Pauper Deck of the Week: Blue-Black Terror

Every Wednesday Insight is taking a quick look at one of the top-performing, most peculiar, or simply sweetest Pauper decks among recent results. Winning the last Showcase Challenge and getting second at the regular Challenge the same day speaks for itself. So do huge creatures at discounted costs.

angler terror

At its heart this is a tempo deck: cheap creatures, cheap removal, cheap counterspells, and some card selection. Your goal is to play the early turns leveraging your instant-speed capabilities as you threaten and . Whenever you don't need them, you turn to or cast and to fill the graveyard. This enables you to deploy a quick and/or and overwhelm your opponent. Past brews also used and to give the deck more creatures and more early aggressive plays, but these are seldom seen and are not well positioned in the current meta.

As far as removal goes, only is truly stock for the main deck. It is practically free, which helps you execute the tempo plan, but things like , , and also see play, though the choices are contingent on the meta.

  • Edicts are the premier answer versus Auras due to . The deck sometimes vanishes from the meta, reducing the overall value of sacrifice effects, but you always have the flashback to justify the addition.

  • Cast Down doubles as an extra spot removal that kills pretty much anything. It is the choice when the meta incentivizes one-for-one trades. The new Ring mechanic making one creature legendary already on the first trigger may create a few problems these coming months, but Snuff can hopefully cover that specific case.

  • Agony Warp is particularly good against , which is widely used in decks based on Gates and is a permanent blocker against your threats. Coupled with small creatures that act as edict fodder and chump blockers, it can give the opponent enough time to turn the tables. Because Gates are not as popular these days, you can probably shy away from running this type of effect.

  • Other removal effects like , , and are used whenever you need to deal with go-wide decks like Boros Bully, Monoblue Faeries, Kuldotha Burn, or Elves. Fumes has the cycling option, which increases its value and makes it a decent main-deck inclusion, but three mana can be too steep of a cost especially against the latter two strategies.

You need to make a few concessions in deck building with . It definitely isn't the type of card you want to be casting if you are winning the game, but you have so many ways to filter your draws that you shouldn't feel too bad about this. Turning one of your threats into a 6/6 with lifelink does help a lot, for example to ambush an early or or just to win the race against faster decks.

There are some flex slots for cards such as , which tends to fight with options like . The main tension seems to be between going all in on the tempo plan or allowing more of a midrange approach, using the Archaeologist to get bodies on the ground to pivot to a big-creature strategy midgame. The Archaeologist can also stonewall or at least soak up some damage versus or tokens, especially if it gets a +1/+1 counter. It is a solid choice overall, and many lists go the middle way and run just a pair of them.

This is the perfect deck for those enjoying the Delver playstyle. It is pulling up solid numbers throughout the Challenges too. Here I selected two slightly different lists that got first and second at two important events on the same day.

Blue-Black Terror by qburtle15, 1st at Pauper Showcase Challenge, June 10
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Blue-Black Terror by Lennny, 2nd at Pauper Challenge, June 10
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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of Cardmarket.