This is the second time I've seen somebody mention how this set makes them think of Game of Thrones. Why? Because it has armies and snow? Is it because Zurgo is sitting down? Because someone is fighting a bear? I'm not sure how anybody can see these images and think about GoT?
As Olaw pointed out, there are many more similarities to Kung Fu Panda or Avatar. I immediately thought of Disney's Mulan.
Only nitpick: I believe you're mistakenly using "wedge" when saying "enemy wedges", implying there are also "allied wedges". But wedge = enemy triplets (so called because they form the shape of a "wedge" on the mana wheel, if you draw lines through them). Allied triplets are called shards, after Alara. I also hope we'll finally get proper names of them, anyway.
I think this is the block that takes Alara's place in the current seven-year cycle. This way:
MRD => SOM => artifact block set on Mirrodin
CHK => ISD => top-down thematic block
RAV => RTR => dual-colored block set on Ravnica
TSP => THS => Time Spiral was so experimental, I guess Theros is just another Kamigawa-like block
LRW => ??? => We missed one here
ALA => KOT => triple-colored block
ZEN => ??? => I think we're going to return to Zendikar next, we got the Soul, lots of hints about Sorin going back there to stop the Eldrazi threat for good, Ugin and the mysterious Lithomancer going to show up, etc.
As for KOT, I guess we've come to the point when the R&D/the creative team was started to feel the influence of Game of Thrones. But it's also yet another culturally thematic block. They've done four of them so far, two in the far past, two in the modern era.
Arabian Nights: Arabian folklore directly transposed on cards
Portal Three Kingdoms: Chinese history directly transposed on cards (yep, it was pretty weird)
Kamigawa: fictional characters and places inspired by Japanese folklore
Theros: fictional characters and places inspired by Greek myths
I guess Mirage had an African background, but it wasn't top-down, don't think there were actually direct references to anything in particular but a geographical setting.
Wizard do a panel every year where they tend to reveal a lot of information but are awful at actually disseminating the information (I don't know if this is deliberate to enhance the experience of being at Comic-Con). I believe the full panel is going to be up on the mothership at some point but it hasn't been uploaded yet. I was going to wait for that but I found I could obtain nearly all the information from other sources. I think they found a nice balance of giving us something to be excited about without actually going into major spoilers.
Thanks for the heads up, olaw! I didn't get to see anything from SDCC, so I've been relying on the interwebs to fill me in. I'm surprised that we learned so much already, since we're still just under 2 full months away from release. But, heck... I'm not complaining!!! :D
But my point was mostly that with Commander, any analysis is hindered by the fact that it doesn't exist a basic Commander meta, since there's no tournaments, no pros, no articles to reference that can be based on anything more than what the guy writing them experienced. The result is that everybody is playing and talking about a different version of Commander, for better or for worse.
(Well, except the 1v1 vs. multiplayer separation. That one should always be clearly stated and kept in mind.)
Match one game two: he was trying to use his Spirit Bonds to make his creature indestructible but couldn't because his other creature was a spirit and thus an invalid target.
I have played enough to see how degenerate a sylvan primordial can be. Usually the thing is flickered and cloned beyond belief. I have seen smart players play prophet and end games. A 5 CMC card should not be able to do that and replace 2 cards (teferi and seedborn muse). Multi and Single player are definitely a different game. Not everyone can be pleased. Deadeye is pretty dang bad, I agree. He makes more sense than Sylvan. I did miss a few troublesome cards. The thing is, if your paying a high amount of mana, that card should be able to end the game. My articles are geared towards new players.
Someone who runs a tourney will not learn anything new by reading what I write. My meta and yours are vastly different. When I play, people attack your mana and do flicker nonsense. I do not see a lot of stasis and winter orb stuff. Again, my articles are for all the people in all the forums and chat rooms asking "how do i play EDH?" I fully expect and I hope that my advice gets outgrown and new players play their own deck. As for not playing enough removal, you have to do what feels good for you.
