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!