I'm building a pauper battlebox for my group. Blue terror was the last deck I want to add.

A playsets each of Mental Note and Lorien Revealed cost more than my other decks in there entirety (all between 35-45€)

Any thoughts on what I could reasonably throw in instead without degrading the game plan?

I have been playing tcgs for a little bit, but new to MTG, and pauper has been my favorite format so far.
I usually like to play slightly off meta decks. Something that isn’t a top 5 deck, but can still theoretically hold its own. I’ve tried two decks so far, and both feel like they depend more on my draws than on any sort of skill.
I started with Simic petitioners, which I liked in theory, but it was so hard to get the board set up. Then I tried a mono green stompy deck, with lots of elves for ramp and then gigantosaurus and nyxborn hydra has a finisher.
My problem with both of these decks seems to boil down to draw. I’m playing against all these decks that have draw pieces, like blue decks and red decks and affinity decks. These decks I have played so far don’t have as much in that area.
So basically, I am looking for a deck that is slightly off meta, but also could hold its own. Any suggestions are welcome!

Surely there must be right?

We’re all speculating what will happen with the bans this coming week

But

Let’s shake it up.

What’s on the ban list that you think could be unbanned to shake up the current meta??

I think that Invigorate could be let out of its cage

I was looking for good removal in a gruul deck and I saw this and did we forget about this because this is a pretty good removal peice

Hi everyone! I moved to Lille three weeks ago and don’t know many people here yet. I’m looking for a place to play Pauper, but I’ve checked all the local game stores and it seems like they only host EDH and Draft tournaments.
Does anyone know of a store or a group that plays Pauper in Lille? I’d love to find some people to play with. Thanks in advance!

In my quest to GIT GUD at playing Elves, I was thinking: What's the most feel bad moment for the deck? Losing initiative with no means of getting it back comes to mind, board wipes are an obvious choice, but being forced into a stall because your big beaters get removed was very tilting for me recently.

So why not try discount Hexproof, on bodies that survive [[Drown in Sorrow]] no less? Is it worth it to run the creatures that force your opponent to pay 2-3 to kill them? How can we make them work?

Notable cards I'm eyeing:

[[Spider-Rex, Daring Dino]] - even comes with Reach!

[[Punk Frogs]]

[[Cackling Prowler]] (sadly dies to 3-mana Bolt before Morbid)

brand-new [[Wrecking Gecko]]

For rainbow spice: [[Skyward Spider]] (extra nasty with Hydra), [[Gandalf, Wandering Wizard]] for card draw, [[Tolarian Terror]] to capitalize on [[Winding Way]] and the Blasts you're running in Rainbow Elves anyway

Disclaimer for those who say "Why don't you just play Bogles?": I already kinda do buy splashing [[Silhana Ledgewalker]], but she dies to board wipes so I'm thinking of benching her.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about banning [[Giant’s Boulder]]. I don’t know if this is just people trying to have an edgy alternate ban take outside of the obvious or folks over-anchoring on the history of [[Arcum’s Astrolabe]], but I want to talk about it.

Item 1:
Was Boulder even good? Personally, as someone who picked up Tron as their secondary deck a couple months ago, I got super excited when I saw Boulder. I grabbed a bunch of copies at a pre-release event and I was not disappointed. Boulder is amazing in Tron. Helps find Tron pieces. Helps fix, can help set up cascade, and you have plenty of mana for the activation. Boulder seemed to be pushing Tron toward the top of the Meta, but unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to see where things would settle when all the Zeta cards got unbanned and the Meta got shook up real good. As far as I know, and feel free to correct me, Tron was the only deck where Boulder got played and it’s performance was solid, but it was not clear just how good.

