On March 23rd, I reached the finals of Paupergeddon, a record-setting edition with 738 players. In this report, I’ll describe my preparation and my tournament experience. This story looks like fiction to me, I hope you will enjoy the narration.
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My History With the Deck
I mention this topic because it adds to the value that this result had for me, and the readers might be interested in the process that brought a tier deck to life.
It all started in October, at the team trios tournament of Radioatog, where the Golden Pigs team won for the third time.
As is usual for trios, I was on Kuldotha. In the finals, I beat Giulio Zorzi, who was on Jund Gardens. This was the last straw for him: he needed to fix the Kuldotha matchup. Together with Giovanni Rosso, he put together a more artifact-oriented version of Gardens to try and emulate the success that Affinity had against Kuldotha.
A few days later, Tommaso Loss picked up the list, made some changes, and played it at his LGS. As a renowned hater of non-blue midrange decks, I couldn’t help but message him to flame the list. After a round of conversation, my hate was shaken, and I found that Tommaso was making some very good points. I decided then to make a list, keeping what Tommaso had convinced me was good, and cutting what still looked bad to me.
I based my new list on the Affinity list that I was running at the time, and I added Nyxborn Hydra to the mix, thanks to the experience matured with Gruul during the summer, when GiorgioCombo and I found out that the card was busted. I then joined a challenge on Magic Online and immediately reached the top4.
At this point, we had recognized that this was going to be the next best midrange deck, and I started refining the list for Paupergeddon Roma 2024, working with Tommaso and Marco Trivella. The day before the event, Tommaso got cold feet and decided to bring Affinity instead. He needed some Vault of Whispers, which I lent him for the event. After the weekend, he forgot to give me my Vaults back. Keep this detail in mind for later.
In Rome, I ended up going 10-3, while Matteo Cirigliano made top8 with a Jund Wildfire list that Franco Cicchini had suggested to him on Friday night, and Marco went undefeated at Sunday’s side event with the same list. Tommaso was rightfully punished for his cowardice and didn’t even make day 2 with Affinity.
After Paupergeddon, I kept playing the deck, getting a second place at the Super IPT Pauper Scream, on top of a bunch of top8s between IPTs and MtGO challenges. The most important preparation for Paupergeddon Lecco 2025 consisted of accumulating experience with the deck in all these events.
Inspired by Lorenzo Aldegheri, I wrote an extensive guide to the deck, which I published in early March. Writing the guide was also very helpful. Putting your thoughts in writing forces you to elaborate on your choices and back them with arguments. In this process, some holes come to light and get fixed, and the whole particular system of knowledge is consolidated.
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Testing House
Before Paupergeddon, I planned a three-day testing session in person with Pietro Bragioto and Giovanni Rosso. On the day of my train, I woke up with a 39°C fever. Since I was barely able to walk, I considered skipping the testing session and/or Paupergeddon. But after checking with my friends and learning that they didn’t fear contagion, I decided to ingest some pills, get on the train, and hope that I would recover in time for the tournament.
During the testing session, I wasn’t working at full capacity, but we still managed to get some things done. I and Pietro were locked on deck choice (Jund Wildfire for me and BG Glee for him), but we needed to make some last decisions about our decklists.
Giovanni, on the other hand, still needed a deck. We tested Spy Combo and Boros Synth, which were chosen by other members of our team, but we found those decks underwhelming.
I and Pietro had to test our lists against Kuldotha because we hoped that we could cut some hate cards from the sideboard, and Giovanni kicked our asses. This led me to keep the hate cards, and we started considering Kuldotha as a meta call for Giovanni. This was something that I had started considering in February, when I noticed that most decks were overloading on board wipes to beat Kuldotha, and a Kessig Flamebreather sideboard plan was able to sidestep the hate.
Assuming that you were playing the right list with the Kessig sideboard plan, I think that Kuldotha was one of the best decks to bring to Paupergeddon Lecco. Kessigs granted the deck a positive matchup against Glee, Wildfire, and Faeries, the most expected decks of the event.