You can't ban everything evil, but you can use a good mix of mass, targeted, and specialized removal. I have seen good decks with MAYBE 5 creatures and everything else be toolbox or removal/draw. To each their own. The thing I do not want to see happen is new players getting crushed and giving up because they get obliterated by the same crap over and over.
Violence is never acceptable, and I didn't read the comment (obviously), but then why is the article author allowed to make the extremely ignorant suggest of "taking that bapping stick and whacking whoever changed Alt-U to Ctrl-Z until the stick breaks, then getting another and starting all over"
Ctrl-Z is the universal shortcut for Undo. New players are going to expect Ctrl-Z to work if there is a reason to Undo. And if you don't like it you can change it in the settings.
I hate to be cynical, but success seems to depend on prizes. Nobody seems to want to play for the love of pauper alone. Whatever succeeds needs to have a prize structure. I look at what SCG have been doing as an example; holding out the carrot of great prizes has boosted their sales proportionally. Can any trader work out how to drive sales of pauper cards through prize sponsorship?
I guess constructed pauper really isn't profitable for those type of people. What we really need is a limited pauper format.
I keep shaking my head when I'm reminded they banned Sylvan Primordial and let Deadeye Navigator run rampant. In 80+ events of Sunday Commander (as mentioned in the comments for Mikey's podcast), we've never seen the kind of decks that, assumedly, caused the ban of Sylvan Primordial. But I was forced to ban Deadeye Navigator, eventually, because it was just taking over the meta. You don't even need decks with more colors than blue, because Navigator gives you infinite mana with Palinchron/Great Whale, and at that point, in blue, you pretty much have infinite ways to win the game. It was beyond oppressive, and beyond consistent (people would even fetch the Navigator with Ethereal Usher!)
As for the Prophet, she's surely strong and I can see where people who want her banned come from, but she's far from being the absolute key to victory. She helps you win as much as Mana Reflection or Vorinclex do, which means possibly, likely, far from surely. Now, Momir Vig as a commander, that's the real thing. If you have a lot of mana and nothing to play because you couldn't refill your hand, you're in a bad place. With Momir, you just have to pilot the deck well, and Momir will execute your plan for you.
Speaking of which, your recipe for deckbuilding feels like something aimed to Commander newbies (is it?), but then after you've played for a while (especially competitively), you get to a point when you build towards a master plan based on the commander you chose, so you don't "play safe" anymore, by design. If everything in your deck is just either a threat or removal for other people's threats, then every deck will play in the same way. That's one way to play Commander for sure, but IMO it's not the most fulfilling way.
To some degree, Commander is a Vintage/Legacy format (to some degree, it's even more complex and cutthroat). Think of a Dredge deck or a Elfball deck. Those decks don't care about being able to answer other people's game plans. They ARE the ones you should answer to, the ones you should be afraid of. Many Commander builds (I might even say archetypes, it they weren't too many) have the same approach.
Of course, the real, main issue in Commander is that there's not a metagame to base any observation on. Everybody's vision is limited to their own specific experiences, often within specific play groups. Since when I started running Sunday Commander, I came into contact with monstrously powerful things I had never thought about, things that would make my old self shiver and run for cover.
Take this fear that "green will kill your lands!", for instance. I see it mentioned often.
Now, I'm a green player. I like to run monogreen. I ramp, I have Terastodon in my decks. But after I ramped, if I fetch Terastodon, that means I'm losing, not that I'm trying to win. If I want to win, I fetch Craterhoof Behemoth, or Ulamog, or I pump everything with Kamahl, or unleash Tooth and Nail. If I fetch Terastodon, it's because there's something on the board that's killing us all. People usually cheer when I do that, because I'm killing the problematic stuff most decks can't easily kill, and in exchange I get a bland vanilla dork that won't make me win (I'll recur it with the Navigator, you say? Why in the hell should I bother doing that when I can do the same with Acidic Slime?). More so, if I get to 8 mana in early turns, should I fetch Terastodon and kill 3 lands of one opponent, with the result of everyone else attacking me, stat? So, maybe we're talking 1v1 here? I feel like we do, because, sure, in 1v1 it's a correct play, but in 4-man, it really isn't. And that's another issue: the Commander debate keeps conflating multiplayer and 1v1, when they're so wildly different, both at the building table and on the battlefield.
