MPDC League Season 2 - Esper Artificers

The first week of Season 2 of the MPDC League is in the books. And as promised, we've got some new content to show off. First, we've got a fantastic trophy designed by Polyjak. Second, I've got a new visual decklist graphic as well as a short write-up of cRUMMYdUMMY's winning list from Week One, which we're calling Esper Artificers. Let's take a look at his list:

As its name suggests, this deck is all about Artificers and the Artifacts they control. Aether Swooper, Bastion Inventor, and Aviary Mechanic are all Artificers, giving them an immediate advantage when combined with Inventor's Goggles. Add to this mix a full playset of Self-Assembler, Thraben Inspector, and a single Pilgrim's Eye, and you've got a fairly aggressive creature-based strategy. These creatures can then be further augmented with the Cartouche of Knowledge and of Ambition, making them into an even more formidable threat.

However, that's not to say the deck can't also play the long game. There are seemingly dozens of ways to abuse the "bounce" effect of the Mechanic, generating card advantage from not only your creatures, but from the Cartouches and Prophetic Prisms as well. The list even includes 2 Metallic Rebukes for some "soft" permission and a single Brilliant Spectrum, which thanks to the Prophetic Prisms could potentially draw up to 5 cards.

The Sideboard gives the deck some powerful Artifact/Enchantment hate from Forsake the Worldly, whose Cycling ability ensures it will always be useful. Other options include some additional counter magic from Essence Scatter, Negate, and another two copies of Metallic Rebuke, some helpful removal spells in Grasp of Darkness, and the fourth copy of Cartouche of Ambition for when you really need the extra life granted by Lifelink.

Congratulations to cRUMMYdUMMY for piloting this deck to a 5-0 finish and earning the trophy for Week One.

Finally, don't forget to check out my top picks from Hour of Devastation for Standard Pauper, which is now available over at PureMTGO.com.

Finishing Up My Hour of Devastation Review

Today I am hard at work on my Standard Pauper review of Hour of Devastation for PureMTGO. I am most of the way through it, and assuming all goes according to plan the article should be published this coming Monday. After not doing much writing about Magic for the past few weeks, it feels good to be back at work evaluating cards and thinking about how Hour of Devastation will impact Standard Pauper moving forward.

On the whole though, I haven't been that impressed with this set. I only identified a little more than a dozen cards that will probably see play, and several of those are fringe cards that might be good in a particular archetype but are not worth much outside of that specific strategy. In fact, other than highlighting these particular cards, assigning a ranking to them seems pretty fruitless, as they all fall more or less within the same ranking.

Anyway, here's a preview from the article:

This cycle of creatures (plus the Blue creature Enchantment Aura) are vanilla creatures with an additional ability that turns on whenever you control a Desert or have one in your Graveyard. They are each fairly costed for their stat-lines, but even with the secondary ability they don't offer much benefit for the cost of having to include Deserts in your deck. The Falter-like effect of Gilded Ceredon is probably the most interesting, making this creature more difficult for your opponent to effectively block. But of them, the best is probably Unquenchable Thirst, since it is not only still decent even with a Desert card but is also an effective removal spell for Blue. Overall though this cycle is pretty lackluster, and certainly doesn't give you enough incentive to include Deserts in your deck if you weren't already going to play them.

League Begins and Amonkhet Top Hits

I am happy to announce that the Monday Pauper Deck Challenge League is officially underway! Whenever you are on Magic Online, join channel #mpdc, chat with your fellow Standard Pauper players, and get in some matches. You can also check out the current Scoreboard, which lists every match that's been recorded as well as the decklists they were using. It's been great to see so many players already taking advantage of this opportunity, and I'm happy to report that things are well underway.

I've also had several questions about Self-Assembler. While this card has been banned for the last couple seasons of MPDC, with the start of the league I decided to go ahead and make it legal again for play in the league. I will be keeping a close eye on the results and won't hesitate to ban it once again if it proves to continue to warp the format. But in many ways the league is like a reset button for the format, and I'd rather open everything up, especially with the influx of returning players. As such, I have adjusted the front page accordingly.