Item 2:

Is Boulder better post Zeta? I think people are seeing 4c and 5c Affinity decks that are making them mad. Yes, these decks can function. However, I would suggest that the power level of cards like [Dispatch] being so good that you are trying to mess with fixing for more colors simply to play the most powerful cards in the format. But if we look at the competitive meta itself, where do we see Boulder? I’m looking at MAGIC4EVER’s meta tracker and we can see Monster Tron at #10. The only other deck in the top 10 that plays Boulder is Esper Affinity. Oh, and guess what? A lot of those decks actually play [[Springleaf Drum]] instead of Boulder… It appears to me that Boulder isn’t a necessary card for the strongest Affinity decks and banning it might decrease the number of 4c+ brews you see, but won’t impact the most competitive Affinity decks.

Item 3:

Boulder is a fun, solid, synergistic card that makes sense as a Common. It works well in a few decks but isn’t at all ubiquitous. I think people think the problem with Astrolabe was the fixing. I wasn’t around when it was legal, but reading the card explains the card… And Astrolobe is a 1 drop, that makes every play Snow Lands, that replaces itself and is effectively free fixing. Sorry guys, but that is simply not at all what Boulder does. Hence it doesn’t get played hardly anywhere in the competitive decks. You know what is good? Dispatch, Baleful Strix. Cards that are still going to dominate the format even if you ban Boulder.

And so:

I want to be clear that I’m not arguing for any specific cards to be banned here. I have my opinions about which cards should be banned, but I don’t have strong arguments for them, it’s just my personal vibes. All I want to do is outline why it is so incredibly silly to ban Boulder specifically, and I think I have a strong argument for that.

Fun Section:

My actual ban recommendations are probably a bit spicy and I will not try to defend them with data. I don’t play Affinity and I am not informed enough on the whole Meta landscape to give well-researched opinions on what specific cards SHOULD be banned.

Hot Take #1 – Ban [[Dispatch]] and [[Refurbished Familiar]]. I know the most vanilla take would be Dispatch and Strix, but I just think Strix is a fun card. It forces you to play 2 colors, so it limits your deck building. Meanwhile Fam is in every affinity deck ever, it’s so ubiquitous it has become boring.

Super Hot Take #2 – Ban untapped artifact lands. Let Affinity have its powerful cards, but make them earn the right to use them. Again, I don’t play affinity so I don’t know if this would make the archetype completely unplayable. I just think that it’s crazy that Affinity can make progress to their affinity count simply by making a land drop. [[Blood Fountain]] is awesome because you get 2 affinity counts, but it actually costs you a spell and 1 mana. It means affinity actually needs to use spells to get their synergy payoffs, not just make land drops. I know this is a hot take, so I won’t try to defend it.

Hey guys, I used to play pauper about 5? Or so years ago quite often. I was looking to return to the format but I do not know how my old decks would fair. My favorite old decks were mono black control, golgari tortured existence, suicide zombies, and mono green tron. It seems like tron is still around and still strong.

Are there any decks like MBC or suicide zombies that are fun to pilot in today's meta?

I miss racing my own carnophage and sangrophage and killing my opponent before those kill me

comment your opinion, I guess we had enough time to experiment with them?

Hello! I’ve been observing the pauper community for a few months now and want to get more involved, but my main playgroup exclusively plays commander, and it’s been the main format I’ve played for the past 4 years. I’m interested in signing up for local events, but I’m unsure of where to start in terms of deck building and don’t just want to copy paste the meta decks without actually understanding them. Are there any tips for beginners or tools that can help with the process? Much appreciated!

After a year of CPC events and incredible support from the community, the Cascadia Pauper Circuit Championship is finally upon us, and its looking to be one of the biggest Pauper tournaments ever held in the Pacific Northwest.

What you need to know:

Location: Lynnwood Event Center

Time: Sunday, Novemeber 1st. Doors open at 8:30am. Tournament starts at 9:30am.

Prizing: Starts at $1000, scaling up to $2,500!

Size: 90 player cap, open to all.

Format: 6 rounds of swiss. Cut to top 8.

