Pauper Deck of the Week: Caw Gates

Caw Gates is a versatile deck that combines small white creatures with the powerful capabilities of a blue control shell. The idea is based upon the old Caw Go and Caw Blade variants that wreaked havoc in the Standard of 2010–2012. Its main trick paired with a effect to generate massive card advantage. It goes like this: You resolve a Hawk and search three others, then you brainstorm to put two of these on top of your library, so the Hawk can search for them again. Instead of turning one Hawk into more Hawk, you effectively net proper draws. Then you'd use a buff to pump any creature to carry the game. In Pauper this comes in the form of activations.

Bringing the classic Caw Go card advantage engine to Pauper looked fairly obvious as most of the cards were played in established decks of the format. But nobody really managed to make it work, and it looked like there weren't any good buffs available. The player Zoohn started toying with the idea, stuck Hawk and Brainstorm into a white-blue deck, and kept playing it to reasonable results. Then came to the format introducing great synergy in Basilisk Gate and , and he started to polish the deck on that angle. He inaugurated the deck in the Challenge of July 1, 2022, winning the whole event.

I remember talking with Zoohn a couple of days before the Challenge, and he pointed out the game changer wasn't just the Gates, but the feeble ! At first glance it looks weak-ish, but this comes from undervaluing . The lifelink coupled with the Gate activation should be enough to stabilize against everyone who isn't comboing and will undo several turns of damage. The Cat having embalm, which is an ability, also means you not only have eight copies of it, but half of those won't be countered by or .

Because of the color versatility of and , you can unlock other colors without much trouble. By sideboarding it is almost a rule that the deck will turn into Jeskai due to the power of in blue mirrors as well as the versatility of and in the current meta. But things like and can also come out to play in more go-wide environments.

There are alternative choices you should be aware of. saw play and plenty of success in specific circumstances. It is the type of card to bring when you expect many mirrors or and decks, as the vigilance coupled with your fliers will give you an edge in these encounters. Similarly can break the mirror as the Gate will have to target it, and it doubles as an anti-Auras tech in place of . Lastly and , which may seem odd, can work as a surprise attacker to close a game in a single turn. As of late players are also using . Although not widely adopted yet, it appeared in the list that got fourth place on July 1, 2023.

Other than that a lot of the fine tuning of gameplay comes down to properly minding your time and wisely using Brainstorm to control your hand. It is a deck that rewards a lot of careful thinking and planning and has the tools to fight the whole format.

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