And Kuldotha’s worst matchup is Affinity, which we expected to see little play and perform even worse. Giovanni also imagined that we weren’t the only people considering cutting a card or two for the Kuldotha matchup, and so Kuldotha was a little underestimated.
The main reason why I chose to bring Wildfire is that I feared it could be the last time that I could play the deck (due to the scheduled B&R announcement), and I wanted to cash in the experience I gained from my 400 matches with the deck. Don’t get me wrong, Wildfire was also among the top three best choices for the tournament in my opinion.
I mentioned metagame predictions, but let’s dig a bit more into that. This Paupergeddon was one of the most predictable editions in the history of Pauper. Firstly, because the metagame was solved, and hadn’t changed in a few months. But there was also a new factor: guide sales.
This was the first Paupergeddon to be preceded by the sale of guides for multiple decks, and the sale numbers suggested metagame trends for the event.
For example, after my guide sold more than 130 copies, it was easy to predict that Wildfire was going to be one of the most popular choices at the event. And since the sales numbers were public, we also knew that people knew that Wildfire was going to be popular, but more on that later.
Here’s our predictions, compared with the actual metagame of the event. We got them pretty much on point.
Let’s go back to Jund Wildfire and see what I needed to decide. I was settled on 68/75 cards:
For the remaining 7 slots, these were my options:
First of all, I had decided that I wanted at least one extra lifegain card in the main and one extra in the sideboard, but I had a few options. I quickly discarded Toxin Analysis, because we predicted a very low amount of green decks.
The biggest question was whether I wanted to run Pulse or Incursion in the main, and the third Weather or Incursion in the sideboard. I took the idea of Crypt Incursion from a Japanese player. When I saw it, I immediately made a mental note about the card because having both graveyard hate and lifegain in the same slot can be very precious.
Incursion is less versatile than Pulse of Murasa, which is never dead, but it does two things very well, and can be much more impactful than Pulse in some matchups.
We predicted Dredge and Altar Tron to be decently popular, and I enjoyed the idea of having an additional silver bullet there. Dredge, in particular, is a matchup that you always win if you see your graveyard hate (not because gy hate wins by itself, but because the rest of your deck will easily bring you to a position where gy hate wins).
Having two gy hate cards gives you good chances of finding one, but can be dangerous. Having three gy hate cards will ensure that you see one of them in time. I was also concerned about facing Cycling Storm on Day 2. We predicted that very few people would play the deck, but we knew that it was very good against two of the top three most popular decks.
They could dodge U Faeries and get to the very highest tables, or get paired with several Faeries and not go anywhere. It was kind of a coin flip that I didn’t want to risk. I should also clarify that the version of Cycling Storm with no basic lands is quite easy to beat with Wildfire, but I knew that the Italian players knew about this, and that they would bring some basic lands. This prediction turned out to be pretty accurate.
For my win&in, I was sitting next to a Cycling Storm player, and another one had only been stopped by Faeries at the high tables a couple of rounds earlier.
Going for Incursion and no Toxins left me with a free maindeck slot, a perfect fit for the third Cast Down, which lets you face more peacefully a variety of matchups.
As I mentioned earlier, testing against Mono Red proved that the third Breath Weapon and the third Weather the Storm couldn’t be cut. Therefore, they were quickly added to the sideboard. At this point, I had three sideboard slots left. Incidentally, this is why banning something from Mono Red was a good decision by the PFP.
The deck could only be beaten with a lot of dedicated slots, and it could even circumvent the hate, as I mentioned above. I’m an avid Mono Red player, and I had just bought 14 golden Mountains from Aetherdrift, but I think that Persistent Percussionist had pushed the deck a bit too much.
I knew that I wanted at least two emblems for Glee. I decided to limit myself to two because I wanted to play at least one of the other two cards that I had in my maybeboard. At this point, we started testing the mirror with several configurations, pitting one against each other.
