Pauper format - 1/2023
- What is Pauper format?
Hello, my name is LordPerth from Team not-Tavrod (TNT). We organise community tournaments regularly, focusing on alternative formats (formats that you can’t play on ladder), one of which is pauper. The rules for pauper deckbuilding are pretty simple:
- Minimum 75 card decks and consist of only commons.
- Campaign cards are not allowed
That excludes a huge part of the card pool: There is close to 0 market access, barely any good board wipes, most removal is either damage based or a lot more expensive than in expedition/throne, the only dual influence powers are banners and expensive units and flyers are much less threatening.
- Meta analysis
Preface: My meta analysis is only based on a few community tournaments and the few DWD pauper events that we had so far, the last one of which was more than a year ago, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s very possible that there are some strong decks out there that just haven’t been discovered yet because the format isn’t played a lot.
Pauper has a lot of decks that are playable, but based on our tournament experiences and the experiences of the official DWD pauper events so far there are 2 decks that stand out the most: Xenan Sacrifice and Corrosive Dagger decks. Both can put on pressure, the first through buffed Nahid Faithful’s, the second through armies of 1/1 grenadines, while both are also able to grind out games via recurring those threats.
Aggro decks have a lot of tools available (justice has most it’s cheap buff spells and good 2 drops, fire has cheap removal and good 1 and 2 drops), but it struggles against the aforementioned top decks because they both combat the board well early and then overwhelm aggro with boards that are too big or wide to get through. Your best shot is to deal enough damage early and to then burn them out late, but that can be difficult against Marsh Dragon or Nahid’s Faithful. Both top decks don’t have a lot of air presence and removal though, so flyers/spells that grant flying can be another option for aggro.
Midrange is either highly synergistic (like Xenan Sacrifice and Corrosive Dagger decks) or they go for the basic midrange curve and try to play the cards with the best rate on curve. Time has access to efficient ramp units, sizable 5 and 6 cost threats (like Corrupted Behemoth and Infused Guardian) and silence to combat the recursive threats of the 2 top decks. Shadow offers good removal (like Extinguish and Execute) and good inscribe cards (Call the Hit and Eavesdrop). The latter is also very good at stopping recursion and it helps with grinding out other midrange and control decks. Justice grants good 2 drops that are simultaneously aggressive and good at stopping aggression (like Myrmidon Drone or Unseen Marksman) and it offers a strong flexible finisher with Starkissed Wings (especially on units with berserk or double damage).
Control loses most of the cards that make it strong in expedition or throne (efficient market access, board wipes, strong win conditions) and card draw is mostly limited to primal. Because of that your choices for control factions are a bit limited, the only one that really got explored so far is Feln (more about that deck later).
Combo in the sense of deterministic game winning combos is pretty much unplayable in pauper, but there are some highly synergistic decks that can grant a similar feel (in addition to Xenan sacrifice and Dagger decks you can try to build around ping effects with cards like Stormhalt Concoction, Tainted Mark and Mercenary Vanguard).
- Decklists
I tried to build at least one deck for each dual faction combination. For some it was pretty easy (like Xenan or Praxis), for some it was a bit harder (Feln, Elysian).
