November 24th Pauper Challenge Breakdown

The November 24th Pauper Challenge looked rather different than the three prior events. There was only one Flicker Tron deck in the Top 8 and the archetype was not in the winner's circle. Instead it was one of two Stompy decks in the Top 32 - both in the Top 8 - that edged out a version of Boros Monarch that appears to have been built to beat the mirror. 

These results should be heartening. Tron was held in check by an abundance of strategies that are strong against the deck. Stompy, Elves, and Burn are all decks that attack Tron from slightly different angles. The second most popular deck - Izzet Faeries - has also adjusted and now has it's own end game lock in Deprive and Mystic Sanctuary. While not a slam dunk against Tron, access to true counters can help disrupt the loop that would otherwise lock a player out of a game. 

And here is the part where I say that the  results of the Challenge are not totally reflective of the wider Pauper metagame. Shortly after I tweeted out the image to the left I got a reply:

Top Tron players refused to play it because its boring

— PR0boszcz (@PR0boszczMTG) November 25, 2019

There are a few ways to look at the claim. No one can deny the fact that some well known Tron pilots stayed out of the Challenge. If you have been hanging out in Discord I manage you will have no doubt seen Hellsau, and to a lesser extent, Birbman bemoaning how good the deck is - with Hellsau feeling locked into play the strategy in the Format Championship even though they hate it. 

But to quote a musical that is culturally relevant, you had to be in the room where it happened. 

More on this in a bit.

Because these players did not play there is no way to know if they would have won in this field. It is possible that they would have won and it is also possible they would have lost. But the tweet above unintentionally questions the veracity of the results. This tournament doesn't count because Tron wasn't played.

What is true? Has Tron taken a hit or is it just a blip on the radar and the prison deck is going to come back in force before the December 16th Banned and Restricted announcement?

I'm not sure it matters. What does is that these discussions about Pauper need to come out of the shadows. While all social platforms are opt-in, Twitter at least puts the discourse in front of folks who make Magic. So if you have opinions on Pauper let people know using the #mtgpauper hashtag. 

Because shouting into the void of a Discord with people who agree with you doesn't affect change. It just makes you look like you're shouting. 

Pauper continues to grow in popularity and I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

November 17th Pauper Challenge Breakdown

There are two main takeaways from the November 17th Pauper Challenge. The first is that Tron currently holds Tier 0 status in the metagame. Winning the event and taking three of the Top 4 slots, it is clear that locking your opponents out of combat phases is a Good Thing at the moment. 

That is the headline for sure. Going into a Challenge without being prepared to take on both Moment's Peace and Stonehorn Dignitary is a recipe for failure. There are many ways to try and get around these cards - from Skewer the Critics to Shepherd of Rot - but one rising strategy seems to be running good old Counterspell. Delver made a Top 8 this week and was backed up by two different stripes of Faeries decks - Dimir and Izzet. The ability to apply pressure while saying no to key spells can buy enough time to beat Tron before they can fully assemble their prison lock.

But I want to talk about another way to use creatures here. I want to talk about Slivers. Back when Modern Horizons was fully revealed, Pauper players (including yours truly) recognized that Bladeback Sliver could provide Sliver decks with the reach needed to close out games. The new addition to the deck provided a way for Slivers to win in a board stall and through effects that obfuscated combat.

Frucile - who has put a lot of effort into Slivers in years past - put this change into practice. They made Top 8 while a similar list made it into the Top 16. Gemhide Sliver allows Slivers to explode on to the board a la Elves and Bladeblack Sliver means that board stalls do not matter (outside of the mirror). Slivers has always been a powerful tribe thanks to its three traditional lords. The result is a deck that can fairly quickly blank toughness based removal while also applying a ton of pressure and thanks to Virulent Sliver, a way to win through Weather the Storm.

The addition of Hunter Sliver in these decks is fantastic. It can help push through key creatures while also acting as a form of removal for smaller bodies (or bodies made smaller by Sidewinder Sliver). Considering that recent decline of Stompy in the past two Challenges, I think it is safe to say that Slivers is coming for the title of premier beatdown deck. An interesting, if not welcome, change.

The next Banned and Restricted update comes in four weeks. Until then we have a good idea of what the metagame is going to look like. With that being the case, how are you going to approach Pauper?

Pauper continues to grow in popularity and I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

November 10th Pauper Challenge Breakdown

There were 10 varieties of Flicker Tron decks in the Top 32 of the November 10th Pauper Challenge. Tron had two decks in the Top 8 and won the event. The recent performance of the deck has been the source some concerns expressed over the archetype's dominance as of late. 

But is this warranted?

