Welcome to a new chapter of Weekly Pauper Recap! First off, i have to apologise for the delay. I was unusually busy throughout the week and barely managed to get my usual 50 matches in. I simply didn’t find the time to also write an article.
As always, we’re going to start with a Metagame Recap, then we’re looking at the Decks I Played This Week and finally there will be two Intriguing Decks from this week’s published decklists, one of which i am going to play next week.
Metagame Recap
If you’re just interested in the raw data, refer to my Google spreadsheet. If you’re also interested in what i have to say about the data, let’s get to it!
This is wild. For the second week in a row, Faeries was the most popular archetype, with Mono Blue somehow being more popular than UR. Same as last week, W/x Monarch came in second. UB Alchemy had its best week in a month after seemingly continuing to fall out of favour. Stompy and Mono Red also made it in (with surprisingly low numbers for Mono Red), but there’s no Tron (!), Affinity, creature combo, Elves, Mono Black or Bogles.
For whatever reason, Acid Trip was a deck more than one of my opponents played this week. It’s been a while since we’ve had such an obvious outlier though, so why not.
Moving on to the data i personally find more important. Faeries jumped from third place to first, overtaking Mono Red, which had a quiet week. Nothing has changed re: W/x Monarch, but i’m counting Rhystic Tron towards that archetypes metagame share now. I will keep listing it separately though, just like Blue Tron and Marauder Tron. Speaking of which, because we’re now well past the sudden Tron hype from earlier in the season, Tron has fallen to fourth place at this point.
As i expected, creature combo got to fifth place, but i suspect this won’t last long – the remaining archetypes are all so close that anything can happen. Which one is most common at any given point doesn’t really matter, but it certainly helps to know which ones to expect. Mono Black barely made it in last week, but just missed out this week. Now that i’m counting Rhystic Tron towards W/x Midrange, i might have to count Mono Black towards UB Control as well. They might not exactly play the same, but they have very similar strengths and weaknesses. The only exception i can think of right now is the Burn matchup, which is awful for Mono Black and… well, not awful for UB Control.
Going forward, these are exactly the decks i would expect to face. Bogles and Elves will continue to be fringe archetypes, but i really don’t expect them to consistently cross 5% anytime soon.
Decks I Played This Week
(UW Familiars by Blloodpet, 5-0 from this week)
My first impression playing this deck was that every control deck in Pauper is simply worse than Tron. Then i realised that wasn’t true. What is true, however, is that whenever this deck doesn’t have God-Pharao’s Faithful on the battlefield, it’s trying to do what Tron does, while trading in a good chunk of power for just a little more consistency.
Whenever it does get Faithful going though, this becomes a control deck that actually does trump what most of the non-Tron decks in the format are doing. Unfortunately, as mentioned in the beginning of this article, my time was very much limited this week, so i only managed to play three leagues (3-2, 4-1, 2-3) with this deck before switching to Bogles to have any hope of reaching my goal of 50 matches per week.
For people who want to try this deck, i have to say i think it’s generally pretty good and i definitely want to finish my run with this soon. The worst cards in the list seem to be the anti-creature four drops, Stonehorn Dignitary and Serrated Arrows. The main issue with Dignitary is that it’s narrow, but it’s still a good card that i probably wouldn’t cut anytime soon. Serrated Arrows, however, are just not very good. In the matchups where you want them – Faeries and Inside Out Combo – you can’t really afford to draw too many copies, which is a problem i have run into. I might of course be missing something, but that’s how i feel about the list right now.
No changes from previous list.
I played seven leagues with this deck; 5-0, 4-1, 3-2, 3-2, 3-2, 2-3, 2-3 (22-13 total), which only took me a little under seven hours. Maybe i should’ve taken a little more time though, because i punted at least four games where i had pretty clear lines that would lead to victory.
I could see myself playing some Gut Shots in here somewhere, but everything else is good already. depending on Affinity’s prevalence going forward, i could see myself replacing the Gorilla Shamans.
I’m currently not sure on Aura Gnarlid vs. Heliod’s Pilgrim, but if i’m being honest, i don’t really think there’s a correct choice anyway – each of them will randomly be better than the other sometimes, but most of the time, they will do pretty much the same. I might just play a split and call it a day.
I think this deck is very good, but it’s nowhere near as easy to play as people like to make it out to be. In most matchups involving Bogles, the experience of the Bogles player will be the most important factor. If you learn to navigate your cards through opposing interaction, it will pay off.
Intriguing Decks
(UB Delver by IronicGentleman, 3rd place in the 02/09/18 Pauper Challenge)
I like aggressive Delver decks, so this one’s right up my alley. My only issue with this is how much i hate black removal when compared to Lightning Bolt. Still, this is somewhat similar to OG Team America, which is a deck i enjoyed a lot.
(UB Crypt Rats by habakiri, 5-0 from last week)
This deck has been on my bucket list for ages. Pristine Talisman is one of my favourite cards that i basically never get to play and Crypt Rats + Grim Harvest is just insane value.
So yeah, picking a deck for next week is gonna be harder than usual. Both of these are decks i’ve wanted to try for a while and it doesn’t make things better that i don’t think either is particularly great. There’s just this thing with UB decks that i always feel they’re missing something. Anyway, we’ll see.
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
theweeklywars 