I think there is too much nonmadness cards in the deck to utilize all the discard. I think call to the netherworld sounds like a cool idea, maybe a couple rootwallas would work well with the discard aswell. I mean they will always be 1/1s but you still get them for free and a pseudo-cantrip off of winds.
Just a suggestion. If you were writing this article with a casual content idea in mind you might have wanted to put a disclaimer or something. The way the article was written sounded like you were coming off of major tournament experience. As an almost pauper only paper, I think the least you could have done was played a few games in the pdc room just to see if your decks could stand up to that. Also, your bit about linear mechanics might be true for standard, but in classic I am fairly certain that most of the tier one decks are not linear (MUC, RG beats, Cloak,....). Also, stating the format you were talking about could be useful in the future. That already rotated standard deck confused the hell out of me,
I would seriously consider Call to the Netherworld. I know it seems like a bad card -- and normally it is -- but it can let you turn a profit on Tolarian Winds. Note that you can get back one of the other cards you're discarding, which also might help alleviate the problem you mentioned of not wanting Winds when your hand is good.
Gorger is surprisingly effective, albiet vulnerable to removal, but a potential turn 2 4 power creature is nothing to sneeze at, plus in rare circumstances, its GOTG the removal (very very rare) I'd like to see deep analysis somewhere, possibly over think twice, its very solid CA and fits the theme nicely.
I was not sold on the Gorgers initially. However, after playing with them, they proved to be very successful. Either I would have a 4/2 creature ready to attack on turn three, or I would be able to remove a pesky blocker. I do not think they belong in every deck, or even the final version of this one. However, as of now, they are performing very well in this particular deck, and will stay until testing proves otherwise.
Fair enough. If you are going to write articles for this site, why don't you write them on leagues? I would love to see an article on leagues. Specifically cheating in leagues, and whether or not it is still as rampant as it was back when I quit playing them.
@ Richard - I certainly don't think pauper is a joke format, nor was this done as a cheap way to pick up store credit (I'm not even entirely sure that the per word is worth the time). That said, I have to disagree that articles about pauper must focus solely and explicitly on PDC tourney-caliber decks or the PDC meta. It seems to me that that's already being written about, on this site and others. At no point did I suggest that these decks were format busters (though I would happily try Rainbow Suspenders in a pauper standard tourney, probably getting my ass handed to me, but as you say, therein lies the learning). Nor was I writing as a die-hard PDCer. One of the things that's great about pauper on MTGO is that it is a very inexpensive entry into constructed for new players. But you do still have to construct a deck. That's where (dare I say it) more casual content might play a role. Perhaps that means that my pauper articles will always be a disappointment to you, but I hope occasionally something of value might shake loose even for the seasoned PDC veteran. @MysticLancer - worry not, I've got a firm grasp on the "comments about ideas are not comments about people" concept :) Thanks for the kind words. And thanks again everyone for commenting!
The most important thing to take from all of these comments is that they aren't attacking you. People aren't trying to be mean or spiteful but are just trying to be helpful so you can learn and make your second article better. Don't take it personally and use it to grow your article writing.
As an Active member of the Pauper community i am always glad for exposure to PDC.
But at the same time it would be nice if you did some research before you post an article.
I do not know of your clan events and it seems they have not been advertised, but if they are only internal to the clan, the result will be very skewed due to the small number both of players and events.
Both the Standard and Classic Metagame are well defined or well documented at the moment. I would think that if you are to do an article on PDC then you would use information from a larger, more defined and longer established meta.
I would welcome you to try any or all of those decks at a PDC event, which are almost ran nightly at this point, to see how they fare. Once you have that information then i would feel a little better about you writing for a format you are not 100% familar with.
Most of those deck lists look rough and untested and i would feel bad for the person who decided to run Ire/dragonauts in a Classic PDC event. The Dragonauts would draw tons of removal and there is enough graveyard hate in the format that the ire's would be less than effective.
I have no clue about the gruul storm, but your manabase is way way off. And Rainbow suspenders would lose numerous games due to color screw without proper fixing.
As far as the "best" cards are concerned i am with spike and if you actually read some of the pauper websites you would see what cards are format defining.
PDC is not a joke format and i hope that this wasn't written to just get a few dollars credit. If it is not a joke then you have my apology and i hope that you do more research before you address a wider audience. I also hope that readers understand that these decks have not been tested against a wide and established meta.
