Feeling Blue in Standard Pauper

After a seemingly endless domination by White in Standard Pauper, I think it's fair to say that Blue may have risen to take its place. It all started with Treasure Cruise, which is arguably one of the best Commons to see print in quite some time. Blue has been paired with every other color now to take advantage of this excellent card, results in decks like Azorius Heroic, Izzet Control, Dimir Devotion, and even my own Wintergreen.

But that isn't to say that Blue necessary even needs the support of another color to be good. With the release of Dragons of Tarkir, we've seen a MonoBlue Combo deck rise to competitive play as well as other Control decks rise to the forefront, driven by other value cards such as Anticipate, Rise of Eagles, and Weave Fate.

Indeed, DrChrisBakerDC earned himself a 1st place finish in the most recent SPDC with a powerful Mono Blue Control deck. If you're interested in the deck, checkout his Deck Tech video below, and if you like what you see, you can also view video from all of his matches with the deck. Enjoy!

Infinite Life in Standard Pauper

All week I've been blogging about the new combos in Standard Pauper and how you as a player need to be prepared to answer them. Today I want to look at another fun trick you can do with one of the combos that I haven't seen anyone mention yet.

For review, the first combo involves playing and replaying Spidersilk Net by means of Zephyr Scribe enchanted with Retraction Helix. In this scenario, the accepted wisdom is to use this combination to power up your Elusive Spellfist until it can deal lethal damage to your opponent.

However, something fun happens when you replace the Spellfist with this card:

Student of Ojutai harkens back to the Gatekeepers cycle from Dragon's Maze. It's a 2/4 for 3W that is pretty decent on its own, given its potential to gain you quite a bit of life in the right build while also presenting a fairly relevant blocker. But combine this with the above combination, and you have created a loop that can generate an infinite amount of life, assuming your opponent doesn't have any means to interact with you. I believe that this is the first time that this is possible in Standard Pauper (although if I'm wrong, please let me know in the comments below).

So why hasn't this combo gotten any attention?

Well, there's just one small problem with gaining infinite life: it doesn't actually win you the game. In fact, it's even worse online than it would be in paper, since the presence of the game clock means that even if your opponent can't ever actually kill you, all he or she actually has to do is either be ahead on time or on cards to win (since you lose either when your game clock runs out of time or you are unable to draw your last card). And since Standard Pauper lacks any means of shuffling your library back into your deck, this probably isn't really a viable win condition.

That said, someone might be able to make a deck designed to pull this combo off, then Gravepurge another creatures back into your library to avoid losing my running out your library. Then all you'd have to worry about is being ahead on time. Not exactly the kind of deck I'd want to run, especially since it requires three colors of mana - but hey, it might actually be feasible!

So that's another fun thing you can pull off with this combo. 

Answering Combo in Standard Pauper

Last time, I wrote about the new combos in Standard Pauper. It seems like the whole community is buzzing about it. It's on Twitter, showing up in articles, and making appearances in the weekly PREs and practice matches. So you better be prepared to play against it, even if you've jumped on the bandwagon and are playing it yourself. Fortunately, as DrChrisBakerDC put it, the combos are quite fragile.

It's important to remember that the combo actually relies on three different cards to activate, and a fourth card for either combo to actually do anything. This means your opponent will need time to assemble these pieces, and you have multiple avenues of attack. But at its heart, both combos are reliant on untapping a single creature. Which means you can answer the combo by:

1. Taking out the creature. Point your removal of choice at Midnight Guard or Zephyr Scribe, and when it fits the Graveyard, the combo is dead in the water. The Scribe is particularly fragile with only 1 Toughness, but you'll need something a bit more potent to take out the Guard. Unfortunately, there's a wealth of ways to protect creatures - Gods Willing and its variants primarily, but also Glint, which is seeing play right alongside the Zephyr combo. Which means you might want to try...

2. Using counter magic. Counter either creature before it enters the virtual battlefield, or counter whatever spell your opponent uses to protect it. Cancel is probably the best, but Negate and Nullify are also worth considering. Of course, this forces you to hold up mana over multiple turns. Which means the better solution might be...

3. Removing the combo pieces before they're cast. Black has a whole suite of discard effects now, including the newly reprinted Duress, which not only lets you see exactly what your opponent has in hand, but also take out any of the non-creature cards or protection spells. But any of these first three options are better than...

4. Using specific hate cards against the Artifact. Both combos rely upon a mediocre Artifact to combo off, and you could certainly include cards like Naturalize or Shatter to destroy them. The biggest problem with this option, however, is that these cards don't have a lot of good targets in the format right now, and so might be a bit too narrow to include.

So while these two new combinations are both popular and fun, they are most dangerous when people aren't prepared for them. But forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. Don't let these combos get you down. Stop them in their tracks!

Combo in Standard Pauper

Suddenly I don't recognize Standard Pauper at all.

Well, that's not entirely true. But despite all the careful attention I paid to the new cards from Dragons of Tarkir, I failed to recognize that the addition of just three cards into the format unleashed not one but two potentially viable "infinite" combos onto the metagame. It wasn't until I saw this post by rremedio1 that I understood what I had overlooked.

Both combos are remarkably similar, relying upon a zero cost spell plus a creature than untaps when a certain requirement is met:



For this first combo, you cast the Helix on the Zephyr Scribe, then use the newly granted ability to bounce the Net back into your hand. Then, you cast the Spidersilk Net again for free. Since this is a noncreature spell, it activates the untap secondary ability on the Scribe, untapping it. You can then repeat this indefinitely (assuming your opponent doesn't interact to stop you).

To take advantage of this interaction, all you need is something that generates an effect as often as a noncreature spell is cast. Any Prowess creature will do the trick, but Elusive Spellfist is particularly effective, since it cannot be blocked. You simply repeat the combo until the creature has enough Power to deal lethal damage and then attack with it.



The second combo also utilizes Retraction Helix, but relies upon a different creature with an untap ability. Midnight Guard untaps whenever another creature enters the battlefield. So you use the Helix to bounce the Ornithopter, then replay it for free. Since this is a creature, it triggers the untap ability of the Midnight Guard, untapping it to allow you to again repeat this as many times as you want.

To take advantage of this interaction, you need something that generates an effect whenever a creature enters the battlefield. In this case, Impact Tremors fits the bill, since it deals one damage whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control. Repeat the combo as many times as it takes to deal lethal damage to your opponent.

Next time, I'll talk more about these two combinations and what you can do to combat them.