June 23 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame

What happens when a format decides to take several turns off to spin its wheels? The answer appears to be found in the June 23rd Challenge. For weeks the name of the game has been Arcum's Astrolabe. On Sunday, two Affinity decks made Top 8 and Stompy took down the tournament.

Arcum's Astrolabe is a good card but at the same time it doesn't really do anything. Yes, it fixes mana and yes, it is cheap. Compare it to Ponder, Preordain, Faithless Looting, and Ancient Stirring. It is clearly less powerful than these and this is a horrible comparison. 

But run with it for a second.

At their apex, Ponder and Preordain helped to keep the best decks in the format flowing, They looked at multiple cards for a single spell and presumably upgrade the quality of a card in hand (although the number of times I've seen people Preordain into Preordain is...high).

So Astrolabe replaces itself with a random card and helps to fix your mana at the cost of a mana. For a deck that features Glint Hawk and Kor Skyfisher, that is all part of the plan. In a deck like Tron, however, the cost is a bit higher since Tron cannot cast the spell. And the Glint Hawk decks have now taken to running more spells to find key cards (similar to Tron) and less action. 

So what is the end result? Sometimes Astrolabe decks are glacially slow. Affinity and Stompy can prey upon slow draws and apply pressure early and often. Will this last? Probably not, but it exposes something about Pauper - you can't always afford to waste turns one and two on hand sculpting. 

Minimum number of appearances: 2 (or a Top 8)

So where does that leave us going into next week's playoff? I think we could see a return to an earlier metagame. Glint Hawk decks will likely need to choose which is better - Arcum's Astrolabe or Prophetic Prism - and run a playset of one and one or two copies of the other. Tron may have to devote more slots to actually handling the board instead of seeing a random card. 

If I had to pick one deck to do well on Sunday, it would be Boros Midrange - no Monarch. These decks have been picking up steam in recent weeks and now with Astrolabe, they have an easier time making Seeker of the Way large. Of course that could make an opening for a correctly metagamed Tron deck to take the whole thing down.

We'll have to wait and see.

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