First of all, I totally agree about Bramblesnap. I think it's one of the cards that works well in both archetypes mainly because it simultaneously fills the role of finisher and early defender. While many people see trample and assume that Bramblesnap is an offensive card, it actually plays defense better than it does offense. That said, it also works just fine as a late game attacker.
That said, I completely disagree about Crusher/Artisan. I think you are imagining a scenario where you sac a few tokens, cast your crusher and are then unable to cast the artisan because you no longer have the mana to do so. This scenario is based on a faulty premise, because if you are drafting ramp you should be prioritizing more durable forms of mana acceleration like battlement, treespeaker, ondu giant, growth spasm, etc. If you ramp up using these guys, then your line of play is to run the crusher out there and then artisan it back into play if it gets killed. Dealing with a quick crusher once is tough, but dealing with it a second time plus an artisan? Let's just say I've never seen anyone come back from that beating.
I'm also not sure what you mean by an early major threat. A lavafume invoker is not a major threat until you have 8 mana and a bunch of guys out. Bloodthrone vampire is not a major threat until you have to block it because you have enough creatures to make it lethal (or close enough to lethal). Broodwarden can be a major threat if you have enough tokens out -- but if you do then you were probably drafting a token deck anyway. Without token support Broodwarden is a pretty weak play. Anyway, if your opponents are blowing removal spells on these guys early that they could be using later on against Eldrazi or other fatties, then quite frankly they are playing very poorly. Your vampire/invoker/broodwarden or whatever are much more likely to eat a flame slash, staggershock, or small induce despair or what not than they are to eat a vendetta/narcolepsy/guard duty. Bloodthrone might get narcolepsied or guard dutied but probably not until you have developed your board quite a bit.
I can tell that both you and Felorin prefer drafting the tokens archetypes to the G/x ramp archetype. That's fine -- it's a totally legitimate preference. Furthermore, as I said above, I agree that hybridization works better for the token deck than it does for the ramp deck. Drafting token enablers in your ramp deck leads to sloppy drafts, but drafting a few big finishers for your token deck is pretty much fine. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's *optimal*, but it's certainly not bad.
It is interesting to see what has remained stable through the changes of the last few months. I am curious if you plan to actually write some opinions on these price trends. Or perhaps give us insight as to why some cards appear to be more popular than others when there is no real in game reason. Some text would be nice along with the many charts. :)
Hopefully nothing here seemed too negative about the fact that blue is currently dominating. I tried to illustrate that the metagame was just a disparate six weeks ago with low-cost creature decks being equally dominate.
Pauper has a lot of viable strategies (which is what drove the list of archetypes in this article) and the preeminent streategy at any one time can be countered through deck selection.
You know I think you might be a little unfair on the hydra. You should see him in an Ashling mono-red big mana deck. He's a great sink for all that extra mana when Ashling's not on the table. Not only can he end up a huge beat stick but after a couple of activations he can single-handedly take down most critters and get through the last 5 or 6 points of damage against an opponent. He's a fantastic rattlesnake-type card and a nice source of +1/+1 counters should you need them (ion-storm anyone?)
Ok, so yeah I'm a hydra lover too but you shouldn't let my personal prejudices stop you from slipping this little beauty into a deck.
As i said on the PDC forums this is nothing new...Infact fully expect to sooner or later hear people crying about MuC in the next 3 months unless people get smart and start playing decks against the meta again. Thus creating another shift.
So yes people pauper has a HEALTHY meta game (anyone remember that huge stink of a debate?) If it's still "unfun" at this point then obviously they have no clue how to cope with eternal formats and need to play either standard pauper or another format entirely.
Awesome article Pete, I mostly agree with all your points.
