DAAAAAAMN! That is a ***k ton of white cards. I figured that from the multicolored cards, that w/r herioc/enchanting beat face stuff was up. Also, who was that one guy that like put a random artifact in his deck?

Boros decks are about a quarter of the field, if I had to give it a percentage.

I honestly kind of expected Cluestones to make more of an appearance, but I was noticing that Theros block cards are far more prevalent than RTR block cards in general. I think the Pauper challenge attracts a fair deal of newer players who may be more familiar and comfortable with Theros block than anything else.

The decks that were doing the most work last year were Delver of Secrets  ^Flip decks (the best were U/R and U/G) and then there were B/W Extort/Control decks. Aggro wasn't nearly as common as the removal was a lot stronger between Innistrad and RTR than it is now.

Here's to hoping I win (At least the first round).

I will be honest, i don't remember last years spcsp too well. I do remember mirrodin + innistrad. Man, infect with Blight Mamba is a mistake and Ogre Menial does some serious work in pauper. I am excited to read the quick summary of the matches though! I want to get into the pauper format more, though the thought of only using standard cards pains me. But, if everybody likes it, then good for them!

Yes, GOOD LUCK!

May the odds be ever in your favor

Oh, Jesus. Ogre Menial was the best creature in the format at the time because it dodged all of the common removal except for Doom Blade and Murder . Razor Swine was a tank, too. I remember that the decks were separated by color and Volcanic Strength on a 2/6 unblockable Infect body was basically GG in a mono-Red format.

clowe304433: don't forfeit. You could win in the end (it doesn't even matter. I have gone to far, too lose it all ...) because all of the decks have potential.

Aww, quit being such an emo kid. It's a no-risk, free challenge. You might just learn a thing or two, as well.

@clowe304433

Why sign up at all if you're going to forfeit before your first match? Anything can happen. The most experienced player with the best possible deck still has a reasonable chance of losing their match. If you could call the outcome before the game, no one would even play Magic in the first place. Come on man - just give it a shot.

You never know, clowe304433! I've seen casual decks take down top tier decks, just let the tournament run its course. Either way you'll leave more experienced, especially with zandl's brief rundown of each match. It's things like this that'll make you an even better deck builder.

Out of curiosity, how many turns do the games run on average, zandl? I tested mine a few times and it ran anywhere from five to fifteen turns (estimate). I realize that there are some very aggressive decks and others that just want to sit there for a while, but do you have a guess on an average?

GL to Echokarma and everyone else. Rules check: Is Doom Blade legal in standard pauper?

I have no idea what Apoptosis is running, but it better be fast, because that's how my deck's built to run.

@sadiuh: "Standard Pauper" doesn't have any official rules, so I've made my own for all of my past challenges. If a card has been a common in the past but it only exists in Standard-legal sets as an uncommon, then it's not legal for use. Being a Standard Pauper challenge, you can only pick commons from Standard-legal sets.

Therefore, Doom Blade isn't legal in this challenge (by my own rules, at least).

clowe304433 don't drop out, You can always win it in the end. All you need is a bit of luck!

Again, zandl muchos gracias!

:P

mono-white ftw!

erabel my deck stinks, I was going for a bant hexproof and never got it right. I meant to retool it, maybe make it Naya but never got around to it. Just ran a few playtests against your deck, I won 1 and lost 3. I basically need a nut draw to win (i.e. T1 Oppressive Rays to buy time into Ethereal Armor /Hopeful Eidolon onto a Gladecover Scout or Akroan Skyguard ). If I can get Hopeful Eidolon onto something big enough to stabilize and you can't manage to kill it, I win. Otherwise you stomp my face badly. Good luck in round 2, because I doubt I'll be there ;-).

clowe304433 I playtested this deck several times with different outcomes haha.I'm totally unsure of what i'm doing when it comes to pauper (This is my first time even remotely trying something like this)

So don't fret it man. You have as much of a chance as I.