I am not so sure. Taking a look at the chart that breaks down the Top 32, Burn performed on par with Tron. The most remarkable thing about the Top 32 may not be the number of Tron decks but the absolute dearth of Stompy - and aggro in general. While Boros Bully might be an aggressive deck, it is not beatdown in the sense of Heroic or Slivers (in the case of Sunday). Rather there exists a full spectrum of strategies under the Tron umbrella while everything else is trying to find a lane.

This is perhaps the best argument against keeping Tron around. Tron is a powerful enough mana engine that once it is online it simply gets to do more than a deck with a non-Tron mana base. Thanks to cards like Expedition Map and the advent of the London Mulligan, Tron's fail rate has declined. As such it has a greater chance of being able to leverage its mana advantage earlier and more often. The result is that decks that are not Tron get squeezed out by similar Tron-based strategies. Why play a control deck without Tron when you can play one with the engine and never want for mana again?

The popularity of Tron would be more worrisome if it had more success on Magic Online. Through three Challenges and a PTQ, Flicker based Tron decks are make up 17.19% of the Challenge Metagame while accounting for 20.48% of the Weighted Meta - that is weight of wins at a X-2 record or better. That's a pretty good clip but considering its popularity, the deck would have to be performing better to register as a problem on the radar of someone caring exclusively about numbers. 

By comparison, at the end of the Core 2020 season Jeskai midrange was 25% of all Top 32 lists and accounted for over 33% of the Weighted Metagame.

So Tron isn't as dominant as previous "best decks" but I don't think that tells the whole story. 

Tron can be miserable to play against. A non-Tron deck can establish its gameplan according to the most well written script and it simply may not matter. If Tron is able to come online it stops acting as a control deck and instead plays prison, locking the opponent out of meaningful actions. But the war is not entirely lost and so there exists a compulsion to play to the bitter end of things. 

It comes down to this: Tron is not a dominant deck as we have come to know them in Pauper, but the toll it takes on the psyche during a game is quite high. That is not to take anything away from people who enjoy playing the archetype, but I have heard from multiple people who win with the deck that they actively hate it and only play it because they feel there is no other choice.

That's not good.

Pauper continues to grow in popularity and I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

November 3rd Challenge Breakdown

On November 3rd there were 6 Tron decks in the Pauper Challenge and four of them made Top 8. It was half the Top 4 and won the Challenge. The winning player went 7-0 in the Swiss and then clearly went 3-0 in the Top 8. That's impressive. 

If you have followed me for any length of time you probably know I am not fan of the current iteration of Tron decks in Pauper. While the prospect of looping Dinrova Horror or Stonehorn Dignitary sounds cool, playing against it time after time can get tiresome - especially if you like attacking. Tron, in Pauper, is a prison deck that masquerades as a value build. 

But is it a problem?

I am not convinced. 

Shocking, I know.

Look at the results of the Challenge. Out of all the decks you can argue that one of them is a traditionally bad matchup for Tron - Elves. While you can make the case for Affinity, Burn, and possible the Dimir Exhume deck, each of them have some problems, including a vulnerability to either Hydroblast or Pyroblast and their Alpha kin. 

But every deck here attempts to attack the game on an axis that Tron excels at stopping. If some of these Stompy decks had instead been Red Deck Wins, it is possible a few Tron decks would have fallen. If the Izzet Faeries deck instead opted for an aggressive Delver of Secrets build, it's possible that one of these decks would have taken a hit. Four decks in a Top 8 is scary but only if it is consistent. And while this singular challenge may not be a harbinger of something worse, when we take a look at the three tournaments since Arcum's Astrolabe was banned we see something that should give pause.

This chart takes a look at the popularity of a given archetype (here Flicker Tron and Dinrova Tron are grouped) and compares its volume to the weight of its wins at X-2 or better. Through three events, Tron is crushing the field (although not as bad as some previous offenders). So the question then becomes what can be done? I would be looking at Bogles as a potential foil to Tron, while also investigating the prospect of Zombies as Shepherd of Rot can do some work in pressuring Tron without having to attack. 

But that's my two cents - what are yours?

Pauper continues to grow in popularity and I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

October 26 and October 27 Weekend Recap

First, I want to apologize for the delay in this post. I was out doing coverage of Grand Prix Phoenix this past weekend and let me tell you: two cross country flights in the span of 84 hours is not good for getting back on a schedule.

Regardless, there were two major Pauper tournaments this weekend - an 8 Round PTQ and a 7 Round Challenge. The results were not surprising but there was something that stood out immediately to me upon viewing the decks that performed well.

When you look at the PTQ results, they conform to what many believed the format would look like in the wake of banning Arcum's Astrolabe. Stompy and Boros Monarch were two of the best performing decks on the day, with Monarch taking the Blue Envelope - while other former format staples put up respectable numbers. These were top decks that lost the least after the ban.
At the same time some fringe strategies showed up in the shape of Dimir Teachings and Mono Black Aristocrats. It is heartening to see fringe strategies perform well in the PTQ as this event attracted a larger player base and one not as well versed in the nuances of Pauper. If these decks perform well under these circumstances then they may have merit as legitimate strategies. As always, however, there needs to be more than one result to identify a trend. And in the case of Teachings, a slightly different (read: 80 card) build made it back to the elimination rounds on Sunday.