@SpikeBoyM: I have to plead some ignorance of the broader PDC metagame. The clan event was run by League Warriors, which as you might guess from the name focuses more on limited. The Ire deck was for a post-GPT standard tournament. Sadly, I rarely have the time to commit to a full-on tournament, but I would love to see what happened to this deck in the full meta.
As for the "ten best," I agree that the decklist should not be considered the definitive top 10. Like I say in the article, depends on the deck...Blink is clearly a contender for overall power, though, for sure.
@khirareq - see above re: not appearing in the PDC logs. As for Strength, the deck typically generates enough card drawing to formulate an Empty + Strength alpha strike. It's not all that great a trick in a vacuum but I'm rarely at a loss for uses for it (even occasionally on defense). Scatter is interesting, and buddies up with Vigean Hydropon in another pauper deck of mine, but in this instance I don't know what I'd remove (and I would really have a lot of Convoke going one, even with the Oracles...).
I don't remember seeing either of these decks in the metagame data for either of the standard pauper events. And I've recorded most of the data for these tournaments at paupermagic lately, so I would have recognized them. They are intriguing, though I do have to question things like Strength in Numbers with only one token producer (why not run scatter the seeds?), or boreal druid over llanowar elf (just to pump skred?)
It's always nice to see what other communities are doing with the Pauper format. However, you make numerous mention of these clan events- What clan, and are they clan only?
Also, you seem to have a very insular pauper metagame. In the general PDC metagame, many of the storm decks were hated out due to the powerful sideboard cards against such strategies.
I stumbled upon this page randomly and wanted to offer some advice. About myself, I am an 1870 rated limited player, and 999 is a format I am comfortable with it. So if nothing else, I am rather solid. Please take this criticism as my trying to help you get better; no offense or denigration is meant in this post despite the fact that it is critical.
The first thing I need to get out of the way is the notion that this is a very good deck. It has some great cards, but it will play in a good-but-not-amazing way due to a strategic flaw and a weak mana base. The strategic flaw is the deck's lack of strong threats and permanents which unfortunately cuts into the value of your ridiculous card advantage via wrath and card drawing like the broken tidings. Unless tidings lets you win on attrition, an opponent whose deck is one solid threat after another, will fairly often just beat yours or outrace you even when you draw your broken stuff. The way to solve this problem would have been to go after more solid or evasive threats rather than early blockers and stuff -- and to instead fall back on mana leak / remove soul for early defense.
In this regard you made a better choice than I would have during the draft, taking phantom warrior over sift although you don't do this in general. You can somewhat deal with this problem by boarding in your countermagic, which serves multiple roles by protecting your more limited number of threats, stopping your opponent's showstoppers, and serving as an early defense. This is the reason Lumengrid Warden belongs in the board: they get obsoleted very quickly, whereas countermagic is probably a better defense and doesn't become obsolete as fast.
Another issue is the mana base. Regardless of your mana flood, 18 lands is the right recipe for this deck given its copious card-drawing. You also need to have far more plains than you do. Even a relatively light splash of one color in a two-color deck justifies a 10/7 land ratio, and in this case, I would at least have done 10/7 if I could not convince you to run 10/8 lands. I am not sure about splashing blaze; it's an absolutely awesome card, but regardless, you have to run more than one mountain and no mana fixers to have a realistic hope of casting any red card. Is it worth two or three mountains? Personally, I don't like to do that when your card quality is fairly high in two colors, but I could be wrong.
All that said, your draft choices were very sound even if your deck construction was a little off. Best of luck!
I stumbled upon this page randomly and wanted to offer some advice. About myself, I am an 1870 rated limited player, and 999 is a format I am comfortable with it. So if nothing else, I am rather solid. Please take this criticism as my trying to help you get better; no offense or denigration is meant in this post despite the fact that it is critical.
The first thing I need to get out of the way is the notion that this is a very good deck. It has some great cards, but it will play in a good-but-not-amazing way due to a strategic flaw and a weak mana base. The strategic flaw is the deck's lack of strong threats and permanents which unfortunately cuts into the value of your ridiculous card advantage via wrath and card drawing like the broken tidings. Unless tidings lets you win on attrition, an opponent whose deck is one solid threat after another, will fairly often just beat yours or outrace you even when you draw your broken stuff. The way to solve this problem would have been to go after more solid or evasive threats rather than early blockers and stuff -- and to instead fall back on mana leak / remove soul for early defense. In this regard you made a better choice than I would have during the draft, taking phantom warrior over sift although you don't do this in general. You can somewhat deal with this problem by boarding in your countermagic, which serves multiple roles by protecting your more limited number of threats, stopping your opponent's showstoppers, and serving as an early defense. This is the reason Lumengrid Warden belongs in the board: they get obsoleted very quickly, whereas countermagic is probably a better defense and doesn't become obsolete as fast.
