TL;DR: Cards printed at common in the Zeta set WILL be legal in Pauper (starting Monday Sept 7), reversing their previous decision.

Narcomoeba and Price of Progress are pre-banned

Baleful Strix, Vandalblast, Dispatch and Cut Down are all being watched carefully to see if they cause problems

Heya. I’m currently playing my brews on the league - playing competitive weird decks is my jam.

I’ll be going with 1 brew each week until the end of the league - and if I get a chance, will take a strongest deck into top8 finals.

Yeh, yeh I know, tron. Tron is probably one of the most explored archetypes - and it's hard to add a meaningful input on it on top of what people already established previously.

Since you have huge amount of mana from the tron itself and all of it is colorless, you need to somehow deal with this problem - either by playing big creatures that don't require color (monster tron), or playing artifacts (artifact tron), or by converting mana to the color of any source to then have big amount of mana of any color - and to play value cards to outvalue your opponents while regaining tempo from your tron manabase (flicker-control).

This deck is based on a Flicker Tron. The issue with a Flicker Tron is that it's a very slow control deck that beats the opponents either with the Mulldrifters (yeah, that slow), or Dinrova variant locks the opponent, outcontrols and then beats it, or Roiling Thunder variant that burns the opponent down. Or you have a very very late game combo with 3 [[Urza's Tower]] 2 [[Mnemonic Wall]] [[Unwind]] [[Ghostly Flicker]] [[Weather the Storm]] [[Energy Refractor]]... yeah.

So I've invented another faster combo - I tried to search the web and it doesn't look like anyone else knows this card: [[Stone-Seeder Hierophant]] (requires to survive a turn to get rid of summoning sickness) + [[Ghostly Flicker]] that targets [[Mnemonic Wall]] & [[Urza's Tower]]. The tower returns to the board in the untapped state and untaps Hierophant. Tap tower, Hierophant untaps tower, tap tower = 6 mana, it costs 4 (with Refractor) to cast the flicker again. OR flicker an island and untap the tower with Hierophant -- it doesn't require the refractor.

The combo above gives infinite mana, if you have any ETB card draw permanent on the board - infinite draw. The only missing piece is to kill the opponent. So 2x Lush Oasis - land with ETB 1 damage.

Games

2-1 vs Monster Tron: I've lost a game where I failed to assemble a tron. Otherwise the gameplan to turbofog them just works as intended -- the piece they had against it is an Eldrazi with annihilator, but it doesn't annihilate if they have no combat, which is what happened game 3. Hit the timelimit (5 turns limit), but comboed into win.

0-1 vs Golgari Gardens: first game lasted pretty much almost the timelimit. They repeatedly nuked me with multiples of Nihil Spellbomb from the maindeck. Neither Hierophant, nor Mulldrifters survived on the board, and were later exiled. Flickering was complicated as it was answered with instant speed removals in response. Mnemonic Walls ended up getting nothing. Died to X damage on the rats after they've healed up with the x2 campfires, but it's not like it mattered, I didn't have any wincon in my last ~7 cards in the deck and I was about to deck myself faster.

The matchup would go so much different if I had Roiling Thunder. Even the Dinrova would stand a better chances. Shows why my brew is a brew and why people play different stuff competitively :)

1-1 vs Jeskai Ephemerate Skred: I've comboed into win the first game, lost the second (got denied the Refractor & ended up without colors), didn't finish the third to timelimit. The odds were fair for us both, I had the OG flicker tron combo, he had several Mulldrifters on the board - chances are I would be locked out again. Turn 4 of timelimit I tried to spin the combo but didn't have enough mana to finish it.

Overall: I think I had bad luck on the matchups. Turbofog is tuned to play vs aggro/midrange and not full blown controls.

Overall feelings

The deck is still a slugfest. A new combo speeds it up a bit but the core of spending early game to build the tron, find the ways to generate colours, and then gradual stabilization - all the while the CMC/colors math is complex and makes you think more than you should (skill issue, but other tron variants definitely have it easier).

The problem that the deck is vulnerable to so many hate options makes it just sad.

• Artifact removal, countering the artifacts -- no colours, dead.
• Wildfires - no tron, no bitches.
• Graveyard hate - the most popular pauper hate locks you out of infinite value loops, locks you out of comboes.
• Removal - still works against you.

Possible future changes

I think I will pivot the deck into multiples of Roiling Thunder while preserving some of the Hierofuns, cutting other removal / control pieces, maybe teachings & pulses of murasa.

Heya. I’m currently playing my brews on the league - playing competitive weird decks is my jam.

I’ll be going with 1 brew each week until the end of the league - and if I get a chance, will take a strongest deck into top8 finals.

I think people sleep on 3 mana symmetric discards. Lots of decks will struggle after discard 3 cards. Even less continue to be functional after picking 4 nonland cards from their hands with Last Rites.

Sure, the pain is mutual, but your deck can prepare for it.

Discard almost everything t3 with a plan to gradualy stabilize and outvalue. Gates to make your wincon bulletproof, and turn your evasive engine pieces into kill machines.

