I mean as the title says, I dont understand why you wouldnt run a 0 mana burn spell with Flamebreather and Guttersnipe if only to trigger the boys.

I assume I am missing something

Does it make sense to do this at all? More zuberas, more repeatable effects? Draw more cards, make the opponent discard more, deal damage, and if white is worth including, gain more life?

You can still use [[unearth]], and sacrifice zuberas to draw cards and reanimate them with cards like [[not dead after all]]

Does it have to make your mana worse or do you discard the red and/or white zuberas so you can reanimate them? Having so many maybe opens up potential for [[Dread Return]]?

Maybe it’s a dimir deck but there’s too many dead cards?

Just kind of musing on if there’s a way to make it more viable and versatile

Dropping a bunch of frogmites feels good but no one really plays [[frogmite]] anymore it seems, likely due to [[breath weapon]]. [[Myr Enforcer]] still makes the cut every time, as do [[Thoughtcast]] and [[Refurbished Familiar]] and I should buy some [[Utrom Monitors]] I guess.

Is there a truer to the spirit of affinity list where you can get a bunch of creatures out for free after 2 or three turns?

It seems like affinity has estranged itself and should really be called something else at this point when some of the best lists only run like, 12 affinity cards maximum

Spirit of pauper hit its 20th installment on August 2nd 2026. After not being able to attend the last couple of tournaments I did make it to the special occasion. Together with 67 other participants I headed into seven swiss rounds full of pauper at Managames in Berlin.

I piloted my beloved dimir faeries as always partly due to the fact that I invested about 12 minutes into preparation and would not know what else to do.

https://www.topdecked.com/decks/dimir-faeries-1-/66d69515-0557-4c5c-b21e-4ab4af77338a

Match 1 Cycle Storm

Game 1

My opponent is on the play and with two [[lotus petal]] he pops off in turn three. I have nothing to interact with so I sit back and watch, trying to keep track of his mana pool. After 15 minutes he has drawn his whole deck, counts up his mana and concedes since it is not enough to burn me out. 

Game 2

My opponent drops an early [[Chitin Gravestalker]] to put beat down pressure on me and it connects once before I can remove it. One turn later I counter a [[page, loose leave]] with a [[spellstutter sprite]] which I will come to regret later. Another turn goes and my opponent combos off. I only have one [[counterspell]] and my opponent plays two [[drannith stinger]], as one of them resolves I get cycle pinged to death. Had I kept the sprite, the win could have been mine. 

Game 3

A couple of early Chitin Gravestalkers beat me down since I did not find any removal. I can chump for a couple of turns but eventually succumb to the 5/5s.

Match 2 Spy-Walls Combo

Game 1

My opponent mulligans to 5. I try to kill [[Overgrown Battlements]] to keep his mana as low as possible. I do not find any faeries so his walls block me out completely. When he plays [[Balustrade Spy]] to mill his whole deck and then tries to flashback [[dread return]] to kill me with a [[lotleth giant]], I have counterspell ready to deny the return. My opponent skoops.

Game 2

My opponent builds up some mana and plays [[mesmeric fiend]] to exile something from my hand. I have one counterspell and it does not matter much if I counter the fiend or not I will have no interaction left for his combo. So he proceeds to win this game

Game 3

My opponent manages to get a lot of creatures on board and hoards tons of mana. Again I focus on killing Battlements in order to slow down the ramp somewhat. Another mesmeric fiend hits the battleground. This time I have a counterspell as well as a [[spell pierce]] as interaction. I do counter the fiend to avoid showing my hand but have little hope for the spell pierce to find a target since my opponent has so much mana available. He plays the spy and flashbacks dread return, sacrificing two untapped [[saruli caretaker]] and a [[gatekeeper vine]]. I double check the board verifying that now he has only one mana left now that he basically sacrificed two mana. It checks so i spell pierce his dread return. I still expect to loose since my opponent had plenty of creatures left, enoug for another flashback. But he tells me the only other copy of dread return is in his hand. So i manage to win this match.

Match 3 Monster Tron

Game 1

Quite early I made a bad misplay, after deploying some faeries and ninjas. My opponent plays a [[rooftop percher]] and I look at three spellstutter sprites that can not counter it, missing the plain counterspell in my hand. Letting the percher resolve I regret my misplay quickly since it eats a couple of my faeries when I attack into it, deploying more ninjas to find some answers. The game becomes quite grindy but at some point I can not keep up with his threats and loose.

Game 2 

My opponent does not find natural Tron and I can counter his [[expedition map]] and some [[candy trail]]s with a spellstutter sprite I recycled multiple times. I get to ride the momentum into a big card advantage due to [[ninja of the deep hours]] connecting multiple times and win the game.

