June 9th Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame

It's finally here. Modern Horizons is legal for play on Magic Online. The Leagues have been consolidated. The bans are in effect. Pauper has entered a new era. Whatever Pauper was a few weeks ago it is something different today. It's also rather familiar. Both poles were on display in the June 9th Challenge.

What's familiar? The decks at the top of the challenge. Izzet Delver, featuring Accumulated Knowledge, won the day. It had two slots in the Top 8 (with a third going to Izzet Faeries, complete with Faerie Seer) and another finish in the Top 32 with a 3-4 record. Izzet Delver did not lean as hard on Daze or Gitaxian Probe as other blue tempo decks and as such had an easier time porting directly over to the new metagame. The two Top 8 lists were fairly stock and avoided the recent addition of Fire // Ice. 

Coming in with two Top 8 appearances - Mono Black Control. While this deck has never really gone away, Modern Horizons has given the deck its very own version of Skred in Defile. Defile was the most played new card in the Top 8 with 7 copies. The eighth place list splashed blue for Dimir Guildmage off of four Dimir Aqueduct. I'm a fan of Dimir Guildmage but have moved my Mono Black deck to a Snow-Covered Swamp mana base to facilitate Arcum's Astrolabe. The one mana prism allows you to keep your Swamp count high for Defile while enabling cards like Dimir Guildmage and other fringe (read: only I play them) cards like Strangling Soot.

Speaking of new, Arcum's Astrolabe headlined all new cards. There were 16 copies across all Top 32 decks. Faerie Seer and Winding Way were tied for second with 8 copies each. Astrolabe gives every deck a solid turn one play that replaces itself. There is a real cost to this as it means skimping on the number of gain lands, karoos, cycling lands, and fetches you are able to run. Still, the opportunity to fix your mana while also seeing a fresh card is attractive. Anecdotally, I saw a ton of decks in the league lean on the Astrolabe to stitch together base Boros decks splashing multiple colors.

Dimir Control has also emerged in the wake of Dimir Delver. Leaning hard on Gurmag Angler and disruption, this deck is still quite capable of dumping a ton of cards into the graveyard early to fuel a big fish. Condescend played the deck to the finals this week, complete with three copies of Mulldrifter. While the deck lost some free wins off of Delver of Secrets, it still has the ability to play a solid control game and see a ton of cards. 

Moving forward cards like Tin-Street Hooligan become attractive options. The ability to develop your own board while potentially stranding a Glint Hawk looks to be important for the foreseeable future. Hearth Kami and Torch Fiend are not as good since they have to hit the bin, and Ainok Survivalist is just a bit slow (and it's no Nantuko Vigilante). Qasali Pridemage, however, might hit the sweet spot between threat and answer. Still, this is just Week One of Modern Horizons season. The league results drop on Wednesday and considering the influx of new cards, it will be interesting to see what decks managed to get to five wins.

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!

Common Design: The One with Two Urza's Saga Cards

Time for another entry in my series on potentially powerful Pauper cards. Today I want to start with a card that has gotten a lot of press, in no small part because of one Gavin Verhey.

Over the past several years I have stumped for a three mana sweeper in Pauper on several occasions. When the format was dominated by Stompy and Delver the idea of a single card that could handle a large army of small creatures was incredibly attractive. This was before Palace Sentinels took its play as a pillar of the format. But let's try and return to early 2017.

The baseline size for an aggressive creature in Pauper is 2/2. Beatdown decks build their CVs on their ability to flood the board with these creatures and overwhelm the opponent. The release of Burning-Tree Emissary made it incredibly easy to end the second turn with between six and eight power. At the time the best sweepers were Electrickery and Evincar's Justice which put the aggressive decks at a significant advantage. 

The result of the offensive onslaught was that decks turned to cards like Moment's Peace and other damage prevention effects to survive the early game. Slower decks had a hard time packing the correct removal to take out larger threats while containing an early army. As a consequence, traditional aggressive decks almost completely vanished since they could not come out ahead of the Fog parade. The hope was that a card like Steam Blast would provide control decks with a way to stall Stompy and the like while not leaving them vulnerable to larger threats since they could run supplemental removal.

Now the pendulum is at the other end of its arc. Beatdown is barely a factor for multiple reasons. Prismatic Strands and Moment's Peace make it very difficult for attacking to work while Stonehorn Dignitary shuts down the combat phase entirely. Augur of Bolas, Kor Skyfisher, and Palace Sentinels are all fantastic blockers and eat 2/2s for breakfast. The thing is I still think a card like Steam Blast would be good for Pauper in the long run as a check on these strategies in the future.

That presents another problem. The format has moved past 2/2 creatures and now needs efficient three power creatures for beatdown decks to make a comeback. So if Modern Horizons brings Steam Blast, what else could it bring? My hope is for Albino Troll.

Albino Troll has a series constructed pedigree. As a 3/3 for 1G it is a solid threat that comes with an Echo cost. Is a turn two 3/3 good enough to eat up your third turn? Maybe. If you run Burning-Tree Emissary into Albino Troll? That's a lot more palatable. 

Both of these cards - Albino Troll and Steam Blast - are fairly simple and elegant. They could serve a vital role in Modern Horizons limited while also bolstering Modern. And both are perfectly reasonable to be printed at common in a Masters style set.

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

Common Design: Roar of the Wurm

We’re brushing off the dust and flashing it back. Let’s take a look at Roar of the Wurm and whether or not it could be a reasonable common in Modern Horizons.

You can check out this post to look at my guidelines. Needless to say, New World Order won’t matter much in a set built to impact Modern. 

Roar of the Wurm was a constructed caliber card back in its day. While a seven mana 6/6 is definitely on par for a common, a conditional four mana version is...well also on par for common these days. 

Ignoring Gurmag Angler for a moment - since that card costs one mana in reality - there are two cards we should look at when examining Roar of the Wurm: Walker of the Grove and Canker Abomination. Both of these touch on the different sides of Roar.

 Walker of the Grove can provide you two creatures, both of which are overpriced. The front half - 8 mana for a 7/7 - isn’t exciting. Similarly a 5 mana 4/4 is just average. Considering there are 4/4s four four mana available that do not see play, Walker is just not going to cut it. What it does showcase, however, is R&D’s willingness to print two-for-one creatures at common in Masters style sets. Walker is also a split card - it is either a 7/7 that leaves behind a 4/4 or it’s just a 4/4. Roar of the Wurm is similar in that you can try to cast the 7 mana version first, but then you have to invest more mana in the second half. The goal should be to get the cheaper version first.

This is where Canker Abomination becomes relevant. It is a conditional 4 mana 6/6. Sound

familiar? Roar of the Wurm fills the same role provided it has found its way into your graveyard. The difference here is that Canker Abomination could be smaller while the Wurm token will always be a 6/6. The point of this exercise was not to judge Roar of the Wurm against these existing commons - Roar is miles better - but rather to provide context as to whether Roar of the Wurm could be released as a lower rarity.

And I think the answer is a resounding “Yes!”. If you can get this card into the graveyard you can get a perfectly reasonable threat on turn four that just so happens to be incredibly vulnerable. Not only will the token die by conventional means, but it also falters in the face of the stiff breeze of Unsummon. Combine all of these factors with the supposedly higher level of Modern Horizons and I would be surprised if Roar of the Wurm wasn’t in the set.

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