In multiplayer, if I wanted to build a deck that kills people's lands, Terastodon is pretty much the last thing I'd think about. What about red's many, many ways to do that en masse, from Impending Disaster to Keldon Firebombers? Or what about just shutting everyone else out of the game with Zur the Enchanter fetching Contamination? (If you see Zur or Momir at a table, and those pilots didn't inescapably win by turn 10, it's because they've built/played them wrong/honestly. That's how nasty they can be). Or what about just white's various Armageddon effects? Of course, Living Lands and Elesh Norn is where the cool kids are at, these days. There are so many WinterOrb.dek variants out there that make you want to bang your head on the table violently and repeatedly. Terastodon? Terastodon is your friend!
Last category: I'm all for banning every card that points to a specific life total instead of referring to "your starting life total", as they're doing since a few years (last example: Resolute Archangel). Maybe those cards aren't overpowered but they're just worded wrong. An even better solution would be changing their Oracle text accordingly.
"You can also always extend or reduce the banned list": Unfortunately, if you're playing MTGO, you can extend it but you can't reduce it. Even if you agree with your play group to, say, unban Primeval Titna, then the client won't let you start a table.
Ya know that's actually very funny because we've talked about that before. We can't find many tournament results for edh and when we do its the same decks over and over again. The awesome thing about your event Kuma is that it has variety in what decks people use.
Is Sunday Commander really the only metagame available for competitive Commander? If that's the case, they should start using those data for official banning purposes. :)
I am guilty of the same issue. People want to play what they want to play and don't like it when people tell them no. Not all colors have great targeted and mass removal. You honestly need a good mix of both. I can understand needing each card to pull its weight, but sometimes you just need a good mix of stuff that would work in single or multiplayer.
I think you hit on the main issue on your first paragraph: People need to run more answers. And not just mass destruction, but also pinpoint stuff. You need to be able to interact with people starting on turn 3 (Putrefy, Mortify, etc.) at the latest, and the sooner the better (Swords to Plowshares, Nature's Claim, etc.). Too many people run Wrath of Good and Fracturing Gust, and think that they will be fine. But they can't stop fast starts, and then complain about it. I've had 4 player games where I'm the only one casting spells during the first 5 turns, or I'm the only person trying to keep the super ramp guy in check, and it certainly makes a difference. You can't rely on your opponents to help you keep things in control. So people, instead of complaining, add more ways to interact with your opponents.
I think that 1v1 is a completely different beast than multi, but they will never implement the Duel Commander ban list unless it is officially endorsed by the Rules Committee and Sheldon. I don't see that happening ever, because they don't like 1v1. Would make sense for the rest of us though.
Not bad! After that Game 1, I thought I might be headed for 0-3 in the tournament. This was I think my 4th MMA event ever and I haven't played with most of the cards, so even with a powerful deck, I am likely to make play mistakes.
Thanks for the comment! Maybe we'll cross paths again. :P
I'm pretty sure I was your 2nd round opponent in this tourney. I normally play sealed, but VMA sealed queues had completely stopped firing so I decided to do an MMA draft while they were still available. Game 1 against you was probably my best game of the tourney. I thought I might have a chance against you game 3, but seeing your full deck list there was no way my deck should have beaten yours.
My deck wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. If it didn't win quickly, it didn't win at all. I went 0-3, but I did pretty well with the rares I opened - Slaughter Pact, Pact of Negation and Vendilion Clique.
