Dime a Dozen #28: Poopy Mana and Pauper Commander

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Jason Moore

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  1. Very good article, it makes us think our deckbuilding. I understand your concern about mana bases and I partially share it with you. But at the end of the day, the win ratio is all that matters. So I guess you should keep track of the relative performances of the different Eye Candie lists, for exemple, if you really want to know if your point is accurate. If B wins more than A, point taken.

    As far as evaluating mana bases go, playing a little too many may be as poopy as playing a little to few. Again, it all comes back to results. Pauper is a very competitive tight format and we shouldn’t believe that letting deck performance go away in return of playing “safely” mana-wise is a very good idea, because we will not always be able to outplay our opponents if we keep on drawing lands. Instead, if we want to exploit our skills, we should play low variance decks with lots of interaction, as I once argued in an articled published in portuguese. Let’s stay away from “all in” decks such as Eye Candie and Infect, also because they kinda need poopy mana bases to run.

  2. i have asked for Pauper commander to be supported in MTGO as I love the format

    A few other commanders: Shardless Agent, Fusion elemental, Psychatog, kitchen finks, young pyromancer, serra angel any uncommon with haste (bloodbraid elf) and evasion (volcanic dragon, crazed skirge), or beefy value leatherback balot.

    I love me some thundercloud shaman.

  3. Gustavo – Solid points all around! Keep in mind that to really get a feel for a deck’s win percentage, we’d ideally like to know how many Daily Events their pilots are actually attending.

    A “Poopy Mana” deck could only have a 34% winrate, but if it competes in 10 Daily Events and the “Playable Mana” deck with a 50% winrate only competes in four, then the Poopy Mana deck will have more reported 3-1s/4-0s, and look better. Since we only see the winning decklists from one event per day, our data is considerably skewed.

    Maybe someone could perform a controlled test of two Izzet Fiend decks (it would take a LOT of time) in order to find out which worked better. I think the basic principles of building a manabase help us avoid having to do something like that, however.

    Glad you enjoyed the article! I really appreciate the input.

  5. I play offline magic in Raleigh NC, know Lee, on of the other article writers, locally. He taught me a lot when I was just getting started.

    I am an avid EDH player, but also play standard and a great deal of limited.
    They have a local shop that has supported standard pauper as well, so I try to make those tournaments when they fire.

  7. Almost forgot – I made minor changes (-2 exalted guys +2 benevolent bodyguard; -1 Bonesplitter -1 Plains +2 Ramosian Rally) in your WW list and took it to a local tournament where I knew there wouldn’t be any post decks. Result: 4-1 (8-1). Seems REALLY solid =)