Pauper on MTGO

I've recently been introduced to this super fun format by friends (and a recent article by LSV). If you don't know what Pauper is, it's a format online where your sixty card constructed deck consists of nothing but commons. The best part about the format is that you can build a deck that's cheap, but still competitive (My friend has an affinity deck that apparently only cost 8-10 tickets).

As soon as I decided I wanted to jump into the format, I looked at a site that holds Pauper tournaments and had the top decklists (PDCMagic). I chose to build a storm combo deck that just did well at a recent tournament.

4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lotus Petal
4 Manamorphose
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Ideas Unbound
4 Sign in Blood
4 Ponder
4 Grapeshot
4 Empty the Warrens

3 Ancient Spring
3 Irrigation Ditch
2 Geothermal Crevice
2 Sulfur Vent
1 Island
1 Tinder Farm

Sideboard:
4 Duress
3 Compulsive Research
3 Goblin Bushwhacker
2 Shred Memory
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Echoing Truth
1 Island

I decided on this deck because it resembles Goblin Charbelcher from Legacy, a deck that I really enjoy playing. The deck is super fun, and consistently spits out about 30 goblins by turn 4-5, or Grapeshot's their face for lethal. I've also been working on a mono green infect deck that uses pump spells like Invigorate and Groundswell to kill the opponent as quickly as turn 3.

I've heard that the format is very narrow and that people only play decks like storm combo, mono blue control or mono black, but I haven't seen much of those decks. I've seen a ton of different archetypes... G/W tokens, infect, U/R control, Kiln Fiend decks, all kinds of stuff. I don't think I've played against the same deck twice yet besides Affinity which is kind of common. Hopefully you'll try out this format and like it as much as I am so far. Any format where a card like Sigil Blessing is good has to be awesome.

An Introduction

I have tried blogs before and lost motivation but this time I'm determined to not let that happen. I figure I should start out my new attempt with an introduction of myself, and a reason for you to (attempt to) care about things I have to say.

For starters, I'm 22, and live in a small town in Illinois. I'm a level one DCI judge, and I try to play in any PTQ's I'm not judging that are a format I enjoy. That means mostly limited... sometimes legacy or standard. I plan to take (And pass, I hope) my Level 2 exam in February. I play EDH (or "Commander" now I guess) pretty frequently, playing Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon and Arcum Dagsson (Links to decklists). I recently judged GP Nashville, I've applied to judge the upcoming GP Denver, and I'll either be judging or playing in Starcitygames Open Indianapolis in February. Beyond my minor Magic career, I've played bass guitar for a couple of years, and am an on and off college student. Previously I was majoring in music, but I'm fairly sure I'm going to switch to Psychology next semester.

This is basically just a chance for me to work on my writing and put my personality into the Magic community. I'd like to start a podcast in the near future as well. Hopefully I'll have some tournament reports soon where I top 8 and/or take things down. We'll see.

(Unfortunately I created this blog after I had a crazy road trip PTQ weekend with my friends from Milwaukee and have retold the stories so many times I'm sick of typing/saying them. Suffice it to say that it was basically pure awesome. I'm positive there will be more crazy road trips and such with that group though, because we are all insane.)