Pauper Meta Report - The current State of Pauper is Curious
Table of Contents
2023 Q1, Q2, Q3 Overview
Throughout the last couple of years and before the creation of the Pauper Format Panel (PFP), the pauper community has struggled to answer the question of whether or not Pauper is a healthy metagame.
Since its creation, the PFP's goal has been to make the format enjoyable for most players and keep it balanced. As a part of it, they quickly banned some cards through 2022.
Jan 20, 2022.
Atog, Bonder's Ornament, and Prophetic Prism
March 7, 2022.
Galvanic Relay is banned
Disciple of the Vault is banned.
Sept 19, 2022.
Aarakocra Sneak is banned.
Stirring Bard is banned.
Underdark Explorer is banned.
Vicious Battlerager is banned.
It’s also often inevitable to talk about the health of the meta without talking about bannings. While the word will trigger a mix of emotions in people (anger, anxiety, frustration, skepticism, excitement, etc.), I don’t see it as a bad word overall, if the intent is to bring a given meta to a state where most people enjoy it.
So far, 2023 has been a year without any bans. I think this is primarily due to the posture of PFP claiming that Pauper metagame in Paper shadows the Online one as you don’t see the same dominant decks being played on in-person tournaments, namely Paupergeeddon ones.
The other factor is that this has been a year full of set releases, and with each, new cards and commons were added to a format that often likes to correct itself, and to some extent, it has as new sideboard cards have been added to battle the metagame, for the most part.
Main deck answers to specific decks.
It’s not unknown that sideboard cards play a huge role in battling the metagame against the most popular archetypes. That is true for Pauper and most constructed formats of the game.
What has brought my attention is that multiple players have started using slots from their main deck to cover weaknesses or at least have some sort of advantage in the game, but what happens when you start adding four cards against a specific deck against in your initial sixty?
The last time I saw this happen was before Disciple of the Vault was banned when Andrea Mengucci played his beloved Boros deck with four Dust to Dust in the main deck.
In newer iterations, we see four Pyroblast or Relic of Progenitus in the main deck, but does it mean that terror decks should get nerfed? Not really. In this scenario, it means Boro's unwinnable match is against terror, and they are trying to get at least a chance against them.
Polarized Sideboards
Still, that is different if we see trends in multiple decks' sideboards. As a rule of thumb, you want to cover your worst matchups and hate against the top decks of the meta and try to be as wide as possible.
Pauper meta nowdays is broad, meaning that there are a lot of archetypes under its shells, but recently, in both Online and Paper meta, we see trends where sideboards start to occupy most of the slots for only Affinity, Burn, and Terror.
This is fine for the most part, but decks that are different from the three above will struggle to face other decks that are trying to beat the top three because, in essence, there would be no sideboard against the rest of the field.
The Best deck of the meta is not the best deck of a tournament.
When I was preparing for my first pro tour, NEON Dynasty, the format was Alchemy (not a good one), and the most dominant deck was Naya Runes. I had the opportunity to test in a group with Andrea Mengucci, and we all knew that to have a chance, we needed to bring either Runes or a deck focused on beating it. We opted for the latter, bringing a mono-white deck that essentially had an 80% chance to beat that deck. However, we were not alone, as most of the field also chose that option.
This reminds me of the in-paper events, like Paupergeddon, where you can see that there is a vast diversity of decks in them, but if you start looking at them granularly, you will know that they were designed to beat both Affinity in Burn in mind, and Magic players are clever and can also foresee that and avoid playing the decks that are almost destined to fail despite being the top treats on the field.
Would you put yourself in a disadvantageous position knowing everyone else is hating on your deck? I wouldn’t.
Top Decks of the Week
That being said, what happened this weekend was a bump in the table of red decks. Two red decks and two Gruul Ponzas on the top four only bring two words to my head: Hostile environment.
These results were even more pronounced on Sunday as five of the eight top decks were straight-up burn versions of the deck, and, if you notice the rest of the field, it's not like they were not packing the necessary tools to beat it, but sometimes, all it takes for the burn player is to chain two Monastery Swiftspears to win games with no sweat.
Deck of the Week Award
It always warms my heart to see sacrifice decks winning something. They may not be the prettiest but are the funniest and underdogs that can take some names once in a blue moon. Not due to them being bad, but not having brave souls actually to test them out.
Wrap Up
Is Pauper diverse? Yes.
Is Pauper Healthy? It depends. If you relate diversity to a healthy metagame, then yes. However, if you relate a healthy metagame to the number of sideboard cards you need to run in your 75 to beat some specific decks and that the trend is consistent through many archetypes against the same deck, then would that change your answer?
Thanks a lot for reading until now. It was a late newsletter today, but last week was a bit weird for me.
We will catch up with more content through the rest of the week. Take care, and we will meet again next time!
Where to Play Pauper?
I have compiled a list of places to play Pauper, mostly IRL. The address may vary, but it's a helpful place to start and check if some of them are near you. They may not play Pauper every day, so it's always a good idea to ask before traveling.
If you want your Pauper LGS added, send an email with the details to:
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Another way to support me is via Ko-FI, where you can also find FREE sideboard guides for my pauper brews and exclusive content for members.
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