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Pauper Ponza

Pauper Land Destruction RG (Gruul)

ilobmirt

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Creature (18)

Enchantment (4)

Sorcery (13)

Land (20)

Instant (5)

Sideboard

Instant (8)

Sorcery (3)

Artifact (2)

Creature (2)

Based on Conley's MTGO 5-0 list

Adding more strats with Faithless Looting

About the deck

This is a ponza deck. Part of its game plan is to destroy lands so your opponent can't cast their spells. It helps to destroy them as early as possible. Unlike ritual based decks like mono red and mono black ponza which can start destroying lands on turn 1, this deck trades speed for a more consistent manabase.

This deck aims to make three mana on turn 2 to go with this plan. The above cards aim to have at least 1 forest in your hand to play a creature or enchantment based ramp piece. Then you have 8 land destruction spells that make use of that 3 mana.

The way that we have our turn 1 plays needing a forest means that our manabase is primarily green. Therefore it makes sense to run Stone Rain over other cards like Pillage or Molten Rain. For molten rain, we care more about our board presence rather than our opponent's life total. For both, Having to need on turn 2 is risky when you lean on playing a basic forest on turn 1. This is a pauper deck where untapped dual lands with basic land types do not exist.

Considering that the core of this strategy is rather strict with its sequencing, you'd need a good reason to modify this mainboard.

A weakness found with decks centering around land destruction is that you could end up with the wrong part of the deck at an inopportune times or you may run out of steam late in the game. When playing with Conley's deck, obtaining the monarch through Entourage of Trest did help refuel the hand late in the game, but I felt like there could be more ways to smooth your draws and have an outlet for all that mana after the early game.

Reusing the graveyard seemed like a good option.

Firebolt, and Earth Rift provide utility by being removal from the graveyard.

Faithless looting gives the deck velocity to dig into the cards you want. Each card digging 4 deep into the library to get there.

Pulse of Murasa, while an odd inclusion, is seen as a way to re-buy the creatures that you looted away or have been targeted by removal from your opponent. It's also a passive hate card against aggressive strategies including burn.

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Update — Aug. 14, 2019
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Changes Before ELD's Time Vault Games Pauper Open - Aug 17th 2019

Okay, so this comes with me finally jumping into MTGO. The word on blue's and Tireless Tribe's demise is a false one. If Tribe continues to pick up, I may rethink on adding back Serrated Arrows to the removal suite.

Removed:

2x Ash Barrens

2x Wild Growth

1x Firebolt

1x Earth Rift

2x Flame Slash

1x Tormod's Crypt

1x Swirling Sandstorm

Added:

2x Mountain

2x Tinder Wall

2x Lightning Bolt

2x Burst Lightning

1x Return to Nature

1x Electrickery

Description

Ash Barrens - It's a good card no doubt when it comes to color fixing. But I noticed that it always is used to fetch a mountain. It's rare that I ever use this to fetch a forest with this. So why spend 1 mana for a mountain when I can spend 0 mana on an actual mountain?

Tinder Wall - looking back on my mana ramp suite, I left this card out originally because it did not fit in well with arbor elf + forest. Playing with just utopia sprawl and wild growth, I've come to feel that past the early game, the extra enchantments rotted in my hand to later get cycled with faithless looting. I may have been wrong about Tinder Wall being more than a ritual that didn't fit in with arbor elf. It has a nice 3 toughness and it also has the ability to remove x/2 creatures that it blocks. This has helped save some early aggression.

I took down a few of my flashback spells for 2 Lightning Bolt because I've come to realize that sorcery speed removal doesn't always cut it against the threats I see across the table. Some creatures even have 3 toughness and that makes firebolt a bit sad.

As I mentioned before it really hurt to see sorcery speed removal in my hand. So I'm trading Flame Slash for Burst Lightning. I still want to remove x/4 creatures at instant speed and I'm not yet sold on Magmatic Sinkhole because it's not a guarantee my grave will be stocked.

Speaking of, I always manage to draw into a Swirling Sandstorm with no threshold enabled. And that makes me sad.

I'm giving Return to Nature a try because I still respect the graveyard, but I also feel like a single Reverent Silence may not be enough to fight enchantment heavy decks.

Aug. 8, 2019
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Update — March 23, 2019
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92% Casual

Competitive

Date added 6 years
Last updated 4 years
Exclude colors WUB
Legality

This deck is Pauper legal.
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.55
Tokens On an Adventure, The Monarch
Folders decks i want, The Pauper Playtesting Gauntlet, Pauper Decks
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