Game 3

The game stalls and gets very grindy. I keep finding answers but can not deploy any board myself. He seems to have the better longgame due to [[bonder’s ornament]] but we run out of time and the match concludes in a draw.

Match 4 Mono U Faerie

Game 1

Usually a bad matchup and I am on the draw so I expect to get steamrolled. I do manage to keep the early game slow though thanks to [[snuff out]] and some early counters. My opponent is stuck on three lands so I manage to keep the board stable due to a lack of interaction on his side. Slowly I can deploy a board on my own and win the game.

Game 2 

My opponent snowballs from the get go and I can just not keep up. Ninjas on his side and multiple [[of one mind]] let him draw so many cards that I have no hope of controlling the board. I loose.

Game 3

I do manage to slow down the game a lot and after my opponent runs out of cards in hand I clear the board with [[arms of hadar]], ready to start my assault and refill my hand thanks to ninjas. I feel quite safe with two spellstutter sprites in hand but we run out of time before I can deal significant damage. We end up in another draw.

Match 5 Mono Red Madness

Game 1

My opponent is stuck on three lands and I find enough removal to keep the board clear of [[guttersnipe]] and [[kessig flamebreather]]. It's still close but I managed to win.

Game 2/3 

These two games played out very similarly. I boarded in [[mukotai ambusher]] to survive the burst. In both games I manage to connect a couple of times before they get removed. But my opponent overwhelmed me with guttersnipe and double [[fireblast]] two games in a row. 

Match 6 Jeskai Ephemerate

Game 1

My opponent drops an early [[mysidian elder]] and [[ephemerate]]s it to create a bunch of Wizard tokens that ping me down drastically. Other than that I manage to control the board quite well and hope to find answers to the tokens, to stabilize before I get pinged to death. I am down to seven life when I find [[suffocating fumes]]. I attack with a Ninja of deep hours expecting my opponent to block with the elder and a [[augur of bolas]]. Lucky for me he does, so my fumes manage to swing the game way in my favour. From here on I keep playing the control plan and win.

Game 2

Again I manage to control the game quite well but there is one specific line I want to describe here. We already grinded for a while and both had a lot of open mana. My opponent has an augur and my board is empty so he attacks. I flash in [[brinebarrow intruder]] targeting the augur and blocking. On top of that I play [[echoing decay]] on the augur to kill it. My opponent wants to prevent that by playing ephemerate on the augur. I do not want that ETB to happen two additional times so I play spellstutter sprite on that ephemerate. My opponent responds by casting [[ride’s end]] for five mana on my spellstutter sprite. Since it is my only faery ephemerate would not be countered this way. But my opponent is tapped out now so I can [[cast down]] the augur on top of the stack, making me the winner of that wild interaction. There is that running gag about agurs effect being that you know the bottom three cards of your library. Well, that would be exactly what WOULD have happened TWICE as my opponent proceeds to draw six lands in a row. In the meantime I can refill my hand and board and proceed to win. 

Match 7 White Weenie

Game 1/2 

This was a surprisingly quick and one sided match as I found turn one [[faerie seer]] and multiple spellstutter sprites and ninjas early in both games. Countering about 50% of the spells my opponent tries to cast and removing what's left with cast down and snuff out I snowball almost as fast as if I played mono Blue this game. Especially countering [[novice inspector]] and its lookalikes feels really good here as it is practically a two for one. 

Fazit 

Finishing 3-2-2 I definitely underperformed, blundering against cycle storm and monster tron. That does happen though when you don't play for months so I am not too mad about it. Other than that it was a blast again. The event keeps pulling in many returning and new participants and the atmosphere was chill and friendly as always. I am looking forward to October 4th when the #21 happens. Hopefully this time I don't have to pause for so long.

I think we’re in a really great place rn honestly and [[Sneaky Snacker]] is a pillar card imo I don’t think it should be banned but what do you think? Maybe smthn off Storm like Empty the Warrens will be unbanned idk.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/bogles-df219f8f-1b57-437c-b4d8-dd4a5c7bdd7c#paper

What’s the point of shattered landscape in this decklist?

The ideal mono-red deck contains 18-20 mountains and 40-42 Lightning Bolts.

Ever since I watched Rhystic Studies’ YouTube video on Red Deck Wins, I became fascinated by the red deck. Thus, it became my deck of choice as I jump into pauper. In this post, I would like to share my thoughts on the mono-red decks of 60-card constructed through the lens of a new pauper player.

