PAUPER BOROS TREMOR TOKENS
If you’re reading this, you likely understand the concept of a metagame. The most powerful decks and ideas rise to the top of a format, and skill expression shifts from building the best decks to tuning and piloting them the best. This has existed in every card game since the moment tournament results became public, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, being able to navigate the meta is a skill in its own right.
However, I have always loved a good homebrew. It’s just as much fun to slam ideas against the wall and try to make certain overlooked cards busted as it is to go out and play them. I get an extra rush of joy when I take down meta decks with my baby. Most of my brews end up being somewhere between mediocre and terrible, but occasionally I hit on an idea that shines. My Elves deck at Grand Prix Detroit during Eldrazi Winter was my proudest moment and earned me my first Pro Point.
Right now, Pauper is the best place to brew. The smaller player base, relative lack of high-stakes events, and absence from Arena make metagame adaptations slower than in other formats, and the card pool is wide enough to host loads of innovation. Ahead of the RIW Pauper 1K on February 3, I want to share the favorite brew I’ve ever made and one upon which I’ve iterated for years: Boros Tremors.
Formerly Red-Green, Boros Tremors plays as a traditional token-based aggro deck, which is rare in Pauper. There are no cute shenanigans with Experimental Synthesizer nor Ninjutsu tricks with flying creatures. The plan is simple: Slam an Impact Tremors, start dealing 2 to 3 damage with every spell we cast, and turn tokens sideways. Here’s the list:
Every single spell in the deck either creates at least two creatures, serves as reach to punch through blockers and finish off opponents, or is Impact Tremors. The 1-drops harken back to the days when Young Wolf menaced Pauper, where killing or even attacking into them is an exercise in futility.
Grim Initiate is especially obnoxious because first strike is a rare and brutal ability to see in the format, allowing it to attack into or block opposing X/1s cleanly, or even high toughness creatures when combined with a burn spell.
Lord of the Rings provided a new piece of tech: Rally at the Hornberg. Despite being a red spell, it creates white tokens, and it gives all Humans haste.
This encouraged me to adjust my token-makers to shift toward Humans, giving me a chance to lead with a Doomed Traveler or Gather the Townsfolk, then cast Hornberg and swing for loads of damage out of nowhere. A few times, I have even gotten to live the dream of making five creatures off Gather and then Rallying, winning a close race with seven attackers out of nowhere! It’s a rush.
Why pick up this brew? It offers unique qualities you won’t find elsewhere in the format:
High redundancy: The critical mass of token makers (almost half of the deck) ensures that we’ll almost always draw enough of them to be relevant in any given game. We generally don’t need a large amount of synergy to make the deck “do its thing.” We also don’t fold to a large Weather the Storm since our creatures deal consistent damage to such decks.
Unconventional Damage Sources: Nobody is prepared to deal with a red enchantment killing them in game one, and post-sideboard we don’t need to stick it to win. We can also cast both halves of Rally the Peasants and Battle Screech rather easily, even if the front halves get countered.
Near-Immunity to Spot Removal: Sick of Tithing Blade and Chainer’s Edict? Boros Tremors embarrasses black decks’ removal suites pre-board and leaves them only a few options post-board.
Resilience: Always expect board wipes post-board in Pauper when you’re playing a deck focused on X/1s. Unlike other decks, Boros Tremors can counter them for free with Ramosian Rally or otherwise rebuild its board almost immediately between 1-drop death triggers and a critical mass of token-makers. In general, if you don’t overextend, it takes either three wipes or two plus a tight race to put us down for the count. We make such a variety of tokens that even Echoing Truth is relatively weak!
Relatively Few Red Spells: Against most aggro decks, Hydroblasts read “Counter / destroy target anything.” Not so with Boros Tremors. Half of our spells are white, and most of our tokens are either white or black, making Prismatic Strands less effective.
That’s not to say this deck is invincible; far from it. Here are the problems I’ve run into while refining this deck post-LotR:
No Digging: Most aggressive decks can keep their gas tanks full via Synthesizer or Reckless Impulse if the game goes long. We can’t; when we’re out of gas, that’s it. We can’t afford to run those cards and disrupt our critical mass of token-makers.
Walls: Specifically, walls that have more than 0 power. We can punch through them with Rally the Peasants later in the game or use precious burn spells to remove them, but they brutally stifle our early aggression.
Spell Pierce: Sadly, almost every “creature” in the deck comes from an instant or sorcery, and playing on curve leaves us particularly vulnerable to the Pierce. It’s also generally the only one-mana counterspell that blue decks play in their main.
