MPDC 24.03 Pre-Game Show

Greetings loyal readers!  I finally have the opportunity to play in today's Monday Pauper Deck Challenge Standard Pauper tournament after over a month away from the game due to real life dilemmas.  Now I face another dilemma:

What the heck do I play??

Without any spare time to brew a list of my own, normally I'd choose whatever deck seemed most dominant in the metagame. But it's too early - with only two events' worth of data - there is no easy answer as to which deck is the best in the format.  So far, Bant Hexproof has won an event and a BUG-colored Defenders deck has taken the top spot, both times beating out a uniform White Weenie list.  Decisions, decisions, decisions...

If I were to just netdeck one of these three hoping to repeat their success, I'd probably go for DrChrisBakerDC's Defender Mill for purely sentimental reasons: the last deck I played in an event was a wacky five-colored defenders deck I threw together just for fun.  Dr. Baker has improved things substantially by putting a lot of thought into how such a deck can actually win, turning a quirky casual deck into what looks to be a true powerhouse in the format.

But wait! There are more deck lists to copy and paste thanks to Standard Deviations Standard Pauper Gauntlet contest.  I will not be able to resist brewing a deck at a later date to enter this unique and exciting event:

Or I could browse on over to an excellent article published today on the most important website for Magic: The Gathering articles, Star City Games, to find out What Standard Pauper Has To Offer care of well-known writer Jason Moore.  It's great to see Standard Pauper getting some hard-earned attention here!  Just the fact that so much good reading is available on this little format from such big names threatens to eat up all my deck-building time as well...

...anyway, I hope you are not having the same indecisive problem as I am having today.  I'll simply encourage you to play whatever deck you feel most comfortable with and gives you the greatest satisfaction when the "fun factor" is given highest priority.  That's how I will make my choice today and I'm actually thrilled to be able to face this kind of dilemma again.  It means I've finally come back to my favorite hobby: playing Standard Pauper on Magic Online with awesome commons and even more awesome friends.

See you in the Getting Serious room in about an hour!  Good luck to all and have some good games today.  Peace,

- C

Monday Metagame Report

The first week of the New Year is usually a slow one for Standard Pauper PREs.  This year is no different.  There was no MPDC tournament last week due to the holiday break (which ends today with MPDC 23.10!) and the first event in the 20th SPDC season has already been covered here in a tournament report.

Furthermore, while it has not seen the light of day quite yet, I expect that the next edition of Standard & Pauper (here is last month's article) will be published shortly on PureMTGO.  I've a hunch it will appear today, but I could easily be wrong.  I'm probably not the only amateur Magic writer who has taken it upon himself to churn more drafts in the New Year :-)

So instead of a redundant post, we'll have to wait until next week to see how the Monday Metagame Report pans out.  You can expect a summary of what happens later in today's MPDC and the results of SPDC 20.02 coming up this Thursday.

I will instead update this post with a link to January's installment of Standard & Pauper as soon as it is published.  In the meantime, here's a preview of some of the metagame data I've tracked for the series:

The article will also track the Top 10 decks of the metagame, the balance between aggro and control, and an updated look at the comparative ratio of colors being played.  I hope you enjoy it, maybe between rounds of today's Standard Pauper event...

That's all for this slow week.  Stay tuned for next week's metagame report as things begin to pick up speed again.  In any case, have a great Monday!  Peace,

- C

2014: A New Year for Standard Pauper

Happy New Year!  This will be my fifth year of playing Standard Pauper and the eighth year of Standard Pauper play on Magic Online.  I hope it will be the first year for loads of new players, too.

In that sense, the most important article of 2014 has already been published just for them.  On day one, no less!  Gwyned, the author of Writer Adept and host of the MPDC series has updated his New Player Primer from a couple years ago to provide players who have never participated in a Player Run Event before all they need to know to get started.

PureMTGO - Writer Adept: New Player Primer 2014

The article covers the both the old and new MTGO clients and some updates to the Gatherling procedure for these tournaments.  And there are links, links, links to every place that updates content regarding the format.  The information is as applicable the MPDC series as it is the 20th season of SPDC I will be hosting this year...starting tomorrow!

So if you are new to Standard Pauper, do check out Gwyned's article on PureMTGO to help you get started and join us on Monday afternoons and Thursday nights all year long for the best kept secret in Magic Online.  And if you're a returning player, then welcome back!  I hope to see you online and get the best games of my Standard Pauper career in with you this year :-)  Good luck and have fun with your 2014!  Peace,

- C

Tuesday Post-Tournament Post - MPDC 23.09

It's the second week in a row that White Weenie has defeated a Red Deck in the finals match of MPDC in the Standard Pauper tournament scene  And just like last week, the White pilot was BigBee with the same list he won with before!  It seems another winning streak could be underway.  The burn decks were a bit different from last week, though, as was the rest of the Top Eight.  Once again, some defining archetypes returned while some entirely new ideas emerged victorious.  Check out the full metagame report for a closer look at some of these innovative new decks.