In terms of finding a game, that's not hard in either the "Just for Fun" room or "Tournament Practice Room". Pauper's the main format I play and at the worse times I might need to wait a couple of minutes to get a game going.
These tend to be competitive decks, but Pauper is pretty wide open:
RUG Tron
Mono-Black
Mono-Blue Delver
Kilnfiend
Goblins
Burn
Madness (lots of variants on madness)
Elves
The above decks are just a sampling and they do range in terms of competitiveness. Unfortunately I don't have the time to do player run events like the PDC, but Pauper will give you a lot of options for casual decks that can be put together on the cheap and win games.
Sad to read this article. I used to play Classic Pauper and am just getting back into MTGO. First goal was to buy up whatever's good in Pauper now. I still plan to, but it looks like it'll be harder to find a game.
One thing I noticed that has been a hindrance is a lack of information on Classic Pauper. I used to use pdcmagic, but it looks like since I was gone they completely dropped normal Pauper in favor of Standard Pauper, making it that much harder to find not just winning decklists but a breakdown of how those decks run.
"Supposedly you can mod DotP 2014 for the PC and add every card that has been hard coded in by the modders"
That, and then some.
Once you start to understand the code, and believe me I'm terrible at coding, you can copy and paste sections of code to make other cards. Heck, I've made a few simple, fake cards just for the computer to run because it can't understand how to run some of the more complex cards I made. I've made over 30 cards myself and have collected over 5,000 (with duplicates). It's worth mentioning that 2013 had mods as well.
Oh, and I haven't given a dime to micro-transactions. I'm right with you, there. I just like it as a nice way to chill and play with friends who aren't willing to buy into MTGO.
This is the second time I've seen somebody mention how this set makes them think of Game of Thrones. Why? Because it has armies and snow? Is it because Zurgo is sitting down? Because someone is fighting a bear? I'm not sure how anybody can see these images and think about GoT?
As Olaw pointed out, there are many more similarities to Kung Fu Panda or Avatar. I immediately thought of Disney's Mulan.
How do you link pictures to your page? Can I download stuff into my file browser and link to it? If so, what is the path I use?
Excellent work, olaw! Appreciated the humor.
Only nitpick: I believe you're mistakenly using "wedge" when saying "enemy wedges", implying there are also "allied wedges". But wedge = enemy triplets (so called because they form the shape of a "wedge" on the mana wheel, if you draw lines through them). Allied triplets are called shards, after Alara. I also hope we'll finally get proper names of them, anyway.
I think this is the block that takes Alara's place in the current seven-year cycle. This way:
MRD => SOM => artifact block set on Mirrodin
CHK => ISD => top-down thematic block
RAV => RTR => dual-colored block set on Ravnica
TSP => THS => Time Spiral was so experimental, I guess Theros is just another Kamigawa-like block
LRW => ??? => We missed one here
ALA => KOT => triple-colored block
ZEN => ??? => I think we're going to return to Zendikar next, we got the Soul, lots of hints about Sorin going back there to stop the Eldrazi threat for good, Ugin and the mysterious Lithomancer going to show up, etc.
As for KOT, I guess we've come to the point when the R&D/the creative team was started to feel the influence of Game of Thrones. But it's also yet another culturally thematic block. They've done four of them so far, two in the far past, two in the modern era.
Arabian Nights: Arabian folklore directly transposed on cards
Portal Three Kingdoms: Chinese history directly transposed on cards (yep, it was pretty weird)
Kamigawa: fictional characters and places inspired by Japanese folklore
Theros: fictional characters and places inspired by Greek myths
I guess Mirage had an African background, but it wasn't top-down, don't think there were actually direct references to anything in particular but a geographical setting.
(Kuma here, btw)
No worries!
Wizard do a panel every year where they tend to reveal a lot of information but are awful at actually disseminating the information (I don't know if this is deliberate to enhance the experience of being at Comic-Con). I believe the full panel is going to be up on the mothership at some point but it hasn't been uploaded yet. I was going to wait for that but I found I could obtain nearly all the information from other sources. I think they found a nice balance of giving us something to be excited about without actually going into major spoilers.
