Monthly Metablog & Metagame Report: March 2015, Part II - Standard Pauper Metagame

The month of March saw nine Player Run Events on Magic Online via PDCMagic.com.  The  Standard Pauper Deck Challenge (SPDC) and Monday Pauper Deck Challenge (MPDC) are nearing the end of their 28th seasons for the ninth and eighth years running, respectively.  The metagame data for these events are compiled on the Gatherling tool on PDCMagic.

TOP DECKS OF MARCH 2015

The Top Deck of the format this month was an Aggro build, Azorius Heroic Cruise.  This build adds the power of Treasure Cruise to a combination of efficient White and Blue Heroic and Prowess creatures with effective combat tricks to trigger these mechanics, protect threats, and frequently cantrip into more of the same.  With four wins, Heroic Cruise has won twice as many events as any other competing archetype.  It's performance in the Top Four is also better than any other list, making the cut nine times out of nine, an amazing 100% events-to-playoffs ratio.

Azorius Heroic Cruise

1st Place at MPDC 28.03, March 9th, 2015, by Forli

Creatures 4 Akroan Skyguard 4 Hopeful Eidolon 4 Wingsteed Rider 2 Jeskai Student 2 Lagonna-Band Trailblazer 16 cards Other Spells 3 Jeskai Sage 4 Defiant Strike 4 Feat of Resistance 4 Gods Willing 4 Treasure Cruise 3 Refocus 2 Chosen By Heliod 18 cards

Lands 10 Plains 4 Evolving Wilds 4 Tranquil Cove 2 Island 20 cards Sideboard 3 Negate 3 Retraction Helix 2 Ajani's Presence 2 Disdainful Stroke 2 Last Breath 2 Pillar of Light 1 Erase 15 cards

That means it's not just the breakout builds of the season.  It will go down in history as one of the greatest Standard Pauper decks of all time!

The Metagame is almost evenly split between Aggro and Control strategies, with 19 of the former and 16 of the latter being piloted to Top Four status.  The most top-performing Control deck is Izzet Tokens Control, a "creatureless" strategy with the win conditions Flurry of Horns and/or Rise of Eagles, generating two large tokens at once, and backed up with counters, bounce, and burn.  Behind Azorius Heroic Cruise is the other best Aggro deck, Boros Heroic Aggro, which forgoes the card-drawing prowess in blue for more aggressive red creatures and direct damage.

Other decks of note are the Black-splash-Blue Devotion builds running Gray Merchant of Asphodel, at once a win condition and an engine for staying in the game.  These also play Treasure Cruise along with blue and black removal and card advantage spells for controlling board until Gary drops down on the battlefield.  Some players have splashed an additional color, the most popular being White for even more drain-life effects useful in the long-game.  On the Aggro end of the spectrum, an Orzhov Tokens strategy has become popular this month, featuring  powerful white token-makers for card advantage and enough black removal to clear a path before a well-time white mass pump spell.

Only one Top 8 deck, Mono Blue Control, has completely dropped off the radar after appearing earlier in the month.  Most recently, entirely new builds have surprised contestants and won events in their first entry! The last two events were won by an Izzet Blitz list, looking very much like "Red Deck Splashes Blue for the Win," piloted by the event host himself.  The next day, a Grixis Control build by rrmedio1 with no Gary or Izzet token makers (but plenty of Treasure Cruise and a scary Hexproof finisher) took the top spot at the last MPDC tournament of the month.

TOP STORIES OF THE MONTH

Treasure Cruise Banned in Pauper, Remains Legal in Standard Pauper

The most powerful card in the format is hands down Treasure Cruise.  No hard numbers are needed to back this up: the card was banned in Classic Pauper last month.  Having already been banned in other Eternal formats, this makes Standard Pauper one of the last places to play Magic where the card is legal and not overpowered.