The Challenge results sit in stark contrast to those presented above. Setting aside the fact that the PTQ was more than twice the size of the Challenge, no deck in the Top 32 took home more than four slots. In the Challenge, Boros Bully and Boros Monarch each put seven players into the Top 32. There was less overall diversity of archetypes but that in it of itself is not a bad thing. In fact, nothing about the Challenge results are inherently "bad".

Yet I couldn't shake a funny feeling about them during my flight home.

And I think this is why. Boros Monarch and Stompy were the best performing decks on Saturday. If the metagame had reacted rationally I would have expected to see an increase in Tron (true) and an increase in decks that prey on Tron (also true). At the same time, the sheer volume of Boros laid in stark contrast to the diversity of the PTQ. 

And I think it may have something to do with the population of players. The PTQ attracts both Pauper stalwarts and people trying to qualify. Compare that the the Challenge, which is made up almost exclusively are hardcore Pauper regulars. With such a closed metagame in mind it can become easier to game the system and attempt to predict what the known quantities will be running. The metagame is not as varied as as such packing specific cards becomes more attractive.

In turn this can explain the allure of Boros. Red and white have access to some of the best sideboard cards in Pauper - Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast, Gorilla Shaman, Prismatic Strands, Standard Bearer - and having access to these cards, especially in a relatively closed system, can give you a sizable advantage over the rest of the field. Of course this can create a feedback loop where if this is known, then it actually could be beneficially to not run in lockstep with the loop.

On Sunday that did not take place. In a single event, players were attracted to the powerful options provided by Wind-Scarred Crag. As the metagame moves further away from Jeskai it will be interesting to see if people will look for the exploits in the system or continue to trod the same paths again and again.

Pauper continues to grow in popularity and I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

October 20th Format Playoff Breakdown

So there was a Pauper Playoff on October 20th and the story of the Top 16 was a familiar tale. Jeskai Midrange decks dominated the Top 16 but didn't punch through for the win. Stompy put up a strong showing but was held in check by the correct metagame choice of the weekend - Boros Monarch. 

But all of this is a moot point. The format has fundamentally changed after the Arcum's Astrolabe ban. While I don't expect the metagame to change too much from a macro point of view (outside of Jeskai tanking) there are going to be some shifts.

First and foremost, Jeskai, as we have come to know it, is dead in a ditch. The cards are all still powerful and a shell using similar cards could easily exist. The problem with the builds moving forward is the mana. Astrolabe represented a way to get every color for a single mana. While Prophetic Prism still exists it is twice as expensive in a deck that ran 19 or 20 lands. That is a huge ask, especially considering how often the deck relied on a combination of Astrolabe and Preordain to set up its early turns. That is a lot harder to do when your Astrolabe costs two. Mulldrifter and Ephemerate is still a powerful combo, as is the Archaeomancer loop, but my guess is it becomes significantly harder to splash a third color, forcing Azorius Blink decks to slow down a bit and look for other ways to control the board. 

Out side of that, the format remains largely unchanged. Yes, the absence of Arcum's Astrolabe means that three color good stuff will take a hit, but look at the rest of the Top 16. You can reasonable expect those decks to remain part of the the competitive sphere. 

I've said Tron is likely to lose a step but still remain a highly played deck. I stand by this statement. Tron isn't going anywhere but the loss of Astrolabe is going to hurt its early game consistency. At the same point it may end up being a benefit as the deck can return to relying on lands to fix its mana rather than an artifact. 

What cards from Modern Horizons, Core 2020, and Throne of Eldraine now have a chance to take off in the wake of Astrolabe's axe? Sound off below.

Pauper continues to grow in popularity and I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

October 13th Pauper Challenge Breakdown

The October 13th Pauper Challenge brought us everything we have come to expect from the format. Jeskai was the most popular deck and performed better that the field. Arcum's Astrolabe was everywhere in the Top 8 with 24 out of 32 possible copies being played. Unlike other Challenges from last season, Jeskai came out on top- for the second time since Throne of Eldraine was released.

There is more to the Top 8, of course. Two aggressive Boros decks both made it to the elimination rounds, as did Affinity and Boros Monarch. Three of these decks ran Galvanic Blast while one ran Rally the Peasants as a force multiplier. This tracks with what people have been saying about the Pauper metagame for weeks now - if you aren't playing Ephemerate decks you have to be positioned to race them.