Thanks for the heads up, olaw! I didn't get to see anything from SDCC, so I've been relying on the interwebs to fill me in. I'm surprised that we learned so much already, since we're still just under 2 full months away from release. But, heck... I'm not complaining!!! :D
It is a noble intent.
But my point was mostly that with Commander, any analysis is hindered by the fact that it doesn't exist a basic Commander meta, since there's no tournaments, no pros, no articles to reference that can be based on anything more than what the guy writing them experienced. The result is that everybody is playing and talking about a different version of Commander, for better or for worse.
(Well, except the 1v1 vs. multiplayer separation. That one should always be clearly stated and kept in mind.)
Match one game two: he was trying to use his Spirit Bonds to make his creature indestructible but couldn't because his other creature was a spirit and thus an invalid target.
I have played enough to see how degenerate a sylvan primordial can be. Usually the thing is flickered and cloned beyond belief. I have seen smart players play prophet and end games. A 5 CMC card should not be able to do that and replace 2 cards (teferi and seedborn muse). Multi and Single player are definitely a different game. Not everyone can be pleased. Deadeye is pretty dang bad, I agree. He makes more sense than Sylvan. I did miss a few troublesome cards. The thing is, if your paying a high amount of mana, that card should be able to end the game. My articles are geared towards new players.
Someone who runs a tourney will not learn anything new by reading what I write. My meta and yours are vastly different. When I play, people attack your mana and do flicker nonsense. I do not see a lot of stasis and winter orb stuff. Again, my articles are for all the people in all the forums and chat rooms asking "how do i play EDH?" I fully expect and I hope that my advice gets outgrown and new players play their own deck. As for not playing enough removal, you have to do what feels good for you.
You can't ban everything evil, but you can use a good mix of mass, targeted, and specialized removal. I have seen good decks with MAYBE 5 creatures and everything else be toolbox or removal/draw. To each their own. The thing I do not want to see happen is new players getting crushed and giving up because they get obliterated by the same crap over and over.
Violence is never acceptable, and I didn't read the comment (obviously), but then why is the article author allowed to make the extremely ignorant suggest of "taking that bapping stick and whacking whoever changed Alt-U to Ctrl-Z until the stick breaks, then getting another and starting all over"
Ctrl-Z is the universal shortcut for Undo. New players are going to expect Ctrl-Z to work if there is a reason to Undo. And if you don't like it you can change it in the settings.
Instead of reject rares draft run a reject commons draft?
I hate to be cynical, but success seems to depend on prizes. Nobody seems to want to play for the love of pauper alone. Whatever succeeds needs to have a prize structure. I look at what SCG have been doing as an example; holding out the carrot of great prizes has boosted their sales proportionally. Can any trader work out how to drive sales of pauper cards through prize sponsorship?
I guess constructed pauper really isn't profitable for those type of people. What we really need is a limited pauper format.
I keep shaking my head when I'm reminded they banned Sylvan Primordial and let Deadeye Navigator run rampant. In 80+ events of Sunday Commander (as mentioned in the comments for Mikey's podcast), we've never seen the kind of decks that, assumedly, caused the ban of Sylvan Primordial. But I was forced to ban Deadeye Navigator, eventually, because it was just taking over the meta. You don't even need decks with more colors than blue, because Navigator gives you infinite mana with Palinchron/Great Whale, and at that point, in blue, you pretty much have infinite ways to win the game. It was beyond oppressive, and beyond consistent (people would even fetch the Navigator with Ethereal Usher!)
As for the Prophet, she's surely strong and I can see where people who want her banned come from, but she's far from being the absolute key to victory. She helps you win as much as Mana Reflection or Vorinclex do, which means possibly, likely, far from surely. Now, Momir Vig as a commander, that's the real thing. If you have a lot of mana and nothing to play because you couldn't refill your hand, you're in a bad place. With Momir, you just have to pilot the deck well, and Momir will execute your plan for you.
