The Week of October 30th in Standard Pauper

It's Thursday, so it must be time for another installment of my weekly metagame update for Standard Pauper. The big news this week, of course, is the discussion on whether Self-Assembler should be banned now that almost every deck is playing it. If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to check out the discussion over at pdcmagic.com. You can also read my own ramblings about it here.

For this week, attendance was a bit lower at MPDC, leaving us with only eight decks that survived the cut to the playoffs between our two Player Run Events. Coincidence or not, this also resulted in a much smaller field of decks.

For SPDC, the trophy went to DownByTheRiverside's Izzet Control build, which as has been mentioned before is almost identical to last season's build save for the addition of Cathartic Reunion and, you guessed it, Self-Assembler. He also chose to include Pyre Hound, a card that didn't see much play despite being quite well-suited for this particular deck.

For MPDC, the trophy went to a new Dimir Artifact build piloted by cRUMMYdUMMY. This deck relies upon cheap creatures that synergize well with Artifacts, backed by a powerful suite of removal spells. It also utilizes Gearseeker Serpent as it's primary win condition, although of course it too includes a full playset of Self-Assembler.

Also noteworthy was littlefield's Top 4 finish in both events with the Simic Big Stuff deck, which is quite similar to the build he piloted to first place back in MPDC 35.01. During the event this week he joked that any deck worth playing starts with Take Inventory and Self-Assembler, and based on the finalists this week, he's probably not far off.

The rest of the field included Sultai Control, a Gruul Monsters style deck, Esper Control, and a Mono Black Artifacts list. And yes, each and every list included a full playset of Self-Assembler. Green, Blue, and Black are by far the most dominant colors in the metagame, but White and Red were also present to a lesser extent. Just goes to show that even with one card making every list, we still have a surprising amount of diversity, with no one deck yet rising to the point of being the best deck.

That's it for this week. Hope to see you online next week at one of our events!

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.

The Week of August 28th in Standard Pauper

As I mentioned in last week's metagame update, we've continued to see growth in the attendance at our weekly Standard Pauper tournaments. In fact, between the two events this week, we had 32 unique participants, with 5 of those participating in both tournaments. In fact, for the first time since I started these updates, both events cut to a Top 8 playoff, bringing us up to 16 decks to consider for this week's update. That being the case we've got plenty to talk about today, so let's jump right in.

Izzet Tempo continued to be the big player in the metagame this week, accounting for six of the 16 top decks. While there is still some variation between these lists between a more midrange tempo build and a true control build, all of these decks are utilizing Elusive Spellfist and Thermo-Alchemist, activating them with a suite of spells that includes burn and card draw. Of these, DownByTheRiverside was the most successful, taking his build to an undefeated 6-0 in SPDC and capturing the 1st place trophy.

GB Control accounted for only two decks this week, one of which was a unique 4 color variation piloted to 1st place by cRUMMYdUMMY in MPDC, splashing Blue for Wretched Gryff (and Negate in the Sideboard) and Red for Rolling Thunder (as well as Boiling Earth in the Sideboard). The deck relies on 3 copies of Pilgrim's Eye and 4 copies of Primal Druid to gain access to its stringent color requirements, and is slanted enough towards Control to give itself the time to be able to cast all its cards.

The RG Tokens deck that won in MPDC last week had two appearances in the Top 8 of MPDC this week, one of which was my own 2nd place finish. I will be publishing a full deck-tech on this list over at PureMTGO, which should be available this coming Monday. Bibbob played the exact same list as I did, and lost to the exact same deck I did a round earlier (the aforementioned 4cc variant of GB Control).

The rest of the top decks including a Hexproof Selesnya build by bibbob, a Dimir Zombies build by Fred_Dettofano, a Gruul Monsters deck by hero1141, another Dimir Control deck by rremedio1, and a Orzhov Aura build by olstyn. Of these, only olstyn managed to survive the Top 8 round, finishing in Top 4 in MPDC. All of these decks were either new or at least uncommon in the metagame, but look to be potential contenders in the future. If you're looking for something new to play and experiment with, any of these might be a good place to start.

A few other thoughts from this week:

1. Thermo-Alchemist continues its dominance, and has certainly replaced Pulse of Murasa as the most important card in the format right now. Given the dominance of the Izzet archetype right now, your deck should probably include a reliable way of dealing with this card early in the game.

2. Blue and Red have become the most important colors in the metagame right now, with all but three of the sixteen top decks including at least one of these colors. Excluding Thero-Alchemist, the next most popular cards appear to be the Red removal spells such as Boiling Earth, Fiery Temper, and Twin Bolt.

3. Once again, White is the least popular color, with only two decks of the sixteen playing this color. However, the strength of its Aura based synergies with Auramancer, Ironclad Slayer, and Totem-Guide Hartebeest, especially combined with its strong removal, certainly shouldn't be underestimated. Hopefully we'll see this trend reversed in future events.

Finally, let me remind you that every Monday I am publishing an article and videocast on the winning deck from the previous week's MPDC, which you can find over at PureMTGO.com. You can also get a sneak peak at that content early by subscribing to my YouTube channel. Thanks for reading, and hope to see you across the digital table soon!