Looking at the remained for the Top 32, only three decks don't cleanly fall into this cap - the two Orzhov Monarch and the Skyfisher Tron. Even the Blue Zoo deck maxed out on copies of Sunken City in an attempt to Crusade their way to victory. A top 16 finish is nothing to scoff at but it will need to put up a few more results before the deck can be mentioned in the same breath as something like Red Deck Wins, let alone a true metagame staple.

The above chart is every deck that has at least two appearances (which is around 2% volume) or a Top 8 this season. Pay special attention to that last column. It weighs a decks volume - that is how many times it appears in the Top 32 - against its' Win+ volume - that is its share of wins at an X-2 record or better. You expect the very best decks to "punch above their weight". Jeskai is doing much better than punching above its weight - it's suplexing a sumo wrestler. It's also twice as popular as the next most voluminous archetype and still manages to account for almost 40% of all wins at X-2 or better. 

In the words of some mid-90s commercial, that's domination homes.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

October 6th Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame Breakdown

Forgive me, for this post is likely to be briefer than usual. Nothing was banned in today's update. The next chance for bans, barring an emergency, is halfway through November. So the metagame we have today is the one we will have for the foreseeable future.

The October 6th Pauper Challenge is fairly representative of what you can expect. Jeskai Mindrange based around Ephemerate was far and away the most popular archetype. A baker's dozen of decks in the Top 32 ran the Astrolabe and a flicker engine, including half the Top 8. As if we did not have enough to worry about with Mnemonic Wall and Archaeomancer, Entropy263 has shown us that you can achieve a loop with Arcum's Astrolabe, Mystic Sanctuary, and Ghostly Flicker if you stack the triggers correctly.

And at the same time, Stompy won. This was a story repeated many times last season. Astrolabe decks would dominate the Swiss rounds while Stompy ran over the Top 8. If you are looking for reason to the rhyme of the lack of announcement this could be it. Despite being an incredible force in both the rounds leading up to the Top 8 and the leagues, Ephemerate tends falter when it counts most.

But correlation does not equal causation. Clearly Jeskai is doing something right to consistently take down multiple slots in the Top 8. 

Jeskai the perfect expression of a Pauper midrange strategy. It can grind games to a halt with value and removal while also playing control just well enough to stay in the game against other similar strategies. It can falter in the face of Tron but is not dead in the water.

But what Jeskai is best at is drawing cards. When the power level of the format, barring a few key cards, is relatively even, being able to draw more of those pieces can matter quite a bit. And thus we see why Stompy can succeed: cards in hand do not matter if your opponent never gets a chance to cast them.

So beatdown is likely the answer next week. The problem, of course, is the abundance of Moment's Peace and Stonehorn Dignitary just waiting to be unleashed. Until aggro decks can adapt to counter these threats, the beatdown will continue to have a rough time remaining consistent.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

September 30th Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame Breakdown

The Core 2020 season of Pauper Challenges ended with Jeskai on top. While it had the second most Challenge wins (3 to Stompy's 4), it took down 34 out of a possible 96 Top 8 slots. It occupied a quarter of all reported Top 32s and took down a third of all wins of X-2 decks or better.

Put another way, for an average event you could expect somewhere between 5 and 6 Jeskai decks between the Top 16 and Top 8. The next best performer were Burning-Tree Emissary beatdown decks (Stompy and Red Deck Wins). You could expect two between the Top 16 and Top 8.

How would Throne of Eldraine season stack up against this? The first Challenge provided more of the same. Two Jeskai decks made the Top 8 and one won the whole dang thing. There were 11 Jeskai decks in the Top 32. The next two most popular decks - Stompy and Flicker Tron - barely held a candle to Jeskai's numbers. Flicker Tron and Stompy each had one deck with a record of 5-2 or better (and both had a deck finish in the Top 32 at 3-4). These big three accounted for 19 decks in the Top 32 and for more than half of the allocated Win+.

Win+ is a metric used on this blog. It measures a deck's success in a given tournament against the lowest finishing positive/neutral record. For a seven round event, a 4-3 record yields a Win+ of 1; 5-2 a Win+ 1, and so on.

There are some important pieces of information to be gleaned from this tournament. First, both Mono Black Control decks in the Top 8 found home for copies of Witch's Cottage. Neither ran Pestilence and the finalist ran two copies of Crypt Rats main (with two more in the board). Between the two, there were three copies of Thorn of the Black Rose (one main).

These decks are built for a different sort of grind - one of the Jeskai variety. Jeskai has been the best at dragging out games for quite some time, allowing their incremental value engine to take over. They also have a flexible sideboard that can often deal with traditional trump cards (like Pestilence). The two MBC decks in the Top 8 came prepared to fight aggressive strategies with 13 removal spells that cost one mana or less between the two main decks. They also overload on removal in an attempt to contain Jeskai.