About card price & rotation/banning, there is also an another think I would like to point out : that's true that many people complaining about price drop. But it is amazing to observe that simultaneously, there are very few people who are claiming their happyness when a card price skyrockets thank to a rotation/ban decision or a new released card, . In example, I bought more than 1 year ago a playset of entomb at 4/5 bucks each on modo. This card was banned in legacy and only played in classic. One thing was sure : this card was and still is a very potent card. Thank to the unbanning, I could play them in legacy, and btw I saved around 140 bucks on a 40$/entomb basis (and it was much more a few days ago). I could sell them and pick alsmost 2 fow with that, or almost any dual playset except underground sea. That was a crazy good deal to me. And I dont remember to have seen at this time any article or forum post telling "YEAH ! I WON A LOT FUND THANK TO THE B/R CHANGES"... Funny thing. And the situation was pretty identical for many player with Natural Order, Dark Depth, or even recently with all the faeries stuff (and there is many other example as well).
Pauper MUC decks from a year ago were more pure control decks having only 4 to 6 creatures maindeck. The current crop of so-called MUC decks top out at 21 creatures. In my mind this takes them further toward the aggro end of the scale. MUCFae definitely relies more on its creatures than traditional control decks would. I like the metagame that's developing for pauper, it was only a few weeks ago that people were howling for Bushwacker to be banned, and we now see that the format has plenty of answers for any deck.
Reasons why All is Dust says sacrifice instead of destroy:
1) Kills creatures with Totem Armor.
2) Kill Indestructible Creatures.
3) Combos with It That Betrays to give you control of all of the things they sacrifice to All is Dust.
4) Flavor obviously, cause Eldrazi cause you to Sacrifice. That's what I came up with.
Quote from Klemzo's post "First of all, I'm not claiming that this is my deck, nor I'm not advertising it to be super powerful. "
Second Quote from Klemzo's post "And your making me sound like I wanted to prove to everyone that this deck is unbeatable and super powerful and nothing can beat it. No, I didn't say that, but in my eyes (and apparently my luck) he has about the same winning chance as Jund in competitive tournament."
Quote from article Klemzo's article "The deck I'm gonna show you, is actually so good, that with no problem whatsoever beats any deck, without breaking a sweat."
Contradict much?
EDIT: Also, if you post a deck that is not your own creation, you should mention that and definitely credit the creator. Your failure to do so left me with the mistaken impression you had created the deck.
The g/w list he posted advertised as "I now officially consider this a T1 STD deck!" has existed online as a Zendikar Block deck since the release of Rise of the Eldrazi.
Thanks guys for the comments and thanks everyone else for reading. From my personal experience I can tell that the most powerful one is the mono white deck but the most fun one is the Selective Mermory deck.
I wouldn't be surprised if Dredgevine is storming the meta right now. It seems like the type of deck tons of people jump on and oversaturate the meta with. I played it (unprepared) in a 2 man the other day.
Really irritating deck to play against if you aren't prepared.
Really easy deck to play against if you ARE prepared.
I don't have $400 to drop either, I got my Jaces early. And I run 3 for now. Might add a Beleran or two.
Didn't notice the MonoW had path, but sweepers are not enough for these decks. You need path to deal with VVine.
I still need to do more testing on my build though.
I guess your right. Apparently I was just so lucky. Of all the matches I had so far (which were around 50, 2man and 8man tournaments, daily events and practice room, I almost always won, against all of the decks I stated above. It's true I never went against Vengevine, which for some reason I completely even forgot about. If I would fight against it I would probably lost, true, but I'm happy I didn't as it seams currently there isn't a lot of Vengevine decks in MTGO meta. At least, it wasn't when I played.
Again, It's true it's weaker then UW deck with Jace, but I don't own Jace as 400$ is simply too much for me, so I wasn't even looking in that direction.
I guess this deck is one of the weakest of it's kind, but I still win with it a lot, A LOT more then with Polymorph deck. Either I was just so lucky in this 50 games, or the deck is just good enough.
I don't disagree with any of you guys, but first try it.
And how come almost everyone says there is no spot removal? I did post monoW version of it, didn't I? 4x Path To Exile? + DoJs and All Is Dust. To me, that was enough so far.
But I'm gonna do some more testing and see how much more will I win, and I'll make sure I'll report it here.
