A new season of the Standard Pauper Deck Challenge series began last night. New Years' hangovers and the rescheduling of Pauper Classic Tuesdays due to the holiday did not prevent enough paupers showing up to compete.
On my end, I had fun running back and forth between windows and faucets to make sure the pipes and Grandma didn't freeze in between rounds. You do what you gotta do :-) Let's see how the event played out:
This tournament gave us a first in Theros season Standard Pauper: playoffs composed enitrely of Mono Colored Decks. I'll grant we only ran a Top Four playoff, but we still have the following decks leading the way, all of them running only a single color.
Finals and Playoffs Winners:
1st Place: White Weenie2nd Place: Big Green3rd Place: Mono Black (deck not yet posted)4th Place: Red Deck Wins
This is the first time a straight Green deck has made it to the Playoffs. I've run into these big Snakes and Foxes before. They are tough to deal with and can finish games in very few swings - without messing with too Auras the way White Weenie and Red Decks do. It looks to ramp up to big brutes right quick, then smash with something that's too big to handle...But the finals match was brutally quick. Xelz's White Weenie deck bestowed upon him two Hopeful Eidolon plus Ethereal Armor openings in a row while Jadis's Big Green could not ramp fast enough. With this victory, the archetype is second only to Dimir Mill in total wins.
Swiss Honorable Mention:
We're not sure of the exact list posted by Mono Black last night (make sure you post your deck lists to Gatherling to receive your season points and contribute to metagame data). But I did run into a slightly different Black deck in the Swiss played by FlxEx. It's a surprisingly fast thing compared to the usual Mono Black Control list. That's because this is Mono Black Aggro...Blade!
Yeah, I kept looking for it but never saw it either. There really is no Gray Merchant of Asphodel here. I found myself making mistakes with my Simple Izzet Control list that was used to the Devotion strategy. Instead, FlxEx bested me in the Swiss even after I had a chance to play test against it before the event. He just kept dropping cheap dudes and swinging like any other Rakdos Shred-Freak deck.
The Takeaway:
Personally, I'm glad the new season began without a hitch and in a particularly challenging time in real life. That's a big step up from the disappointment of Worlds 19 not firing; the season needed a good start to boost my morale at least. Hopefully yours, too!
I'm looking forward to next week, with MPDC 23.10 on Monday, to see if single-color decks arrive in greater numbers. Green Ramp and Black Aggro were both very interesting entries for me, just when I was starting to think that guild-based decks were the way to go. And once again, I think I'm sick of White Weenie already again, but that's just me :-)
Also, I anticipate attendance being higher next week as there will be no conflict with any other PRE's (to the best of my knowledge). That means the competition will be stronger and could lead to an even higher prize payout! Thanks to all who played this week and see you next Thursday in the PDC room at 8:30 PM EST for SPDC 20.02. Till then, good luck! Peace,
- C
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