If this trend continues it would follow for Jeskai to take a longer game approach. Mystic Sanctuary only appeared in two decks this week. In the versions of Jeskai that have Pulse of Murasa, adding Mystic Sanctuary could help to create a loop with Kor Skyfisher that provides yet another path to inevitability. 

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

September 22 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame Breakdown

11 Challenges, one Mythic Championship Qualifier, and one Format Playoff. The Core 2020 season closed with the September 22 Pauper Challenge. Throne of Eldraine is coming and the format is likely to experience some shifts before the October 7th Banned and Restricted List Update even if nothing ends up leaving the format.

The narrative coming out of Sunday was the "fall" of Jeskai. Despite making up half of the Top 8 only one build of Jeskai made the Top 4 and it was crowded out of the Finals. The other three decks in the Top 4 were all Stompy decks with slightly different creature suites. So which archetype had a better day? 

I don't have a solid answer. Jeskai decks were more popular - 9 total appearances - and they took home 40% of the Win+ points available in the Challenge. At the same time, Stompy won the dang thing and had three decks in the Top 4. It had 28% of all Win+ with 15.6% of the field. Compare this to Jeskai's 40% in 31.25% of the Top 32. If you were asking me to pick a winner on Sunday I would give the edge to Stompy, but not by a mile.

And isn't that the story of Core 2020 season? Jeskai is the most popular deck and racks up Top 8 appearances - 34 out of 96 total Top 8s - but doesn't win nearly as often. All Jeskai variants have 3 Challenge wins - Stompy has 4 in 10 Top 8 appearances.

(These numbers are inclusive of the MCQ but not the Format Playoff, as that tournament only reported the Top 16).

Jeskai, for better or worse, defined the last 13 weeks of high level Pauper play. It may be more accurate to say that the interaction of Mulldrifter and Ephemerate were the focal point, with Arcum's Astrolabe finding these cards and fixing mana, but that generates another question: is it okay for a format to have a clear best interaction around which everything revolves?

This question gets to the heart of differing opinions about what Pauper should be. Should there be a static point at the center that everyone is coming for, or should that center loci shift over time - and if so how long is appropriate?

Over the 12 events (in 13 weeks), Jeskai made up a quarter of all Top 32 appearances but it accounted for over a third of all Win+. Put another way: for every record 5-2 or better, Jeskai accounted for 1/3 of those wins. When looking at every other macro-archetype, the next best performer was Burning-Tree Emissary at nearly 13%. Beyond that you have Ethereal Armor decks and Tron decks that try to play the same game as Jeskai, only with a mana abundance. Should the core of Arcum's Astrolabe-Ephemerate-Mulldrifter-Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall account for over a third of the Top 32 and over 40% of the weighted metagame? That's a question for the folks in Renton.

My hope? Regardless of whether or not anything gets banned I'd like to see some evening out of these numbers. Moving into Throne of Eldraine season I'd like to see a smaller delta in the Jeskai numbers and I would like to see other decks claw back some of the metagame share. Whether this means people adopting maindeck hate measures or an overload of sideboard silver bullets, I'd like to see the meta pull itself free of Jeskai's gravtitational pull.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

Examining the September 15th Pauper Playoff

There was not a Pauper Challenge this past weekend. Instead there was an invite only Format Playoff. The result of the tournament is noteworthy - Elves over Eldrazi Green - but before we do I want to take a look at the Top 16. 

Unlike Challenges, Playoffs only provide the Top 16 decks. Out of these 16 decks, 8 were Jeskai featuring an Ephemerate engine and two were Tron featuring the same engine - 62.5% of the Top 16. When looking at Win+ the Jeskai decks accounted for 41.67% of all Win+ and when you add the Tron decks, Ephemerate engine decks accounted for more than 58% of the total volume of Win+ in the Top 16. Compare this to Stompy - the next most popular deck (or archetype) with 2 appearances, which accounted for 16.67% of all Win+. It is not that the Ephemerate engine decks are better than the rest of the format, it is that they are significantly better and are forcing nearly every other archetype to the fringes. 

Now, as to this event. Elves won the day. In the Top 8 it had to take down two different Jeskai decks, packing a grand total of three Electrickery and one Swirling Sandstorm. Even with that, Federusher came prepared for sweepers with Wrap in Vigor and Magnify, as well was running the maximum allowable copies of Lead the Stampede and Winding Way. They even packed a copy of Vivien's Grizzly in their sideboard. Needless to say they did not want to get blown out. Federusher also came ready for the mirror with two copies of Viridian Longbow main in addition to a Trinket Mage to fetch the equipment.

Federusher had to be Ponderouscz in the finals, with the latter player also making their way through two Jeskai decks. They were running Eldrazi Green - a mono green ramp deck that wants to resolve huge threats early while blowing up the opponent's lands. Normally a threat to Tron, Ponderouscz made some changes to help bulwark the deck against Jeskai. 

