Monday Matchup: White & Boros Aggro

Welcome to the first full week of blogging on Cabel the Pauper!  This is also the final entry where I will establish the schedule for this week.  Monday is the beginning of the new week and is also the day of the Monday Pauper Deck Challenge Standard Pauper tournament.  So before that starts at 2:00, I'll get up the Card of the Day, let you in on what the themes will be this week, and share a few pre-tournament Standard Pauper thoughts.

Color(s) of the Week:  White

Old School White Symbol, Baby!

Just like the first partial week on the blog saw a Red theme, I'll have a prismatic standard bearer to keep the blog focused starting each Monday.  This does not mean we're going from red to blue to black to white to green and back again every five weeks.  Not by a long shot.  I count thirty-one total color combinations, not counting colorless, which should allow me to offer a decent variety.

Seeing as how I've been writing about Red for days now, it's only fitting I switch it up.  We'll get started right at the beginning for this week and just go with White as the weeks' color on Cabel the Pauper.  I'm still in establishment mode so I'll skip a basic description for now.  But note that for the future I'll be getting even more specific and move on to focusing on just one aspect of the color, guild, shard, or wedge being considered.  For now, white-in-general is our color on Cabel the Pauper.

Moving on, I'll also establish a Standard Pauper deck to focus on all week, usually the one I'm working on most and about to play in MPDC.  You know, so that everybody can sideboard against me specifically and continue my epic losing streak :-)

Deck of the Week: BOROS AGGRO

And this week I am still working on Boros Aggro.  I know I've already written about me playing such a deck, but hear me out.  I am the type of guy who keeps plugging away when it comes to winning games of Magic.  If I truly believe a deck has the potential to win but I end up losing, I'm not one to drop the project and move on immediately.  I go back to the drawing board, do more tweaking and playtesting, sometimes even consider an entirely new angle, and try, try again.

Last week I focused on the Battalion and Unleash aspects of Boros and did not make the cut to Top Eight.  I've been checking out other Boros lists that have and tried to keep the core cards from those builds.  Might as well use what works! But I've also taken note that this deck archetype can go several different directions.  And it has been successful in each of them.  Here's a quick run-down:

First, you have your basic Boros Aggro build, or at least the build that established the decks potential when rhysticy won MPDC 23.03 with a creature-heavy list.  The key innovations I see here is the use of Madcap Skills to push through even more damage along with two key copies of God's Willing and less than a playset of burn spells.

The pure beatdown approach was first attempted in the first event of the season by PRObosczcz with his Humans-style Boros build based around the tribal synergy of Cavalry Pegasus.

Finally, there was Gamelen's major revision by adopting a Boros Tokens strategy one week ago.  I'm always interested in decks that make tokens so I'll be keeping my eye out for improvements to the deck.  I'll definitely be giving it a spin later this week after my experiment with my own approach to Boros.

Which is what?  Well, you'll just have to stop by tomorrow for my tournament report after MPDC.  Or, just come to the tournament and play some friendly but competitive games of Standard Pauper with me and a host of other great folks to duel with.  Hope to see you there!  Thanks for reading, good luck & have fun!  Peace,

- C