Still, the conversation about possible ban-hammer-worthy cards is contentious - even when they are commons - and we Standard Pauper players must remain vigilant to make sure no single card destroys our format.  Until then, it's safe to say that Cruise has replaced Gary as the boogie man of Standard Pauper, for better or for worse.  It is this Pauper's opinion that the ship should remain on the waters and not be banned, and the rest of the community seems to have come to the same consensus.  It's a sure bet that Treasure Cruise will remain legal in the 29th seasons of MPDC and SPDC starting soon.

Campaign to Get Standard Pauper Listed on the Magic Formats Web Page

The banning of Treasure Cruise in Pauper raised questions of whether or not the card would still work with the Magic Online Standard Pauper filter.  In researching this, I came to discover that finding information on Standard Pauper on the official Magic: the Gathering Formats page on Wizards of the Coast web site is impossible: Standard Pauper is not listed as a format.

This month, other top players and I began discussing (perhaps a little too strongly at first...my bad!) on how to change this lack of information this long-running format, which has existed and thrived on Magic Online for going on ten years and is now being explored In Real Life at Local Game Shops as a result of the MTGO v4 debacle.  Stay tuned to the PDCMagic.com and other forums (and, of course, this blog!) for updates on the ongoing campaign to get Standard Pauper listed on the Magic: the Gathering Formats information page.

IN CONCLUSION

The month of March 2015 in the World of Standard Pauper is now in the history books.  Looking ahead, the month of April 2015 starts off with a bang: The SPDC Worlds Season Championship takes place this Sunday and the MPDC finale will take place about a week later.  It is very rare that new winning decks take players by surprise the week before these season finales.  Based on the metagame this month, one can expect the above-discussed archetypes to have a good change at the top trophies of the season(s).

Best of luck to and congratulations the Paupers who earned invitations and byes to the championships. And to all participants, may your topdecks be relevant, your maths be accurate. Good luck & have fun...and hey...Good Friday, too :-)  Peace,

- C

Tuesday Post-Tournament Post - MPDC 23.07

Yesterday's MPDC 23.07 event finally broke what I've dubbed "The Dimir Milling Streak." As for me, I ended a long streak of games as well...as losing streak!  I took my Boros list from last week that failed to make the cut to Top Eight and turned it inside out. I lowered the curve to make it faster.  I stuffed in more haste.  I even turned it into Aura deck at the same time.  And this time, it got me past the wall.

The results were pleasing, and I think if I'd played better throughout the event I'd have had an easier time of making it into the playoffs and pressing onward.  The deck really only gave me awkward draws related to mana, which I think is my fault, too.  Considering this, if I can make so many mistakes all night and still get to the second half of the tournament, then perhaps I've finally found a decent list.  Or at least the start of one.  I call it...

 Aura Boros Aggro:

MAINDECK

Creatures

4 Akroan Crusader

4 Wojek Halberdiers

3 Foundry Street Denizen

3 Hopeful Eidolon

3 Minotaur Skullcleaver

3 Rakdos Shred-Freak

3 Viashino Firstblade

2 Auramancer

Spells

3 Dragon Mantle

3 Gods Willing

3 Madcap Skills

3 Titan's Strength

2 Ethereal Armor

2 Prophetic Prism

Lands

9 Mountain

6 Plains

4 Boros Guildgate

1 Unknown Shores

SIDEBOARD

3 Razortip Whip

3 Keening Apparition

3 Electrickery

3 Chandra's Outrage

3 Celestial Flare

It took a little bit of experimentation to the get he numbers seeming right.  I knew space would be tight and I would be sacrificing the consistency of Boros by lowering the creature count to make room for the Auras suite.  So I ended up making the somewhat weird-looking choice to only go with two  copies of Ethereal Armor even though these are the most powerful Aura on its face.  What's the deal with that?