Traditionally Eldrazi Green has leaned on the interaction of Arbor Elf and Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl to generate its mana abundance. Historically this has been a fragile plan thanks to haha dead Elf. Ponderouscz build in redundancy with Nest Invader and Kozilek's Predator. While not as explosive as Arbor Elf, the Eldrazi Spawn provide an insurance policy that can help cast key spells. Ponderouscz also ran the full four copies of Entourage of Trest to keep the cards flowing. While they did not include any sweepers, it could be trivially easy for the deck to include copies of Electrickery or Swirling Sandstorm and set Utopia Sprawl to red in games two and three.

The success of Eldrazi Green points to Jeskai's greed. The deck centers on four and five mana haymaker plays but tries to get away on 19 or 20 land. This is an exploit for land destruction strategies. While Jeskai can easily handle any threat Eldrazi Green can present it has a harder time doing so when its mana is constrained. 

Can this strategy persist? Unclear. Eldrazi Green thrives when it is on the play. It also has a hard time against Burn and other decks that can pressure a life total while not needing a ton of mana. Additionally, if Elves remains a popular archetype Eldrazi Green could be in for a world of hurt thanks to Quirion Ranger. 

Still, it's nice to live in a world where this deck was a good call for an event.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

Why There Should Be Bans on October 7th

Yesterday I ended my entry on this blog by saying that Arcum's Astrolabe, Ephemerate, and the Tron mana engine should be banned. Today I am going to do my best to explain my position on the matter. This is going to be replacing my usual Patron's Only post for the week, but considering the subject matter I did not want to restrict access.

Similarly I am want to keep this on my blog because a lot of this is my opinion. While it is informed by data, this post is going to trend a little more negative than I'd like. I have heard a ton of feedback for I am endeavoring to be more positive on my more widely published pieces.

Before I go any further I am going to ask those of you reading to be civil in your comments. People who disagree with you are not crybabies or whiners. If you are reading this chances are you are like me and you want to see Pauper grow, succeed, and thrive. While we may see different routes to those ends we can at least agree on the end goal: a vibrant Pauper. 

This chart represents the online Pauper metagame, starting with the July 7th Challenge and running through the Challenge on September 8th. It is inclusive of the Mythic Championship Qualifier. It takes into account 352 decks from the Top 32s. While this is not a statistically significant sample size, it is fairly indicative of the metagame going back to the release of Core 2020. In that time, Jeskai decks have accounted for nearly 25% of all Top 32 lists - 87 decks to be exact - and 30 Top 8 slots (that's over 34%). If you are a regular reader you know I like the Win+ metric - something that measures wins above an X-3 record. Jeskai decks have accounted for nearly 33% of the Win+ share (indicated by the red trend line in the graph). All of these metrics seem to indicate the format is out of balance. Jeskai is defining the format it is dominating. 

What does a healthy format look like? A lot of this is going to be subjective but to me a healthy format is one that is dynamic. While there may be a Best Deck it should not be so potent that it is immune to shifts in the metagame. At the height of its power even post-Cloud of Faeries Delver had bad matchups that approached the game from different angles. By comparison the best way to beat an Ephemerate deck is to race. 

If we want to talk numbers, I think averaging between 12% and 15% of the top of the metagame is acceptable. Achieving a delta of between 3% and 5% of actual volume and weighted volume is likely ideal. The current delta for the top macro-archetype in Pauper currently sits at 8.24%.

So how do we restore parity? Right now the best way is to take cards out of the format. The current crop of Throne of Eldraine spoilers continue the trend of role players as opposed to metagame shapers. To be clear this is fine - Pauper is defined by cards released at commons, not a wish list of high power cards. 

One thing I am not going to do this time around is advocate for a ban on the Monarch mechanic. While I do feel that it has no place in two-player Magic it has also never existed in a format where beatdown decks did not have to compete with Daze. Daze was such a huge beating against decks that wanted to present two-drop threats that it helped stifle aggro. The fact it was often paired with Augur of Bolas did not help things either. While it may be true that the Monarch is too good for Pauper, I would like to see what a deck like Stompy could do if it did not have to contend with Daze on top of cards like Kor Skyfisher and Augur of Bolas. In this world is the Monarch a dominant force or one that is constrained by the inherent risk of the mechanic? While I am inclined to believe the former if the Monarch could survive and be a viable option without wapring the meta, I am all for keeping it around.

The case for banning Arcum's Astrolabe, as I see it, is as follows: it subverts the mana system. Prior to Astrolabe the format did not have great mana. While it was the best it had ever been between Khans of Tarkir Gain Lands and the Ravnica Block Bounce Lands, running more than two colors and reliably casting your spells was a bit of a stretch. Astrolabe did not just make the mana for decks better, it gave every one of those decks access to a card draw package. One reason to dip into multiple colors is to gain access to powerful effects outside your main chroma. In the world of Astrolabe this is trivial and has allowed four-color blue decks to rule the day. Make no mistake- all those Kor Skyfisher decks are blue decks and like all mana fixing in Pauper blue is able to make best use of Astrolabe. 

