In last week's recap, I highlighted the fact that mono-color decks performed well in both the PE and PRE, but did not provide further information outside of the weekly updates to the charts and deck lists.  Dolmir commented and asked, "Why don't you try to address the mono-color trend?"  Fair enough.  While I plan on the Perspective section of these articles to cover a wide range of topics concerning Pauper, I definitely want to spend some weeks providing analysis of current Pauper trends.  So this week, I will address at least one reason behind the strength of mono-colored decks in Pauper.

In the past two weeks, eleven of the sixteen decks to reach the top 8 have been mono-colored, with four mono-blue control, one mono-black control, one mono-green stompy, and five mono-red goblin decks.  The remaining five spots were taken by one affinity build and four blue/black control decks.

Before tackling the success of mono-colored decks and the success of blue/black control decks in comparison to other color combinations, I want to first address Affinity.  With many colorless Artifact threats, Affinity ignores many of the issues that will be discussed for other multi-colored decks.  In addition, Affinity can use color-fixers in a way that supports the rest of the deck by enabling threats.  Chromatic Sphere, for instance, serves three purposes in Affinity: color-fixing, card draw, and cost reducer for cards such as Frogmite and Myr Enforcer.  In other decks, Chromatic Sphere which only does two of these things, and color fixing is typically more efficient with Evolving Wilds or even Bant Panorama.  

While not reaching the top 8 in the past two weeks, Storm manages to leverage many of the same principles as Affinity by utilizing a wide range of mana fixing that also serves three purposes, replacing cost reducers with increasing storm count.  This efficient utilization of color-fixers enables Affinity and Storm to rise above the negative aspects of multi-colored decks and gain synergy from cards that are otherwise nominal inclusions in other decks.

With Affinity and Storm identified as exceptions to the rule, what are the reasons to use multiple colors in a deck and why should a deck be limited to a single color?

The advantages to dipping into a second or even third color are two-fold.  First, access to cards is opened to a larger pool of options.  With cards that either require two colors (e.g., Agony Warp, Blightning, and Armadillo Cloak) or provide significantly greater capabilities in a two color deck (e.g., Momentary Blink, Probe, and Steamcore Weird), utilizing two colors provides access to many powerful spells.  Second, every single color has gaps in what it can achieve, and the inclusion of two colors in the same deck can provide the opportunity to overcome one or more of these deficits.  For example, while blue has difficulty in dealing with a permanent that has landed on the battlefield, black can destroy such creatures very easily.

There is one primary advantage of running a deck that requires a single color of mana for optimal operation: consistency.  If every spell in a deck is blue and every land in the deck produces blue mana, then every land I put into play can be used to cast every spell in my hand.  In contrast, consider an opening hand with Island, Terramorphic Expanse, Swamp, Ponder, Disfigure, Counterspell, and Sign In Blood; this is a keeper based on the mana base drawn with a number of powerful, playable spells, but from the moment you play your first land, you are limiting your options for how you play out the rest of the deck and how you will be able interact with your opponent.

Consistency issues exist in every deck when evaluating an opening hands' land versus spells, even in mono-color decks.  For the following analysis, an examination will be made comparing land distribution of an opening hand to a simple, rules-based approach to mulligan decisions.  This is done to show differences between decks featuring one versus two colors.  I fully acknowledge that choosing to mulligan an opening hand has a greater number of factors more than the land distribution such as the cost and effectiveness of the spells in the opening hand, distribution of spell colors versus mana provided by lands, and the contents and strategy of the opponent's deck.  The rules for each deck are designed to maximize the deck's optimal start with respect to the likely needs of that deck structure.  The utilization of this rules-based mulligan approach provides a basis for comparing the draws of various deck structures against one another.

The chart below illustrates the likelihood of the number of lands drawn in a player's seven card opening hand when playing with twenty-four lands.  The most probable hand will include 3 lands (30.9%) with a 2 land hand coming in as the second most likely (26.9%).

This chart simply identifies the probability of drawing a particular number of lands in an opening hand, not the types of lands in hand.  When you break it down, that means that 77.5% of your opening hands will have between two and four lands.  For the purpose of this article I will assume all zero, one, five, six, and seven land hands should be mulliganed based on either being mana starved or spell starved.  This means that a mono-colored deck running lands that produce the appropriate mana will see a mulligan-worthy opening hand 22.5% of the time based solely on lands drawn.  Over the course of a seven round tournament, that equates to choosing to mulligan an opening hand 4 times due to bad land draws (assuming 17 games in a tournament as the benchmark).

