Hey guys. I love Magic the Gathering. However, I almost exclusively play casually with my wife. As a result I like for us to have multiple decks sitting around the house so it never gets old. I like to build at least 4 decks for me and 4 decks for her. This is something I did with Pre-Modern. I’ll show those off in a future post. I like doing this with non rotating, affordable eternal formats. Now, affordable is obviously subjective and proxies exist and budget options to expensive cards exist. So with that said, unless your deck is built around something expensive, you can make most formats affordable one way or the other.

The affordability of Pauper as well as the sheer width of deck options is why Pauper has remained my favorite format since I gave up on Modern years ago. But I’ve never sat down and tried to flesh out a box. If I had done this experiment a decade ago when I started playing Pauper I would have thrown in my favorites at the time: GB Midrange for me. Burn for my wife. And rounded it out with stuff like Boros Monarch and Mono Black with Gary and the crew. But a lot changes in a decade. So here are the decks my wife and I are currently building

#1 Grixis Affinity

Before you scoff at this inclusion, I built this deck like 3 years ago ling before Utrom Monitor made this one of the most controversial decks in Pauper’s history. For those of you unfamiliar, with the release of the TMNT set brought ancillary products. Utrom Monitor found itself in oje of these side products. I believe it was a 3 of. Which made things awkward for 60 card formats where you want 4 of him, specifically Pauper. It was reselling for about $10 when it came out. When I’m building pauper decks, I don’t like cards even over $2. It kind of ruins the spirit of the format. Either way, I never invested in the Monitors. My win condition was a flipped Tithing Blade, Bolts, and Galvanic Blast. There was a creature package with Gingerbrute who could get in unblockable to set up ninjutsu for Ninja of the Deep Hour. And Refurbished Familiar was an absolute unit as long as you weren’t facing those Sneaky Snackers. This was probably my favorite Pauper deck of all time and could stand for some upgrades in the near future.

#2 Rakdos Madness

When I first saw the Madness Pauper deck, it was Rakdos. That’s my wife’s favorite guild so we started working on this build [foregoing the straight Mono Red Burn]. She plays burn in every format its available in [which is all of them…], so I thought it would be fun to add a layer of complexity to her decks. She loves point and click burn spells. This deck still plays loads of burn spells in the form of Lightning Bolt, Fiery Temper, Vampire’s Kiss, Alms of the Vein, Grab the Prize and, at least for right now, Fruit of Tizerus. But the discard package will encourage her to keep track of multiple game spaces and timing. Fiery Temper and Alms of the Vein deal with discard, exile, and timing. Fruit of Tizerus forces her to keep up and remember what’s in her graveyard. Grab the Prize pseudo forces her to think about what she’s discarding. While Vampire’s Kiss will make her keep track of tokens and the game board itself. Its still her preferred strategy of burning the player out, but I think it will force her to pay more attention and become a better player.

#3 UB Birds

This is my pet deck. I actually built this and streamed it on the Dahubbz Youtube channel 8 years ago. Admittedly, it is kind of jammed in a weird place. Cavern Harpy is one of my favorite cards. I love repeating and abusing Enter The Battl… oh, yeah we don’t use that verbiage anymore. I mean I love abusing the Enters trigger [yeah, just doesn’t sound the same…]. So I started looking for the best things to bounce back with Cavern Harper and landed on a creature called Parasitic Strix. These formed the backbone of the deck. Now, we don’t have Baleful Strix or we would be cooking. As it stands, I use Tidehollow Strix as a replacement. Its Blue and Black, is a bird, is an artifact, and has flying and deathtouch. It checks like 4 out of the 5 boxes Baleful Strix does, so its alright. The deck has gotten some new toys in the last 8 years including Grim Bauble, Cryogen Relic, and heck I did my video a month before Cast Down came out. The only thing is its kind of is a UB based Artifact Fliers deck. As you saw with my Grixis Affinity list I already have an artifact deck. And as you’ll see in a few entries, I am planning a fliers deck. Still this is my baby. I have to have it.