Many Pauper players love Astrolabe, likening it to Fetch Lands. They make decks more consistent and make it easier to cast your spells. This is valid. At the same time when the mana in a format gets too good decks start to resemble one another. While there may be multiple varieties of Jeskai out there, they all run the same core cards. Aside from a few flex slots - Trinket Mage vs Spellstutter Sprite for example - what is the actual difference in these decks?

Is this metagame diversity? 

Ephemerate looks innocuous. Blink strategies have been around the format since before it was sanctioned. While Ghostly Flicker has helped to power out some game ending loops it required multiple cards - Mnemonic Wall and another card - to enable the victory formation. Even then many players felt that Ghostly Flicker was too powerful to keep around. 

I was not one of them. When I saw Ephemerate I thought it would be a neat card but not one that broke things in half. 

I was wrong.

Whereas Ghostly Flicker requires two friends to do work, Ephemerate only needs one. Targeting Mnemonic Wall or Archaeomancer with Ephemerate means you get the best spell out of your graveyard and then you can get back the Ephemerate and start the process over again. Pair Ephemerate with Mulldrifter to draw six cards for four total mana. It is not the effect of Ephemerate as much as the cost. At a single mana it is trivial to set up a turn where you can enact the loop with your shields up. Ephemerate also can store itself in exile, meaning that traditional graveyard hate is less useful against the card. Ephemerate has had nearly four months approaching the summit of Pauper, let's have the card retire in peace.

The last card I want to see sunset is three cards - Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower. When a deck has access to the best spells in the format thanks the best possible mana - Astrolabe and Prophetic Prism - and has a surplus of resources, it can run roughshod over the metagame. If Tron was simply being used to power out Fangren Marauder and Rolling Thunder it would be safe to keep around. However Tron's main use these days is as part of a prison deck that can lock people out of interacting as early as turn four. Unlike prison strategies in other formats there are very few natural foils available in Pauper. The pieces can be stored in the graveyard or exile and thanks to a Mystical Teachings toolbox they can be retrieved and protected with ease. 

While there are fair applications of Tron, there is no path forward for including powerful cards that does not end with Tron running them and doing so, casting twice as many per turn thanks to 1+1+1 = 7. 

Tron also does work in stifling other end game decks. Slower midrange and control decks cannot keep up with a deck that simply out-manas them. As such, as long as Tron remains in the format these decks will tend towards Tron. One high profile Tron pilot has said the only reason the decks isn't dominating online is because of how physically taxing it is to pilot correctly.

So what happens if these bans take place? I hesitate to speculate too much. Boros Monarch and Stompy likely remain as solid options but I also imagine a new control deck will emerge and Familiar combo will see a resurgence. Regardless of all this I hope that October 7th ends with a healthier, more balance Pauper metagame.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

September 8 Challenge Winner's Metagame Breakdown

On September 8th Hellsau won the Challenge with Flicker Tron. Five Jeskai decks made the Top 8. Despite the fact the interaction of Mulldriter and Ephemerate have dominated the Pauper metagame for the past several months, there have not been many innovations when it comes to countering the menace. 

But don't worry - there were plenty of copies of Leave no Trace for Heroic and Hexproof - the scourge of September 1st.

To be fair it is hard to metagame against the Jeskai deck - and against Ephemerate-Mulldrifter- in the abstract. The decks that are able to run these cards dedicate multiple slots to cheap interaction to protect their engine. Some decks can come prepared - Spellstutter Sprite is quite good at eating Ephemerate - but the best Sprite decks these days just so happen to also be Jeskai decks. 

There are ways to fight the engine. Magma Spray and Last Breath can exile creatures in response to Ephemerate. Castigate can nab the card directly from the hand. There are a bounty of cards that can hit a spell in the graveyard, provided the shields are down. Heck, Faerie Trickery can get it off the stack for good, as can Syncopate and Liquify.

Have all of these been attempted? Possibly. It is also possible that running these cards might leave you at a disadvantage against the rest of the field. 

Still, Jeskai was five of the Top 8 decks on Sunday with another three in the Top 16. If you add up all Ephemerate-Mulldrifter decks in the Top 16, you come out to 10: 8 Jeskai, 2 Tron. That's out of 15 such decks in the Top 32. A 66% conversion rate to a 5-2 or better record is pretty darn good. 

And this is a sustained level of success, at least with regards to Jeskai. On August 11, Jeskai decks comprised 25% of the challenge Top 32 decks and accumulated 30% of all Win+ points. By the end of Sunday the volume shrunk to 24.72% but the Win+ volume rose to 32.96%. Even as the deck gets less popular, it gets better.