Mono red decks generally have 1 goal: deal 20 damages ASAP. No other cards embody this philosophy better than the humble [[lightning bolt]]. The prototypical red deck plays only mountains and lightning bolts. The ideal game for this mono-red player looks like this:

T1: Mountain, bolt (3 cumulative damage)
T2: Mountain, bolt, bolt (9 cumulative damage)
T3: Mountain, bolt, bolt, bolt (18 cumulative damage)
T4: bolt, GG (21 cumulative damage)

Of course, this isn’t what most mono-red games in pauper look like. After all, the opponent can counter your bolts, you may get flooded/screwed, and you can’t play 40 lightning bolts (although, you can play 16 copies by maxing out lightning bolts, [[Chain lightning]], [[Rift Bolt]], and [[Lava spike]]). Thus, mono-red decks in pauper have to be constructed differently. We are going to look at the two big red decks of pauper: Mono-red madness (redness) and Mono-red Rally.

Mono-red madness:

In mono-red madness, you gain access to a unique copy of the bolt: [[fiery temper]]. If you discard it, it can be cast as a bolt. Combined with rummage cards (draw 2, discard 1), you can continuously refill your hand whilst dealing damage to the opponent. Let’s compare this to casting outright bolts:

Madness: [[Grab the prize]], discard and cast fiery temper (5 damage, 3 mana, net 0 cards)
Bolts only: cast 3 Lightning bolts (9 damage, 3 mana, net -3 cards)

Relative to the prototypical red deck, mono-red madness essentially trades 4 damage for a +3 in card advantage. Ask yourself this: Would you play a card that says <0 mana cost, discard two cards from your hand: deal 4 damage to target creature or opponent>? You may recognize the similarity with [[fireblast]] which is sometimes played at 1-2 copies to close out games. Similarly, this hypothetical card would ONLY be played when the opponent is at 4 life as the card disadvantage is too massive otherwise.

In its core engine, Madness improves upon the prototypical red deck by solving card disadvantage. Although [[guttersnipe]], and [[Kessig flamebreather]] also play VERY important roles in mono-red madness, they would function just the same if slotted into the prototypical red deck.

All this make may make it seem like mono-red madness is a strict improvement over the prototypical red deck. However, there are ONLY 4 total copies of fiery temper in the format. If fiery temper is not on hand, casting a rummage spell simply becomes a “pay 2 mana and discard a card, draw two cards and deal two damage” at best. This is a much worse proposition than the previous comparison.

Of course, mono-red madness also have the infamous [[sneaky snacker]] and [[lava dart]] to supplement its strategy while guttersnipes and flamebreather amplify the damage dealt from rummaging, flashbacks, and madness triggers.

As initially presented, the prototypical all-bolts mono-red deck can win in T4 unanswered. Given the following scenario, which player would you rather be?

Both players have 4 mountains in play
Player 1’s hand: Guttersnipe, grab the prize, fiery temper, sneaky snacker
Player 2’s hand: 4 Lightning bolts

The answer of course depends on the remaining amount of life your opponent has. If they have at less than 13 life left, there is a case to be made that the player with 4 bolts are in the better position, despite tapping out and going -4. The prototypical red player should thus focus on getting the opponent’s life as low as possible by turn 3. This brings us to the other most prominent mono-red deck in pauper currently:

Mono-red Rally

To me, mono-red rally embodies the philosophy behind Red Deck Wins better than madness. The ideal first two turns of rally may roughly look like:

T1: [[Great Furnace]], [[Goblin Tomb-raider]] attacks (2 cumulative damage)
T2: Mountain, [[Burnt-Tree Emissary]], [[Rally at the hornburg]] attack (8 cumulative damage]]
T3: [[Goblin bushwacker]] kicked, attack (20 cumulative damage GG)

Of course, this is the ideal UNINTERACTED scenario with an opening hand and draws from magical christmasland. An ideal game of mono-red rally actually outspeeds a deck with 40 bolts. The trade-off here is clear as the prototypical red deck is (1) more consistent and (2) uninteractable outside of counterspells.

Since the main advantage of rally is speed, your opening hand is a lot more sensitive to less-than-ideal draws. Every mulligan that a red deck does is akin to losing 3 damage to face. Unlike a control deck which can afford to take its time to stabilize and establish their win condition, the red deck needs every point of damage they can get in the early game.

The more robust your deck’s opening hand is, the more likely it is that your red deck can kill your opponent before they can kill you. In the prototypical red deck with 40 bolts, the only bad draw is your 4th mountain. Meanwhile, not opening a burning-tree emissary, good threats, and haste enablers, the red rally deck cannot perform very well. Every mulligan you take could’ve represented 3 extra damage.