The thing is, I found Armor became a win-more card for when things were already working out here than in other Aura decks, where it's a pure backbone card. Also, Madcap Skills is just perfect as a three-of in Boros; this was not my innovation, so I did not want to touch it.   The decision came down to the balance between Armor, Dragon Mantle, and Titan's Strength, two spells that have been doing well in aggressive Monored builds  In the end, I went the more red route and ended up relying less on the optimal draws Armor wants and just ended up with draws to begin with.  This helped me out tremendously in testing and in-tournament and I would still get the concessional Eidolin + Armor god draw.

I was also taking my new one-drop into consideration, taking a build-around me approach.  Akroan Crusader can be a real nastyman, especially in an opening hand with any of of the buffs.  Some of my testing matches before the tournament convinced me when I was able to swing for almost half my opponent's life total on the second turn.  No joke, give the deck a test run and see how high you can get your second turn swing!  You just need one of the other dudes and some buffs.  More on these in later post since Boros is the Deck of the Week.

Above all, the real MPV of the deck is not any of its creatures or auras or pump spells.  It's Gods Willing.  No contest.  More about this later in the Card of the Day since I haven't even mentioned the players who did even better than Boros.

The trophy honors went to Grociu's Monoblack control, giving the archetype its second win this season.  All this talk about how mean, nasty, and prevalent Dimir Mill is has kind of overshadowed this beast. In fact, it seems Dimir Mill has failed to place at all!  Are happy days here again?  Or have we traded one awful control build for another?

Only time will tell, and there are plenty of contenders to knock Control off the throne developing.  The rest of the players who had success after the Swiss had as wide a variety of decks as we've seen all season.  Gwyned's new  Turtle Power! deck based around Nivix Cyclops took second place and is the most refreshing entry to me, but there's even more variety this week, from new Simic strategies to trie-and-true Hexproof.

Looks like some changes are a-happenin'!  We're already pretty much halfway through the season and the environment is still in far from solved.  See you around the second half the season!  Thanks for reading, good games, and good luck.  Peace,

- C

 

Weekend Update: A Break To Break Things In

Just so I don't risk biting off more than I can chew, I think it's a good idea to work some breaks from blogging into the new blog schedule.  I'm pretty happy with the format that is evolving, the daily features and with getting back to writing regularly.  But even I need a day off and I've set some pretty high standards for this new endeavor.  Now that I've had some time to break this new blog in, it's time I took a break.  I'm usually a little bit busier on weekends anyway, and a rock show or two usually pops up each month on these party nights.

Therefore, on Saturdays or Sundays I will take a step back and simply publish a Weekend Update.  That should give the blogger some space so the blog does not become overwhelming.  As part of this, the Card o' the Day will be a weekday feature only to give me extra time off.  Time to think more about Pauper, read up on other writers, get future writing started in advance, and I almost forgot...

...time to actually play Standard Pauper instead of just writing about it!

Now that the format of the new blog and my return to writing for PureMTGO are all set after a pretty hardcore writing streak to jump-start me, the next few weeks should feature much more playing than writing.  It's about this time every week I start to think about Monday's upcoming Standard Pauper tournament, anyway.  This will likely be the topic of most Weekend Updates, but anything Pauper (and everything else I've been getting up to) is on the table.

As I wrote in my first Post-Tournament Post, I am still working on Boros Aggro.  Last week I tried to make greater use of the Battalion ability than is usual in Boros.  Since then, another Boros list, Gamelen's New Recruits, featuring token-making spells and the Populate keyword made the Top Eight. Discussion about the archetype has continued about the many paths Boros could follow to re-take the top spot.

Personally, I'm just hoping to make the cut, but I've been considering all the available options to get there.  Batallion is out and Populate has been tried before.  Both seem a little bit too reliant on achieving optimal-board states in order to work, so that leaves me wondering about simpler stand-alone abilities like Haste, Aura, and Burn.  I'm still not sure which one I will be going with, but both Red and White have some cool options I hope to surprise folks with on Monday.