All that said, your draft choices were very sound even if your deck construction was a little off. Best of luck!
On whether or not you should have conceeded - I don't think any of us in the audience can really make that call. It's a judgement call that should be based on the experience of the players in the game. If you thought your chances of winning the game were better than marginal, then no, you should play it out. If you thought that your eventual success was highly unlikely, then yeah, you probably should have conceeded. Then again it's hard to be a top competitor if you think like that!
I do stand by what I said about Polyjak's actions as host; what he did was right.
Elrogos - come play Standard PDC with us! The metagame there has been shifting violently every week! I have yet to playtest against two different people playing the same deck twice in the same night. I have run up against duplicates in a tournament, but never the same duplicate week to week (first week boros, next week orzhov, next week gruul, that kind of thing.) There is a rock/paper/scissor effect in the format that keeps it vibrant.
""I would love to know what common was picked over the $5 bill that is Phyrexian Arena.""
Judging from the other commons in the pack, it was Dark Banishing. Those groups of commons go together in the collation: Dark Banishing, Elvish Berserker, Crafty Pathmage, Hill Giant. You can see this in Pick 16... Why someone playing black (obviously if they picked DB) would pick that over the Arena is beyond me - except sometimes ya get tunnelvision looking for such cards and click before looking at the rest of the pack...
I think there is too much nonmadness cards in the deck to utilize all the discard. I think call to the netherworld sounds like a cool idea, maybe a couple rootwallas would work well with the discard aswell. I mean they will always be 1/1s but you still get them for free and a pseudo-cantrip off of winds.
Just a suggestion. If you were writing this article with a casual content idea in mind you might have wanted to put a disclaimer or something. The way the article was written sounded like you were coming off of major tournament experience. As an almost pauper only paper, I think the least you could have done was played a few games in the pdc room just to see if your decks could stand up to that. Also, your bit about linear mechanics might be true for standard, but in classic I am fairly certain that most of the tier one decks are not linear (MUC, RG beats, Cloak,....). Also, stating the format you were talking about could be useful in the future. That already rotated standard deck confused the hell out of me,
Maybe you need to look harder...
http://www.classicquarter.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=158
I would seriously consider Call to the Netherworld. I know it seems like a bad card -- and normally it is -- but it can let you turn a profit on Tolarian Winds. Note that you can get back one of the other cards you're discarding, which also might help alleviate the problem you mentioned of not wanting Winds when your hand is good.
Interested to see how this deck develops.
Gorger is surprisingly effective, albiet vulnerable to removal, but a potential turn 2 4 power creature is nothing to sneeze at, plus in rare circumstances, its GOTG the removal (very very rare) I'd like to see deep analysis somewhere, possibly over think twice, its very solid CA and fits the theme nicely.
I was not sold on the Gorgers initially. However, after playing with them, they proved to be very successful. Either I would have a 4/2 creature ready to attack on turn three, or I would be able to remove a pesky blocker. I do not think they belong in every deck, or even the final version of this one. However, as of now, they are performing very well in this particular deck, and will stay until testing proves otherwise.
I'm not sold on Brain Gorgers myself. A punisher mechanic like this plus all the inconsequential dorks in PDC just doesn't add up to me.
Cool article and concept. Would be better without the typos.
Fair enough. If you are going to write articles for this site, why don't you write them on leagues? I would love to see an article on leagues. Specifically cheating in leagues, and whether or not it is still as rampant as it was back when I quit playing them.
@ Richard - I certainly don't think pauper is a joke format, nor was this done as a cheap way to pick up store credit (I'm not even entirely sure that the per word is worth the time). That said, I have to disagree that articles about pauper must focus solely and explicitly on PDC tourney-caliber decks or the PDC meta. It seems to me that that's already being written about, on this site and others. At no point did I suggest that these decks were format busters (though I would happily try Rainbow Suspenders in a pauper standard tourney, probably getting my ass handed to me, but as you say, therein lies the learning). Nor was I writing as a die-hard PDCer. One of the things that's great about pauper on MTGO is that it is a very inexpensive entry into constructed for new players. But you do still have to construct a deck. That's where (dare I say it) more casual content might play a role. Perhaps that means that my pauper articles will always be a disappointment to you, but I hope occasionally something of value might shake loose even for the seasoned PDC veteran. @MysticLancer - worry not, I've got a firm grasp on the "comments about ideas are not comments about people" concept :) Thanks for the kind words. And thanks again everyone for commenting!