This matchup was very hard to figure out, and in three days we weren’t able to converge on a sideboard plan, which I had to invent on day 1 of Paupergeddon. But at least we managed to reach some conclusions for deckbuilding, which was the most pressing issue.
We verified that Thorn of the Black Rose was better than Avenging Hunter in the mirror and that Troublemaker Ouphe had a big impact in the matchup. Bragioto was convinced that Thorn was also better than Hunter against Glee, but I disagreed on that (n.d.r. Spoiler: I was right, all hail the black queen!). You know Pietro, he has a special relationship with the Monarch emblem. Anyway, the difference against Glee was pretty marginal, while in the mirror the difference is substantial, so I ended up with Thorn.
For the last slot, I was considering Last Rites because I feared that on Day 1 I could run into some weird midrange predator, like Turbofog, Altar, or others, given that the popularity of Jund Wildfire was a known factor. I also thought that Rites could help vs BG+R Glee, where Wildfire’s answers run tight, but during our testing the card proved to be very high-variance against Glee, ranging from winning on the spot to being harmful to the Wildfire player. This, united with the belief that Glee would kill all midrange predators, led me to put the second Ouphe in this slot, ending up with a very clean list.
I’ll save you some time and immediately reveal that the spicy Crypt Incursion was never relevant during the tournament, meaning that all games would’ve had the same outcome with Incursion or with Pulse. Nonetheless, I think that the list was perfect for the event, and I wouldn’t change anything in retrospect.
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The Tournament
Disclaimer: In this case, I can’t write my sideboarding decisions like in my previous report, because they are included in the premium content that people already paid for on Metafy.
I will mark each round OTP if I won the die roll and OTD if I lost the die roll.
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Day 1
Round 1 – Affinity OTD
I didn’t have a round 1 bye because I had lost the final match for the bye both at Pauper Scream and at the Pauperwave online league finals. I had to do it the hard way. Luckily, I was immediately paired into my best matchup, one of the many fortuitous circumstances that occurred during the weekend.
G1: My opponent mulligans to 5, but manages to completely refill his hand with divinations. He gave me too much time though, and I’ve found the best answer to deathtouch Krark: Munitions. I can now safely deploy an unstoppable wave of eldrazis and Hydras.
G2: I don’t remember. It must’ve been regular midrange outgrinding.
Match: 2-0
Score: 1-0
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Round 2 – Mirror OTD (Giovanni Battista Caffi)
G1: I have an anemic start without card advantage. I have to bestow Hydra on Refurbished Familiar and hope that my opponent doesn’t have one of the 2-3 Cast Downs. He doesn’t.
G2: I have an insane start with triple Wildfire. My opponent sees an empty board and has to try a Thorn of the Black Rose. I untap and cast triple Refurbished Familiar, clearing their hand and setting up to steal the monarchy the next turn.
Match: 2-0
Score: 2-0
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Round 3 – Black Pactdoll OTP (Giovanni Postorino)
I know Giovanni, and this isn’t the level of opponent that I was hoping to face in round 3, but what can you do.
G1: I can’t find a Cast Down, and I get completely overrun by double Pactdoll.
G2: I win, but I don’t remember what happened.
G3: My opponent chains multiple divinations without affecting the board. When I Duress him, I discover that he’s saving up a couple of Emblems for the right moment, but it’s too late because I have Munitions down and a couple of creatures. I discard Cast Down, leaving him with a very costly Snuff Out. He casts Avenging Hunter and snuffs one of my creatures, but that leaves him dead to Munitions.
He’s understandably bugged by his mistake, but I don’t think that he had any available out from that situation. Fun fact: three years ago, I lost the finals of Pauper Scream to Giovanni Postorino because I missed lethal with Munitions, so killing him with Munitions felt a little like redemption.
Match: 2-1
Score: 3-0
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Round 4 – Naya Ramp OTD (Giacomo Baraldi)
I’m playing against a regular Gruul Ramp that splashes white for Coalition Honor Guard for Glee. Unfortunately, I don’t remember anything from this match.
