The Power of Pauper: Foggy Golgari
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of The Power of Pauper! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be diving into the ins and outs of a new variant of Turbo Fog that's been showing up lately in the form of Golari Fog! In addition that we've got some news about Magic Online Challenges to mention and some Challenges to go over from last week.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Green and Black and Foggy
There's been some very intriguing developments in Pauper as of late, one of which is a big shift in strategy and color pairings for a deck typically rooted in Simic colors. That deck is Turbo Fog! While this deck often in the past has played cantrips and cards like Stream of Thought to eventually mill the opponent away, this big change is more into Golgari instead of Simic due to the fact that it is playing the core of what we call in the format the "Deadly Dispute" core.
The big upside to this core is of course, getting to draw a lot of cards. Sacrificing a card like Ichor Wellspring to Deadly Dispute is going to draw three cards plus make a Treasure, which is functionally as close to Ancestral Recall as Pauper will ever get. There's very little downside to playing these cards, because the format has virtually no way of punishing draw effects like other formats do. In addition to Dispute, newer effects of this like Eviscerator's Insight, Fanatical Offering, and Reckoner's Bargain all interact in different ways with these artifacts that are worth sacrificing, but they all manage to draw a bunch of cards for 1B.
The biggest change here in regards to how the deck ultimately wins the game. The crux of this shell rests on the Gates shell for providing a long term path to winning the game. Basilisk Gate can get a threat like a Khalni Garden Plant token or Crypt Rats, and Rats especially can clear small board states in short order when it's a much bigger creature than the damage it needs to do.
The other big upside here is the card Campfire. While this card is so very unassuming, the big thing this card does is provide consistent life gain but also allows you to shuffle your graveyard back into your library. This allows you to recycle effects you've already used (outside of stuff you've flashed back like Moment's Peace).
This is certainly an interesting deck, but for my own direct experience with it (since I've been attempting to record at least one solid league with the deck) is that the format overall is very well set up to handle 1-2 individual creatures. There's lots of Tithing Blade around, and Burn seems to be an almost unwinnable matchup (it's VERY lopsided for sure). In addition the biggest aspect is the time management of the deck. The deck plays out very slowly and there are often lots of times you need to react to something happening in your opponent's turns so you need to cast a Fog or whatever, and that eats into time on Magic Online, making this a pretty rough sell on that platform. That being said, on paper this is a bit easier to manage.
Still, this is a sweet way to approach Fog, and I do want to eventually play it more and more to try to get a video out on my channel for it, because it is really intricate and interesting to play. Just be aware of this deck though, because it can be VERY grueling to play consistently for sure.
Big Changes to Magic Online Challenge Prizing for Format Challenges
This past week a very large change to some of how Magic Online is handling prizing for Format Challenges. Format Challenges are the weekly events that we cover here. The full link to the recent blog describing these changes as of the writing of this article can be found here.
Much of the reasoning behind these changes is centered around feedback provided by the community on the expansion of Constructed Format Challenges (as Daybreak has added more Challenges to the schedule throughout the week and weekend to meet demand) and that specifically too many Treasure Chests and Play Points were entering the system. Part of this change involves reducing the cost to enter a Constructed Format Challenge to 25 Event Tickets or 250 Play Points ( down 5 tickets from before).
I won't go too much deeper into these changes, but they have been pretty hotly contested from the community at large. Something like this does take some time to understand how much it impacts things in an economical sense, but there have been some Challenges this past week that have failed to fire, but it's currently unknown if the issue with these Challenges is 100% directly tied to these changes. We'll be monitoring how things go with this to get a feel with where things are going, as Daybreak has shown time and time again that they are willing to work with the community to make changes with feedback.
Pauper Challenge 32 9/20
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the Friday event. This event had 35 players in it according to the MTGO website. There was no data for this event.
You can the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Gruul Ramp | 1st | Broa |
| Jund Broodscale | 2nd | PNascimento |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | outZEROo |
| Azorius Gates | 4th | twister66 |
| Grixis Affinity | 5th | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Mono Blue Terror | 6th | discoverN |
| Burn | 7th | boom_bust |
| Elves | 8th | newbarola |
Pretty interesting Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Gruul Ramp that won.
Pretty solid looking list here. Very interesting to see both Rumble and Lead the Stampede here. Also Boulderbranch Golem in the sideboard is super intriguing.
In Second Place we had Jund Broodscale.
This deck continues to look to be one of the best decks in Pauper at the moment. It's incredibly powerful and we'll be talking about this more than once here, but it's definitely strong. Last Rites in the sideboard here is pretty interesting though.
Also in this Top 8 we had Azorius Gates.
Haven't quite seen this deck in this configuration in a hot minute. It's pretty neat though. Thraben Charm looks quite good in it.
Pauper Challenge 32 9/21
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 51 players in it according to the MTGO website. There was no data for this event.
You can the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Terror | 1st | discoverN |
| Jund Broodscale | 2nd | Hype12232 |
| Jund Broodscale | 3rd | ezocratto |
| Jund Broodscale | 4th | Maccaciock |
| Burn | 5th | mlsp |
| Jund Broodscale | 6th | Terminus0 |
| Gruul Ramp | 7th | scalo94 |
| Burn | 8th | hetare_ane |
Speaking of Broodscale, it made up half of this Top 8. At the end of the event though it was Mono Blue Terror that won.
Very clean and efficient deck here. Deem Inferior is a super cool way to interact with things for sure.
In Second Place we had Jund Broodscale.
Sylvok Lifestaff in the sideboard is kind of interesting honestly. Also, the Jack-o'-Lantern in the main is a cool thing. OH, AND Gravitic Punch?! NICE.
Also in this Top 8 we had Burn.
All of this is Pre-Duskmourn so we haven't yet seen how the Percussionist is making its way to this deck, but I've seen it first hand in matches and it looks GOOD.
Pauper Challenge 32 9/22
The final Challenge event of the weekend was the Sunday event. This event had 55 players in it according to the MTGO website. There was no data for this event.
You can the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Elves | 1st | newbarola |
| Jund Broodscale | 2nd | CrazyMorango |
| Jund Broodscale | 3rd | PNascimento |
| Jund Broodscale | 4th | Carlinhoss |
| Grixis Affinity | 5th | Mogged |
| Elves | 6th | olati |
| Grixis Affinity | 7th | Capoeira02 |
| Mono Blue Terror | 8th | Luminati |
Quite a bit of Broodscale here too, but at the end of the event it was Elves that won.
Nyxborn Hydra is a stupendously nutty card in a deck that makes as much mana as Elves does. Giving this deck a very legitimate win condition that has Trample AND Reach is very, very good.
In Second Place we had Jund Broodscale.
Very much more Midrange build. Evolution Witness with a Sadistic Glee is kind of cool honestly.
Further down the Top 8 we had Grixis Affinity.
Pretty solid-looking list here. I definitely think Toxin Analysis is a super underrated card. It's always seemed so good overall.
Around the Web
- Heartyshow has a video on Golgari Tokens. Check it out here.
- TeasdaleMTG has a video on the Top 5 Pauper cards from Duskmourn. Check it out here.
- Alex Ullman has a new article on some off beat brews. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
As League results are now spread out across the week, let's dig in and find something spicy!
Midnight Guard combo is spicy!
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Pauper!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGPauper Discord Server.
Until next time!
