Highlights from Paupergeddon, Summer 2023

Paupergeddon, the biggest series of Pauper tournaments in Italy and arguably the world, always draws hundreds of players. The most recent main event in Pisa was the first to span two days, meaning it was essentially a "Pauper Grand Prix." Here are a few of the weekend's highlights!

June, from Friday 16 to Sunday 18. A full weekend of competitive Magic, with a 481 players in the Pauper main event. And I had the chance to be part of the commentary team on Twitch. You can find the replays on Lega Pauper Italia channel.

The Weekend's Winners

This last edition in Pisa, in the Tuscany region, was the first with a two-day main event. To qualify for the second day, one needed a score of X-2 or better. After twelve Swiss rounds (seven plus five) and the Top 8 playoffs, the final match came down to Altar Tron versus Grixis Affinity. Despite being the underdog in the matchup and despite Altar's new toy , Affinity had the last word and claimed first place with a sound 2-0.

Grixis Affinity by Roberto Francini, 1st at Paupergeddon Pisa 2023
Main Deck		Sideboard
2 4 4 1 1 3 4 4 4 2	3 4 4 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 1	2 1 2 2 2 2 1 3

Altar Tron by Tommaso Loss, 2nd at Paupergeddon Pisa 2023
Main Deck		Sideboard
4 1 4 4 3 2 4 3 3 2 1	4 1 4 1 2 4 4 4 1 1 2 1	2 2 1 1 1 3 1 2 2

On Sunday the Modern side event got a respectable 56 players. But the Pauper format remains the crowd favorite, with 127 players in attendance in the side event.

Kuldotha Red by Marco Rossi, 1st at Big Pauper Side Event
Main Deck		Sideboard
3 4 4 4 4 4 2 4 1 2 4	4 4 4 13	3 3 3 3 3

Compared to other editions, the one in Pisa is one day longer. This is because of the Top Pauper Player of the Year, a title awarded via an invitational tournament the day before the actual main event. One can qualify for it by winning a major regional Pauper tournament or finishing in the Top 8 at another Paupergeddon in the previous year. This year's winner is Mirco Ciavatta, also known as Heisen01, an Italian YouTuber and part of the Pauper Format Panel.

Boros Synthesizer by Mirco Ciavatta, Top Pauper Player 2023
Main Deck		Sideboard
4 4 4 2 2 3 4 3 2 2	4 2 4 4 2 4 4 2 4	4 1 1 2 1 2 4

The Metagame

Tabletop and online are somewhat different, and at least one deck that supposedly is tier one in paper, Altar Tron, is not playable on Magic Online. Altar Tron requires too many clicks and the loop ( plus two copies of {c=Myr Retriver}) takes too much time to win. For that reason and also because and infinite storm count aren't a win condition online, you can't find enough of this deck when looking at online results.

Another oddity is Unfinity, the silver-bordered set that also has tournament-legal cards. In Pauper the sticker sheets can provide a +4/+0 bonus or even some toolbox abilities. While Stickers Stompy is nothing new, Stickers Gates Infect is.

Infect Stickers Gates by Giorgio Venditti, Top 16 at Big Pauper Side Event
Main Deck		Sideboard
4 4 2 4 4 4 4 2	4 4 2 4 4 4 4 6	4 4 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Giorgio is the pioneer of a couple of archetypes in Pauper (Altar Tron and Dimir Terror), and his deck-building prowess is famous all over Italy. Here Infect plays more like a combo design, trying to win in two turns by growing the poisonous creature to 5/1, thanks to . If the game goes longer, the win condition is .

Other than that, the tabletop metagame reflects the online meta well, if not for the presence of Boros Synthesizer as one of the most popular decks.

Data courtesy of Pauperwave — Thanks to Lega Pauper Italia, Dungeon Streets, Andrea Piemonti, Alessandro Rossi, and Pauperwave for the graphic and the photos in this article

Monoblue Faeries was the most played archetype, at least if we don't sum up the two variants of Monored. Kuldotha Red (7%) and Burn (8%) differ in their game plans, as Kuldotha mostly focuses on combat damage, while Burn has more card advantage and direct damage.

Affinity did well despite the high amount of hate cards, for example . Affinity is the allrounder of the format, good at playing the aggro (, ) and also the control role (, , ). Thanks to those elements of interaction, it can survive the fast starts from Monoblue and Monored and also turn the race against Boros Synthesizer.

Lord of the Rings

Paupergeddon Pisa took place on the same weekend as the prerelease for The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, so the commons of the set were already legal. While possibly harder to obtain than older cards, new toys like , , , and showed up in decks like Boros, Kuldotha, Dimir Terror, and many more.

The Gathering

Beside the low cost, one of the strong points of the format is the chill environment. It helped to spread the format across the country and allowed events like this to grow. We are now at a point where the former "kitchen-table format" is now able to gather people from all over the continent, even with a €40 entry fee. Players from Spain, Croatia, Poland, and other nations always show up, regardless of whether the city is Pisa, Rome, or Milan.

Important to note is the participation of Gavin Verhey, game designer at Wizards of the Coast. Gavin is also part and head of the Pauper Format Panel. Having a group of people that is in direct contact with the motherboard and gives advice on the format's health is awesome, probably one of the best things that happened to competitive Pauper. The presence of the PFP at events is a way for the community and Wizards of the Coast to stay in close contact.

The most heartwarming part of Paupergeddon is the lunch and dinner. Since it is such a close-knit community, a lot of people eat together the day before the tournament. We celebrate bisteccageddon (literally "steakgeddon") with Florentine-style beefsteak when in Pisa, carbonarageddon with carbonara pasta when in Rome, et cetera. Besides, you can also find a stand of typical products from the region at the event, freely available for everyone, from Suocera del Pauper and Lega Pauper Martesana, two very well-known local Pauper leagues in Italy.

The next Paupergeddon will be in September or October in Rome. Check Lega Pauper Italia's Facebook page for news and infos.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of Cardmarket.