The most important thing to take from all of these comments is that they aren't attacking you. People aren't trying to be mean or spiteful but are just trying to be helpful so you can learn and make your second article better. Don't take it personally and use it to grow your article writing.
I agree with the general sentiments posted below. Nothing personal, but those decks would do pretty atrociously in real PDC tournaments.
League Geek,
As an Active member of the Pauper community i am always glad for exposure to PDC.
But at the same time it would be nice if you did some research before you post an article.
I do not know of your clan events and it seems they have not been advertised, but if they are only internal to the clan, the result will be very skewed due to the small number both of players and events.
Both the Standard and Classic Metagame are well defined or well documented at the moment. I would think that if you are to do an article on PDC then you would use information from a larger, more defined and longer established meta.
I would welcome you to try any or all of those decks at a PDC event, which are almost ran nightly at this point, to see how they fare. Once you have that information then i would feel a little better about you writing for a format you are not 100% familar with.
Most of those deck lists look rough and untested and i would feel bad for the person who decided to run Ire/dragonauts in a Classic PDC event. The Dragonauts would draw tons of removal and there is enough graveyard hate in the format that the ire's would be less than effective.
I have no clue about the gruul storm, but your manabase is way way off. And Rainbow suspenders would lose numerous games due to color screw without proper fixing.
As far as the "best" cards are concerned i am with spike and if you actually read some of the pauper websites you would see what cards are format defining.
PDC is not a joke format and i hope that this wasn't written to just get a few dollars credit. If it is not a joke then you have my apology and i hope that you do more research before you address a wider audience. I also hope that readers understand that these decks have not been tested against a wide and established meta.
I'm no expert, but your card choices seem subpar.
A 3 color deck with no Terramorphic Expanse?
Naturalize instead of Ronin Unicorn?
Also, posting "10 best commons" list, then saying its not really the 10 best commons list is pretty janky. Make a point and defend it.
@SpikeBoyM: I have to plead some ignorance of the broader PDC metagame. The clan event was run by League Warriors, which as you might guess from the name focuses more on limited. The Ire deck was for a post-GPT standard tournament. Sadly, I rarely have the time to commit to a full-on tournament, but I would love to see what happened to this deck in the full meta.
As for the "ten best," I agree that the decklist should not be considered the definitive top 10. Like I say in the article, depends on the deck...Blink is clearly a contender for overall power, though, for sure.
@khirareq - see above re: not appearing in the PDC logs. As for Strength, the deck typically generates enough card drawing to formulate an Empty + Strength alpha strike. It's not all that great a trick in a vacuum but I'm rarely at a loss for uses for it (even occasionally on defense). Scatter is interesting, and buddies up with Vigean Hydropon in another pauper deck of mine, but in this instance I don't know what I'd remove (and I would really have a lot of Convoke going one, even with the Oracles...).
Thanks for the comments!
Also for your standard list, how does it not have Momentary Blink, probably the defining card in PDC Standard right now.
I don't remember seeing either of these decks in the metagame data for either of the standard pauper events. And I've recorded most of the data for these tournaments at paupermagic lately, so I would have recognized them. They are intriguing, though I do have to question things like Strength in Numbers with only one token producer (why not run scatter the seeds?), or boreal druid over llanowar elf (just to pump skred?)
It's always nice to see what other communities are doing with the Pauper format. However, you make numerous mention of these clan events- What clan, and are they clan only?
Also, you seem to have a very insular pauper metagame. In the general PDC metagame, many of the storm decks were hated out due to the powerful sideboard cards against such strategies.
Alex
Nice article Pete, I always enjoy them. It was definitely nice to see the online side and how the combo works in general. Good Job!
I haven't seen anyone discussing online options, though. I liked it for that. :)
Lol...... Yet another Hulk Flash article. I believe this is the 1000th article attributed to Hulk Flash (if you use Flores' count)
Anyway, it's pretty much known throughout the world, but I'm sure there's some people here who probably haven't heard about it.
Good article anyway.
Hi,
I stumbled upon this page randomly and wanted to offer some advice. About myself, I am an 1870 rated limited player, and 999 is a format I am comfortable with it. So if nothing else, I am rather solid. Please take this criticism as my trying to help you get better; no offense or denigration is meant in this post despite the fact that it is critical.