Match: 2-1
Score: 4-0
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Round 5 – Gruul Ponza OTD (Matthieu Pfenniger)
G1: The most recent lists of Gruul Ramp are immune to mana screw, because they have a low curve and are filled to the brim with mana sources. But as soon as I understand that this is Gruul Ponza, I start going after his mana with Wildfire, removal for Arbor Elf, and Krark-Clan Shaman for spawns. He has revealed a Boarding Party with Rumble, but I never let him get to 6 mana, and I win the game.
G2: I don’t remember.
Match: 2-0
Score: 5-0
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Round 6 – BG+R Glee OTD (Nicolas Komanski)
G1: I have an anemic start with all basic lands and the weakest components of my engine. I can’t find enough interaction, and I die to the combo.
G2: I win but I don’t remember how. Probably with Thorn.
G3: I mull to 6 and open a hand with Bridge, Wildfire, Thorn and Snuff Out. There’s only one land though. I’m on the draw, so I have two looks for a land. If I draw it, I have the strongest possible start in the matchup. The alternative is mulliganing to 5. This is one of the few instances where I condone keeping a one lander with a Dispute deck. My opponent starts with T1 Khalni Garden into T2 Troublemaker Ouphe on my Bridge, leaving me on 0 lands. I have no other lands on top of my deck anyway. The match is over.
Match: 1-2
Score: 5-1
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Round 7 – Mono Blue Whale Combo OTP (Tobiáš Janík)
The weirdest match of the tournament. I’m playing against a very fringe deck on X-1, and my opponent has a self-deprecating attitude. Both things can lead to excessive relaxation, which leads to defeat. I identify the situation and explicitly repeat to myself that I have to stay focused.
My efforts have no effect, maybe because it’s getting late in the day, and I quickly lose both games by making two ridiculous punts. I can’t invoke the explanation that I didn’t play well because I didn’t know what my opponent could play. I didn’t know many things about my opponent’s deck, but as soon that I saw the first Whale there was something I knew for sure: he was playing Retraction Helix.
Despite that, I lost both games to “unexpected” Helixes. My opponent, on the other hand, played very well, efficiently finding the kill line every time, thus revealing that he had experience with his deck and was in the X-1 bracket for a reason.
G1: My opponent has an Ornithopter in play and deploys a Whale. On my turn, I don’t realize that if interact now with the Whale I can guarantee that I won’t die, because it has summoning sickness, while interacting during the opponent’s turn is very dangerous because Helix is an Instant, so I don’t cast my Snuff Out. I also attack with Refurbished Familiar, leaving only a Chrysalis to block.
My opponent untaps, casts Helix on Whale, I respond with Snuff Out, he casts another Helix, which resolves. The Whale bounces my only reaching blocker, then Tobiáš casts Tooth of Chiss-Goria, which has flash, and untaps the Whale after pumping the Ornithopter. He repeats this process a large amount of times. Now Snuff Out resolves and kills the Whale, but there’s an infinite/infinite Ornithopter that attacks and kills me.
G2: I mulligan to 5 and have to accept a bad hand with double tapland. If I draw lands, I have a bunch of Chrysalises in hand. Thankfully, my opponent has a slow start too, and gives me time to draw lands and cast my Chrysalises. At that point, he reveals why he had started slowly, by unloading a Frogmite and the three Enforcers he had been keeping in hand. I attack with my big Eldrazis because I don’t have much going on and I want to put some pressure on. I’m at 14 life and he has 14 power on board, but surely it isn’t a problem, since I have 4 eldrazi spawns ready to block, right? Well, I decide to use two spawns in combat to cast an Eviscerator’s Insight and push more damage, leaving only two blockers. Now my opponent only needs to cast two Helixes on his Ornithopters to bounce my spawns and kill me.