Explosions: Our average draws are, in my opinion, better than those of most red decks. Our best draws, however, do not match theirs well. If a Kuldotha deck pops off on the play, there’s little we can do about it. (Honestly, isn’t that true of almost anyone?)
Tremors Need to be Early: Impact Tremors has the classic Aether Vial problem: It’s insane in your opening few turns and far worse by turn 5. It isn’t a total brick unless you’re in a fast race, but it’s disheartening to draw in place of a finisher or just more dudes.
Brewing frees us from the metagame personally, but when it becomes game time, you can expect to see that meta well represented across the table. Here are my experiences against the format’s top decks:
Golgari Gardens: One of the biggest decks in the format, and we love it. The deck plays a retinue of spot removal spells that we find hilarious, and we can race against Guildsworn Prowler and Khalni Garden tokens all day. Our consistent clock allows us to keep slugging even through Reckoners’ Bargains. The only concern is if they land Unexpected Fangs on their Crypt Rats, but that takes a bunch of mana and is highly unlikely to happen in game one. They’re notoriously soft to fliers, and aside from lifelinking Crypt Rats, we can endure their wipes post-board.
Dimir Terror: Not quite as much of a drubbing, but we’re still heavily favored here. Dimir Terror is a popular flavor of Terror for its ability to beat other Terror decks via edicts and Snuff Out, cards we do not care about. Barring a nut draw on their end, we can race them easily by having infinite chumps to their 5/5s and killing them in the air. They also have no reach, so we can be cheeky and let them get us to 5 life to blow them out with Gather the Townsfolk.
Kuldotha Red: The best advice I can give is to win the die roll. The matchup can lead to complex combat math, and it’s crucial to know which person is “the beatdown” at any given moment; we have more overall consistency, but they can draw cards late-game. Grim Initiate earns its keep here. A surprisingly skill-expressive matchup outside of nut draws and one of my favorites.
Faeries: Speaking of complex combat math, this is a fellow deck stuffed to the brim with 1/1s. Unfortunately, theirs are harder to block, and a few of them are evil counterspells in their own rights. (I have a 15-year vendetta against Spellstutter Sprite.) We make up for quality with quantity, block their ninjas well after their first hits, and host some flying blockers of our own. It’s crucial to force them to tap out as much as possible, even compared to other blue decks, but play smartly and don’t get destroyed by Spellstutter. Another highly skill-expressive matchup and a fun one to boot.
Affinity: This largely depends on how many Myr Enforcers the opponent can slam and how quickly they do so. Depending on the flavor, we usually have time to build up a board and chip in with fliers while chumping big creatures on the ground.
Cast into the Fire and Journey to Nowhere give outs post-board to animated Bridges and whatever gets suited with All That Glitters. Landing an early Tremors boosts win percentage by a mile.
Caw-Gate: Maindeck Prismatic Strands is rough on us, even if our concentration of white tokens precludes it from being the combat blowout it is against most other aggro decks.
While we can often race a few instances of life-gain, recurring life-gain is another matter, so Sacred Cats need to be picked off on sight. Still, the deck is by definition pretty slow by playing a bunch of taplands, so we have a good shake so long as we burst out of the gates quickly. If you expect to see this deck often, consider Flaring Pain for your sideboard.
Mono-Blue Terror: Yikes. It’s strange how a matchup can swing so much just by removal of a color.
Blue Terror doesn’t have any removal for us to ignore; it’s just counterspell after counterspell and the ability to slam three Terrors on turn 4 (they always have 3 of them). This makes it difficult to race them because it’s just so hard to resolve spells.
Familiars: Oof. This is our worst matchup by a lightyear. Walls, 1/3s and 1/2s stifle our aggression, and God-Pharoah’s Faithful undoes whatever damage we can sneak through them while being difficult to pick off.
Our ability to gum up combat is irrelevant to a familiar’s combo win. They have too many must-kill creatures, so hope for a bad draw on their end and crank up the pressure.
Pauper’s metagame is incredibly diverse, so I can only cover the biggest decks I see around my area. I encourage you to practice with the deck against Ponza, Kiln Fiend, Elves, Delver variants, and whatever else you expect and share your experiences with the community!
MUCH A-BREW ABOUT SOMETHING
I’m excited to judge the Pauper 1K on February 3, but that sadly means my beloved brew will not be represented – unless you give it a spin for yourself. It’s incredibly cheap to make, so grab those commons, jam some games, and see what changes you would make. Come out and practice at our Pauper locals on Wednesdays before the big event and tell me how the deck has performed for you!
I’ll see you in a week or two.