Speaking of which, your recipe for deckbuilding feels like something aimed to Commander newbies (is it?), but then after you've played for a while (especially competitively), you get to a point when you build towards a master plan based on the commander you chose, so you don't "play safe" anymore, by design. If everything in your deck is just either a threat or removal for other people's threats, then every deck will play in the same way. That's one way to play Commander for sure, but IMO it's not the most fulfilling way.
To some degree, Commander is a Vintage/Legacy format (to some degree, it's even more complex and cutthroat). Think of a Dredge deck or a Elfball deck. Those decks don't care about being able to answer other people's game plans. They ARE the ones you should answer to, the ones you should be afraid of. Many Commander builds (I might even say archetypes, it they weren't too many) have the same approach.
Of course, the real, main issue in Commander is that there's not a metagame to base any observation on. Everybody's vision is limited to their own specific experiences, often within specific play groups. Since when I started running Sunday Commander, I came into contact with monstrously powerful things I had never thought about, things that would make my old self shiver and run for cover.
Take this fear that "green will kill your lands!", for instance. I see it mentioned often.
Now, I'm a green player. I like to run monogreen. I ramp, I have Terastodon in my decks. But after I ramped, if I fetch Terastodon, that means I'm losing, not that I'm trying to win. If I want to win, I fetch Craterhoof Behemoth, or Ulamog, or I pump everything with Kamahl, or unleash Tooth and Nail. If I fetch Terastodon, it's because there's something on the board that's killing us all. People usually cheer when I do that, because I'm killing the problematic stuff most decks can't easily kill, and in exchange I get a bland vanilla dork that won't make me win (I'll recur it with the Navigator, you say? Why in the hell should I bother doing that when I can do the same with Acidic Slime?). More so, if I get to 8 mana in early turns, should I fetch Terastodon and kill 3 lands of one opponent, with the result of everyone else attacking me, stat? So, maybe we're talking 1v1 here? I feel like we do, because, sure, in 1v1 it's a correct play, but in 4-man, it really isn't. And that's another issue: the Commander debate keeps conflating multiplayer and 1v1, when they're so wildly different, both at the building table and on the battlefield.
In multiplayer, if I wanted to build a deck that kills people's lands, Terastodon is pretty much the last thing I'd think about. What about red's many, many ways to do that en masse, from Impending Disaster to Keldon Firebombers? Or what about just shutting everyone else out of the game with Zur the Enchanter fetching Contamination? (If you see Zur or Momir at a table, and those pilots didn't inescapably win by turn 10, it's because they've built/played them wrong/honestly. That's how nasty they can be). Or what about just white's various Armageddon effects? Of course, Living Lands and Elesh Norn is where the cool kids are at, these days. There are so many WinterOrb.dek variants out there that make you want to bang your head on the table violently and repeatedly. Terastodon? Terastodon is your friend!
Last category: I'm all for banning every card that points to a specific life total instead of referring to "your starting life total", as they're doing since a few years (last example: Resolute Archangel). Maybe those cards aren't overpowered but they're just worded wrong. An even better solution would be changing their Oracle text accordingly.
"You can also always extend or reduce the banned list": Unfortunately, if you're playing MTGO, you can extend it but you can't reduce it. Even if you agree with your play group to, say, unban Primeval Titna, then the client won't let you start a table.
Ya know that's actually very funny because we've talked about that before. We can't find many tournament results for edh and when we do its the same decks over and over again. The awesome thing about your event Kuma is that it has variety in what decks people use.
Is Sunday Commander really the only metagame available for competitive Commander? If that's the case, they should start using those data for official banning purposes. :)
I am guilty of the same issue. People want to play what they want to play and don't like it when people tell them no. Not all colors have great targeted and mass removal. You honestly need a good mix of both. I can understand needing each card to pull its weight, but sometimes you just need a good mix of stuff that would work in single or multiplayer.