After this match, I was devastated. Experience has taught me that a lonely mistake among hundreds of good decisions will deny you a Paupergeddon top8. And this is perfectly natural. During 13 rounds, you will lose at least a couple of matches due to unavoidable circumstances. A terrible matchup, or a nut draw from the opponent, or mana screw, some of this is bound to happen in a card game. Your job is to ensure that you play perfectly in the remaining 11 rounds. If you fail to do that, you don’t top8. With this match, I felt like I had burnt my chance once again. I didn’t know that luck was on my side this weekend.
Match: 0-2
Score: 5-2
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Round 8 – Mono Red Pingers OTD (Matteo Lombardelli)
I know that I won’t win my match if I keep feeling defeated. A strong attitude is needed to compete. If you are the first one who doesn’t believe in themselves, you will lack the determination to get out of sticky situations, and you won’t win. With this in mind, and with a lot of effort, I manage to get back to a decent mental state.
G1: During the game, I gradually realize that the opponent is from my league, and that I’ve seen his list, which is a very interesting take on Pingers, which mixes in some madness elements. I see some of my maindeck lifegain, and I win the game on 1 life because the opponent lacks a fourth land to flash back the last Lava Dart. Needless to say, winning G1 is crucial in this matchup.
G2: I’m on the draw and I lose.
G3: I’m on the play and I win. I’m sure that it was slightly more complicated than this, but unfortunately I don’t remember the details.
Match: 2-1
Score: 6-2
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Day 2
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Round 9 – Kuldotha OTP (Lorenzo Limongiello)
Even though it happened the previous day, I remember sitting next to Lorenzo in round 8, so I know that he’s playing Kuldotha.
G1: I open a hand with Krark-Clan Shaman: snap keep. I wipe his board and start beating. He rebuilds a little bit, but I find a second Shaman. I keep attacking with Chrysalis, and now I have Munitions on the board. He still has four creatures. I force some blocks and now he has no cards in hand, but a 1/2 on the battlefield, while I’m at 4 life and have no available blockers. I have to sacrifice two lands to kill the Reckless Lackey and stay above the crucial threshold of 3 life (my opponent doesn’t have metalcraft). At this point, only a potential Fireblast can kill me, assuming he plays it. He doesn’t draw Fireblast and I win.
G2: On the draw, my biggest fear is Cast Into the Fire. I open a nice hand with Bridge, Wildfire and a board wipe, and luckily I have plenty of nonartifact lands. I choose not to play the Bridge, to guarantee the Breath Weapon on turn 3. I wrath the board, but I was on the draw, so I still need to be very aware of my life total. I cast a Chrysalis, and my opponent targets my spawns with CItF. Now, I don’t know if my memory is mixing up things, but I remember that my opponent had two mana up thanks to a treasure, so I chose to wait again on my Wildfire, and let him sinkhole me on his turn. After that, I drop a second Bridge, finally cast my Wildfire, find some lifegain and win the game.
Match: 2-0
Score: 7-2
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Round 10 – Mirror OTP (Giuseppe Vassallo)
Unfortunately, I don’t remember what happened in the first two games, but I lost G1 and won G2.
G3: I keep a mediocre hand with two bridges, a basic land, an Insight, Thorn, Cast Down and Snuff Out. The crucial part is that I have no turn 2 play and no enabler for Insight. But I have two turns to see a turn 2 play, and in the fail case I can rely on the monarch plan. My opponent starts with Blood Fountain and a fetch. I’m convinced that he will fetch Forest and cast Ouphe on my land, but it’s not too bad. I have already drawn the fourth land, and I was lacking enablers for Insight, which I can now use on my land in response to Ouphe. While I think all this, my body goes “tapland, go”. My opponent fetches, it’s too late. Forest. He untaps and casts Ouphe on my land, while I’ve only one mana up. Will this mistake finally take me out of the tournament? I keep my composure and keep going. I manage to land the monarch and defend it, winning the game.
Match: 2-1
Score: 8-2
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Round 11 – Affinity OTP (Guillem Martínez Sánchez)
I’m surprised to see Affinity on Day 2, but I accept the gift without complaining. My opponent even reveals that he isn’t feeling well, and I hope he has recovered quickly after the tournament.
