Welcome to P.C.W. issue #5, your weekly source for all things Pauper written by players for players.
We had another high turnout event at RIW last Wednesday (32 players), a great stream, and a lot of fun. Also, some exciting Pauper news in the form of an unbanning that will be legal for play this Weds at our weekly event:
Bonder’s Ornament is unbanned!
Dave Polzin has a write up about what this unbanning may hold in store for the format.
But first, let’s take a look at last week’s metagame and 4-0 deck:
It’s pretty interesting that Elves and Red Madness kind of swapped metagame shares after Elves was the top dog with four copies the previous week. With that said, the unbanning of Bonder’s Ornament may shake things up.
Bonder’s natural home before it got banned last time was Flicker Tron, so does that mean Thermokarst gets better? I’ll be on the stream play-by-play this week and so unable to play, but if I were playing I would sleeve up an aggressive Green deck with Thermokarst.
Congratulations to Ryan Bearden, who was our lone 4-0 player last Wednesday with Dimir Terror!
I am a fan of Bonder’s Ornament being unbanned and unbanning in general. Anytime I can take cards out of my banned from Pauper stack is a good day to me. Sneaky Snacker is one of my favorite cards, and I am happy to still be able to brew with it.
Pauper has a lot of decks right now and it seems to expand every week. I can’t exactly tell why this is ultimately the case, but it feels like combo decks and linear focused decks are well represented. A card like Bonder’s Ornament can help out some of the go-long strategies.
That said, I could see Bonder’s reuniting with the gang in Ephemerate Tron:
Ephemerate Tron (Blasting Jelly)
Slot into Jeskai Ephemerate in the Bender’s Waterskin slot:
Jeskai Ephemerate (Bender’s Waterskin)
Seems more of a leap but, I think Ornament could pop up in Monster Tron & Garden decks.
Decks I’m fixing to play soon are BW Blade & a Dark Jeskai Ephemerate brew.
Recently, I saw the blade deck playing foot ninjas. Boy howdy, you had me at Foot.
BW Orzhov Glintblade (Foot Ninjas)
Jeskai Ephemerate (Fanged Flames)
“First off, I want to thank Brian and Russo for allowing me to join them in the commentary booth. It was wonderful getting to watch local names show what they’ve got and how they approach the format. Commentating was something I was interested in, but never had the chance to do. I’m glad I was able to show off what I know and disperse some insight into the format and the decks we saw on stream. If you were a viewer and had feedback for me, please reach out on how I can improve as a commentator! As for the local meta, in the last couple of weeks, we’ve been seeing a major uptick in Terror, Grixis and Monster Tron and a major downtick in mono-colored aggro strategies. This leads me to believe that we are on the verge of a combo uptick, but I’m excited to see if midrange stays on top or if the aggro decks can be reconfigured to take down the top dogs of the format. I will certainly be trying my best to do so. Be sure to catch the weekly Pauper streams at 6 PM EST on Wednesdays over at twitch.tv/riwhobbies and hopefully you’ll be seeing and hearing more from me!” – Nick Sobczak
It was a pleasure to have Nick on the stream last week. Nick is definitely a Grixis Affinity expert so it was especially fun to call those games with him because he sees the deep, turns ahead plays coming well in advance.
One last note about the Twitch Stream for this week!
If you haven’t played on stream yet (and would like to) – let me know! Also, if you are playing a Bonder’s Ornament deck please let me know before the Stream because I definitely want to see the card back in action.
One of the things that I love so much about Pauper at RIW is how collaborative it is. Everybody helps each other with decks, plays, cards, tech and ideas. With that said, if you have any ideas, commentary, or insight you’d like to share in the Pauper Championship Weekly articles please feel free to reach out on Facebook, Twitter @briandemars1, or just say ‘hi’ on Wednesday and let me know.
