Ok Your Mardu deck here is absolutely disgusting. I'm no expert in brewing Pauper, but your deck here is outpacing, out ramping, out controlling, and even out aggroing my Rakdos Stompy deck! This deck should be banned on principle alone.....good job!

I do not feel that the black splash for BCV or costly plunder is worth it. Three colors is hard in pauper and you have to really justify it. Ruining the manabase of a decent Boros deck is not really worth it. If you add Kuldotha Rebirth and 3 more artifacts like Porcelain Legionnaire or other cards like Battle Screech or Rally the Peasants, you will have a much more consistent deck.

And the comparson to ancestral is not really good. Sure, you can spend 2 cards and 4 mana to draw three cards, but it is not getting you far ahead, nor does it have mad recursion possibilities. And the comparison between rhino and BCV - one more mana, no trample, no additional toughness and no requirement for metalcraft really make the cards too incomparable.

Boza: I'd have to disagree with your point regarding costly plunder. It is one of the best card draw in the deck and trades the need for a turn by turn monarch card draw ability with instant card advantage. The problem with boros monarch in general is that it makes for awkward problems and does not sit well in an aggro meta.

Kuldotha Rebirth has always been underwhelming for me especially in a meta choke full of to the ground aggro strategies like affinity, elves, and stompy. The reason I'm comparing BCV to rhino is the philosophy behind it of instantly draining opponent for a substantial point of life while gaining board presence. BCV is great because it can stabilize my life totals as well as potentially bringing down my opponent's life totals to burn or lethal range. It can also be bounced by skyfisher to be recast again.

I understand your skepticism about splashing black but I think it is worth testing and tweaking before dismissing the idea.

Well, as I said, card advantage is very relative in this case - 4 mana and 2 cards to draw 3 cards is just a worse rate than Divination, which nets the same amount of card advantage for 1 less mana. If you factor in the ETB effect of wellspring, then you get ahead, but as described costly plunder is just as its name suggests - costly.

On BCV - the cost of doulbe black is real. You play 9 CIPT lands. That is a lot for a relatively low-to-the ground aggresive deck. Right now, you are playing a turn behind your opponent in exchange for getting to lava spike them at turn 5+, which is not a good payoff.

I like the black splash and BCV, but it is not enough to justify it. I would add 4 Disciple of the Vault and go heavier into the sac artifact theme.

Boza: The point of CP is the incidental value of not only drawing three cards off of ichor wellspring (a "cantrip" card I already gained value off of skyfishers/glint hawk) but also playing it in response to various interactions (turning my creature that's about to eat a removal or extra artifact lands to card draw). It's just a really versatile card after testing.

Disciple of the vault route sounds interesting, I might test that out. Thanks for your feedback!

Hey Boza you did your math wrong with your divination thing

The wellspring draws on ETB or graveyard, total of two cards

Costly plunder draws two cards

So... B3 or 4 to draw four

That's pretty dang good card advantage... Two cards for four.

So I just wanna say that I built this before I noticed you did it, then your build showed up in my "similar decks" feed, so I checked it out and our builds aren't that far off. Although I added an additional synergy with Costly Plunder. I have 3 Angelic Purge as an efficient removal spell as well as giving me a free way to sac Ichor Wellspring. Looking at my list against yours, the only differences are I have the aforementioned Angelic Purge in place of Battle Screech, one CP became a third BCV, and the journey's became a main-deck Relic of Progenitus and an additional land. Our sideboards differ quite a bit, but that's not important because that usually comes down to the meta you play with. Honestly this deck seems super sweet and I want to put together in paper already and start the spice. Good job on the deck and feel free to look at my version if you'd like. Mardu Valuetown