The Week of October 23rd in Standard Pauper

Today's post was delayed by some gateway errors over at pdcmagic.com, but I'm happy to report that those have been resolved. I have also resumed my Standard Pauper Deck Techs, and I should have the first installment up on Monday. But for today, I want to take a look at the twelve decks that made it to the playoffs of our two Standard Pauper events and offer a snapshot of the current metagame.

Gone entirely was the Gruul Thriving deck that performed so well last week. Instead, the archetype to beat this week is a return of the Izzet Spells deck, which earned a Top 4 finish in SPDC and two Top 8 finishers in MPDC. This build is very similar to the one that dominated last season, but adds Self-Assembler and Tezzeret's Ambition to the mix.

Another archetype that performed well was an Esper Auras deck. This deck is all about Artifacts and Enchantments, utilizing Ironclad Slayer and Aviary Mechanic to recur strong cards like Boon of Emrakul, Dead Weight, Prophetic Prism, and Self-Assembler, while backing up those threats with a strong removal suite. GotThisForSOI piloted this archetype to first place in MPDC as well as a Top 4 finish in SPDC.

These two archetypes were the only ones to have multiple representatives among the playoffs of the two events, with 8 other unique decks filling the remaining slots.

Among these was a Sultai Control build by rremedio1 that took the trophy in SPDC which relies upon the sacrifice synergies of Primal Druid, Wretched Gryff, Bloodbriar, Bone Splinters, and Altar's Reap to generate a ton of card advantage, backed up by powerful Pulse of Murasa as well as the new powerhouse of the format Self-Assembler.

The rest of the pack included a Mono Black Vehicles deck, a repeat of the Rakdos Madness deck that performed well last week, a Dimir Control build, a Boros Vehicles deck, a Simic Big Stuff deck that was also featured last time, and a Mono Blue Control build. Of these, only two didn't include a full playset of Self-Assembler, which as I mentioned earlier this week has quickly become the card to beat in Standard Pauper.

Yet despite the prominence of that single card, the metagame is still quite diverse, with 10 different decks among the top performers. Perhaps that will be the saving grace of the format, since almost any deck can take advantage of this card without constraining the deck in any particular direction. This will certainly be something to watch moving forward.

See you next time.