Standard Pauper Card o' the Day: Rakdos Shred-Freak

So it's Black Friday, but it's still a very Red week here on the blog.  What does that mean for the Standard Pauper card of the day?  It means you get both:

Rakdos Shred-Freak - Return to Ravnica

MTGO Traders: Rakdos Shred-Freak - 0.08 Tix

This hasty little berserker is finding a home in all sorts of Standard Pauper decks.  Red Decks of all stripes want to start beating quickly and he does just that.  But Mono Black control builds are taking advantage of the fact that Shred-Freak technically has two black mana symbols in his casting cost, upping the devotion count for the game-winning Gray Merchant of Asphodel.

I'll bet we'll be seeing this Freak around for a very long time, and his slightly higher price range for a Standard Pauper card tells me he has applications in Classic and non-Pauper formats as well.  He's a pretty heavy hitter for such an early Standard Pauper Card o' the Day this Black Friday.  Give him a shot!  Thanks for reading.  Peace,

- C

Standard Pauper Card o' the Day: Akroan Crusader

It appears I've accidentally established a Red theme for my first week, even before my first weekly theme is figured out.  So let's make the Standard Pauper Card o' the Day another interesting Red selection.  This guy might end up being my new hero:

Akroan Crusader - Theros

MTGO Traders - Akroan Crusader - 0.02 Tix

Now that is one unique and very flavorful card.  It's an A+ in design and a perfect five-out-of-five fit for all player psychographics.  Everybody's inner-Melvin and Vorthos can see the Spartan flavor everywhere.  Spikes should see a token-generator with card-advantage potential, Timmies are thinking about building around the Heroic mechanic for token swarms, Johnny's are trying to figure out how to trigger this 300 times in a single turn while screaming "This! Is! Pauper!"

He's also a big step in filling out Red's philosophical position in the color pie.  Would you believe Akroan Crusader is the first 1/1 Human Soldier for one Red mana at common in history?  I had trouble too, but what a debut!  See, he's also only the third common Red creature to see print that can produce one or more tokens.  His company is as illustrious as I believe he will soldier on to be.

This list of Red Token-making creatures is illustrative of a split between Standard and Classic and even the gap between Vintage in the paper world versus the MTGO realm. But they can wait on that for now, because they are now letting me do this!

All that said about our Card o' the Day and I've never even really tested him!  My red one-drop of choice so far has been Foundry Street Denizen, but I've been impressed with guy from the other side of the table, so it's time to log on and test out Akrosan Crusader.  Give him a shot, thanks for reading and until next time, GL & HF!  Peace,

- C