Colors of MTGO pauper: BLACK. (Tortured Zombies)

When I started playing MTG, black was among my favourite colors. I used to look at cards like terror or dark banish and think "so, you can destroy a creature that costed like, six mana with a 2 mana spell, this is simply amazing!".

Now, many years later, I will talk about a deck that has almost no removal at all (at least for a black deck).

I know... MBC is probably the most powerful monoblack deck you can build in pauper. Abusing the power of cards like chittering rats and liliana specter brings joy to the thoughts of any darkmage.

But, one thing I am trying to bring here are decks that aren't played so often. I am pretty sure you can find great articles about MBC on the web already.

I want to talk about another monoblack strategy: ZOMBIES!

Yup, maybe our little putrid friends aren't so disruptive, but they do have some perks.

First, lets talk about the KING OF ZOMBIES, mister gray merchant of asphodel.

Yup, this is one of the staple pieces on MBC decks, well it is one of the central pieces in my zombies list as well. The idea here is to play merchant, and possibly recur it as many times necessary to drain the opponent.

Another great card for zombish draining is good old gempalm polluter. For 2 mana you can draw a card and cause some damage to your opponent life total, again, you can rinse and repeat many times with this deck, until the job is done.

The rest of the deck is basically trying to survive or trying to recur the graveyard, one of the central recurring pieces in the deck is good old tortured existence because of that, I am trying to use as many creatures in the deck as I can, because tortured existence is a better card when you have a decent share of creatures to select with it.

Because we need to reach 5 mana to put gray into play I also added 4 dimir aqueduct, this will slow down the pace a bit in the early game but I feel reaching 5 mana is more important than having a superfast start with this deck. (This is not a suicidal version of zombies)

The current list:

Lands:
16 swamps
4 dimir aqueduct (could be any karoo land)

1 mana:
4 Putrid Imp
4 Carrion Feeder
4 Shambling Goblin
4 Tortured existence
4 Ghoulcaller's Chant

2 mana:
4 Nameless Inversion

3 mana:
4 Ghoulraiser

4 mana:
4 Grave Scrabbler

5 mana:
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel

6 mana:
4 Gempalm Polluter

Total creatures: 28
Total non-creatures: 12

Draining outlets: 8
Recurring spells/creatures: 16
Removal spells/creatures: 8

I don't have a sideboard for it yet.

So, the deck isn't very easy to play, but it is superfun, feels nice to hold and grind, until you gempalm for 7 on the EOT and gray for 8 on your turn.

We have 12 small guys to flood the field with little zombies, this will help gempalm to be more effective on the early turns. Also those little guys have some utility attached to them: Carrion Feeder let's you send whatever zombie you need back to the graveyard, so you can return it to hand and re-use it, this works nicely with Gray Merchant or Grave Scrabbler. 

Putrid Imp is an alternative way to discard Grave Scrabbler this can be useful if you have no tortured existence in play. Shambling Goblin is a great blocker, also it can kill small guys and be recurred sometimes. Nothing feels better than killing a recently played delver with our little goblin.

Ghoulcaller's Chant is great in this deck, not only it will recur creatures, it can bring back Nameless Inversion. For only one mana, you get to re-use 2 cards.

Ghoulraiser doesn't give you much control over the card that is coming back, but he is a pretty powerful card in this deck. Don't forget he can also return Nameless Inversion to hand.

I am sorry, I don't have a sideboard for this deck yet. I would guess it could have problens against fast hard to block combo decks, like izzet-fiend, selesnya-hexproof-auras and infect. So some of the sideboard could be dedicated to address those.

Also, graveyard hate is a problem. If you can't recur the graveyard, the deck is left with a bunch of bears that will probably be outsized by 4/4s and 5/5s. It is possible that some sort of defense against graveyard hate or some sort of alternative plan to put some pressure could be nice there.

We could go more beefy/aggro using bigger or evasive zombies and less graveyard recurring. Or splash some color to offer artifact removal. I guess I would try the first option, I guess there are some beefy zombies out there to abuse. (Embalmed Brawler?!)

That's it, cya! =)

Colors of MTGO Pauper: BLUE. (Deep Fountain)

I love monoblue, in MTGO pauper blue is a force to be reckoned. Sorry aggro players, but let's face it: some of the best pauper cards are blue.

In fact, there are so many powerful blue cards in pauper we have to pick one among some possible directions.

There are the monoblue aggro decks, abusing first turn delver, followed by ninjas and faeries. They are very popular, very fun to play and not an easy match for any deck.

We can go "counter everything" mode, using 10-12 or even 14-16 counterspells, pinched with a couple removal, some strategic defensive creatures (usually Spire Golem) and some flashy draw (like think twice).

It is possible to build tron blue, I don't think it is strong as multicolor tron decks, but it has its perks, like a more stable and easy to handle mana base. Sadly, many of the most powerful counterspells have UU in their costs, that hurtz monoblue tron a little bit.

Lately I have been playing a slightly different monoblue deck than most around. It has its perks and bad sides in the card choices. It doesn't carry a lot of counterspelling, but it has a pretty heavy lategame and has some versatiliy in the card interactions.

One card the deck tries to abuse is Deep Analisis, one of the most powerful draw spells available in pauper and yet you don't see a lot of decks using it, at least not in the maindeck. This is due to the fact Deep Analisis is a very slow card and the life pay really hurts. The good side is that it is very hard to counter and it will draw a ton of cards, making the late game of the deck a lot better.

Also I am not using deprive in the list. I know deprive is one of the most powerful counterspells around, but this deck really wants to drop lands. This deck is very mana costy, things start to get good when you reach 8, 9, 10 mana. I feel deprive would be a set back in this list.

Also, his is not very usual in pauper, I am running 25 lands, including a set of cycle lands, this helps to drop more lands early in the game. Later we can cycle the lands with help of some Azorius Chancery.

The list:

13 islands
4 lonely sandbar
4 azorius chancery
4 Radiant Fountain

Bounce/Removal:
3 Seal of Removal
3 Echoing Truth
4 Curse of Chains

Counter:
4 Counterspell
4 Memory Lapse

Draw:
4 Deep Analisis
1 Ghostly Flicker

Creatures:
4 Sea Gate Oracle
4 Archaeomancer
4 Mulldrifter

Sideboard:
4 Hydroblast
4 Coast Watcher
4 Annul
3 Dispel

So here is the plan:

Early game we have 10 bounce/removal to hold opponent back a bit. Then, midgame, we start to play draw spells (like mulldrifters and deep analisis), this is when we build our mana base up to 8-9-10 lands. Late game we abuse the power of archaeomancer, recycling counterspells and bounce.

Radiant Fountain helps to survive early game and helps to compensate the life paid for deep analisis. The bounce spells can be used to return our own creatures and draw more cards if you feel it is better.

Altho this is a very slow deck in the early turns considering pauper metagame, usually things start to turn a lot on your favor if you survive until 6th 7th turn and on.