January 13 Pauper Challenge Breakdown

TL; DR: I'm starting a Patreon.

The January 13th Pauper Challenge is in the books and thus ends Ultimate Masters season with Ravnica Allegiance hitting the digital shelves this week. Mathonical won the day with Elves, defeating Burn, Boros Bully, and Boros Monarch in the Top 8. Three total copies of Spidersilk Armor had to have helped, as well as access to two copies of Hydroblast in the sideboard.

Boros decks did exceptionally well on the day, earning 9 total Win+ points across eight appearances. Base Dimir Gush decks were even money: five Win+ across five appearances. There were eight different archetypes in the Top 8 and 15 archetypes across the Top 32 if you split up Monarch and Bully Boros as well as Dimir and Esper Delver.

When you break the Top 32 down into the pillars, things shift just a bit. There were 12 Monarch decks, 9 Gush decks, and four Tron decks. 

The other two Top 8 decks were go-wide green decks with a huge but - they had sweeper insurance. The very best go-wide decks have tons of fragile creatures but cards like Spidersilk Armor and the triple lords of Slivers can make it harder for Electrickery to do the dirty work.

The season ends with a 2% threshold of 3.84 appearances - rounded up that means only decks with at least four Top 32 finishes will be featured. To the shock of everyone, Dimir Delver and Boros Bully are at the top of the chart, each performing 1.5 Top 8s above expectation.

So what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? Well, we can't ignore the fact that both Grixis Delver and Esper Delver got one Top 8 each, as well as two more Top 8s for Dimir Exhume. This means that base-blue/black Gush decks earned a total of 18 Top 8s. Meanwhile, combining Boros Bully and Monarch you get a total of 14 Top 8s.

Dimir Delver defined this six event season. The format has adjusted to handle threats both large and small - Angler and Insectile - and is catching on on how to handle the hordes of tokens spewed out by Bully. Incidentally, Tribe Combo had a fairly poor season all things considered. Given the abundance of powerful removal it makes sense that this deck has taken a hit.

And so ends another season dominated by Gush and Monarch. Going into Ravnica Allegiance I would be on one of these two decks. If not, I would consider running Hexproof. With Chainer's Edict removal all but absent form the top of the metagame, putting a ton of pants on a Bogle seems like a good idea.

With that out of the way, I want to talk about my new Patreon. Simply put, 2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper and I want to continue to bring you content like these breakdowns. I also want to do so much more and give you deeper insights into my thought process and how I approach the metagame. Given the amount I want to do, I want to be sure there is an invested audience. So this Patreon is an experiment that I hope works out. These weekly breakdowns won't stop, but Patrons will get access to some additional forums and perks. If you have questions about the Patreon please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. Regardless of whether or not you sign up, I hope you come along for the exciting ride that Pauper in 2019 is sure to be!