Now let's take those same thresholds and apply it to a two-color deck with twenty-four lands, including four Terramorphic Expanse and ten of each respective basic land.  This breakdown assumes an even split between the two colors that form the basis of the deck.  While this is not always true, it is a sufficient starting point for examination.  Once a deck expands from one color to two colors, the lands drawn in the opening hand must be evaluated for their ability to both support the spells in hand as well as what might be drawn.  For analysis, the assumption for this exercise is that a multi-color deck will mulligan under the same conditions as the mono-color deck above and it will also mulligan if it does not have the ability put one land into play to support each of the deck's colors.  To illustrate, this means that a two land hand that is keepable by a mono-color deck will result in a mulligan nearly half the time for the two-color deck (due to both lands drawn being of the same type).  Terramorphic Expanse is considered a land to support either color, and a hand with only multiple copies of Terramorphic Expanse is rated as keepable.

This chart illustrates that when accounting for the need to have different mana production capabilities, the decision to mulligan is going to be made more frequently.  Under this mulligan algorithm, the likelihood of choosing to mulligan an opening hand increases to 40.7%.  In a seven round tournament with 17 duels (roughly halfway between the tournament minimum of 14 and maximum of 21 duels), this increases the number of mulligans due to mana issues from 4 with a mono-colored deck to 7 with the two-color deck.  In short, you are providing your opponent with a one card advantage three times over the course of a tournament.

On top of that, a mono-colored deck will draw a desirable hand based on land 74.7% of the time after a mulligan, while a dual-colored deck will draw a keepable hand 58.4% of the time.  While the quality of hands declines at a steeper rate for the mono-chromatic deck, its chances of drawing into a keepable six cards still far exceeds the chances for a successful mulligan with a multi-color deck.

That provides a breakdown that shows the comparative consistency between a mono-chromatic deck like Mono-Blue Control and Blue/Black Control, but how does the comparison stand when comparing a deck like Goblins or Stompy with a multi-colored aggressive deck like Zoo.  As can be seen from the recent PE results (reflected in the archetype performance charts below), a variety of multi-colored control decks have been reaching the top 8 of the PE, especially Blue/Black Control, but decks such as Zoo and Slivers have not been able to achieve the same success.

For aggressive decks like these that run fewer lands, the needs and land contents of a mono-colored deck are different than those of a multi-colored deck.  Mono-color decks such as Goblins and Stompy can work off of a single land in the opening hand, whereas a single land in the opening hand of Zoo or Slivers is paramount to disaster with a significant number of spells rendered uncastable.  In addition, the two-color deck is likely to run Terramorphic Expanse to mitigate undesirable land draws, but while control decks can be happy with two Terramorphic Expanse in the opening hand, aggressive decks cannot afford that tempo loss.

The mulligan algorithm for the mono-colored aggressive decks will result in the opening handing being shuffled back into the deck when drawing zero or more than three lands.  The multi-colored aggressive decks will mulligan when drawing zero, one, or more than four lands, if they draw only Terramorphic Expanse for lands, or if they do not draw lands to support both colors. Just based on these parameters for accepting or rejecting an opening hand, the mono-colored aggressive deck has a desirable hand 81.8% of the time while the multi-colored aggressive meets these guidelines only 52.5% of the time.

For aggressive decks using these parameters for mulligan decisions, the mono-colored deck will be forced to mulligan in 3 games during a seven round tournament where the dual-colored deck will mulligan 8 times in the same tournament.   

Basically, control decks are giving up three cards per tournament and typically include spells to draw cards.  These control decks are designed to stabilize and then win the game.  Aggressive decks, in counterpoint, need to work quickly and either race another aggressive deck or knock the control deck beyond a point at which a stabilization can be achieved.  Mana-fixing in the multi-colored aggressive decks can result in tempo loss that can be detrimental in a duel against an opposing deck.

