Brewer's Minute: Pauper Primer

Plunging to the prodigious plane of paper pauper, perfecting the perilous profession for the people. A pretty practice, perhaps.

Ah Pauper, the one format where the dollar amount is less than the tix amount.

I believe Invigorate is banned due to Infect. Great video, Seth, as always! I love pauper, so glad it's finally getting the attention it deserves. It's very balanced and very competitive.

It may not seem like It, but pauper is a brewer's paradice. Although most of the brews don't necessarily go tier 1, there are just so many weird commons that have been forgotten over the years that nobody bothers to look into.

This pauper primer was the perfect production to help prepare for professional pauper events where the professor will be playing. I may pop over. I'm so pleased!

Invigorate was too good in Infect, not in stompy. Plating is OP with the artifact lands, and the metagame is more diverse than It looks in MTGO. Also, I'd say you have midrange in Boros Monarch and maybe Golgari Aristocrats

Tortured Existence is also a very strong 'midrange' deck that goes over the top of creature decks, and can also generate an endless stream of recursive threats VS the control strategies. IMHO, Abzan Tortex or some kind of Tron variant are probably the best in an open field since they have the #1 best lategame. Delver might be the "best" deck going into round 1 but since everyone else in the room knows this, they'll have to fight everyone's sideboards in order to place well. (The mirror for that deck is also absolutely miserable, which will cause burnout for the pilots later on.) And speaking of everyone else's sideboards, Circle of Protection: Blue (and Rhystic Circle as well) is an absolute dagger that Delver has a LOT of trouble dealing with, and being able to either constantly recur it through a wall of counters (Tortex) or simply protect it with your own counterspells (Tron) gives you basically free wins against them. (I mean that literally, look at that mono-U list. 2 Annul in the sideboard, and ZERO bounce spells to get it up once it hits.) Every single deck that can generate white mana will be playing that card in their sideboard.

One thing to note: there are also cards that have been printed at Common in paper but never on Magic Online. These are not legal in Pauper, as I regrettably found out after buying a playset of Ashnod's Altars.

I just started playing Pauper. So far my favorite Pauper deck is Delver, namely Mono Blue and Izzet. As a RG player, this is the first time I "delved" into blue. I like drawing cards and countering things now. This is a good video, Seth! I just hope the cards doesn't spike up. I still like to build other Pauper decks now.

Great quick overview guys! Anyone looking into pauper, there's a lot of great resources out there. People are writing articles talking about decks and there's been a lot of great content creators popping up as well. I myself have been rocking a bunch of Elves (and sometimes other things), Mathonical, Kungfutrees, and PAUPERGANDA are all bringing the spice along with a couple very well known decks such as Izzet Delver and Boros Monarch, Color Commontary put out a bunch of great podcasts discussing a variety of different decks and the format as well. Obviously MTGGoldfish has their own series of videos, though their lists may be somewhat out of date now, and Tolarian Community College with The Professor himself has lots of great videos on the format as well. I'm dying to see what today brings at GP Santa Clara's event and I hope it brings Pauper that much closer to being the legitimate amazing format it always deserved to be.

Love this vid and would love to see a similar primer for the other formats!

Ash Barrens, Oubliette, Manamorphose and other cards whose paper price is totally out of wack seriously need a reprint for paper pauper to take off.

Thank you for making this video! I've been wanting more pauper support since our play group decided to host a mini pauper tournament. The format is very fun and won't cost a lot to build a deck. Going to GP Santa Clara to test out my paper pauper decks!

I've been playing paper pauper like 5 years and I'm delighted for this new spike of the format

I'm not a Legacy player, and I didn't get into Pauper because of the Prof. However, this was a decent video. Thanks for beginning to share the format more seriously. Maybe the weekly series will come back?

Pauper is actually vintage light. There are cards legal in pauper that are banned in legacy.

I've been playing the GW Slivers and been doing pretty well. Honestly I love Pauper. It's a fun way to play online without breaking the bank. Thanks Seth. Love the content as always. Can't wait to see the streams next week and play some momir.

Paper pauper player picked a particular pack of playing cards as per pauper professional's personal proposal. I don't have anything worthwhile to say, I just wanted to be included.

Excellent article Mr. Oliver. Here on Brazil, we are looking forward to sanctioning Pauper format from a long time. The first 'oficial' Pauper Tournament was a side tournaments in the GP São Paulo in 2017. With almost 100 players.

I would like to say that I was originally introduced to the Pauper format through paper tournaments at my LGS several years ago. I would also like to mention that invigorate was banned in pauper due to Infect as it is more consistent in pauper than it is in paper. My favorite Pauper deck is Delver Memory Lapse where you Memory Lapse and Portent to stop your opponent from drawing cards whil you tempo in with Delver and delve creatures.