Thursday, May 16, 2013

Return to Ravnica Block Pauper Event

This past Monday, the weekly Monday Pauper Deck Challenge was a special event. Rather than playing our typical Standard Pauper, the host instead ran a Return to Ravnica Block Pauper event. While turnout was lower due to the expense and/or difficulty of picking up the new cards, it was still a very fun event.

After a quick look at the available options,  I ended up building a Grixis-colored Control build that utilized a solid suite of Instant and Sorcery spells to power out Nivix Cyclops. It had the typical Control elements - counterspells, removal, card draw, and defensive creatures. Here's what my build looked like:


I ended up with a respectable 2-1 record, but my tiebreakers were not sufficient to make Top 4. I still had a lot of fun, and actually had some very close games during Round 2. Unfortunately, the client failed to record most of my replays, and I didn't end up recording any of the game numbers, so most of the event was lost. But I did manage to recover a single game from Round 2 which I thought shows off the deck pretty well:

 

 Anyway, the event was lots of fun. I hope you enjoyed watching the video. Next week, MPDC will be back to my beloved Standard Pauper format, and I hope to be bringing you lots of great coverage of how the metagame has evolved with the release of Dragon's Maze. Thanks for reading. See you next time!

2 comments:

  1. Nice video and idea for Block Pauper, might have to brew some, too!

    I'm pretty ornery about some things, so just to educate the masses since you misinformed them twice in your video - it IS very possible for your opponent to draw a land after you mill them with Balustrade Spy - 2 lands are allowed to be consecutively drawn - and while you're guaranteed to mill the first one, the second will still be there, waiting on top :D See, so Balustrade Spy's 'drawback' isn't as bad as you implied.

    Liked the video - keep it up, sir.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agreed with Chris; if you hit a land with your first Spy zap, it marginally increases the odds that your opponent draws a non-land; on the other hand, if you hit a bunch of nonlands followed by a land, it actually increases the chance he draws a land; the whole thing comes out in the wash if you do the math and it makes no difference whatsoever.

    ReplyDelete