This simply semms like a weak turbo-land, the T2 update to block eldrazi ramp (which wasn't even the best block deck), so to claim it as a format breaking bwhemoth that 'just wins' is a tad rediculous, and makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. I'd assume you aren't even aware of how your matchups properly play out. You don't discuss 2 of the most popular decks in the meta, and polymorph isn't close to being 50 50, you have no removal or counters.
This deck idea isn't exactly cutting edge.
Mark Flores wrote about it on his blog at the beginning of June.
His version, a W/U control version (yeah it runs jace, why not), plays much more nicely. (And I have been tweaking and testing it since)
Putting all your eggs into the ramp basket is not the best way to go with this deck. Slow and steady wins it.
Spending tons of cards to ramp a fatty out that meets removal seems worse than just playing at your own pace and casting the Eldrazi when you have control of the game.
I'm not sure why none of these decks run targeted removal. (Path is pretty important, especially if facing other Eldrazi)
Also, this deck can't win in its current form against Dredgevine, which is a legitimate concern.
I took the Flores deck and the mono W deck and made my own hybrid, running 1 Hedron, 1 map, 3 Crossroads, and 1 Bojuka Bog main for the meta.
Thanks a lot. Yes deck is open for removal a lot. But I didn't had that problem so far as I simply played another one after the first one was removed and I usually managed to come through somehow. It might be luck, but I don't believe, since I've spent over 100$ on drafts just this month, and didn't opened a single mythic :)
Yeah I did state, I think, that you could add more removals. Mono white version uses Path to Exile, 4x All Is Dust and 3x DoJ, making it very "removalish". Plus, you can always try the W/B version, which is eve more deadly.
First of all, I totally agree about Bramblesnap. I think it's one of the cards that works well in both archetypes mainly because it simultaneously fills the role of finisher and early defender. While many people see trample and assume that Bramblesnap is an offensive card, it actually plays defense better than it does offense. That said, it also works just fine as a late game attacker.
That said, I completely disagree about Crusher/Artisan. I think you are imagining a scenario where you sac a few tokens, cast your crusher and are then unable to cast the artisan because you no longer have the mana to do so. This scenario is based on a faulty premise, because if you are drafting ramp you should be prioritizing more durable forms of mana acceleration like battlement, treespeaker, ondu giant, growth spasm, etc. If you ramp up using these guys, then your line of play is to run the crusher out there and then artisan it back into play if it gets killed. Dealing with a quick crusher once is tough, but dealing with it a second time plus an artisan? Let's just say I've never seen anyone come back from that beating.
I'm also not sure what you mean by an early major threat. A lavafume invoker is not a major threat until you have 8 mana and a bunch of guys out. Bloodthrone vampire is not a major threat until you have to block it because you have enough creatures to make it lethal (or close enough to lethal). Broodwarden can be a major threat if you have enough tokens out -- but if you do then you were probably drafting a token deck anyway. Without token support Broodwarden is a pretty weak play. Anyway, if your opponents are blowing removal spells on these guys early that they could be using later on against Eldrazi or other fatties, then quite frankly they are playing very poorly. Your vampire/invoker/broodwarden or whatever are much more likely to eat a flame slash, staggershock, or small induce despair or what not than they are to eat a vendetta/narcolepsy/guard duty. Bloodthrone might get narcolepsied or guard dutied but probably not until you have developed your board quite a bit.
I can tell that both you and Felorin prefer drafting the tokens archetypes to the G/x ramp archetype. That's fine -- it's a totally legitimate preference. Furthermore, as I said above, I agree that hybridization works better for the token deck than it does for the ramp deck. Drafting token enablers in your ramp deck leads to sloppy drafts, but drafting a few big finishers for your token deck is pretty much fine. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's *optimal*, but it's certainly not bad.
It is interesting to see what has remained stable through the changes of the last few months. I am curious if you plan to actually write some opinions on these price trends. Or perhaps give us insight as to why some cards appear to be more popular than others when there is no real in game reason. Some text would be nice along with the many charts. :)
Hopefully nothing here seemed too negative about the fact that blue is currently dominating. I tried to illustrate that the metagame was just a disparate six weeks ago with low-cost creature decks being equally dominate.