I win G1, then I mulligan to 5 in G2 and lose.
G3: I mulligan to 5 again. I start getting scared. My opponent sets up a problematic race, equipping Hunter’s Blowgun to his creatures. I’m getting low on life and resources, it’s hard to imagine a way out that doesn’t involve Dispute into a sequence of other things. And there it is: I topdeck a Deadly Dispute, which sees other cheap spells and a Weather the Storm, and in the span of one turn I’ve recovered both resources and life total. At this point, I start grinding out my opponent, until the point where he’s hellbent and I can safely resolve an Hydra on Familiar, which is lethal in two attacks. If he topdecks a burn spell, I lose. He doesn’t and I kill him.
Match: 2-1
Score: 9-2
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Round 12 – Mirror OTD (Nicola Rispoli)
G1: Just like I did in round 2, my opponent bestows Hydra on Familiar while I don’t have Cast Down. I die quickly.
G2: I’m on the play and I have T3 Ouphe, followed by Turn 4 Ouphe. Both of them exile lands, and it’s all downhill from there.
G3: This was a long game and I might get the details wrong, but, as I recall it, we grinded for a while, until my opponent was left with no cards in hand and no creatures on board, and I had removal in hand. At that point I decided to land a Thorn. What could possibly go wrong? My opponent draws for turn: it’s a Thorn. He has the courage to do what’s necessary and casts Thorn, then draws for the emblem and it’s a Cast Down for my Thorn! Luckily I’m ahead enough on the resources game that I manage to recover and gradually turn the game back in my favor, but I definitely took a scare.
Match: 2-1
Score: 10-2
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Round 13 – Black Pactdoll OTD (Lorenzo Montana)
My opponent is 10-1-1, and an ID would be enough to guarantee top8 for him. But unfortunately for him, he’s been downpaired, and I have to play.
G1: I’ve never been a fast player, but my deck selection has usually insulated me from the negative consequences of this weakness. Since I picked up Jund, I’ve had to improve on this front because the grindy games with Jund can take a lot of time. There’s still much room for improvement, but I feel like I’ve reached a decent level, and at least I can play the deck, as the results would seem to confirm. That’s great, but now I’m in the win&in at Paupergeddon and old habits creep back in. I’m feeling the tension, and I want to play perfectly, which leads me to play slowly. Ironically, I make a mistake anyway, overcommitting to the board without an answer to Crypt Rats + Toxin Analysis. I saw Toxin Analysis in round 3, and I know that my opponent is part of the same team as Postorino, but I’ve completely forgotten that Toxin is a card they play. Again, this is certainly an advantage of playing an off-meta deck for the opponent, but I don’t have any real excuse, because I could’ve very reasonably assumed that my opponent played that card. After the board wipe, I still feel ahead, since I have plenty of resources, but I end up dying to burn before I can deploy them all. At this point, we have 20 minutes left for the match, and I know that my opponent only needs a draw to guarantee the top8. Credit to him, I don’t think he ever slow-played me during the match. From this point onwards, he played not to lose, but that’s perfectly understandable. I’ve dug myself a hole.
G2: I have a strong start and my opponent bricks. I quickly take the game and I start hoping I can make it.
G3: My opponent keeps a onelander on 6 on the play because he has Duress. A bold move that is not rewarded, as he doesn’t draw the second land for a while and I start attacking him. After he finally draws the land, he starts chaining a long sequence of removals that barely keep me off lethal damage until extra turns are called. My only out to close the game in time is to draw a Hydra, which doesn’t arrive. Given 1-2 more turns, I’m quite sure that I would win the game, but I don’t have that luxury, and the match ends as a draw.
Match: 1-1
Score: 10-2-1
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I throw my cards on the table, and the only thing I can think about is how during the first 12 rounds I made not one, but two mistakes that would’ve normally kicked me out of the tournament, but I was assisted by luck so much that I found myself in the win&in, and then I found a way to screw up again. I know that there is a chance that one or two 10-2-1 enter by rating, but why would I be one of them? I lost pretty early in the tournament, and my rating is probably bad.
