February 3 Pauper Challenge Breakdown

The headline of the February 3 Pauper Challenge is that Burn took three of the Top 8 spots and had seven Top 32 appearances, with six of those being 4-2 or better. In a world dominated by Boros Monarch and Dimir Delver that's a pretty good headline.

That's what we call burying the lede. This was a small challenge - that Top 32 represented more than half of the field. Considering that it was also the day of the Big Game for the National Football League and you have a recipe for an outlier if I ever saw one. But we can get to that later.

Burn did have a great day and there's something nice about seeing variety in the builds. Every deck in the Top 8 opted for Thermo-Alchemist and Ghitu Lavarunner; one ignored Skewer the Critics entirely; one shaved Needle Drop while another cut copies of Lava Spike. Burn is a great Level One deck right now as it attacks the format quickly in a way that gets around Dispel. More than that, it also has a low enough curve to play around Daze and with Seeker of the Way Boros decks on the decline, it can win before Prismatic Strands can do its business. Burn is also very easy to hate out. Much like Affinity in Pauper and Dredge in other formats, if enough people pack appropriate answers then the deck loses its punch.

There are some other interesting notes from Sunday. Pilgrim Prison - an enchantment based control deck finished in the Top 16. Hexproof had its best finish this season. Izzet Delver came back from the dead to make Top 8. And Boros Monarch continues to keep the crown away from Bully.

Boros Monarch and Boros Bully both use a similar shell but operate along slightly different axes. Bully wants to eke out advantage in the form of tokens, using the force multiplier of Rally the Peasants to shrink the window of opportunity for a comeback. Monarch on the other hand is built for the long game. In the past few weeks Monarch has proven to be the superior build, potentially due to its more robust creatures.

Let's look at the seasonal stats. The cutoff for 2% of total volume this week is around 2 appearances.

That's a stark difference between Monarch and Bully. In a similar number of appearances this season Monarch has five more Top 8s. Monarch also has 11 X-2 or better finishes to Bully's 6. Of course there's still Dimir Delver - six Top 8s and a whopping 2.25 Top 8s over expectation - sitting at the top of the heap.

Moving forward I'd prepare for Burn. Whether that means extra copies of Lone Missionary or Martyr of Sands you have to have a plan to protect your life total. Beyond that, more of the same: know how to handle Monarch and Dimir.

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