If you have been playing Magic: the Gathering for any period of time, you know at least one thing – that Magic: the Gathering is expensive. Constructing a deck can consume allowances and salaries, and you still have to be able to play the deck well to win your FNM or local tournaments. For a lot of players, the cost of making a deck can keep people from playing the game. If you look at the majority of Magic players, and see how many are interested in the game and in playing fun Magic, many are not interested in paying $40 for a play set of Wrath of God just to do well in their next FNM tournament.

With all that in mind, what if I told you that you could build an extremely competitive deck for fewer than two dollars, could play in weekly tournaments for free, and win prizes? If you weren’t interested in buying expensive cards, would you be interested in that? For that matter, are you interested in a new and challenging format where budget doesn’t constrain your game? If so – welcome to the world of Pauper.

Pauper is a format that’s existed since the very beginnings of Magic: the Gathering play. Ever since players have been playing decks consisting of nothing more than Grey Ogres, Lightning Bolts, and Hill Giants, Pauper has existed. But, what used to be more of an idea around a kitchen table has now become an amazingly complex format that’s a blast to play.

But what is Pauper?

Pauper is a constructed format where the only cards you can play are common. That’s right, only commons. Pauper, like its cousin Peasant Magic, limits the rarities of the cards you can play. Besides being just an all-commons format, Pauper is a modification of regular formats. That means that most normal rules apply to Pauper events, and most normal formats, like Standard Constructed (T2) or Two Headed Giant, can be played Pauper style.

As a player, I’m extremely interested in what I call the “competitive casual format.” A competitive casual format is a format that is casual in nature (compared to the more strict competitive formats like Extended and Standard) that still rewards good game play, and at the same time is challenging and fun. These formats are few and far between. Pauper is a perfect example of a competitive casual format – the players are nice, playing the matches is fun, but the desire to compete and win never dies.

In the past few years, Pauper has become such popular format that it has become one of the leading player run events on Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO). There are seasons of Pauper Magic play which correspond each year to a Pauper Worlds Tournament – the best of the best Pauper players come together to compete to claim the championship and become the world’s best Pauper player. At the time of writing this article, Season 5 of Pauper is ending, and in a few weeks, the World Championships will start.

Aggro, Combo and Control: The decks in Pauper

Despite the lack of uncommons and rares in Pauper, the three deck archetypes still remain. Aggro, Combo, and Control are very much alive and active within the Pauper format. To give you an idea of what decks look like in Pauper, I proudly present to you three different Pauper decks.

Control

This deck, is one of the major running archetypes in Pauper Standard right now. Called Orzhov Blink, or OhBlink! by the Pauper community, this deck uses powerful comes into play effects like those of Ravenous Rats and Blind Hunter with Momentary Blink to gain multiple life thefts and multiple discards. Momentary Blink is especially powerful with Aven Riftwatcher, which not only gets a full set of time counters after coming back into play, but also gains you four life in the prossess – two for going out, and two for coming back in. Finally, the deck takes advantage of some of the best standard enchantment removal like Pillory of the Sleepless and Faith’s Fetters (out of the sideboard). With these powerful creature-stoppers, your little flyers can push through damage to win the game. This is a traditionally powerful control build, and if the metagame is right, it does an amazing job.

The awesome thing about Pauper Magic is that you can construct high-caliber decks for two to three dollars! This Orzhov-Blink deck may cost you three dollars to put together on MTGO (if you’re unlucky). I know this for a fact – this version of the deck only cost me less than two dollars. That’s the beauty of the format – it’s challenging, it’s fun, and it’s cheap!

Aggro

This deck is a complete and polar opposite to the Orzhov Blink deck I just mentioned. Armadillo Cloak is a deck that uses its superior (and sometimes unblockable) creatures with stat-boosting enchantments and equipment to push through large amounts of damage. The Nantuko Vigilante is there for a purpose – to ward off Affinity decks.

That’s right, Affinity, of Ravager Affinity fame, is still an extremely powerful deck in Pauper. It’s so powerful that Cranial Plating is the only banned card in Pauper, and the six artifact lands are the only six restricted cards in the entire Classic format.

Which leads me to my next point – on MTGO, there are two normal formats for online Pauper play. Standard Pauper is just what it seems; it is Pauper Magic using the last two blocks (Ravnica, City of Guilds, and Time Spiral), the current core set (9th Edition), and any extra sets (Coldsnap). Classic Pauper, in contrast, is Pauper where any commons in MTGO can be played. That means in addition to the regular Extended card pool (which is what is currently on MTGO), players also have access to Mirage and Visions commons.

In non-Online play, you can play Pauper Extended or Pauper Legacy as well. If you have the cards, then there is no reason not to play them - just make sure that if you're using cards from sets that were printed before Exodus that you look up the rarities online. It wouldn't be fair to be playing Spirit of the Night against your buddies that are playing Treespring Lorian, now would it?

