The Week of July 3rd in Standard Pauper

It's time for another update on the Standard Pauper metagame for this week. With Monday being a holiday here in the United States, we originally weren't scheduled to have an event, but fortunately plans changed and things were able to proceed as normal. With another week in the books, we've only got two more events before WORLDS, which is the capstone tournament for the season just before the release of Eldritch Moon on Magic Online. By this time next week, we'll probably have the full spoiler in hand. But for now, let's take a look at how things are shaping up as we finish out the season.

This week the Top 4 of both SPDC and MPDC included six different archetypes, with the infamous GB Control only accounting for one of those spots - albeit an important 1st place finish in SPDC by GotThisForSOI, who had accumulated an impressive run of wins before being locked out of the Top 4 of MPDC altogether! Air Support and RB Madness were no where to be seen this week, but BW Allies and a Pieces of the Puzzle variant of Dimir Control both returned to the trophy stand this week, with the latter claiming a spot in both events. An aggressive Boros archetype run by Paranoid_Android, a Bant Enchantments archetype with two wins by afreeAK, and a White Weenie like Selesnya build piloted by morpphling accounted for the final three archetypes. This certainly seems to indicate that there's plenty of space in the metagame for a variety of decks, and it will be interesting to see which decks the top players decide to bring to our final events of the season.

A few other interesting tidbits from this week's finalists:

1. Once again, every color was represented among these eight decks. Red was the least played with only a single representative, while White and Black tied for the most played colors. In fact, every deck in the Top 4 of SPDC was playing Black! While the emphasis on Black for removal is pretty expected, the strong resurgence of White is a bit more unusual.
   
2. Pulse of Murasa was back up to 14 copies, although morpphling's build only included two copies in the Sideboard. Black removal continued to be a shared emphasis among many of the archetypes. For White, Thraben Inspector was the card that was most commonly played, despite being absent from the typical BW Allies build.
   
3. As is typical towards the end of the season, the metagame is tilting more and more towards Control, with only two of the eight decks adopting an aggressive strategy. There simply is too much advantage to be gained in the late game to make Aggro an attractive option right now!
   
4. morpphling also managed an impressive 5-0 record in MPDC with his Selesyna build, defeating Paranoid_Android's aggressive Boros build twice, rremedio's Dimir Puzzle Control, and afreeAk's Bant Enchantments twice. In SPDC, GotThisForSOI came close, but dropped a game to rremedio (who played Dimir Puzzle Control there as well) to finish 4-1.

We continue to see new players each week, which is definitely a trend I am excited about. Keep spreading the word, and let's see our community continue to grow. See you next week for more Standard Pauper!