Sidenote: zandl my name is linked to a half-assed EDH deck

Fixed.

@ducttapedeckbox: Games can go anywhere from 5 turns to both decks running out of cards. It just depends on the type of decks, the efficiency of the build, and the cards that come up. It's a lot more like draft's games than constructed's games.

Read this. It's admittedly sounds a bit more confusing than it actually is.

Your boros deck looks like it'll sync up pretty well against mine, My bet is your flying will out do my heroics.

But we shall see!

zandl (2) vs. zandl ()

zandl by zandl versus zandl by zandl

• Game 1:
  
• Game 2:
  
• Game 3:

Uh. Also, that was an accident. I was playing with the HTML for the next article and testing it in a TappedOut comment. Didn't mean to hit "Post".

:/

Methinks Feast of Dreams will be quite a powerful removal spell.

Looks like a tough match up.

Looks like a more intense match than two Pixy Stix decks facing each other.

Looks good zandl! Last year you had stats on specifically the total number of each deck of a colour combination, is that something you'll bring back or was that solely for Guild purposes?

@Energycore: Good luck! It looks like it's MonoU against Junk Midrange.

Im suprised i got matched up against a deck that i really liked for the first round Johnny5 im quite interested to see how our matchup will go. The biggest flaw my deck has is possibly consistency running 3 colors against a monocolored ramp deck. Its cool to see Vulpine Goliath getting play I wish you the best of luck and hope our match is amazing .

@Dallie: It's not something I can find this time around without going through each individual deck. R/W decks are by far the most popular, Mono-Black and B/x decks are pretty big, Mono-White and W/x is somewhat prevalent, and G/W seems decent.

First matchup of the second article? I know I don't have to do anything, but I've got stage fright haha. Good luck to everyone though, hope this is gets to be as fun as it was to build for.

GL to you too Zandl, here's the best for ya :D

@zandl: Fair enough, I took the liberty of looking through the submission deck page, the first article and finally attempted to catch anyone who slipped through the net by checking the match-ups to find out how the decks specifically were divided. If you want to add it to the article feel free, however I could only find 98 of the 103 decks. The results of colour combinations follow:

Mono:

White: 6
Blue: 2
Black: 5
Red: 8
Green: 7

Guilds:

Azorius: 9
Boros: 22
Dimir: 2
Golgari: 2
Gruul: 5
Izzet: 3
Orzhov: 7
Rakdos: 2
Selesnya: 4
Simic: 2

Shards:

Bant: 3
Esper: 1
Junk: 3
Naya: 2
USA: 3

I would've put percentages by them, but obviously, since it's 103 decks (or the 98 I found) 1 deck is very close to being 1 %, so I assumed that people could figure that out for themselves.

I had a few send me their lists privately, as well.

Very interesting results. Thanks for piecing that together!

After a few playtests, I can tell that I'll be out after round 1

Fack I wanted to compete but didn't submit my decklist - drat :(

Anyway good luck to all the people.

I've got a feeling that the "lands and spells" deck will dominate here.

Well I'm against literally the best pauper deck out there, with 265 votes.

fuck

sorry, 283. :(

Rienuaa Your pauper deck looked pretty solid. Both are similar so it's just a matter of who gets the better draws

So I'm facing the mirror, eh? Should be fun. I think I might have a slight advantage in that I run removal in build.

Rienuaa where did you get those votes?

I'm incredible sorry for those games that come down to who draws their last card first, zandl... Haha those might be painful.

Also, good luck to Necrotrotador! I've had mixed results against control, I'm just glad you have a singleton Feast of Dreams ... That cards hurts :(

Great my mono green rogue stompy goes up against a mono white FLYING deck in round one.

Well I knew a rogue deck would be a longshot but man... this will be a tough one.

Also I am running the single artifact in Fleetfeather Sandals to whoever it was that was asking :) My only way to fly. Hope it sees the board I am gonna need it!

Good luck to everyone.