Back to where we left off, Affinity is a player favorite in the current Classic metagame, although main deck hate against it keeps it from dominating Classic Pauper like it once dominated Mirrodin Standard. Check out this build.

While it’s a far cry from the Affinity decks of old, this does have quite a few of the same cards that were used in the original Affinity builds. Rush of Knowledge semi-replaces the card drawing utility of Thirst for Knowledge with pure card drawing power. One Rush of Knowledge can fill your hand when Myr Enforcer is in play – not a bad card to have around.

Other spells, like Bonesplitter and Tooth of Chiss-Goria make the game go faster by powering up one of the deck’s many Affinity creatures. Somber Hoverguard, which originally wasn’t good enough for Affinity, proves to be just what this deck needs – evasion. The cheapness of spells, and the strength of these cards in conjunction with each other makes this deck a deck to beat.

Combo

This combo deck uses cards like Seething Song, Sleight of Hand, Rite of Flame, and Think Twice to power up an immense storm count for Empty the Warrens, with normally enough force to make 12 to 16 goblin tokens, and attack and win in the next two turns. Grapeshot is also useful for taking out opposing creatures after a big storm, and its cost is fairly low, so most times players will even play both Empty the Warrens and Grapeshot on the same storm. Suspending Rift Bolt lets you pay Monday for a spell Tuesday, and it makes that storm count 1 higher without costing a thing.

What’s most interesting about this deck is that with its sideboard, it is ready to stop playing storm and start playing control. With Mana Leaks and Rune Snags, this deck can transform from a storm deck monstrosity into a well-tuned control build that relies on a giant Wee Dragonauts to win the game for it.

Magic: the Gathering Online – A Gateway to Pauper

Before everyone gets on edge because I’ve said the “MTGO” word, let me explain myself.

Magic: the Gathering Online isn’t for everyone. Most people don’t like the idea that they can loose money on “digital objects,” items with no “real” value. These digital items aren’t redeemable (can’t be turned into real cardboard) without a person going through and purchasing an entire set of the cards. If you wanted to play Standard or any of the events where you need chase rares to win games, I’d completely agree with you. I don’t want to buy fake cards for tournaments. However, this “I don’t want to buy non-real cards” idea is the wrong way to think about Pauper Magic on MTGO, and I’ll tell you why.

First of all, the Event Ticket (called a “tix” for short) is worth less than a normal dollar. Even though it costs a whole dollar on the Wizards Online store to buy a tix, you can purchase tix on websites like cardshark.com for 85 cents a tix. Add to that little bit of knowledge this fact – there are sellers online who will trade anywhere from 32 to 128 commons for one (count ‘em, one) tix. At the worst (32/tix), that’s two and a half cents a common, and at best (128/tix) a little over half a cent per card. Plus, when you make an account on MTGO, they give you land for free.

Secondly, the Pauper community encourages people to participate in its events by offering player donated prizes to the Top 4 people in each tournament. This is a great opportunity for you as a new player because you can play in the tournaments for FREE and win a rare or two, or maybe some better cards for your new deck you just built. The prizes are nothing extremely fancy, but if you can do well, you can build a collection without paying any more money than you spent on those original tix. Plus, there are people online who are willing to give away commons and uncommons. Just give them away to new players. There are opportunities everywhere to not have to pay much money for MTGO, and still have an amazing time.

Now, if you’re telling me that you can’t spend the $4 you were going to pay for a pack on commons on MTGO, you’ve got no excuse. Save up that money, buy 10 tix with the 8.50 you saved from buying two packs of real Magic cards, and make a few decks on MTGO. Dedicated weekly tournaments, really cheap cards, a great time, and the chance to play Pauper Magic with Death_By_Beebles; what more could you ask for?

Whether you’re playing online or in a friend’s living room, Pauper offers amazing chances to have a great time. Even if you’ve been ignoring those piles of commons in dusty boxes somewhere – pull them out, and flip through them. Tell the guys about this article, tell them about Pauper. Build some decks, play a few games. I’m positive that you’ll have a blast.

Death_By_Beebles

Death_By_Beebles is a relatively normal guy. When he’s not working on a new Raiding the Dollar Bins deck, or thinking about what to play for next week’s 3CB tournament, he’s spending his time writing, reading, and playing Pauper Magic. If you’ve got questions, comments, or suggestions, send them on over to deathbybeebles@magicdeckvortex.com.

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Articles Spotlights from 2007:
Lorwyn Theme Week Intro & Schedule of Events
Blink And Bounce: Timing is Key
Going Blind: XCB Metagaming - A Prolonged Conclusion.
The Science of Magic: Genetic Engineering, Part Two.
Shifting Lineaments: Casual Metagaming (Pt. 2).
The Dungeon Of Malefict: Pure Evil!
Land Week Introduction & Schedule.
Combofusion: Legends Timeshifted.
One Card to Rule Them All: Coastal Piracy
Irrational Love: Chimeras. The Lego's of Magic.