Finally, today PureMTGO.com published my latest article, this time analyzing what I believe are the best 25 cards of the set for Standard Pauper. Check out my article here. Note that I am no longer doing a card-by-card evaluation on the whole set. Instead, I'm just evaluating the cards that will probably see the most play, ranking them as follows: good, for those cards that will see regular play; better, for those cards that are particularly relevant or worth building around; and best, for those cards that will define much of the format. I hope this new ranking system makes it easier to quickly get a grasp on the format and guide you as to which cards you should pick up first from Amonkhet.

Hope to see you soon across the virtual table in the MPDC League!

Getting Ready for WORLDS

It's hard to believe, but the 34th season of our two weekly Standard Pauper tournament comes to an end early next week. This will also be the last event where the Commons from Dragons of Tarkir and Magic Origins will be legal. As a result, next time I'll take a look back at what proved to be the top hits from those two sets. But for today, as we get ready for the final events of the season, I wanted to set aside my normal Thursday state of the metagame and instead talk about what you should be prepared to face as you enter the capstone events on Sunday and Monday.

1. While they are by no means the only contenders, the most important decks in the metagame right now are Izzet Spells, Simic Eldrazi, Pulse Control, and Tremors. If you're just looking to pick up a strong deck and run with it, you're best bet is to pick one of these.
   
2. Even if you're not playing one of those four decks, it would be wise to understand each of them. You should be familiar with the cards they play and the basic strategy for each archetype. If you're looking for help in this area, you can check out my Deck Techs for each of these decks.
   
3. Removal is going to be key in almost any match-up. But not just any removal will do. You want:
•  Instant speed, cheap removal to help deal with early critical threats like Thermo-Alchemist.
• Unconditional removal later in the game to help deal with the Eldrazi big hitters (Eldrazi Devastator, Ruin Processor, and Wretched Gryff). 
• Beating token strategies is also best accomplished by having access to Red for Boiling Earth, even if you can only find room for it in the Sideboard. 
• Finally, having the ability to exile creatures with Touch of the Void can also be an excellent way to sidestep Graveyard recursion.
  
4. I'm not seeing many players using hard counters, but I also think that this might be a great way to get an edge, since most people won't be playing around them. While everyone is including Negate and Turn Aside, especially in the Sideboard, Spell Shrivel is something that will catch a lot of people by surprise.

I doubt there's a deck that can do all of that, but if there is, that's what I'd play this coming week. Hope to see you on the other side of the virtual table soon!

The Week of September 11th in Standard Pauper

After a week hiatus from my weekly blog entry, today I'm back with another metagame update for Standard Pauper. As always, I'm looking at the decks that made it past the cutoff in our two weekly Standard Pauper events (SPDC on Sunday and MPDC on Monday) and identifying trends, cards to watch out for, and any other information that seems relevant. This week only MPDC had enough players for Top 8 (just squeaking by with the minimum of 15), so we're only looking at 12 decks this time around. So let's get started!

SPDC was all about Izzet Spells, which claimed three out of the four spots, including both the 1st and 2nd place trophies. While these two decks weren't identical, they were very close, and I would say that DownByTheRiverside's build is more or less the stock version of this archetype. Izzet didn't fare nearly as well in MPDC, accounting for only one of the Top 8 decks, but that could simply be because only two out of the fifteen players chose that particular deck.

The first place trophy in MPDC in fact went to bibbob playing the Tremors deck, which as you may recall is a Gruul build that wins using a combination of tokens and Impact Tremors as well as a bunch of burn spells. This deck has a decent matchup against Izzet Control, but bibbob was the only player among both tournaments to select this deck. But apparently it was the right choice!

Moromete took 2nd in MPDC with a different variant of the 4 Color Pulse Control deck that took first place two week's ago, which is much closer to a Temur deck that splashes Black for Vulturous Aven and a few additional removal spells post-Sideboard. It also looks to have simpler color requirements overall, making it a bit easier to play.