Thanks a ton zandl!

@SuppaFlySnipa- Ugh. I got paired against that great boros aggro build first round. Good luck to you.

yay! thanks so much, zandl. i can only assume how much time and effort you'll put into this..

also good luck, GoldGhost012 i think that Feast of Dreams is going to be my worst enemy...

Feast of Dreams is gonna cause problems for everyone :P

Feast of Dreams may even be better than Doom Blade would be.

I almost wish I went with W/G over W/U just so that I have Gladecover Scout to dodge all of the Feast of Dreams .... It even fits with my 1-CMC theme

I got a bye? :(

Cheer up, poopypants! You get a free pass into the next round!

Looks like my Junk is up against a mono-red heroic/burn deck. Here's to hoping the Aurafont can keep it 'pacified'.

zandl, I know, but I wanted to see how my deck did!

Just play-tested my matchup, I won though I'll admit I'm a) obviously biased, and b) new to the game and prone to doing things a older player wouldn't. But I'm hopeful and have my fingers crossed that I can get my Grim Guardian out.

Just remembered this meme, had to post it:

Lol. I think you should post that in each of your articles zandl.

Or this one:

You will find out if you've been eliminated sometime late next week. I need to get through the first article's matches and that article probably won't be up until almost this weekend. After that, I have to start the second half of the round and make that entire article.

Have patience. With this many decks, it's inevitable that this will take some time in the first few rounds. Once we get to round 3 and beyond, though, it will be much less time between articles.

Also, I'm having job interviews all week long, so my attention is divided for the next few days. I'm still working on the challenge, but real-life comes first. :/

Still, though, the first half should be done and posted by the start of this weekend.

I wish you the best of luck with your interviews zandl. This will be the first competition i have ever really done for magic outside of 2 prereleases. I ind it exciting to see how far my deck will go. Good luck to everyone participating i hope its fun for everyone .

@zandl: Good luck with the interviews! We'll wait patiently for our gracious host to serve the results!

Lol Boros for the win!!!

I'm last.

IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN.

I believe the top 7 issue would actually be a top 6 issue, with 13 decks and one receiving a bye. One way to correct this may be selecting two wild cards either at random or by number of game losses throughout the first 4 rounds. Just an idea.

The good thing about round-robin is that it's a fair way to determine a winner out of any number of entrants. :D

14 matches done, 11 more to go. I'm just going to say that I'm being pleasantly surprised by the results (and upsets).

First half results could be done as early as tomorrow evening... Maybe. If you plays your cards right.


c wut i did

thar

I didn't realize how popular Boros Heroic was. I though I was being original. :(

I'll be playing the deck I submitted at FNM tomorrow. LET'S SEE HOW THAT GOES.

CMONNN MONO-HOOOOWHITE

@Programmer_112 me too, dang it.

I had a feeling white was gonna be big, and that it would pair up with red for Borosiness or Green for HERO TIME. Too many good commons in that pool.

Which is part of why I submitted a weird piece of jank.

Found out Sherlock Season 3 was on Netflix, so it'll be up in 12 hours or so. After waking up in the morning, I just need to finish the last match or two and make sure the formatting is solid. You'll have a lot to read; trust me.

28 Energycore vs. 15 Dallie

We're playing in match nr. 21, the first number in EnergyCores Contestant number is 2, this first in mine is 1. 21.

8 and 5 is 13. Thirteen has eight letters. 13 + 8. 21.

2 and 1 is 3. And you know what that means...

Half Life 3 confirmed.

(all a big part of my procrastination instead of studying)

Dallie you may have just achieved enlightenment.

Formatting the article now. It's almost done.

Shout-out to brokendwarf for having the one username I can't type at normal speed. I apparently spelled it "brokendrawrf", "brokendrawf", "brokendawfr", and "brokndewarf" throughout the article.

-sigh-

Good...good

New article's up!

gogogo

Standard Pauper Challenge: Round 1 Results (Part 1)