and extended? I always assumed it was the cards that can only be in classic are the ones that comprise the classic list, while the cards that can be in extended and classic make up ext, and standard as the only cards that could be in standard. But upon actually thinking about it, this logic does necessarily NEED to be true. Especially when Extended was lower than Standard it makes sense, but I just thought I'd ask.
Really like the charts of the specific cards over time Ham. Helps to show the demand over a few seasons. If at all possible think we could see the fetch lands together over a couple of season would help show when the demand spikes from extended season effected them.
Tell you the truth the change is very nice, now it does make me feel new in a sense. Its an exciting format where money does not matter for the time being. I highly doubt any of the commons will become 10 dollar cards anytime soon how ever I can see some of the harder to find ones becoming 5 dollar ones. Its just refreshing to have a tipsy turny format where all those dust covered commons have a purpose. Standard and Extended to some degree just feel way to defined to me, and there is nothing wrong with that but when I jump in the pauper que the mystery of what I will face is very fun and exciting. I have seen a mix of decks and rarely face the same one in any four man. Kudos to WOTC on this one, and all those who pushed and helped this turn about.
I know personally Pauper and 100 card singleton have revived my interest in Magic and I can only play MTGO. The diversity of the formats is great, where I find Standard and Block to be too formulaic. I love Pauper; I'll celebrate with you. That's 15% in jest.