The rest of the decks included two Top 8 finishes by chula and olstyn with an Orzhov Auras build, a repeat of Storm_blade's winning deck from last week, two Dimir decks (one a Control build by beatnik bobby, while the other a Midrange Flyers by rremedio1), and one unknown deck, since this player neglected to actually enter his decklist.

With the the online release of Kaladesh only about a month away and the subsequent rotation in Standard, the metagame is about as diverse as I've seen it, with winning decks found using all five colors in running the full spectrum between Aggro and Control. Izzet Spells continues to be the most important deck overall, so whatever you choose to play, it's important for that matchup to be winnable. But otherwise, there is certainly quite the variety of decks to choose from, with no other deck clearly rising above the others. This is definitely one of my favorite things to see in the Standard Pauper metagame!

If you're interested in more information about these decks, I encourage you to check out my Standard Pauper Deck Tech series over at PureMTGO, where I normally feature the previous week's 1st place deck from MPDC. Thanks for reading.

Starting Points for Analysis of the Format

Registration for the Standard Pauper Double League is well underway, with almost twenty players registered in just the first 48 hours of the announcement. The event has been advertised on Twitter, reddit, and a couple different websites, and there are already several names I didn't recognize. So if you haven't already registered, just send your MTGO name, and time zone to gwyned at gmail dot com with the subject line, "Standard Pauper Double League," and you'll be all set.

Today I want to make sure you know where to get some great information on what to play in the league. Even with the recent rotation of Standard, there's already quite a bit of data to help you navigate the new metagame. Here's some great starting points, in no particular order:

1. Chris Baker wrote up a great blog post, covering not only his set review of Battle for Zendikar but also addressing how the rotation of Standard changed the Standard Pauper metagame. Check out the post and accompanying video here.
   
2. One of the two weekly Standard Pauper Player Run Events (SPDC) has already resumed, and the other one (MPDC) will start this coming Monday. You can always see the breakdown of decks and how they performed off the start page on pdcmagic.com. Going forward, this will give you a steady flow of new information, so it's well worth keeping tabs on. Better yet, come join us on either Sunday or Monday at 2pm EST and participate in the fun yourself!
   
3. rremedio just wrote a great post on the Standard Pauper Players blog talking about the results from SPDC 31.01 and the different archetypes that were played. This is a great snapshot of where things stand at the moment, and is well worth a detailed look. Check it out right here.
   
4. My full set review of Battle for Zendikar is also complete and available over at PureMTGO. It's broken up into three parts: Part One (White and Blue); Part Two (Black and Red), and Part Three (Green and Colorless). I hope you find it helpful!

I also anticipate having lots to say about the event here on my blog, which I will be updated twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

So break out some sweet brews, get testing online, and come be a part of the Standard Pauper Double League!

Origins for Standard Pauper

As I've said so many times before, now is a great time to be part of the Standard Pauper community. Not only do we have two great Player Run Events that run just about every week, but we also have an abundance of great content about the format. With the release of Magic Origins online, and the beginning of new seasons for both MPDC and SPDC, everyone is trying to figure out how the new cards will impact the metagame. But it's not like you have to figure all of this out for yourself. Instead, we've got four different sites with great reviews and metagame analysis of Standard Pauper and how Magic Origins will affect it:

1. MagicGatheringStrat's weekly podcast reviewed the set over two recent episodes, which you can find here and here.

2. Standard Pauper enthusiast and co-host of SPDC (and often-time guest host for MPDC) rremedio1 wrote an excellent review of the set for the StandardPauperPlayers blog.

3. DrChrisBaker, host of SPDC, also completed an entire video review of the set, with highlights on his most recent blogpost.

4. And last but not least, we have my own exhaustive set review broken up into Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

And if you know of any other content for Standard Pauper on another site, please let me know in the comments, and I will add it to this post. Thanks for reading!