Pauper has a lot of viable strategies (which is what drove the list of archetypes in this article) and the preeminent streategy at any one time can be countered through deck selection.
You know I think you might be a little unfair on the hydra. You should see him in an Ashling mono-red big mana deck. He's a great sink for all that extra mana when Ashling's not on the table. Not only can he end up a huge beat stick but after a couple of activations he can single-handedly take down most critters and get through the last 5 or 6 points of damage against an opponent. He's a fantastic rattlesnake-type card and a nice source of +1/+1 counters should you need them (ion-storm anyone?)
Ok, so yeah I'm a hydra lover too but you shouldn't let my personal prejudices stop you from slipping this little beauty into a deck.
Consider yourself informed ;)
As i said on the PDC forums this is nothing new...Infact fully expect to sooner or later hear people crying about MuC in the next 3 months unless people get smart and start playing decks against the meta again. Thus creating another shift.
So yes people pauper has a HEALTHY meta game (anyone remember that huge stink of a debate?) If it's still "unfun" at this point then obviously they have no clue how to cope with eternal formats and need to play either standard pauper or another format entirely.
Awesome article Pete, I mostly agree with all your points.
About card price & rotation/banning, there is also an another think I would like to point out : that's true that many people complaining about price drop. But it is amazing to observe that simultaneously, there are very few people who are claiming their happyness when a card price skyrockets thank to a rotation/ban decision or a new released card, . In example, I bought more than 1 year ago a playset of entomb at 4/5 bucks each on modo. This card was banned in legacy and only played in classic. One thing was sure : this card was and still is a very potent card. Thank to the unbanning, I could play them in legacy, and btw I saved around 140 bucks on a 40$/entomb basis (and it was much more a few days ago). I could sell them and pick alsmost 2 fow with that, or almost any dual playset except underground sea. That was a crazy good deal to me. And I dont remember to have seen at this time any article or forum post telling "YEAH ! I WON A LOT FUND THANK TO THE B/R CHANGES"... Funny thing. And the situation was pretty identical for many player with Natural Order, Dark Depth, or even recently with all the faeries stuff (and there is many other example as well).
Pauper MUC decks from a year ago were more pure control decks having only 4 to 6 creatures maindeck. The current crop of so-called MUC decks top out at 21 creatures. In my mind this takes them further toward the aggro end of the scale. MUCFae definitely relies more on its creatures than traditional control decks would. I like the metagame that's developing for pauper, it was only a few weeks ago that people were howling for Bushwacker to be banned, and we now see that the format has plenty of answers for any deck.
i think number 4 is the big one to be honest
Reasons why All is Dust says sacrifice instead of destroy:
1) Kills creatures with Totem Armor.
2) Kill Indestructible Creatures.
3) Combos with It That Betrays to give you control of all of the things they sacrifice to All is Dust.
4) Flavor obviously, cause Eldrazi cause you to Sacrifice. That's what I came up with.
Yeah.
Apparently my brain really is off when I'm at work.
Nice decks!
Even with "value restrictions" there's some very powerful efects.
Gotta Love Coralhelm Commander!!!
wow im so glad i sucked up the cost to finish a set of depths at like 26 each..
Do you mean Mike Flores (top 8 magic etc)?
Quote from Klemzo's post "First of all, I'm not claiming that this is my deck, nor I'm not advertising it to be super powerful. "
Second Quote from Klemzo's post "And your making me sound like I wanted to prove to everyone that this deck is unbeatable and super powerful and nothing can beat it. No, I didn't say that, but in my eyes (and apparently my luck) he has about the same winning chance as Jund in competitive tournament."
Quote from article Klemzo's article "The deck I'm gonna show you, is actually so good, that with no problem whatsoever beats any deck, without breaking a sweat."
Contradict much?