I think you hit on the main issue on your first paragraph: People need to run more answers. And not just mass destruction, but also pinpoint stuff. You need to be able to interact with people starting on turn 3 (Putrefy, Mortify, etc.) at the latest, and the sooner the better (Swords to Plowshares, Nature's Claim, etc.). Too many people run Wrath of Good and Fracturing Gust, and think that they will be fine. But they can't stop fast starts, and then complain about it. I've had 4 player games where I'm the only one casting spells during the first 5 turns, or I'm the only person trying to keep the super ramp guy in check, and it certainly makes a difference. You can't rely on your opponents to help you keep things in control. So people, instead of complaining, add more ways to interact with your opponents.
I think that 1v1 is a completely different beast than multi, but they will never implement the Duel Commander ban list unless it is officially endorsed by the Rules Committee and Sheldon. I don't see that happening ever, because they don't like 1v1. Would make sense for the rest of us though.
On a semi related note I wrote about something similar a long, long time ago: http://puremtgo.com/articles/conqueror-commander-vol-xxxiii-cards-people...
Not bad! After that Game 1, I thought I might be headed for 0-3 in the tournament. This was I think my 4th MMA event ever and I haven't played with most of the cards, so even with a powerful deck, I am likely to make play mistakes.
Thanks for the comment! Maybe we'll cross paths again. :P
I'm pretty sure I was your 2nd round opponent in this tourney. I normally play sealed, but VMA sealed queues had completely stopped firing so I decided to do an MMA draft while they were still available. Game 1 against you was probably my best game of the tourney. I thought I might have a chance against you game 3, but seeing your full deck list there was no way my deck should have beaten yours.
My deck wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. If it didn't win quickly, it didn't win at all. I went 0-3, but I did pretty well with the rares I opened - Slaughter Pact, Pact of Negation and Vendilion Clique.
In terms of finding a game, that's not hard in either the "Just for Fun" room or "Tournament Practice Room". Pauper's the main format I play and at the worse times I might need to wait a couple of minutes to get a game going.
These tend to be competitive decks, but Pauper is pretty wide open:
RUG Tron
Mono-Black
Mono-Blue Delver
Kilnfiend
Goblins
Burn
Madness (lots of variants on madness)
Elves
The above decks are just a sampling and they do range in terms of competitiveness. Unfortunately I don't have the time to do player run events like the PDC, but Pauper will give you a lot of options for casual decks that can be put together on the cheap and win games.
Classic Pauper is my favorite format. I also think it is great how affordable it is and am not sure why so few people are interested in it.
Try gatherling.com
I've never considered Cat. Gotta say, I don't really love them in their Magic version. But given time, everything can be done.
Oh, I am, because it never occurred to me to look at the subject!
So, we share the favorite card from M15!
Sad to read this article. I used to play Classic Pauper and am just getting back into MTGO. First goal was to buy up whatever's good in Pauper now. I still plan to, but it looks like it'll be harder to find a game.
One thing I noticed that has been a hindrance is a lack of information on Classic Pauper. I used to use pdcmagic, but it looks like since I was gone they completely dropped normal Pauper in favor of Standard Pauper, making it that much harder to find not just winning decklists but a breakdown of how those decks run.
"Supposedly you can mod DotP 2014 for the PC and add every card that has been hard coded in by the modders"
That, and then some.
Once you start to understand the code, and believe me I'm terrible at coding, you can copy and paste sections of code to make other cards. Heck, I've made a few simple, fake cards just for the computer to run because it can't understand how to run some of the more complex cards I made. I've made over 30 cards myself and have collected over 5,000 (with duplicates). It's worth mentioning that 2013 had mods as well.
Oh, and I haven't given a dime to micro-transactions. I'm right with you, there. I just like it as a nice way to chill and play with friends who aren't willing to buy into MTGO.