In order for a deck to achieve success while supporting multiple colors, there needs to be card effects that justify the risk.  Those card effects exist for control decks with Agony Warp, Momentary Blink, and other spells, but there are very few options that propel an aggressive multi-color deck beyond the abilities and synergies of mono-colored decks.  Goblins relies on the synergy between various Goblins such as Goblin Sledder while Stompy has sufficient 2 power creatures for one mana that splitting the mana base between Forests and Mountains weakens the deck without sufficient gain.

While every other environment has numerous lands that provide mana fixing (rather than spells which dilute a deck's threat mass), Pauper is limited to the bounce lands from Ravnica and they will slow the tempo of a deck and are unplayable if you do not draw a non-bounce land.  The bounce lands, however, are more viable in slower, control decks allowing Blue/Black Control and Team America to perform at a higher level than Zoo.

While the consistency of multi-color decks is not the only reason for the failure of multi-colored decks to thrive in Pauper, it is a factor.  Over the course of a tournament, the negative costs associated with running two color decks will result in some losses simply due to two poor opening hands in a single match.  Other factors contributing the consistency of the deck from a mana perspective include the number of spells requiring two specific colors or mana and whether a second color is splashed or if both colors in a two color deck are represented equally.  I believe that a splash of second color works better than an even split as the deck should perform satisfactorily for a few turns before it needs a mana source to support the second color, but the risk is still significant for aggressive decks more-so than control-oriented decks.

For those of you who tend towards the casual side of Pauper, this section presents a deck I have been using in the casual room.  Last week, I presented a Blue/Red Aggro-Control deck using snow-covered lands and Skred.  This week I am presenting a second variation of the archetype without the snow-covered lands.  Elements of the two decks may be intermixed in order to create your own version.

The biggest difference between the two decks is the non-creature spells, which drives some of the alterations for the lands and creatures.  Most notably, this deck includes Serrated Arrows and Rolling Thunder.  These two cards provide options to deal with multiple opposing creatures with a single card.  Both are capable of providing a two-for-one or even a three-for-one exchange in your favor.  Serrated Arrows is also important in that it enables the burn spells in the deck (e.g. Lightning Bolt and Firebolt) to extend their range to higher toughness creatures.

Last week's Izzet Snow deck had an average converted mana cost of 2.84 while this version jumps up to 3.17 (assuming that Rolling Thunder will be cast for five mana).  That jump triggers a few changes in the land allocation, with the total number of lands jumping up 1, to 24.  In addition Izzet Boilerworks is included in this version to provide more mana production without increasing the land count to a point where the deck's capabilities are too diffuse.

With two additional spells and one additional land, the creature complement takes a hit.  Sea Gate Oracle is out and an additional copy of Dream Stalker is in, primarily for use with Serrated Arrows.  Though the card draw of the Oracle is lost, Rolling Thunder and Serrated Arrows provide opportunities for uneven trades to make up for fewer cards in hand.

Blue/Red Aggro-Control
Lands (24)    9x Island    7x Mountain    4x Terramorphic Expanse    4x Izzet Boilerworks	Creatures (15)    4x Mulldrifter    4x Dream Stalker    4x Steamcore Weird    3x Errant Ephemeron	Non-Creatures (21)    4x Counterspell    4x Firebolt    4x Lightning Bolt    3x Rolling Thunder    3x Serrated Arrows    3x Think Twice

Pauper is a straightforward environment.  It allows for deck construction using only cards that have been printed as common on MTGO (note that this means that some cards printed as common in paper Magic are not legal in Pauper and that some cards have been printed as common Online, but never in paper, and these are legal).  The banned list for Classic Pauper is very manageable and consists of exactly one card:

• Cranial Plating

The next Pauper Challenge Premier Event will be held:

• Sunday July 25, 2010 at 11AM EDT
• Sunday August 1, 2010 at 11AM EDT
• Saturday August 7, 2010 at 5PM EDT

In addition to the Pauper Challenge, there are currently two player run events using the Classic Pauper format.  The first is the Tuesday Pauper Deck Challenge (or TPDC), which is held on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM EST.  The second is the European Pauper Deck Challenge (or EPDC), which is held on Thursdays at 3:30 PM EST.

Note that EPDC is on hiatus while a search for a new permanent host is underway for season 2.  If you are interested in volunteering to be the host, please check here.