Over two months I participated in a Lord of the Rings Magic Booster Draft, didn't get $2 million from Post Malone, and was pondering a return to regular play through the Commander format. I even had delusions of slowing morphing my 100 card, no-more-than-one-of-each-card-except-basic-lands as a history tour through Magic. Effectively, I wanted to take cards out and replace them with Unlimited era cards, then Arabians/Antiquities/Legends and so on an so forth. It would be a chance to revisit memory lane and relearn all the cards, as I'm introduced to half of the cards in the 30 years of Magic I've missed.
Except it's a pain in the ass to get these older cards (the old card market blew up in the last 10 years) and I wasn't particularly thrilled with the crew that played.
Moving forward to Pauper.
Pauper is just like a regular tournament rules, except all of your cards must be common, or at least common in one printing. It's relatively practical, it happens at Sword in the Stone on Tuesday, and with no basketball until December, my Tuesdays were open.
The first thing I learned. With roughly 10,000 common cards, the chance for infinite combos is still there. Thankfully everything isn't super-fast and tough to prevent as the more expensive formats, so most player get a chance to stop things before the combos kick.
Second thought: Mono Green Treefolk is doable, but if I'm doing the whole history things, I don't even own all the Revised commons anymore, and most of them aren't a quarter anymore on eBay.
The Alpha Pauper (and Friends)
4x Ironwood Treefolk 4x Llanowar Elves
3x Wooly Mammoths 4x Wild Growths
3x Grizzly Bears 3x Scryb Sprites
2x Wall of Wood 4x Giant Growth
1x Shanodin Dryad 2x Tranquility
1x Stream of Life
18x Forests
Now, you might asking, "ViscountEric, that's only 49 cards?" and you would be right. It's sad to think I don't own any more Streams of Life, or the big nasty green common back in the day, Craw Wurm, but it's a fact, I also realize that the speed of the game has increased considerably, so I need to hedge by bets with a little more pep.
4x Gaea's Touch (Dark)
4x Kodama's Reach (Kamigawa)
2x Elven Cache (Visions)
2x Naturalize (M15)
1x Feldon's Cane (Antinquities)
Feldon's Cane was a staple of every 20th Century deck I own, Elven Cache was a poor-man's Regrowth, Naturalize takes out an enchantment OR an artifact, Gaea's Touch was my go-to mana boost, and Kodama's Reach is optimized land fetching to speed things up.
(Spoiler: I've yet to pull a Kodoama's Reach in a single game thus far).
Even with that boost, I went 1-6 in the first games. Four games were combo city from the start, while the other three were quite competitive.
For my second visit, I updated a few more modern-era cards to augment the deck, plus I built a sideboard.
The Unlimited Pauper... and Beyond!
4x Ironwood Treefolk 4x Llanowar Elves
2x Wooly Mammoths 4x Wild Growths
1x Grizzly Bears 3x Scryb Sprites
1x Wall of Wood 4x Giant Growth
1x Shanodin Dryad 1x Feldon's Cane (Antiquities)
1x Stream of Life 2x Elven Cache (Visions)
4x Gaea's Touch (Dark) 3x Kodama's Reach (Kamigawa)
2x Naturalize (M15)
4x Return to Nature (Eldraine)
1x Argothian Pixies (Antiquities)
1x Many Partings (LotR)
17x Forests
1x Desert
Sideboard
2x Tranquility 1x Snaresnipper
2x Grizzly Bears 1x Magnigoth Sentry
2x Shaman of Spring 1x Scurrid Colony
4x Sandstorm 1x War Historian
1x Argothian Pixies
For a man who does not own Giant Spiders to handle flyers, I needed some folks with Reach.
All of the Return to Natures were supposed to start in my sideboard, but I screwed up the shuffle and still had 15 in the sideboard. Good thing that I did, as I used all four and the Naturalize three (Elven Cache!) to slow down an Urza-tron Infinite Myr deck.
Still, even with bad shuffling/good fortune I went 2-6 in my three matches, but six of them were nailbiters. I hinted at what's coming in the following weeks with the Sandstorms, pixies, and the lone Desert (which came in handy!)
Ararbian commons are going for insane prices, so I've eBayed some Chronicles reprints. I'm grabbing a bunch of future commons through a CCG website that I could grab mostly the black boarder commons for the next 3-4 sets for as much as a value meal at a fast food place.
Here's hoping I keep having fun and the nostalgia pulls out a couple more wins.
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