EDIT: Also, if you post a deck that is not your own creation, you should mention that and definitely credit the creator. Your failure to do so left me with the mistaken impression you had created the deck.
Enchantress in Legacy picking up speed maybe?
The g/w list he posted advertised as "I now officially consider this a T1 STD deck!" has existed online as a Zendikar Block deck since the release of Rise of the Eldrazi.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital...
Thanks guys for the comments and thanks everyone else for reading. From my personal experience I can tell that the most powerful one is the mono white deck but the most fun one is the Selective Mermory deck.
Thanks again for the comments.
LE
It was interesting. Nice article.
Greater Auramancy --- its up to 4.5 tickets. Do you know why that is?
Like the decks, I have been playing a similiar deck to the explosive one, just using riddle of lightning instead.
I wouldn't be surprised if Dredgevine is storming the meta right now. It seems like the type of deck tons of people jump on and oversaturate the meta with. I played it (unprepared) in a 2 man the other day.
Really irritating deck to play against if you aren't prepared.
Really easy deck to play against if you ARE prepared.
I don't have $400 to drop either, I got my Jaces early. And I run 3 for now. Might add a Beleran or two.
Didn't notice the MonoW had path, but sweepers are not enough for these decks. You need path to deal with VVine.
I still need to do more testing on my build though.
I guess your right. Apparently I was just so lucky. Of all the matches I had so far (which were around 50, 2man and 8man tournaments, daily events and practice room, I almost always won, against all of the decks I stated above. It's true I never went against Vengevine, which for some reason I completely even forgot about. If I would fight against it I would probably lost, true, but I'm happy I didn't as it seams currently there isn't a lot of Vengevine decks in MTGO meta. At least, it wasn't when I played.
Again, It's true it's weaker then UW deck with Jace, but I don't own Jace as 400$ is simply too much for me, so I wasn't even looking in that direction.
I guess this deck is one of the weakest of it's kind, but I still win with it a lot, A LOT more then with Polymorph deck. Either I was just so lucky in this 50 games, or the deck is just good enough.
I don't disagree with any of you guys, but first try it.
And how come almost everyone says there is no spot removal? I did post monoW version of it, didn't I? 4x Path To Exile? + DoJs and All Is Dust. To me, that was enough so far.
But I'm gonna do some more testing and see how much more will I win, and I'll make sure I'll report it here.
Thanks
This simply semms like a weak turbo-land, the T2 update to block eldrazi ramp (which wasn't even the best block deck), so to claim it as a format breaking bwhemoth that 'just wins' is a tad rediculous, and makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. I'd assume you aren't even aware of how your matchups properly play out. You don't discuss 2 of the most popular decks in the meta, and polymorph isn't close to being 50 50, you have no removal or counters.
This deck idea isn't exactly cutting edge.
Mark Flores wrote about it on his blog at the beginning of June.
His version, a W/U control version (yeah it runs jace, why not), plays much more nicely. (And I have been tweaking and testing it since)
Putting all your eggs into the ramp basket is not the best way to go with this deck. Slow and steady wins it.
Spending tons of cards to ramp a fatty out that meets removal seems worse than just playing at your own pace and casting the Eldrazi when you have control of the game.
I'm not sure why none of these decks run targeted removal. (Path is pretty important, especially if facing other Eldrazi)
Also, this deck can't win in its current form against Dredgevine, which is a legitimate concern.
I took the Flores deck and the mono W deck and made my own hybrid, running 1 Hedron, 1 map, 3 Crossroads, and 1 Bojuka Bog main for the meta.
Thanks a lot. Yes deck is open for removal a lot. But I didn't had that problem so far as I simply played another one after the first one was removed and I usually managed to come through somehow. It might be luck, but I don't believe, since I've spent over 100$ on drafts just this month, and didn't opened a single mythic :)
Yeah I did state, I think, that you could add more removals. Mono white version uses Path to Exile, 4x All Is Dust and 3x DoJ, making it very "removalish". Plus, you can always try the W/B version, which is eve more deadly.
Thanks :)