#4 Mardu Synthesizer

This was a deck I thought up for a wife a while back but never had the pieces for it. Its an update [albeit now like 3 years old] take on Boros Monarch. I really liked the Kor Skyfisher and Glinthawk interaction back in the day. Synthesizer is a good pick up because it has a great ETB you want to abuse. Grim Bauble has another cool abusable ETB allowing the deck to pick off small aggro creatures. Of course, Refurbished Familiar is probably the main reason to play black. A 2/1 flier that forces the opponent to discard upon entrance is going to be great to bounce back to your hand and replay it. I was sold on the Mardu version for my wife when I saw Black Mage’s Rod. It fits my wife’s playstyle very well. Other reasons to splash black can include Cast Down, Tithing Blade, or Fanatical Offering. Outside of that, red provides burn in the form of Lightning Bolt and Galvanic Blast and some good sideboard cards like Red Elemental Blast, Smash to Smithereens, and End the Festivities.

#5 Gruul Monsters/Cascade

I love Gruul monsters. The original Gruul Monsters from Khans of Tarkir was one of the first decks I saw play on camera and I fell in love. I certainly try to recreate it in any format I can. Unfortunately I’m not sure the curve is in their in Pauper. I don’t think we have something like Gruul Spellbreaker in Pauper. However, the top end in Red Green is super strong. It also plays into argubly my favorite mechanic in Magic- Cascade! I’m still working on an exact 60 I like but some of suspects I’m looking at are: Writhing Chyrsalis, Annoyed Altisaur, Boarding Party, Arbor Elf, Llanowar Visionary and Eldrazi Processor. The rest of the curve will be filled out as I go. All in all this appeals to the gruul part of my brain. Ramp into big mana, cast big dumb dudes, and Cascade into values.

#6 Jund Sac

Okay, hear me out. I’m not entirely sure what I want this to be. In 2015, my wife and I walked into a Walmart and bought the Demonic Deals starter the deck where my wife learned the joys of casting Act of Treason, stealing my elf, and saccing it to her Blazing Hellhound. I think Pauper has potential for a similiar deck. However, it seems black is mostly preoccupied with saccing its own stuff. That’s mostly done in Golgari Gardens. Which seems to have turned into a mostly mono black deck these days. Gixian Infiltrator seems like he would be an interesting build around card, but I’d have to think about fun unique ways to build this that aren’t just Golgari Garden. So this is a work in progress.

#7 Cawgates

Caw Go and Caw Blade are some of the most iconic decks in Magic’s history from a time before I played. This is a chance to play a similiar style deck. Now sure, I don’t get access to Jace the Mind Sculpture, Stoneforge Mystic, or the great equipment package of Standard’s past. However, now we get to use Brainstorm, Counterspell, Journey to Nowhere, and the gate package to simulate the equipment angle. This is probably the deck I’m customizing the least. I’ll most likely find a stock list and just rock it. But really what battle box is complete without some form of UW?

#8 Soul Sisters

Mono Red Burn was my wife’s first MtG love. Oddly enough, mono white life gain or Soul Sisters was the deck she played next. We put a spin on it where she played the Soul Sisters first, but then played cards like Keldon Marauders and Viashino Pyromancer to play creatures that burned on entering. I think they literally made Phlage based off this deck idea, so blame my wife for that one. Anyway, there’s ample ways to get a Soul burn deck going in pauper with Souls Attendent, Soul Warden, Essence Warden, and Suture Priest plus all the burn we can do with Molten Gatekeeper, Raphael Tough Turtle, and Marauding Blight-Priest. We also can go infinite with Scurry Oaks if we build a combo engine around it with something like Ivy Lane Denizen. Our Battle Box is also lacking in combo, so I think this would be welcomed. Its really up to my wife to figure out exactly how she wants to build it.

Pauper is cheap enough, I’d like to work up to a good bit of decks over time. Elves, W Heroic and Simic Land Animate all are on my radar. You also never know when a busted common will come out and create a new archetype over night.

Do any of you guys play pauper? Do you ever build battle boxes for your favorite formats? Let me know what your favorite Pauper decks are!