Classic Pauper Faeries

After using my original faeries deck a couple of times in MTGO, I noticed that I tend to lose to decks that were using older cards, meaning those that have Classic Pauper builds, instead of just Standard Pauper. Since MTGO at the moment doesn't distinguish between pauper types, I decided to upgrade my deck in order to be competitive to these "Type 1" decks. Here's my latest build:



// Lands
22 [ALA] Island

// Creatures
4 [10E] Cloud Sprite
4 [LRW] Spellstutter Sprite
4 [LRW] Pestermite
3 [MOR] Latchkey Faerie
4 [BOK] Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 [LRW] Mulldrifter
4 [DS] Spire Golem

// Spells
4 [IA] Counterspell
4 [9E] Mana Leak
3 [10E] Unsummon

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [IA] Hydroblast
SB: 3 [SC] Hindering Touch
SB: 4 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 4 [MOR] Negate

Being unfamiliar with older cards, I based some of the card selections on decklists I found on PDCMagic.com. I still made some personal modifications though, partly due to my preferred play style -- most, if not all, of the decks I found are pure Mono Blue Control -- and I didn't want to play such a "serious" deck in pauper (I think it defeats the purpose). Also, some of the card selections of pauper net decks are actually quite expensive. For example, Exclude (the Remove Soul with a cantrip) is currently at 3.5 tix each. Prohibit (the conditional counterspell) is at 1 ticket each.

The sideboard, while improving, still needs some work though. I still don't know what to put in the place of the Relics and the Negates. I'll only learn this from experience though, so I guess it's time to go back online, and play some more pauper. :)

Pauper Magic @ MTGO

In a nutshell, Pauper Magic is "commons-only" Magic. That means no mythic rares, no regular rares, not even uncommons. Just your plain old commons -- the ones you never use and just rot inside your card boxes, or wherever it is that you store your Magic cards.

I've been wanting to give it a try for the longest time -- to give myself a break from the Bitterblossoms and Cryptic Commands of "normal" competitive Magic -- and with its increase in popularity and support lately (having been supported officially as an actual format in Magic Online), I finally decided to give it a try.

Obviously, it is a very cheap format... but until I built my first Pauper deck, I never really imagined that it was THIS cheap. I mean, for less than three tickets (2.9 to be exact), I managed to purchase my whole deck (via Cardhoarder.com)! That's less than 150 pesos!

Here's the deck that I built:



// Lands
22 [ALA] Island

// Creatures
4 [10E] Cloud Sprite
4 [LRW] Spellstutter Sprite
4 [SHM] Briarberry Cohort
4 [LRW] Pestermite
4 [MOR] Dewdrop Spy
3 [MOR] Latchkey Faerie
4 [LRW] Mulldrifter

// Spells
4 [10E] Remove Soul
4 [LRW] Broken Ambitions
3 [10E] Unsummon

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [MOR] Negate
SB: 4 [LRW] Faerie Trickery
SB: 4 [10E] Cancel
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus


It's mono-blue faeries. I've always wanted to play a blue aggro deck -- and with the control elements of faeries, this is actually a perfect deck for my playstyle. The sideboard though is so-so. I don't really have any idea about the Pauper metagame, so I just squeezed in a couple of blue cards that I know"might" be useful.

To my surprise, the deck actually performed pretty well. Or should I say, VERY well. After a couple of games in the Casual Room, I managed to beat a few decks, only losing to a mono red burn deck (which is the weakness of the faerie deck). In fact, I even tried to play in a 2-Player Pauper tournament (which is basically just a single match, and whomever wins it gets a pack), and I won! The pack turned up to be crappy -- Brilliant Ultimatum was my rare -- but I was just happy to have won something... from 150 pesos worth of cards. :)

My previous attempt at MTGO was a bit of a disappointment -- I never really pursued it due to budget constraints -- but with Pauper Magic, I'm actually sure that I will be back to play. It's fun, it's cheap, and it's new. :) In fact, let me just publish this blog post, and I'll be back right now. ;-)