Over the years, I have written a lot about Commander decks for Magic: The Gathering, but little on the traditional 60-card formats. This is because I don't have any interest in keeping up with the rotation in Standard, which only uses recent cards; and I don't have the budget for playing eternal formats like Modern and Legacy at a competitive level. I'm a casual player, but one official format definitely holds appeal.
Pauper has a major restriction: every card in your deck must have been printed at some point in common rarity. Printings with other rarities are then allowed if that is the version you own in paper. Power creep is still a thing, and there are a few older broken cards, but not as much without the uncommons, rares, and mythic rares found in other formats. Most cards used to build a deck are cheap, so the barrier to entry is low.
The usual two-player constructed format deck restrictions and principles apply:
Decks must contain at least (usually exactly) 60 cards, and up to 15 cards are allowed in a sideboard.
No more than 4 copies of any card may be included, with the exception of basic lands.
Aim for a smooth mana curve so cards can be played efficiently.
Expect interaction, and have backup plans in case your opponent creates setbacks.
I have been digging into my card collection which has been accumulating for many years, and decided to try building some viable Pauper decks based on ideas I found myself formulating in the process. As I playtest them with friends and refine them a bit, I may post them here. This is a test for interest and engagement.
Mill is a deck archetype which seeks to win by non-combat means, specifically the rule which states that if a player must draw a card and cannot, they lose the game. It also disrupts decks which use abilities like scry to choose what they draw, although there are also decks which exploit the discarded cards in various ways, and milling can help them win by accident.
It is named for Millstone, a colorless artifact which states, "Pay 2 mana of any color, tap: target player puts the top two cards of his or her library [draw pile] into his or her graveyard [discard pile]." Wording changes slightly from one printing to another as the game designers refine the language for the game, but the effect is always the same. In fact, "mill" has more recently become a keyword ability, and the newest version just says, "target player mills 2 cards."
As far as I can tell, Millstone has only been printed as a rare or uncommon, so I don't think it's legal in a Pauper deck. However, there are many, many other cards which either apply this effect in some form or take advantage of its consequences. That is what inspired me to brew this deck.
Many of the cards apply a mill effect directly as spells or as a bonus to combat damage, but that isn't really an effective way to win when an opponent is actively trying to win as well. To counterbalance the slow grind of mill in the absence of the flashiest rarer cards, I included two copies of Jace's Phantasm, a 1/1 flying illusion which becomes a 5/5 if an opponent has at least ten cards in their graveyard. I can potentially win by combat damage if I have to, and I can also defend against some tough creatures to stay alive. Frost Breath can hobble an assault or create an opening for my phantasms to attack, and Mizzium Skin can protect my creatures from combat damage or even a board wipe effect.
This performed well enough when tested, but there is room for improvement. I need to scrounge up two more Jace's Phantasm cards, and then decide what to cut. I may also bump the Archaeomancer to a full playset because their retrieval ability is handy. Anything I do cut would start building a sideboard of cards to swap in as needed to tune the deck against various opponents.
This balances combat and mill such that mill is no longer the primary win condition. Therefore, the deck list may change over time. If you can suggest any cards I may not have considered, chime in!
Update: I have turned this into a series of pauper deck posts, and rather than re-write this completely, I added a note to the next installment here. I have only changed this post to bring formatting more into line with the new post and subsequent entries in the series.
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