Then the speaker starts calling the top8 names. The first one I hear is the 6th place, so I think that they started calling the top8 from the bottom. If they started from the bottom and nobody told me that I’m in the top8, I’m out for sure, because I can’t be higher than 6th. Of course I’m not in the top8, I knew that that would’ve been the case the moment I drew the match, what was I even hoping for?
The speaker calls my name. I don’t understand. Ziofrancone starts celebrating for me, but I’m completely shocked. I can barely hold off the tears while a judge mercilessly imposes me to pick up my stuff because he has to move the table (nothing wrong with that: he was doing his job). I don’t think that a clean top8 would’ve elicited this reaction from me, but the emotional rollercoaster of this last round was unbearable.
Adding to the emotional mix there’s also the fact that I’m there with a list that I built myself, tuned and championed for months, and the fact that, in the small world of Pauper, a two-day Paupergeddon top8 was the only kind of top8 missing from my cabinet. I had achieved top8s in Super IPTs, a Showcase Challenge, a Showcase Qualifier, a Super Qualifier, a one-day Paupergeddon, several IPTs, challenges, and team trios.
The lack of results in two-day Paupergeddons had grown heavier and heavier as the editions followed one after the other, and people kept telling me the expectations they had for me, or even explicitly pointing out this lack of top8s. Now, I don’t want to make it look worse than it was, it’s not like this was a major thing occupying my mind, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to ever top8 Paupergeddon, as that would’ve been mathematically foolish, but I was intensely hoping that I could make it, that’s for sure.
That being said, this top8 has a bittersweet flavor, because I didn’t get there by overcoming the main weaknesses that had kept me out of results in previous editions, i.e. lack of focus and lack of speed. At this Paupergeddon, I’ve made the same mistakes as ever, I just got luckier than other times. I even just barely snuck into the top8 by a few rating points, although that doesn’t concern me much, considering that the last match of the swiss felt like a win. But I’m very happy about the result and I’m motivated to try and improve and get other top8s in the future.
I would also like to thank all Golden Pigs, because they taught me most of what I know about Pauper, and they are an amazing team.
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Top 8
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Quartefinals – BG Glee OTD (Adam Bazika)
G1: I keep a pretty weak hand with Dispute but no enablers, because it’s filled with removals. Lists are open, so I know that I’m facing Glee, and removals are precious. This is a risky keep, because if I don’t advance my engine, my opponent can easily build up to combo through three removals, but I’m on the draw, so I have more chances of drawing engine cards, and I’m playing a good number of them. My opponent immediately duresses away my Dispute, leaving me with even less hopes of advancing in the game. I draw my best lock piece, Munitions, but my opponent has maindeck Ouphe and exiles it. I then draw the cards to assemble my other lock piece: Krark+Hydra.
I’m a little constricted on mana, so I decide to risk it and split the combo between two turns, casting Shaman and hoping that my opponent won’t kill it. Glee players are often oblivious to what can happen if they let the Shaman live, but my opponent is in top8 at Paupergeddon and knows what to do, and my Shaman gets killed. My only option left is to put Hydra on a Chrysalis, beat down and hope that my removals are enough to survive. I topdeck the fourth removal, which is exactly what I needed, and I win.
G2: Thorn of the Black Rose takes the game pretty comfortably.
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Semifinals – Mono U Faeries OTD (Mattia Pesenti)
G1: The first game is the hardest in the matchup, especially on the draw. I manage to effectively play around Stutter and Force Spike for a while, and I try every possible trick to stay alive, but in the end, I get swamped by a swarm of little faeries, whose card advantage I can’t effectively combat.
G2: I immolate a Wellspring to Annul so that I can resolve a 1/2 Hydra and a Familiar, that will stall the board until I can wipe it.
