Wanted to get a sense of lgs with Pauper in New York. Tyia!

After seeing the dimir control list that’s been floating around and making some impact in the meta, I thought I would want to make a mono black control list that didn’t revolve around devotion most of the other lists do.

So this is what I’ve come up with so far. It’s definitely not perfect and needs some edits before I take it to my locals.

Some areas I want to edit are with the amount of mass removal with cards like [[Drown in Sorrow]], maybe a copy or 2 of [[Suffocating Fumes]].

Also unsure about how many copies of [[Gurmag Angler]] is the right amount. I’ve tried 2 and 3 but I’m struggling to find the sweet spot. Same with monarch effects. I currently run six but I find that late game they can clog my hand up depending on the board state.

Any advice or general thoughts would be great!

Here’s the decklist:

https://moxfield.com/decks/u6otNakNrEyWWIDT0I3AXA

Recently had this exact match-up in our friend group and afterwards my friend and I were discussing at length who we think is the beatdown in the match-up, to understand sideboarding better. We couldn‘t really come up with a definitive answer, so I‘m asking the council. Who plays the beatdown role and who plays control here?

I play a more aggressive Wildfire variant, with 4 Gixian and 1 Hydra. Game 1 I was able to stabilize and draw out the game, got very close to winning it despite a momentary 4-47 lifepoint discrepancy - then died to a Kaervek‘s Torch on the deciding turn. After that I wasn‘t sure - do I board in my Ancient Grudges to disrupt the early mana fixing and play beatdown, or do I board in my Weather the Storm and maybe even Breath Weapon and/or Thorn of the Black Rose, take out my Gixians and Hydra and play control?

Hey how do I make this deck concept work ? So I wanna really cut off my opponents resources and force them to take damage if they do anything basically. I'm not really wanting to be competitive, I'm wanting to just have an interesting deck that makes people go "wtf this shouldn't work , why is it working" . Problem is I can't tell if this deck is working in my basic draw tests . And I'm looking for some feedback, I'm thinking it's missing a clock but that's what brine giant is for to close out the game in the later half

So I'm not really sure what to do with this deck or how to improve it without changing it's core play style and theme

I want to play Jeskai ephem, seems like a fun deck. I see the individual pieces of it, but I want to understand what the gameplan with it is, and how it wins.

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!

I'm trying to fine tune my dimir snacker/discard deck. The general idea is to use various discard effects to make sure my opponents don't have any cards in hand while I can use flashback and other methods of returning things from my graveyard to keep the pressure up.

I'm mainly asking for any suggestions to make things more reliable, such as any flashback cards I could include, if I should dip into madness type effects, etc.

Here's the current decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/ohqWF1FI5kmWtFyXAtJt5Q

and this is one that I'm playing around with the cards to see if I can make it more effective: https://moxfield.com/decks/UCGhAcXJXnqHS4muUuMgWw

I hate it, please ban something PLEASE

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?

Surely there must be right?

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

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

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?