The Power of Pauper: Sick Tips for the 2024 Pauper Gamer (2025)

by Joe Dyer // Aug 16, 2024

Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition ofThe Power of Pauper! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be talking all about some sweet tricks you can learn to level up your Pauper gaming! In addition to that we've got some Challenges to discuss.

Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Sick Tips for the 2024 Pauper Gamer

I did one of these for Legacy recently, so I figured why not do one for Pauper! This is some fun things you can do in current Pauper that are some sick tips and tricks to help you understand the format better. I got a lot of great feedback on Twitter about these, so let's dive into some really interesting things you can do in Pauper!

Madness + Timing Costs

Given that one of the new good decks of the format is currently Madness Burn, it feels smart to start small and talk about Madness. One of the most important things about Madness as a mechanic is that it lets you ignore timing costs on cards, so you can cast for example Alms of the Vein or Kitchen Imp on your opponents turn if you have the mana and the means to be able to pitch a card to do so. This can be sometimes important if you have ways to pitch cards, or if your opponent has to take a Madness card with a discard spell you can cast it if you have the means.

On an opposing side of this, if you can work things out to take a Madness spell with a discard spell when your opponent doesn't have the mana to cast it, that's good, but they can also just discard it to the graveyard and not have to exile it.

Playing Regular vs. Snow-Covered Basics

Fun fact about Pauper. There is an actual reason in Pauper to not play Snow-Covered basics! In a lot of formats that Snow-Covered basics have been legal in there's always been either an incredibly ridiculous reason to play them (thank you Arcum's Astrolabe), a good reason to play them (Skred says hello), or virtually no difference between the two types. If you're not a deck currently playing Skred it may be good to skip Snow basics and play regular ones, and the reason for that is the somewhat often played Thermokarst!

Thermokarst having an upside here means that if you don't absolutely need to play the snow basics, then don't! Regular basics are generally prettier anyways.

Deadly Dispute Shenanigans

To say that Deadly Dispute is pretty much a core card of Pauper these days is a huge understatement. The card sees a ton of play across the format, and I'm continually learning more and more fun things you can do with the card even today. This card can be everything from functional Ancestral Recall (quite literally with an Ichor Wellspring) or it can negate removal, or just be all around value.

In this case, it's sheer value. Mesmeric Fiend has two triggered abilities. The first of which exiles a card from an opponent's hand on ETB, and then a separate trigger that returns the card when it leaves play. However, what if Fiend leaves play before it exiles anything? Thanks to how this is templated, you can play Mesmeric Fiend, put its ETB trigger on the stack, and then cast Deadly Dispute, sacrificing the Fiend. This will put its leaves trigger on the stack and it will resolve, doing absolutely nothing. Then, you get to resolve that ETB trigger and take a nonland card from your opponent, and poof, it's gone forever! Your opponent won't get to have it back!

Flaring Pain

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Flaring Pain is an incredibly powerful card, and sees play in a lot of sideboards for that reason. One of the biggest things this card can do is centered around the prevention portion of Protection. Since protection prevents damage from a source, if you cast Flaring Pain, suddenly that protection doesn't prevent that damage anymore. This is big when dealing with cards like Guardian of the Guildpact, as you can cast Flaring Pain after it blocks something monocolored, remove the damage prevention and be able to actually kill the Guardian in combat!

Another thing that's important to remember is how much "can't" holds over everything else. For example, if you cast Flaring Pain and your opponent casts Prismatic Strands after Pain has resolved, that doesn't magically negate the cancellation of damage prevention. Flaring Pain says damage can't be prevented, and that means it can't be prevented, so don't fall into that trap!

Dealing with Writhing Chrysalis

Writhing Chrysalis is Pauper's new big super threat in the Gruul Ramp decks, and boy does this card always look so incredibly powerful. It's one of the best commons inModern Horizons 3by a mile, and it's ability to grow is really big. However, it's important to know that the ability Chrysalis has to make tokens is a cast trigger, and therefore you can respond once that ability resolves in order to remove the opportunity for Chrysalis to grow any bigger. Once the trigger to make the tokens is resolved, you can use cards like Breath Weapon or Krark-Clan Shaman to clean up the board of anything so that they only get a 2/3 that can die to a Lightning Bolt or Cast Down later on.

Playing Around Echoing Truth/Decay

This is another deckbuilding tip. When desiring redundancy in effects, sometimes it's best to split up those names of those cards instead of playing a full four of one and some number of another. Elves for example plays a mix-up of various mana Elves because of cards like Echoing Truth and Echoing Decay in order to ensure that any impact of those cards is far more minimal.

In fact, this is another consideration to think about when wanting cards like Novice Inspector and Thraben Inspector. If you don't plan to play the full four of each it may be best to have some split of the two instead. This helps keep these kinds of effects in check to where they often won't see much play because people are inherently playing around them.

Moving Right Along

That's all we got for this week but I hope to do another one of these real soon. If you have any cool tips or tricks to toss in the comments below, please let us know!

Pauper Challenge 32 8/9

The first event of the weekend was the Friday event. This event had 59 players in it thanks to the data from Daybreak Games. There was no data for this event.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.

Fairly interesting Top 8 here overall. At the end of the event it was Izzet Terror that won.

A million removal spells for one red mana seems like a great place to be right now when you're factoring in decks like Broodscale Combo. Having a ton of redundancy seems like a good way to defeat the deck in general. Following that up with Tolarian Terror seems solid.

In Second Place we had Golgari Gardens.

This is another deck wherein redundancy is so key, and Gardens has it in spades for sure. Lots of redundant card draw and ways to get rid of creatures that are very strong seems great right now.

Further down the Top 8 we had Jund Broodscale.

Lightning Spear seems like a sweet effect to push through damage from a large Broodscale. I'm torn on which of the Broodscale decks I like at this point, to be honest, because both always look pretty intense.

Pauper Challenge 32 8/10

The second event of the weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 55 players in it thanks to the data from Daybreak Games.There was no data for this event.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.The Top 8 is below.

Quite a bit of Affinity in this Top 8, as well as some Gruul. At the end of the event it was Grixis Affinity that won.

Toxin Analysis continues to seem like a really cool effect. Giving something deathtouch is always nice, but having the lifelink and the investigate for only one black mana is pretty above rate.

In Second Place we had Izzet Terror.

Campfire as a playable Pauper card will never not amuse me. So incredibly funny.

At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Ephemerate Tron.

I think Lorien Revealed ties together so much here. Getting access to your colored mana at the same time as being able to open up on hands with just Tron lands is super nice.

Pauper Challenge 32 8/11

The final event of the weekend was the Sunday event. This event had 68 players in it thanks to the data from Daybreak Games.There was no data for this event.

You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.The Top 8 is below.

So much Broodscale here. Literally half of the Top 8. At the end of the event it was Burn that won though.

This is a pretty solid looking list. Having a diverse suite of removal options is nice too.

In Second Place we had Golgari Broodscale.

The amount of protection and card draw here is quite good. Bloodrite Invoker as a kill condition is interesting too.

Further down the Top 8 we had Elves.

I definitely think Nyxborn Hydra is an absurdly powerful card in this shell. It can be cast for really big and even if it's not bestowed it's still a huge threat.

Around the Web

• Heartyshow has a video on Izzet Skred. Check it out here.
• Our good friend Alex Ullman (who recently just joined the MTGO Creator Program so yay Alex!) has an article on Broodscale Combo. Check it out here.
• TeasdaleMTG has a video on Rakdos Affinity. 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!

Mardu Synthesizer with Carrot Cake is kind of sweet.

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!