The Week of July 10th in Standard Pauper

As I mentioned last time, I am still traveling at the moment, and so far I seem to be running about a day behind on everything. As a result, I can guarantee that my set review won't be done for Monday's deadline for PureMTGO, so expect it to come out the following Monday unless the editor is willing to get it published before then. In any case, as is become my regular habit, I want to take a look at what happened in our two Standard Pauper events this past week.

This week GB Control returned with a vengeance, with the typical build capturing three of the eight trophies and its three color variant that splashes Blue for Jwar Isle Avenger and Monastery Loremaster accounting for two more. The other three trophies went to an aggressive Orzhov list (without any Allies!) that took first place in MPDC, another aggressive Boros build, and the Bant Vessel list that first appeared last week.

Here's a few more interesting tidbits from the week:

1. While every color was once again represented among the eight Top 4 decks, Black was far and away the dominant color, appearing in all but two of the winning decklists.
   
2. Pulse of Murasa was included with a full playset in every deck that played Green, accounting for a full 24 copies among the six decks. Complete Disregard and Oblivion Strike were the next most often played cards (not including Basic Lands, of course).
   
3. GB Control continues to be the deck to beat, but it's interesting to see its Sultai variant also performing very strongly. Given that it's slightly more Control than the two color version, I expect that it has a slight advantage in the mirror, but is also more vulnerable against aggressive strategies and poor draws.
   
4. Speaking of which, DrChrisBakerDC published a Deck Tech and videocast of the Sultai Control deck he piloted to 1st place in SPDC. He managed a perfect 5-0 with that deck, so it certainly seems like he's on to something. Definitely worth checking out!

That's all for now. We've got one more week of regular tournaments before our season capstone events the week of July 24th, leading up to the release of Eldritch Moon on Magic Online on August 1st. Hope to see you in one of our free tournaments soon!