Magic Origins Full Spoiler Impressions

Perhaps as an early 4th of July present, Wizards released the full spoiler yesterday for Magic Origins. While my full review is in progress and will be forthcoming over at PureMTGO over the next few weeks, I wanted to take a few moments today to discuss my initial impression now that I've had a chance to look over the set as a whole.

As the last of the Core sets to be released, it seems that Wizards went all out on their last chance to get it right. While I will leave it to others to evaluate the set as a whole, overall I have been quite impressed with the Commons. Sure, there are the usual fare of unplayable chaff. But the overall card quality seems to be slightly higher than in more recent sets, and even the typical role-players have generally been tweaked to make them more interesting.

As far as specifics go, the Renown mechanic looks quite strong, with nearly all of the Commons playable at worst, and a few probably will see widespread play. The Spell Mastery keyword is a little more varied, but even here several will probably make an impact on the format. Additionally, there are several excellent reprints returning to the format. Finally, there are numerous cards with interesting and decent 'enters-the-battlefield' type effects or repeatable abilities, which is a level of complexity that has been missing from Commons as of late. In a way these cards harken back to much earlier sets while still feeling balanced at Common, and this does a great job of evoking the idea of going back to Magic's roots.

Now that we have the whole set, what cards are you most excited about?

Is Standard Pauper Casual?

This week I came across a relatively new article series on PureMTGO entitled "Casual Play" by author bdgp009. The article first caught my eye because he regularly discusses a Standard Pauper build in each of his articles. Then, in his most recent article, he weighed in on what has been a long-running discussion for online games in general and Magic Online (as well as Hearthstone) in particular: What is casual?

Here's what he had to say:

1. Casual is when you play "just for fun."
2. Casual is when it costs you nothing to play and you don't have any prizes on the line.
2. Casual is when you are playing a deck that you enjoy building.
3. Casual is when you are playing a deck that is untested or doesn't have much of a track-record.
4. Casual doesn't necessarily mean weak, but it shouldn't be unbeatable either.

So I was curious how this definition applied to Standard Pauper in general. Overall, I would say it fits pretty well. It costs very little to obtain the cards, there are no sanctioned events or results, it encourages testing and experimenting with new decks, and most of the time any given player can win any given game if the circumstances are right. 

But does this mean that Standard Pauper Player Run Events are also casual? Interestingly enough, it doesn't seem so, at least by this definition. While I hope that most players enjoy the format, there certainly is an emphasis on winning. With prizes on the line, players often go with decks that have performed well in previous events. Of course, even for all this preparation, it isn't unheard of for a complete newbie to end up making Top 8 or better the first time they play, so in Standard Pauper perhaps it is always anyone's game.

What do you think?

The State of the Standard Pauper Metagame

Early next week, I will have an article published over at PureMTGO concerning the current state of Standard Pauper. Today I want to bring you a sneak peek of the content from that article by discussing the current Standard Pauper metagame.

The current metagame is in an interesting place. Typically, aggro strategies dominate a new format, then are slowly pushed out by control builds as the metagame matures. More recently, White Weenie has stayed at the top of the heap, generally having good matchups against just about anything in the format. Right now, the metagame is divided almost straight down the middle between aggro and control, with three major archetypes dominating the Top 4 of these events. However, even though these three decks represent the bulk of the metagame, that's not to say that there are no other viable choices. In fact, over the past couple months, fifteen different archetypes have made at least one Top 4 finish in either MPDC or SPDC. Here's a snapshot of how these different decks have been represented in the Top 4:

Considering that the Standard Pauper set is at its smallest possible size right now (with only four expansion sets and one core set), this is an impressive amount of variety! Additionally, even the top performing decks are seeing quite a bit of variation in their actual lists, so there is still plenty of room for innovation and experimentation in the metagame right now.

So what's your favorite deck in the metagame right now? Let me know in the comments below.

