Pauper Challenge: Blue Results

Deck Challenges

zandl

3 September 2012

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Blue results!

It has recently come to my attention that a good deal of you prefer to have each decklist open as you read through the match results.

Lo, and the good zandl spake, “Ask, and ye shall receiveth great gifts.”

Or, y’know. whatever.
Pseudonym394 - U Pauper Delver (Zandl's Challenge)
knightinkarma - blue_challenge
Gennair - MonoBlueFish (Zandl"s Challenge)
Jarrod_0067 - Bounce, Bounce, Baby
Jokerx71 - Your Graveyard Looks Like Flapjacks
jmb072608 - Pauper delver
toastytoast - prauper-blue-delver
tehboss - Flicker
fireteam - Mono U Delver Pauper
Virlym - zandl's pauper challenge 2012 blue

Round 1 results:

winning player (games won) vs. losing player (games won)

Pseudonym394 (2) vs. knightinkarma (0)

Pseudonym’s draw power won him the match. Though the deck had to mulligan a bit to find Delver of Secrets  ^Flip (the only creature), it was amazing when the flip happened. With counterspells for everything and plenty of draw-power to keep it that way, the deck quickly jumped ahead in both games.

Gennair (2) vs. Jarrod_0067 (1)

Massive land-flooding occurred on both sides in both games. Gennair’s top-decks included Merfolk Looter and Sylvok Lifestaff, bringing about more stability than Jarrod’s AEther Adept and Peel from Reality.

Jokerx71 (2) vs. jmb072608 (0)

Joker’s mix of Enchantment-based Mill and Artifact-based life-gain (neither of which can be easily dealt with in mono-Blue), when supported by creature-bouncing spells, lead to two drawn-out yet solid victories.

toastytoast (2) vs. tehboss (0)

In the first game, toastytoast landed a Delver and got it to flip turn-2. From there, drawing a counterspell nearly every single turn and tehboss being stuck on the first three lands meant nothing could resolve. The second game was surprisingly similar, save for the fact that toastytoast had two Insectile Aberration  ^Flips on the third turn.

fireteam (2) vs. Virlym (1)

By this match, I started noticing a trend. If you have Delver of Secrets  ^Flip in your deck, you really only win if it flips early and you lose if anything else would happen. That’s, at least, what decided this match-up.

Round 2 pairings!

Jokerx71 vs. Pseudonym394
fireteam vs. Gennair
toastytoast: BYE!

Round 2 results:

*winning player (games won) vs. losing player (games won)*

Jokerx71 (2) vs. Pseudonym394 (1)

With Pseudonym394’s deck, you either draw Delver and flip it or lose. With no other creatures or ways to win, and if your opponent just counters and continuously bounces the Delver, you’re dead in the water.

Gennair (2) vs. fireteam (1)

Gennair’s deck simply had far more creatures to dish out damage. fireteam’s deck could theoretically race it, but its pumping spells were in the form of Auras, an exceptionally weak type of permanent in a bracket consisting of handfuls of bounce spells.

toastytoast: BYE!

Round 3 pairings!

Gennair vs. toastytoast
Jokerx71: BYE!

Round 3 results:

*winning player (games won) vs. losing player (games won)*

toastytoast (2) vs. Gennair (1)

toastytoast’s superior amounts of board control and counters led to the eventual victories.

Black Bracket Finals!

toastytoast vs. Jokerx71

Game Deets

Game 1: Toasty wins. 2 Delvers in the opening hand, followed by a Mana Leak on the reveal set the tone for the rest of this game. Joker tried to gain some ground with two mid-game Curse of the Bloody Tome, but Pristine Talisman only gains so much life.
Game 2: Joker wins. Through some crafty casting while Toasty had to tap out for Delver and Ponders and such, Joker dropped two Curses by the sixth turn and managed to keep the opposing Insectile Aberration  ^Flip at bay for a bit with a Pristine Talisman. A late-game Ponder for Joker revealed 2 Dreadwaters with 10 lands out. Drawing and playing both while Toasty only had Essence Scatters sealed the deal for Joker.
Game 3: A very close game, as any self-respecting finals match-up should end with. Toasty dropped a Delver turn-1 and had it flip turn-2 while playing a second one. Not to be intimidated, however, Joker struck back with a slew of creature-bouncing spells and freezing effects, like Frost Breath and Crippling Chill. Without being able to efficiently deal with AEther Adept aside from bouncing it (and, thus, resetting it), Toasty started falling behind in the race between Delver and Mill. Joker drew two Golden Urns in a row and they began to stack up counters. Curse of the Bloody Tome landed shortly thereafter and the stall-fest began. With Toasty missing some crucial Delver flip-triggers and having all creature control for a mostly creature-less deck, Joker drained Toasty’s deck down to 0 and Vapor Snagged the victory to its owner’s hand; his.

So our Blue bracket champion is…

Jokerx71

Congratulations! You now have 2 piping hot Feature Tokens, a Round Robin tournament with the other champions, a game against my personal Blue Pauper deck (near mirror-match?), and eternal internet glory to look forward to! Also, congratulations to toastytoast for making second place! One Feature Token will be awarded to your account within a day or two of this article’s posting. Thank you to all of the people who submitted a Blue deck to this Challenge! You’re helping to make this Challenge a TappedOut tradition! Now on to our *next* color in the tournament:

White Pauper Tournament Pairings!

ptburnham vs. sealion
thomaspaine vs. Wolfsage13
Mpz5 vs. MetaphysicalxProdigy
torridus vs. Tyqar
Kravian vs. BlunterCube
TristanTaylorsVoice vs. birdseed
bhrusson0 vs. madams5 Be on the look-out for the next article around next weekend. Good luck!

This article is a follow-up to Pauper Challenge: Black Results The next article in this series is Pauper challenge: white results