G3: I have Fetch + Snuff Out: snap keep. He starts with Faerie Miscreant, which doesn’t even have an etb. I Snuff it immediately and it’s all downhill from there.
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Finals – Black Pactdoll OTD (Lorenzo Montana)
My semifinals has finished earlier than the other one, so I have a little bit of time to contemplate what’s coming ahead. I’ve faced the matchup twice so far, and I came out on top both times. As I showed in the decklist paragraph, I’ve put the maximum respect on Pactdoll Terror, by running the third cast Down and the second Ouphe, so I feel good about my chances. But some old words start resonating in my mind:
As the players from Pisa say, my opponent has the plot on his side. And the coincidences seem too many to be true, like in a fictional story. One month after my caustic tweet, I’m in the top8 together with the player that convinced all Lega Pauper Pisa to play Black Pactdoll, and the top8 is stacked exactly so that we will meet in the finals. Later on, I will also learn that he’s playing with my “stolen” Vaults of Whispers, which Tommaso Loss lent him. The same Tommaso Loss who often rebukes me for my hot takes, who, many months ago, convinced me to give Jund Wildfire a try, and who convinced Lorenzo Montana to swap a Lembas for a Troll of Kazad-Dum. You will soon see how this last detail is relevant.
G1: My opponent starts with double Refurbished Familiar. The best answers to refurbished are my own Refurbished, Dispute, and Munitions, but I have none of those cards. Soon after, a third Familiar appears and forces me to discard Hydra. I’m keeping Blood Fountain in hand, so that I will be able to retrieve the Hydra later on. I’m trying to stall the board with Chrysalises, but they get predictably killed, while my opponent keeps beating me and even drops a Pactdoll Terror. But I can start a comeback, because I have exactly the mana to cast Fountain, activate it, cast a Chrysalis and kill Pactdoll with Cast Down. To do all this, I have to play a land and leave the Hydra alone in my hand, vulnerable to the fourth Familiar, but I have no other option. My opponent casts his own Fountain, brings back a Familiar, makes me discard the Hydra again, and casts Pactdoll Terror again. At this point, I have three Wellsprings on the table and plenty of mana. I just need to draw the first Dispute effect to unlock a chain of card advantage and get back into the game, but I have one last draw to do it. I draw Eviscerator’s Insight. Insight draws into Krark, that wipes Pactdoll away and draws two Refurbished, which make my opponent discard his last two cards in hand, among which there is a Crypt Rats that would’ve been lethal. I can now attack with two Chrysalises, leave three blockers back for extra safety, and present lethal the next turn. Now it’s my opponent’s turn to make the most of his last draw of the game. He draws a Crypt Rats and kills me.
G2: My opponent bricks and I quickly kill him with Munitions up as insurance against Toxin.
G3: My first hand has a Forest as its only land. My second hand has no lands. I mull to 5 and get a hand with a decent plan: two lands, Wildfire, Thorn and Chrysalis. This plan could quickly come apart, but at least it’s a hand that offers some chances of victory. My opponent keeps a onelander on 6 with Duress just like in G3 of our swiss match. He snipes my Wildfire with Duress, and this time he immediately draws the second land, in the form of Troll of Kazad-Dum. He then starts casting Disputes, looking for creatures, but can’t find any. I draw the third and fourth land, and I’m ready to cast one of my 4-drops. Thorn is risky, but I know that Chrysalis will just get removed and won’t bring me anywhere. I have to cast the monarch, and I do it. My opponent then draws into multiple Familiars and removals, deleting any chance I had to win the game.A few days later, Lorenzo explained to me that he wanted to avoid mulliganing to 5 in a matchup dictated by Refurbished Familiar and Duress. Regardless of how much I agree with this strategy, I would like to commend how he stuck to rational decisions, despite what happened the previous time he tried that strategy, and the tension of G3 of a Paupergeddon final. He had a heuristic that he believed offered him the highest chances of success, and he followed the heuristic to victory.
I congratulate myself with him again. The story of how he brewed his deck and brought it to the victory of Paupergeddon is amazing.
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