As for me, there was just one little difference between the Boros Aggro list I used yesterday to finish in the Top Four, my best all season.  The last time I played Boros I found myself still having trouble stumbling on mana because of color requirements.

The biggest offender in Boros was Rakdos-Shred Freak, whose double red conflicted with the guilded cost of Wojek Halberdiers in the two-drop slot. Freak is a great turn two play and gets very aggressive in multiples, working especially well in Red Decks and Monoblack.

But in the long run, I'd get more difficult turn twos and more late game draws where he's just another one toughness non-threat on a controlled board.  Or just three more life points for Dimir Mill to gain from Crypt Incursion when they inevitably die.  The problem wasn't just the casting cost.  The problem was that Shred Freak was a creature.  One that was not dealing enough damage in the long game in a meta dominated by long game decks.

Razortip Whip fixed all of that.  As a traditional artifact, it's the easiest card to cast in the deck.  It deals more damage in the long run and gives me some extra use out of my spare lands.  It's not easy to deal with, and any sideboard with artifact hate will end up diluting its plan to deal with my swarm of creatures, which are all solid enough with Rakdos Shred-Freak.

Freaks did work great in the scary-looking Red Deck piloted to second place by NT_Smith, though.  We were both running with Akroan Crusaders and plenty of stuff to throw at him for token swarms, but his used a solid suite of direct damage instants differs wildly from  Boros.  Some builds have packed burn spells before, and I've tried to fit them in, but to try and stuff a burn strategy in a deck that's already working two angles (swarm and enchantments) has proved too much so far.  

But there were times, especially in the critical match against BigBee's White Weenie that overwhelmed me in the semifinals, one stupid Shock or "Bolt" would have either kept me alive long enough to find another out or just sealed the deal for me.  This is probably going to be the next angle to explore with my Boros Aggro project if other aggro decks like White Weenie or Boros Aggro itself become more prevalent.

I believe Standard Pauper players will definitely have to adjust to White Weenie now.  We've already had one deck and pilot win two weeks in a row with Mill, and that went on to win a third time and is still heavily present in the environment.  We'll have to wait until the new year to see if Monowhite Aggro matches Dimir Mill's winning streak after MPDC takes a two-week holiday break.

In the meantime, I will be hosting the SPDC Season 19 Worlds Tournament this Thursday at 8:30 PM Eastern Time.  The event will be open to all who wish to participate in order to make up for the fact that the series is just returning after a drop-off.  Closing the season in a fun and clean way is the goal for me, and I'm interested to see how many of the top players from the past years' season I can whip up into attending.  Stay tuned, and thanks for stopping by!  Peace,

- C

Tuesday Post-Tournament Post - MPDC 23.08

The MPDC series broke 30 players yesterday at MPDC 23.08.  The Top 8 players favored mono-colored decks this week, with BigBee's White Weenie taking the gold in the finals against dueyutah's Red Deck.

As for me, we won't get too into that.  All I'll say is played my Boros Auras deck
one more time and barely avoided very last place.  It was fun for a bit, but now I've reached that point in the season where I just don't know what to play.

Dimir Mill seems to be dropping off slightly, though it is still a huge metagame consideration (one player even showed up with a 90-card deck, presumably to fight this).  Mono Black Control is fast replacing it as the top control deck to beat.  And stumbling on mana against either one really isn't much of an option.  This keeps on happening to me with Boros Aggro, and I suspect I'll run into the same trouble if I try out the Selesnya Tokens or Simic Evolve decks that have been popping up and sparking my interest.

Chances are this week I'll load up a stock list that I feel has a good chance to auto-pilot me to a decent showing.  Right now, I'm concentrating a little harder on reviving the SPDC series, which starts again in just two more days!

These events will be run in a manner almost identical to MPDC, featuring the same Standard Pauper format and same Swiss/Playoff structure with similar prize support thanks to PDCMagic.  But SPDC will take place at 8:30 PM instead of starting registration at 2:00 PM, Eastern Time like MPDC to provide Paupers of the Western Hemisphere a weekday evening event.

In any case, despite a poor performance, I really enjoyed yesterday's MPDC and I'm really looking forward to hosting the next Standard Pauper event and hope to see you there!  Until then, good luck & have fun!  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

 

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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