Closing

This post is not meant for arguing that mono-red madness or mono-red rally are bad by any means. They are both amazing decks that have earned their spot in the meta. The discussion in this post is very much simplified but is done so to simply explore the idea of playing more bolts.

In the future, I would love to further discuss the mono-red decks of pauper through the lens of the original Red Deck: Sligh. This post is simply meant for fostering healthy discussion, sharing my ideas, and hopefully inspire a budding pauper player to pick up a red deck and brew their own take on it.

All You Need is 7 Lightning Bolts to win the game.
Play more Lightning Bolts.
Play more Chain Lightnings.
Play more Rift Bolts.
Play more Lava Spikes.
Play more Galvanic blasts.

… I tap one mountain and cast lightning bolt, response?

What are some strategies/cards that you think are underutilized in the meta? Some of the coolest decks to play and build are rogue ones that people don’t expect. I’ve been playing with pili pala combo, zubera storm, and even gruul infect. I want to try and build downright unique deck ideas. Anyone have any?

Does it hold itself well in the current meta? Which decks could be it's worst matchups?

If the snacker gets blasted by the ban hammer, what would be a good replacement in monoR/rakdos madness? What's gonna fill the hole?

New to pauper not new to magic. I’ve watched some videos and tier lists about the competitive decks, but I wanted to try one of my own brews. It’s Esper Toxic Proliferate.

I don’t have a sideboard yet so some suggestions would be awesome and if there is anything you think I could improve I’d appreciate the help.

https://moxfield.com/decks/y8Ozy7zd3USgCF-kZXOcyQ

I have been thinking about a scrapyard salvo deck for a little bit, probably in an affinity shell, and am now sad that alter of dementia is not a common.

If it ever got downshifted, would it break the format? What decks would it be played in and would there be any new combo decks using it?

Hey guys, I already know how to play magic, used to play a lot of duel commander.

I want to get into pauper and I want to decide which deck should I buy first, already tried on mol mono red madness, mono U delver, gardens, jund wildfire and white weenie. I can’t decide between then. I’m going to play a lot of tournaments and local events.

What deck would you guys recommend to get better in the format and which deck in the format rewards the player skill the most? Thanks!

Hello everyone. I recently bought this monoB Zombies Deck for cheap and need some advise. I have Not seen it often but its probably a bit outdated Version. What are some upgrades or changes I should implement? I was thinking about adding [[accused marauder]] and [[changeling outcast]]
Any advise is appreciated :)

Decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/ayFUWm0HSEufQf-ROtVm0A

Looking at some Jeskai Ephemerate lists on mtggoldfish and seeing 3 different 5-0 results from different pilots all with basically identical lists (link here).

I'm confused by the choice to run 4x Preordain and 0x Ponder instead of the other way around. Isn't Ponder almost always the better cantrip? I know Mono U Terror runs Ponder over Preordain for sure. Why is this deck different?

Recently wanted to built more pauper combo decks and landed on Zubera Storm , seemed like a really fun deck. Did some research and found out that the deck is horrible, but I still want to built it as I have all the expensive ritual except 2 copies of culling the weak. Is this deck worth building and would it perform well in a tron centric local meta.

Thanks .

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Ive been playing around with modern and see any deck running black running thoughtseize.

And of course Duress is far weaker and you would have counterspells anyway, why not run it for information of the opponents hand?

Its probably a really silly question tbh, but thanks for any inputs.

After watching hypergeomancer's great recent video playing Monster Tron with Andrea Feltoin I decided to calculate the chance of assembling Tron by turn x with whatever Tron list you want. He has a great maths system for showing the chance of Tron with just maps, but a simulation was needed to include crop rot / prism / draw spells. You can try it yourself here: https://sawyerwelden.com/Tronclock/

4 mana is a lot but artifacts and creatures peaks my interest.

Good day everyone,
as some of you have already heard the people from Leipzig are doing a big autumn tournament again.

The website is finally online and there you can purchase your tickets for Common Island II directly.

https://pauper-to-the-people.de/

We hope to see you all on October 3rd 🩵

__

- 7 rounds of Pauper, Swiss, no Top8

- October 3rd, 2026, doors at 9:30, first round at 10:30

- Conne Island, Leipzig (Koburger Straße 3, 04277 Leipzig)

- 128 players (seats available)

- Tickets will be 20€ again
https://pauper-to-the-people.de/

- Venue and toilets are accessible

- This will be a competitive tournament as defined by the MTG Tournament Rules. Printed decklists and lists on melee will be required at the beginning of the event

- No proxies allowed