Games

2-0 vs Dredge: x4 Bojuka Bogs hit them hard, x2 Nihil Spellbombs in the sideboard sealed the deal. Afaik Last Rites were cast into Bojuka folloup game 1 on t4.

2-1 vs Red Aggro: I was lucky. Despite them having early game land issues I've ended up with 4hp in the last game - one bolt away from losing (lava darts in the graveyard).

2-0 vs Gruul: You hit them with the discard before they play anything big = geegee.

Post-game changes

Current list: https://archidekt.com/decks/14469404/there_go_your_hopes_and_dreams

I needed to address the burn matchup somehow, so I got x2 Campfires in the sideboard.

Also slotted in Dihada's Ploy (feel like it's better in regaining value than Skeleton, plus it heals a bit).

Devour Flash instead of counterspell mainboard. Counterspell always felt wrong in the deck, t2 you rarely have 2 mana open, then after discard you need removals and draw to stabilize. Counterspell is a very very late game lock piece. Probably ok to keep one just to keep them on their toes but not two. Devour Flash is an experiment to lifegain on gates creature if the matchup is burn, and a removal otherwise. Downside is playing this vs something like Crysalis or in a wide board, but I should have enough target removals to address that.

Heya. I'm currently playing my brews on the league - playing competitive weird decks is my jam.

I'll be going with 1 brew each week until the end of the league - and if I get a chance, will take a strongest deck into top8 finals.

The first deck I've played on the league is Sieve - it is UG flash with a HEAVY counterspell department. The the name this deck carries mean "you filter the big cards out", and letting irrelevant pieces to resolve - to then be eaten by lategame card advantage and bigger creatures.

The key tempo card here is Rewind, plus your main draw spells live in 5 mana - getting into high mana early is a must, that's why it is lands heavy.

One of the key idea behind this deck is that flash creatures are sorta like bad removal that can also win you the game if left unanswered. Thus any other control blue deck needs draw, counterspells, removal & wincon, while here your removal is a flex wincon - lets you jam more into other sections. Also green gives access to Ents, which is a lategame finisher. No value is wasted.

Games

1-1 vs dredge (tbf count myself lucky here, it's not an easy matchup, you can't just counter a thing once and for it not to come from a graveyard after...)

2-0 vs scion-Eldrazi deck (I just didn't counter scions and he never had a chance to resolve big things, won mull to 5 this way)

2-1 vs jund wildfire. Gixian Infiltrators got me 1 loss, as they are low cmc and they grow once they get through. He was unlucky on starting hands a number of times, also I've Disrupt-ed wildfire t2 in the last game :D

Post-game changes

Current list: https://archidekt.com/decks/14490277/sieve

I got advised to try the Hard Evidence, and I like the idea of using the card in this deck. Even in the dredge matchup, small 1/1's eat your health pool while you sit t2-t6 countering their bigger things, sneaking one mana 0/3 would be easy without dropping the counterspell readiness. So x2 main board and x2 sideboard vs aggro.

Also dredge matchup shown that I'm not prepared and need more GY hate. Trying x1 mainboard - as many pauper decks actually do resolve around graveyard, and worst case I can cantrip it.

Probably should go for Relics in the sideboard too, but x1 relic is what I have now.

I went 2-1-0 with blue delver in a tournament in one of my city's bar. We were 22 players, which was a bigger tournout than expected, and a nice surprise 🥳 Decklist is here.

ROUND 1 : mono white hare apparent, 2-1 My oppo was playing a brew, 20 hares 20 lands and an assortement of blink spells, mass pump spells, thraben charms and Leonardos. The one loss was from the match where I could not counter the first rabbit, which means I could not stop the deck from snowballing. Also I got my delver mana tithe'd on turn 1, and it hurt 🥲

ROUND 2 : blue white familiar, 2-0 Oppo was playing the foil version of the deck, and it seems like it was too slow against my deck. I got two flipped delvers with dispel backup on turn 3 in the second round, and that was enough pressure to just play counterspells until I won.

ROUND 3 : mono red madness, 1-2 This one was against a friend that I introduced to the game a few years ago, we were both 2-0, the stakes could not have been higher 😁 I lost the pre side match, then won the second one, and lost the third. I think my mistake was blasting the wrong spell, on turn 4 I had a serpent on board, oppo had only two lands, I blasted their plotted highway robbery to keep them from finding a third land, but then they blasted my serpent and I could not find any other threat 😵 I probably sideboarded wrong too, the mystics I brought in felt too slow for the matchup.

It was a great night, I am glad that there is an active pauper community in my city 🥳

Does anyone come here anymore? I just found out about this, but the last post is from two years ago.

Oh never mind, now I see one from three months ago. Cool!

Hello o/,

Does anybody know where one can find a list of upcoming pauper events? I've looked around and can find lots of things happening in the states. Unfortunately I haven't found much luck for things happening in Europe.

I'm specifically looking for any events in the coming months with 100 people or more.

Thanks :)