But on December 4, 2023, the panel chose to ban the humble monk. It’s worth noting that some staple cards like Lightning Bolt and Delver of Secrets are cards that are wildly popular in Eternal formats like Legacy. If you’re looking for another format to try them out, Pauper is the perfect place to be. The rest of Europe exhibits a considerable demand for the format, with its player base primarily concentrated around physical events like PAUPERGEDDON. Currently, these events are exclusive to Italy, but there have been discussions about expanding them to other regions. As part of a personal project, I've compiled a list of places to play Pauper, primarily in Paper.

Pauper: Mono White Aggro - Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

There are some commanders that lend themselves well to Full Combo though. The deck wins by drawing it's entire library using their commander, Village Bell-Ringer, Retraction Helix / Banishing Knack and a bunch of mana dorks. Since the combo needs a critical mass of dorks to function your deck will have an incidental focus on fast ramp built into it already. First of you can't just throw together the obvious Stax card and play Stax.

If you come from other formats, you are surely aware of games which boil down to single cards taking over. While there are some really strong combinations, with the highlight being Krark-Clan Shaman and Toxin Analysis, most games play out very fairly. Their wins are usually very slow and even in their losses the stop people from playing out their strategies as it was intended. Luck is on both the Stax hating and Stax loving players side when it comes to PDH.

Gather The Cards You Need

Beyond that, Chrysalis shines in this matchup thanks to its hidden reach, while Refurbished Familiar can often be cast ahead of schedule. It also easily bypasses early [card]Spellstutter Sprite[/card], meaning your opponent will likely need to use a [card]Counterspell[/card] to stop it—something you can bait to help resolve a bigger Eldrazi later. Additionally, you can even pair [card]Krark-Clan Shaman[/card] with [card]Toxin Analysis[/card] to give it deathtouch and lifelink. While this tech isn’t present in this particular build, it’s worth keeping in mind as a potential option.

It means also that you can take a solid core and rebuild it to your own preferences. That said, [card]Writhing Chrysalis[/card] is a solid option for stalling the board. It grows quickly, allowing it to outsize threats like [card]Tolarian Terror[/card]. Overall, this isn’t a bad matchup, but it can become problematic if your opponent drops consecutive 5/5s for just one mana early on.

Note the rats do have an uncommon printing so they could spearhead your deck as well.Blood Seeker, Suture Priest - These don't slug everyone at once but they do a lot of work. When life total become low they make sure that people can't over deploy threats to catch up in the damage race. They also stop flicker loops as long as they stick around.Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning - You want removal to keep the board free from threats.

Given how the meta is being developed, sideboards are not big enough to run hate against mono red, affinity, caw gates, and Jund Dredge at the same time, so graveyard hate, while needed, is not popularized much yet. The most important concept when it comes to Pauper deckbuilding is the game plan. In other words, our deck needs to have some kind of achievable goal, and thereby requires the proper tools to actualize that goal.

Caw Gates Pauper Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

This one is somewhat the dream hand, as you have a lot of cards to dig deeper into your library for the final piece of the combo, as you can tutor for the mana goblin right off the bat. From here, the game plan diverges drastically between the two deck, even though they share many of the same cards. Both strategies run very similar cards, as their core relies on sacrifice spells like [card]Deadly Dispute[/card], arguably the best black card of the set.

Unless it kills [card]Writhing Chrysalis[/card], it won’t cut it, and because of this, we swamp bad removal for a more useful one. [card]Avenging Hunter[/card] is also very good at changing the pace of the game as [card]The Initiative[/card] is a strong ability for grindy matchups. As explained initially, your Shamans won’t accomplish much unless you pair them with [card]Toxin Analysis[/card] to wipe out their big snakes. If you decide to take this approach, keep in mind that you’ll mtg card not only have to fight through countermagic but also avoid [card]Snuff Out[/card], which can remove your creatures for free. Faeries fly, making them one of the few creatures that [card]Krark-Clan Shaman[/card] can't deal with, so its exclusion is an obvious choice.

Let's face it, who in our fast paced society still has the time to sit down with friends and enjoy several hours of commander. It accelerates the game by increasing everyones recources, be it mana, cards, creatures in play. The goal of these kinds of deck can very well be to win but the first goal is to skip the build up and get right into the action.

In it, he emphasizes the importance of good mana and logical mana curves. Every play we make begins with, and is made possible by, mana (excluding of course affinity spells, convoke spells, Daze, Gush, Patrician’s Scorn, Phyrexian mana, Ramosian Rally, Spinning Darkness— OMG Pauper is so broken). This plan is complemented by Voldaren Epicure and Implement of Combustion, both cards that also interact with Galvanic Blast, which joins Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning to expand the damage range. Goblin Tomb Raider and Goblin Blast-Runner are two other important pieces to establish pressure from the first turns. This is a hard match, depending on the version you are facing off, as the jund variant tends to run more removal in the form of [card]Galvanic Blast[/card] that can easily kill your [card]Coalition Honor Guard[/card] with metalcraft.

You can pair with red for access to Lightning Bolt, Skred, and Red Elemental Blast, or black for the almighty Snuff Out. The core strategy is to play cheap creatures with evasion (faeries) like Faerie Seer and Spellstutter Sprite to sneak in some damage with other creatures in the realm of Ninja of the Deep Hours and Moon-Circuit Hacker. Let’s delve into Pauper, the budget-friendly and competitive format that has gained popularity among players like Andrea Mengucci, a former World Magic Cup winner.