Whatever I do choose, I'm sure to have good games and have fun.  Maybe this week I'll actually have some good luck!  I hope you do too.  Thanks for reading the Weekend Update. Peace,

- C

Tuesday Post-Tournament Post - MPDC 23.06

On Mondays, I always try to play in the MPDC  Player Run Event on Magic Online.  This weekly gathering is a long-standing Standard Pauper tournament run through PDCMagic.com and hosted by gwyned, author of a blog similar to here, Writer Adept.  I recommend frequenting these places regularly if you're interested in or serious about Standard Pauper.  The best place to get started if you're brand new is the MPDC Season 23 Master Document, which gives you all you need to know to get started (and good for all players to refer to).

So on Tuesdays, I'll post my brief thoughts and take-aways from the tournament experience, which is always good fun (even if my luck is bad).  I used to write blog-length ramblings and play-by-plays right in my deck descriptions on Gatherling, but I think this new blog will save that sites memory and grant me more free rein here.

Then let's get to it!  Yesterday twenty-five Standard Pauper players got together to compete in the sixth event of MPDC's twenty-third season.  It marked the third week in a row that SPP Clanmate MudnisV has piloted the dreaded Dimir Mill deck to victory!  He's got a great post talking about how he's developed this monstrous control deck over at the Standard Pauper Players Clan Blog.

Dimir Mill is definitely the deck to beat in the early Theros season.  I was playing it the previous couple weeks as I always give the "best" deck a shot.  But I am an Aggro player at heart and was not playing the deck very well.  So instead, I built up a Boros Aggro deck based on rhysticy's winning list  from before MundisV's Milling streak began.

Here is my Boros Aggro from MPDC 23.06:

Boros Batallion Unleashed

RW Aggro by Cabel in MPDC 23.06 (1-2)

Creatures 4 Daring Skyjek 4 Gore-House Chainwalker 4 Skyknight Legionnaire 4 Viashino Firstblade 4 Wojek Halberdiers 3 Bomber Corps 3 Foundry Street Denizen 3 Splatter Thug 2 Rubblebelt Maaka 31 cards Other Spells 3 Madcap Skills 2 Gods Willing 2 Lightning Strike 1 Celestial Flare 1 Chandra's Outrage 5 cards

Lands 9 Mountain 7 Plains 4 Boros Guildgate 20 cards Sideboard 3 Keening Apparition 3 Electrickery 3 Chandra's Outrage 3 Celestial Flare 3 Annihilating Fire 15 cards

Join the glorious Boros Reistance against the Dimir Mill oppressors!

I did not end up doing well in the Swiss.  It's been like that all season so far.  But damn if it didn't feel good to turn dudes sideways and blow stuff up again!  Constantly staring at a fistful of blue counters and black removal with nothing but land and Archaeomancers on the battlefield is just not action packed enough for me right now.  I need some good old red-based excitement!  I'm really liking some of the Boros options; had fun trying out Bomber Corps, but I think I should stock up on Haste creatures and put Rakdos Shred-Freak back in that slot.  What do you think of the switch?  Feel free to make suggestions about Boros Aggro in the comments below!

I tried to practice a bit more than I did in preparation for previous tournaments and think I played a bit tighter than normal.  Still not good enough, though.  Some of the decks I faced were completely new to me and threw me off.  The Bant Enchantments deck the clan captain is working on and an interesting Simic Evolve both bested me and got me thinking I'll have to plan for them in the future.

But I'll stick with something Red for now.  I'm a Red Mage at heart and it felt great to have some burn at my disposal and army of quick little beaters.  I will likely try Boros again next week, practicing more and refining the list further.  Then again, I might not be able to resist building a straight Red Deck. No ice!  Mono Red has been placing fairly well, which gives me hope for the future :-)

And there you have it!  The first installment of my weekly post-tournament musings are up on The Web.  I hope  to see you for the tournament next week.  Thanks for reading.  Have fun, good luck, and good games!

Peace,

- C

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