Standard Pauper Metagame Diversity

One of the criticisms often leveled against Standard Pauper is that with such a small cardpool the format will inevitably grow stale, with only one or two decklists outperforming everything else, making the format entirely too easy to "solve." And while there certainly have been times when a handful of decks have dominated the Standard Pauper metagame for a period of time, most of the time there is a very healthy amount of diversity in the format. And I am happy to report that right now is one of those times.

To illustrate this, just take a look at the last two weeks of Standard Pauper PRE data, taken from MPDC 29.07 and 29.06 as well as SPDC 29.07 and 29.06. In those four events, we had 3 different Top 8 playoffs as well as one Top 4 playoff. And out of those 28 slots, we had eleven distinct archetypes. Of those, three decks accounted for 12 of the Top 8 finishes, with Dimir Merchant, Stompy, and Izzet Control each with 4 appearances. Red variants also placed well, with Boros Tokens and RDW evenly splitting another 6 appearances between them. Rounding out the top spots were Golgari Delve, Esper, and Selesnya Heroes with 2 each, and single finishes by MonoBlue Control, GB Constellation, and Wintergreen.

I would call that a healthy amount of diversity! These decks touch upon all five colors, and represent Aggro, Control and Midrange (with only Combo being notably absent; although, such a deck does exist in the format right now). In fact, the closest thing to a common denominator is the inclusion of Treasure Cruise, which is included in 5 of the 11 archetypes.

Thus, I think it's fair to say now is a great time to be playing Standard Pauper. If you've never participated in one of our events, don't you think it's time to come check it out?