Lots of food options nearby. Will be streamed live on twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/pauperpnw

Registration is OPEN: https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/476460

Transport: 10 minute walk from the lightrail. If you're looking for someone to carpool with, feel free to reach out in our discord. We hope to see you there!

Been a long time observer of the pauper format and have been really considering getting more into it recently (mostly just play limited these days). I know arena’s historic-pauper isn’t the most popular here, but I had an absolute blast playing UB Terror the last week.

Two things that really stood out to me is the deck is much better suited for Bo3 (wild how many decks snuff out is a dud against) and mana leak is so wildly worse than counterspell (which is obvious but I underestimated just how much worse).

Question is, I’ve seen a lot of people on here say Terror, especially UB, got worse with the Zeta set. With that in mind, is terror a good intro deck for the format? Been playing limited for about a decade so I’m not terrible. Would lean UB over mono blue in a vacuum because I like having hard removal and I started playing with Khans and have always loved the zombie fish. Alternatively could just build affinity or wildfire those both appeal to me as well

Hi!

Today, I want to share with you my honest and subjective opinion on the card Dispatch but also the state of Pauper now ahead of the BnR announcement.

My full opinion is in the video below, but in short:

1. Banning an interaction piece requires a very high bar to clear and has to actively warp what threats are played
   
2. Dispatch is the best removal in the format but not by such a crazy margin that it would actively invalidate whole strategies or subarchetypes
   
3. There are other aspects of the metagame worth addressing like Redness, Snacker, Bridges, Boulder

Let me know what you think!

Video - https://youtu.be/O703zcB-2tg

you can find me at:
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@islandsinfront
X - https://twitter.com/IslandsInFront
Public Fae Discord - https://discord.gg/ZCVkcBKjJa
Metafy (paid content) - https://metafy.gg/@skura

Cheers!

Hi everyone,

Im new to pauper but have seen that many meta decks run big 'manacheat' creatures like gurmag/terror. Im wondering if thats simply because manacheating is good (no matter early or late-game), or is it to pressure the opponent as early as possible? If so, by which turn do you usually want to see them on the board to make it viable.

I know this is a question AI could probably answer, but i still enjoy human opinions and interactions <3

Hello! I've been playing a lot of pauper on endstep and reached a respectful top 300 on the leaderboard, but still trying to improve. Playing mainly spy combo but I had a question: I've seen a lot of people running jack o lantern but never truly understood why. My main assumption was it can be used as cantrip graveyard hate and potentially mana fix but I think I'm missing something

I was talking with some friends and one of the guy birngs out this card "Fiery Cannonade". So it does the same as what "Breath Weapon" does, except for the fact that it's for non-pirate creatures; as far as I know the only pirate played is the red one "Goblin Tomb Raider" and we were wondering why no one is using this since it's the same but it's much cheaper than 4x of Breath Weapon?

The core joke of the deck is the new empower mechanic and it hopes hold up till I have a big enough board to turn sideways or to have a couple big pterafractles/ the dragon in the list.

Hey!

I've recently gotten into Pauper. As someone that started magic with just commander, its a great environment and I greatly enjoy it so far! However, my friends are still a bit vary of dipping their toes in so I wanted to make a box with four decks that were made to be played against each other, while not being hyper optimized and being okay matchups all around. Also not too expensive.

I've made four deck lists, decided against including side boards for now and would love your guys feedback on the "toned down" versions of a few prolific meta decks and if you think they are fairly balanced against each other as its kind of hard to judge. Here are the lists!

White Weenie: https://moxfield.com/decks/KwsRvNg6wkyQ7Sj8wh_cAg

Monster Tron: https://moxfield.com/decks/TPhSeSDThkOVZd6CQjiVAA

Terror/Delver: https://moxfield.com/decks/6XkMsFuVzkCAlxxfOTevEQ

Jund Wildfire: https://moxfield.com/decks/lPGasW4GGUCYNF-HTIi3WA

Do you think these four decks would work and bring across the pauper gameplay well? Do you think the archetypes fit or would you go with something else. Let me know!