3.1. Aggro
- Pauper Rakano aggro by LordPerth | Eternal Decks | Eternal Warcry
- Similar to the Stonescar list I decided to cut the typical fire 1 drops because the influence is not really reliable enough to always play them early and they get a lot worse if you play them later (because most of them are x/1s and those get blocked very easily in this format)
- I included a few more Onis because Acclaimed Artisan is a very strong 2 drop, but I didn’t go overboard with them (you can try to go all in on Onis, but with Artisan as the only synergy I wouldn’t recommend that)
- Twilight Lantern and Shavka Evangel can lead to some burst turns out of nowhere, similarly to Hooru Blitz
- Pauper Hooru Blitz by LordPerth | Eternal Decks | Eternal Warcry
- This list was made by Noverb for our set 13 pauper tournament. I’ve only replaced 2 Draw Strengths and 2 Chainwhip Bludgeoners with 4 Bounding Couriers
- The deck aims to go under the grindy synergistic midrange deck by curving out early and going for huge damage bursts in the mid game, mostly by exploiting the weakness to flyers that most good decks in pauper have
- One weakness of this deck is fast removal, which is especially true in an open decklist environment (because that makes it easier to know when to hold up fast removal), so it might take a little practise to know when to take the risk and go for the damage push with buff spells and when it’s better to hold back
- Pauper Skycrag Stranger Burn by LordPerth | Eternal Decks | Eternal Warcry
- Skycrag has a wide array of burn spells, with Thundershot being the newest and probably scariest addition to that arsenal
- There are different ways to build around those (you could play more units that buff spell damage for example or play more of the classical fire aggro units), but I decided to go with strangers
- The fixing strangers are decent cards in pauper by themselves because they provide a solid statline and because influence fixing is hard to come by. But they also profit from the single faction strangers (each faction has one at common) that do something when a stranger tracks and the primal one (Spellstorm Stranger) really helps with our burn strategy
- Torrential Downpour may seem strange, but it is by far the best board wipe in pauper (it is good against a lot of aggressive units while also hitting the 2 top decks, especially Dagger decks) and gets a lot better if you can buff it’s damage output
- Pauper Feln Flyers by LordPerth | Eternal Decks | Eternal Warcry
- This deck tries to beat the top decks in the air. It also packs a lot of removal, a lot of which can double up as burn to get a faster clock with your flying units (which means that this deck will often play like a burn deck because your flying units are slightly more vulnerable, but also repeatable, burn spells)
3.2. Aggro/Midrange
- Justice is in a bit of unique spot because it has a ton of good 2 drops, most of which work well in an aggro deck (like Hooru Blitz), but a lot of them also work very well/even better in a slightly slower deck somewhere between the aforementioned aggro decks and the bigger time based midrange decks of the format that have a higher curve. Here are 2 examples that I tested with:
- Argenport aggro/midrange:
3.3. Midrange
- Pauper Xenan Sacrifice by LordPerth | Eternal Decks | Eternal Warcry
- This is the most established archetype, it’s basically been around with a fairly consistent core since a pauper event in set 8
- The 2 central cards are Nahid’s Faithful and Marsh Dragon. Both are insanely strong if you pair them with sacrifice fodder and void recursion, so this deck is packed with both
- Grumbos Platoon is a fairly new addition that still has to be tested with (it was broken before unleash got nerfed, but not really tested with post nerf), but it has a lot of potential to be a threat with buffs and recursion (it also doubles as sacrifice fodder, fills your void with units for Marsh Dragon and works as a power sink in the late game)
- The killer effects make your void recursion even stronger (Open Way Supplier is a bit luck dependent, but a mana dork that sometimes makes your gameplan a lot stronger is very good)
- Recursion hate being very good (Eavesdrop, silence and decay effects) is the main reason why I didn’t go overboard on void recursion here (you could also play Triumphant Return for example)
- Pauper Praxis Midrange by LordPerth | Eternal Decks | Eternal Warcry
- This is a typical time midrange deck that aims to ramp and control early to then curve out big units in the midgame that overwhelm the opponent
- The mix of silence and damage based removal should cover up most matchups (silence and decay to weaken recursion, damage based removal against “normal” threats)
- Cannonbearers ping effect comes in very handy against Dagger decks
3.4. Control
- The end
I hope you enjoyed this introduction into the pauper format. For anyone interested in trying it out now I’ll include a link to our upcoming TNT pauper tournament below (it also includes a permanent invite link to our discord server under “rules”). Thanks for reading!
TNT TD 2023 #1: Pauper by Team Not-Tavrod (battlefy.com)
Thanks to my teammates marvin_the_imp and Kuamie for proofreading!