The Week of October 16th in Standard Pauper

Hard to believe it's been a month already since my last metagame update for Standard Pauper! But this week marked the return of both of our Standard Pauper Player Run Events, with twelve brand new decks that made the cut to the playoffs between them. With the rotation of both Dragons of Tarkir and Magic Origins and the release of Kaladesh, things are obviously going to look very different. That being the case, I suspect it will take several weeks for the best decks to emerge. But with that said, let's go ahead and take a look at the top performers from this week's tournaments.

Three archetypes earned multiple finishes among the two events. The first was a Gruul colored Thriving deck, nicknamed for its two Thriving creatures Peema Outrider and Riparian Tiger, who joined forces with the Landfall enabled Snapping Gnarlid and Valakut Predator to create quite the beatdown deck. This archetype took 1st place in SPDC and a Top 8 finish in MPDC.

The second archetype was a Rakdos Madness deck that plays off the synergy between Madness cards and Tormenting Voice (and its Kaladesh equivalent Cathartic Reunion), backing them up with a varied suite of removal and solid creatures. This archetype earned a second place finish in both events as well as another Top 8 finish in MPDC.

The third archetype was what I have termed a Simic Big Stuff deck. This is essentially a revamp of the Simic Eldrazi deck that performed so well last season, but with the key addition of Self-Assembler and Vehicles instead of some of the Eldrazi fatties. This archetype took both 1st place and Top 8 in MPDC.

The rest of the field was an Esper Midrange deck, a stock Orzhov Allies from last season, an almost unchanged Izzet Spells deck, a Stompy deck, and MonoBlack Vehicles.

Among all these decks, the big winners from Kaladesh appear to be Peema Outrider, Renegade Freighter, Self-Assembler, and Thriving Rhino. If you're playing a deck that includes three or four of these cards, you're probably going to do alright moving forward! It will certainly be interesting to see how these cards continue to impact the metagame going forward.