Why I Won't Boycott Magic Online

On Sunday, Twitter exploded with rage over a bug with Magic Online where the renown Luis Scott-Vargas had his win-condition shuffled away by Ponder even though he clearly clicked no on the client. Of course, this happened during an evening stream with hundreds of people watching, so it got immediate widespread attention. Lots of people were quite upset by this, and rightly so. But by far the most widespread comment I saw was that the best solution was simply to boycott Magic Online until things get better. Here's a small sampling of the tweets:

Despite all this rage, I don't believe that boycotting Magic Online is the right solution to the problem. Here's why:

1. It offers what I can't get elsewhere. At the end of the day, Magic Online is really my only outlet to play Magic the Gathering in general, and Standard Pauper in particular. Magic Online allows me to do that on my own schedule and from the comfort of my home. And even though the client is plagued with bugs currently, it still offers me an experience I can't get anywhere else.
2. I've invested too much. Interestingly enough, this isn't really a financial issue for me. In fact, I've probably spent less than $50 total on Magic Online; maybe less than $30. But I've devoted countless hours to hosting MPDC, writing articles, making videos, chatting with players, and enjoying Limited and Standard Pauper matches. Boycotting Magic Online essentially means throwing all that way.
3. Having a voice requires keeping a seat at the table. Who is Wizards more likely to listen to? Someone who quit the games months ago and is still angry about the whole thing, or a current player who periodically gives feedback (both positive and negative)? If I want things to get better, I have to be willing to be part of the solution.
4. I support vendors who depend on Magic Online revenue. So many of my positive experiences on Magic Online came because of sites like PureMTGO, ChannelFireball, MTGOAcademy, and MTGOTraders. These sites depend on Magic Online (at least in part) for their revenue. It's not their fault that the client is a mess. I want to do my part to support these great organizations and the people behind them.

And of course, as I've written about earlier this month, Magic Online is the best hope for Standard Pauper. There's no way I'm giving up on that!

So that's why I won't boycott Magic Online. I'm invested for the duration. And I think you should be too.

Writing for PureMTGO

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I am a semi-regular writer over at PureMTGO.com, an e-zine dedicated to Magic Online that specializes in casual formats. The site is sponsored by MTGOTraders.com, which in case you somehow missed it, is one of the premier online stores serving Magic Online. Why do I bring this up? I'm glad you asked!

A couple weeks back, I wrote about why Standard Pauper is worth saving and what you can do about it. One of the best ways to do just that is to create content for the format. In that post, I mentioned how PureMTGO is always open to unsolicited articles from new writers. While there are probably other sites that would be open to new writers about Standard Pauper, I believe PureMTGO is your best choice. It's not only easy, but they are also quite generous with their compensation. Here's what you do:

1. You need to create an account for their site. This feature is found on the right-hand side of their page under "Account." Fill in all the necessary information. Be sure and include a legitimate E-mail address, as this will be the means by which you are compensated for your article

2. Once you've created an account, you simply click on the "Write Article" located in the same place where you log in. This opens a handy editor that allows you to create online content with needing to know .html code. Of course, if you already know some coding basics, you can click on the "Source" button and edit the specific code. Here's what the editor looks like:

3. The editor allows you to save your progress, so you don't have to finish all at one point. You can even preview the article to double-check exactly what the end user will see.

4. Once you've finished, save the article, then click on the "Workflow" tab. From here, you select the "Submitted" button, and you're all set! Be sure you're happy with your content before you do this, as there's no way to make any additional changes without contact their staff.

5. Once you've submitted the article, it will usually be published within a few days of submission, depending on the total submissions they've received lately.  Unlike other sites, PureMTGO doesn't pay based on advertising or views or anything like that. While they don't advertise their specific formula, you can expect between $20-$30 in credits for a quality article in the 3,000 word range once the article has been published.

6. To redeem these credits, you simply login to your account, click on the "Redeem credits" link, select how much you want to redeem, and submit. Within 48 hours, you will receive a gift certificate to MTGOTraders.com in this amount. 

If you've got specific questions, feel free to ask in the comments below. You can also contact Joshua Claytor, who serves as the Content Manager for PureMTGO. There is also this informative video on their site geared for prospective writers that you should also check out here.