The first thing I need to get out of the way is the notion that this is a very good deck. It has some great cards, but it will play in a good-but-not-amazing way due to a strategic flaw and a weak mana base. The strategic flaw is the deck's lack of strong threats and permanents which unfortunately cuts into the value of your ridiculous card advantage via wrath and card drawing like the broken tidings. Unless tidings lets you win on attrition, an opponent whose deck is one solid threat after another, will fairly often just beat yours or outrace you even when you draw your broken stuff. The way to solve this problem would have been to go after more solid or evasive threats rather than early blockers and stuff -- and to instead fall back on mana leak / remove soul for early defense.
In this regard you made a better choice than I would have during the draft, taking phantom warrior over sift although you don't do this in general. You can somewhat deal with this problem by boarding in your countermagic, which serves multiple roles by protecting your more limited number of threats, stopping your opponent's showstoppers, and serving as an early defense. This is the reason Lumengrid Warden belongs in the board: they get obsoleted very quickly, whereas countermagic is probably a better defense and doesn't become obsolete as fast.
Another issue is the mana base. Regardless of your mana flood, 18 lands is the right recipe for this deck given its copious card-drawing. You also need to have far more plains than you do. Even a relatively light splash of one color in a two-color deck justifies a 10/7 land ratio, and in this case, I would at least have done 10/7 if I could not convince you to run 10/8 lands. I am not sure about splashing blaze; it's an absolutely awesome card, but regardless, you have to run more than one mountain and no mana fixers to have a realistic hope of casting any red card. Is it worth two or three mountains? Personally, I don't like to do that when your card quality is fairly high in two colors, but I could be wrong.
All that said, your draft choices were very sound even if your deck construction was a little off. Best of luck!
Hi,
I stumbled upon this page randomly and wanted to offer some advice. About myself, I am an 1870 rated limited player, and 999 is a format I am comfortable with it. So if nothing else, I am rather solid. Please take this criticism as my trying to help you get better; no offense or denigration is meant in this post despite the fact that it is critical.
The first thing I need to get out of the way is the notion that this is a very good deck. It has some great cards, but it will play in a good-but-not-amazing way due to a strategic flaw and a weak mana base. The strategic flaw is the deck's lack of strong threats and permanents which unfortunately cuts into the value of your ridiculous card advantage via wrath and card drawing like the broken tidings. Unless tidings lets you win on attrition, an opponent whose deck is one solid threat after another, will fairly often just beat yours or outrace you even when you draw your broken stuff. The way to solve this problem would have been to go after more solid or evasive threats rather than early blockers and stuff -- and to instead fall back on mana leak / remove soul for early defense. In this regard you made a better choice than I would have during the draft, taking phantom warrior over sift although you don't do this in general. You can somewhat deal with this problem by boarding in your countermagic, which serves multiple roles by protecting your more limited number of threats, stopping your opponent's showstoppers, and serving as an early defense. This is the reason Lumengrid Warden belongs in the board: they get obsoleted very quickly, whereas countermagic is probably a better defense and doesn't become obsolete as fast.
All that said, your draft choices were very sound even if your deck construction was a little off. Best of luck!
First of all, good article, SpikeBoyM!
On whether or not you should have conceeded - I don't think any of us in the audience can really make that call. It's a judgement call that should be based on the experience of the players in the game. If you thought your chances of winning the game were better than marginal, then no, you should play it out. If you thought that your eventual success was highly unlikely, then yeah, you probably should have conceeded. Then again it's hard to be a top competitor if you think like that!
I do stand by what I said about Polyjak's actions as host; what he did was right.
Elrogos - come play Standard PDC with us! The metagame there has been shifting violently every week! I have yet to playtest against two different people playing the same deck twice in the same night. I have run up against duplicates in a tournament, but never the same duplicate week to week (first week boros, next week orzhov, next week gruul, that kind of thing.) There is a rock/paper/scissor effect in the format that keeps it vibrant.
Plus, no mirrodin!
Sorry about that I reported it to the dev.
""I would love to know what common was picked over the $5 bill that is Phyrexian Arena.""
Judging from the other commons in the pack, it was Dark Banishing. Those groups of commons go together in the collation: Dark Banishing, Elvish Berserker, Crafty Pathmage, Hill Giant. You can see this in Pick 16... Why someone playing black (obviously if they picked DB) would pick that over the Arena is beyond me - except sometimes ya get tunnelvision looking for such cards and click before looking at the rest of the pack...