These numbers should give Pauper players pause. They indicate that nothing can keep Jeskai down. Even if you want to take solace in the results from Sunday that means Tron is the hero (and we all know the Tron memes at this point). With Throne of Eldraine looking to play in space that will not benefit the format of commons it means that other action may need to be taken to ensure the health of the format moving forward.

Yes I'm talking about bans. Arcum's Astrolabe, Ephemerate, and Tron.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

September 1 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame

And now for something completely different. The September 1st Pauper Challenge was won by a Jeskai deck featuring both Arcum's Astrolabe and Ephemerate. But Ethereal Armor had a breakout performance.

Last week (in a Patrons only post) I said that Ethereal Armor was the way to go moving forward. In an article that went live today I expanded on this notion. Namely, the proliferation of Arcum's Astrolabe decks makes the various Jeskai and Tron decks impossible to predict. While a macro strategy may be discernible, these decks could run any card they darn well please. So rather than trying to interact on a meaningful axis, the best way to attack them is to go as fast as possible and ignore their ability to interact with you. Both Heroic and Hexproof are able to do this, while piling on the damage thanks to Ethereal Armor and other force multipliers. 

These decks did more than perform well, they pushed out most other linear decks. Burn put up one Top 32 finish while Affinity was nowhere to be found. The aggressive bend on September 1st also kneecapped Tron decks, as none appeared in the Top 16.

The winning Jeskai list seemed to be prepared for this eventuality. While it did not overload on removal main it did have a copy of Journey to Nowhere, which could have proved instrumental it taking out Lagonna-Band Trailblazers during the Swiss rounds. The winner also packed two Spellstutter Sprite main, and that faerie has been feasting on one drops for more than a decade. Finally, Cracudo packed two copies of Standard Bearer in the sideboard as a way to obfuscate the plan of Hexproof, Heroic, and Stompy. 

So where does that leave the metagame moving into September 8th? Jeskai remains the dominant archetype and will surely adapt to the rise of these "go-tall" decks. The strategy must also adjust to meet the resurgent threat of Tribe Combo. If I were preparing for next week, I wouldn't leave home without access to Chainer's Edict and Pestilence. 

But that's just me.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

A Weekend of Winner's Metagames

A Look at the August 24 MTGO MCQ & August 25 Challenge

It was quite the weekend for Pauper. August 24 saw a 9 round (plus Top 8) Mythic Championship Qualifier on Magic Online and the cream certainly rose to the top. Sunday saw a much more reasonable Challenge (7 rounds plus Top 8). Considering that nothing was banned in today's announcement, it is going to pay to study these results.

Let's start, then, with the MCQ. At 9 rounds, the break even point for Win+ was a 5-4 record, which didn't take place until outside the Top 32. This was a massive event and the additional rounds helped the best decks rise to the top of the standings. While there was only one Tron deck in the Top 32 it made Top 8, as well as 5 of the 17 Jeskai decks. Still, the day was won by Hexproof (featuring four copies of Arcum's Astrolabe). 

When taken as a whole, the Jeskai macro performed extremely well while Stompy did fine. Every other deck that placed in the Top 32 also did at least average with regards to Win+.

At the end of Saturday, Jeskai cemented itself as the deck to beat and Hexproof provided a blueprint on how to do that, building off of the work that Stompy has done this season.

Jeskai is very good at handling singular small threats. While Stompy can go tall, it can still fall prey to a timely Skred. Savage Swipe can turn a tempo profit, but better than going up on tempo is blanking opposing cards. Slippery Bogle is quite good at that. As a result, Hexproof can simply go around Jeskai's main mode of interaction. While the deck is fairly easy to hate out, the archetype should be further explored as a way to attack Jeskai.

What about Sunday? There were more archetypes in the Top 32, as well as 8 different archetypes in the Top 8. There were two Jeskai decks, and this time the one featuring Trinket Mage won the whole thing. The metagame seemed to adjust to the success of aggressive strategies, as indicated by the relatively poor performance of Stompy. At the same time, singular threat go tall decks - Heroic and Hexproof - both made Top 8. When taken together, the Ethereal Armor decks are out performing Affinity, Burn, and Elves. 

Does that mean you should run the card next week? Probably not! Hexproof and Heroic are both highly susceptible to Chainer's Edict style effects, which just so happen to be well positioned in the metagame. That being said, properly constructing these decks could catch the metagame by surprise. That means lessening your reliance on Auras - we see you Leave no Trace. This is easy enough to do in Heroic. In Hexproof it could mean adopting Travel Preparations.

While the best Jeskai deck isn't known, the fact is Jeskai is currently the best deck in the metagame. It's time to put a target on the archetype and work taking it down a notch. How are you planning on melting some snow?

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!