Sideboard


Madness is quite possibly my favorite mechanic in Magic, but it has yet to impact Modern or even Commander significantly. As a last ditch effort to make use of Madness, I turned to brewing in Pauper and have gotten startling results, making me think this deck could be the next big thing in Pauper. Furthermore, with Ultimate Master reprinting most of the deck more players than ever have been brewing around this archetype I have been playing for years. With this, I'll now attempt to justify my card choices in the deck, explain how to play the deck and hopefully write some of what I've learned the past two years playing the deck online.

There are many colors one can go into when choosing a Madness deck (as seen by the comments, this deck was once Rakdos and even Jund), but ultimately I find Red and Green provide the best options. Red is undoubtedly the best color for a Madness deck due to the fact that you get the extremely efficient Fiery Temper + Lightning Axe creature removal suite, threats in the form of Bloodmad Vampire and Reckless Wurm along with Insolent Neonate, Faithless Looting and Cathartic Reunion as an efficient Madness enabler and card advantage engine. Black also offers a lot to run in a Madness deck due to having access to Gurmag Angler as a beater along with Grave Scrabblers and Tortured Existence as a value engine with Putrid Imp. However, I find Green to be better almost solely because of Basking Rootwalla which can be discarded for free and pumped later into a threat which can rival a flipped Delver. Furthermore, Green has access to threats such as Arrogant Wurm which unlike Reckless Wurm doesn't die to a Hydroblast post sideboard as well as Hooting Mandrils which isn't chumped as easily as Gurmag Angler. Furthermore, while Putrid Imp helps the deck play on curve better Wild Mongrel is better lategame as another threat the opponent will have a hard time removing thanks to it's ability to change color and get indefinitely stronger. Along with better sideboard options against Affinity, Control and Burn I find Green to be ever so slightly stronger than Black (even though Grave Scrabbler is admittedly a sweet card I would love to be running). Blue is also worth mentioning thanks to Circular Logic and while that card is strong Blue unfortunately lacks the strong enablers and payoffs to back it up, and any Madness deck running Blue is essentially outclassed by Delver in every way.

R/G Madness is a Tempo deck looking to be efficient in both mana and timing by keeping an opponent off threats while amassing our own threats by using the Madness mechanic to not only get discounts on mana but also force our opponents to play inefficiently by either forcing them to use counterspells on their own turn or blanking removal with our various effects. Insolent Neonate is by far our best Turn 1 play due to the fact that it can sac itself for free to get a Madness card out quickly or can be sac'd in response to removal, and thanks to the fact that it draws a card we get card advantage either way. Furthermore, this card has Menace meaning even if we don't sacrifice it for value it can typically do lots of damage to the opponent during a game. Basking Rootwalla is also one of the strongest cards in the deck, giving us a free 1/1 creature that can be a 3/3 creature later in the game and helps the deck play around edict effects Black control decks like to throw about by cast it at Instant speed with a sacrifice outlet. Wild Mongrel provides the deck with it's most reliable sacrifice outlet and is hard to remove thanks to it's color changing ability getting around cards like Doom Blade and curves nicely into Arrogant Wurm. The deck is fantastic at being reactive to what the opponent is doing, as you can have breakneck fast starts where you play a Neonate Turn 1 and cast a Bloodmad Vampire at the end of their second turn to take over the game with a growing 4 power creature alongside lots of burn with Lightning Bolt and Fiery Temper or you can play the defensive game by casting 4/4 blockers at instant speed along with using Lightning Axe to cut down opposing Gurmag Angler or Myr Enforcer like cards. Getting an early Discard outlet is crucial for being able to play this reactive playstyle, and knowing the match ups are also incredibly important as well so while the deck is able to do a lot and take on most of the format well it typically isn't easy or obvious to do so. This is absolutely a deck that rewards you the more you play with it, and is not easy to pick up to get easy wins. The deck definitely makes you earn the win, but that isn't because the deck isn't powerful but rather because it requires an understanding of threat assessment timing when casting spells.

As mentioned earlier, Green offers lots of great sideboard options. Gleeful Sabotage is a house against Affinity and artifact based decks, acting as a 2 mana Stone Rain against Artifact lands and later in the game can be Conspired to 2 for 1 our opponent. Vines of Vastwood are also great in improving the Black based Control match ups by blanking their targeted removal (Edicts typically aren't a worry thanks to Rootwalla and Neonate). Feed the Clan essentially wins us the game against Burn, as we only run 2 Creatures that can't trigger the Ferocious trigger and thus is almost always gaining us 10 life. We run an additional Lighting Axe in the sideboard in the case our opponents have creatures that don't die to Lightning Bolt effects and against Tron the Axe is vital for helping taking down Ulamog's Crusher. Blazing Volley helps against Elves, Bogles, and strategies looking to get down a flurry of x/1 creatures. Pyroblast improves our match ups against Blue decks by allowing us to counter our opponent's counter spells or remove troublesome blue permanents. Finally, Relic of Progenitus is great in helping keeping control decks out of their graveyard and also subsequently deals with the few graveyard decks in the format.

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Date added 7 years
Last updated 5 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Pauper legal.

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.39
Folders decks i want, pupar, Pauper, Other Decks - [PAUPER], Decks I like or need to borrow from, stuff i think is swell, Pauper Decks, Mazzi fighi
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