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It’s official. Morningtide is here. Actually, that’s a bit of a late statement, because Morningtide has been here for a while now. Morningtide has been out so long, actually, that the newest set, Shadowmoor, is soon to be released on MTGO V3. That’s not stopping me from talking about it this week! As with any new set that comes out, you get a chance to evaluate all the new cards, see what you like and don’t like, and come up with brand new ideas and deck types that revolve around the new cards you like from that set. In Pauper, you have to do some work just like any other format; decks change and evolve, and players are forced to understand and prepare for new archetypes and strategies. That’s exactly what we’ll be doing this week in the latest edition of Pauper Chronicles. The Whole Rogue/Rouge Thing is a Dead Horse If I had a quarter for every time someone complained about how a Rogue deck was spelled, I’d be a millionaire. “It’s spelled Rogue, Rouge is makeup, jeez, you guys are a bunch of losers,” and variations of that phrase drive me crazy. That, however, isn’t the point. The point is that Morningtide focuses a lot on classes. Rogues, Wizards, Warriors, Soldiers, and Shamans all get love in this set. Unfortunately, most of the best cards in those classes aren’t common. Rogues are the exception to this rule. Rogues get a bit of common love with the prowl mechanic. Prowl requires that you deal combat damage with a Rogue creature to get a cheaper cost. This is a good thing, but it can also be a problem. With evasive one-drops like Prickly Boggart and Nightshade Stinger, you get the prowl fairly easily, which makes your expensive creatures a lot better. Add some Rogues from Time Spiral (like Looter il-Kor, Trespasser il-Vec, and Infiltrator il-Kor) and you’ve got yourself a deck! Let’s have a look.
The sideboard is to take care of some of the more powerful Control decks and creatures like Aurochs Herd and Errant Ephemeron with Remove Soul and also to take care of strong recursive strategies like Grim Harvest and Sprout Swarm with Faerie Trickery. You really should have all the creature control you need, but Remove Soul is one of the most powerful spells in the Standard format. If you’re looking to replace it, try something like Mystical Teachings. We All Love a Set of Standards Most of the time in Pauper Chronicles, I like to spend my time talking about the Standard Pauper environment. I enjoy Standard Pauper, so I obviously spend a lot of time on it. Standard Pauper can get a bit boring at times, and that’s when I like to fall back on Future Extended. What’s Future Extended? Well, think of it this way: Future Extended is what Extended will look like after the rotation (meaning everything from Onslaught all the way to now). One of the more interesting things about Future Extended is that you can reuse some of your old decks. For example, I have a lovely little Green and Blue Aggro deck that I could replay, and I could probably give it a little spunk with cards that weren’t legal in Ravnica/Time Spiral block back when I played it. It’s a good way to make sure that if you are spending money on commons, you’re not wasting money on commons. Even better, you can merge decks from the current Standard with old themes. Take this deck for example.
Cogs and Stripes is a deck that has been around for a while. For the most part, its main theme involves using Leonin Squire and Trinket Mage to fix your mana and find/reuse utility artifacts that cost one mana or less. Ninja of the Deep Hours and Momentary Blink allow you to use their abilities over and over, keeping your hand full and keeping the pressure on your opponent. With Lorwyn, this deck gets a wonderful addition in the fishy face of Mulldrifter. Along with Momentary Blink tricks, you can use Ninja of the Deep Hours to play it over. To put it bluntly, this deck can draw a LOT of cards. And drawing all those cards is all it really takes to win. Small bits of damage here and there and plenty of utility creatures make this a deck to beat in Future Extended. And Now, Some More Tribal One of the classes other than Rogues from Morningtide gets a bit of love; Warriors have the fabulous Winnower Patrol, and they have quite a few choices from Time Spiral that it can take advantage of, namely Gathan Raiders and Keldon Marauders. Add that to a quality burn package, and you’ve got the makings of a deck. Here’s a list I found at www.pdcmagic.com.
Earthbrawn is a great combat trick, and it’s almost a pseudo-counterspell in this deck, as it effectively stops burn spells and things like Strangling Soot from taking out your creatures. The MODO is Down As of April 9, 2008, Magic: the Gathering Online version 2.5 has been shut down, and hopefully will be back up sometime the following week. Pauper tournaments will have to wait until then, but hopefully this new client can take care of some of the problems that the old one suffered. We’ll see what happens. See you on the other side. 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 enzyme kinetics, 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@yahoo.com.
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BU
Prowlers. 
The
idea here is to use early attackers and push through some early prowl with
Morsel Theft or Latchkey Faerie. Once you get your offensive online, build up
with more Rogues and use your creature removal to take care of pesky opposing
creatures. Most of your creatures have evasion, which makes getting the damage
in easier, and makes getting that 20 life out of the way quick. Watch out for
opposing Festercreeps and Martyr or Ashes; they can quickly ruin your party if
you aren’t careful.
Cogs
and Stripes. 
The
basic idea is to use your creatures as aggressively as possible, throwing damage
at your opponent the best way you possibly can. Burn serves to save creatures in
combat, deal with pesky creatures, and most importantly, hit your opponent in
the head. Every creature in the deck triggers Winnower Patrol, and if it can get
one or two +1/+1 counters, it’s nigh unstoppable. Brighthearth Banneret lowers
the costs of all your creatures, and it’s also usable in the late game as a
combat trick (with reinforce).