This is a B/W pauper deck that I brewed up a month ago when I discovered the card Nightsky Mimic. The card itself is fairly unimpressive right? A 2/1 for 2 with no natural evasion unless you cast a color intensive spell pre combat. Thankfully, the B/W cards pauper has available to the deck are more than sufficient.
The Core:
Nightsky Mimic: The obvious core of the deck. Meant to beat the opponent down and keep them down. To run the deck, you have to know just when to play mimic. For example, if you know that your opponent is beats, you need him out right away to race (and trust me, you can win a race against all T1 decks) or keep him back and let other spells eat some counters (remember, Mimic only cares if you cast the spell, not if it resolves).
Edge of the Divinity: Where do I begin, the card itself is a mix between Unholy Strength and Holy Strength, but is more conditional than both of them. Isn't that bad? Well I wouldn't call swinging for 7 in the air on turn 3 bad. Considering Nightsky dodges a lot of premium black removal that are straight kill spells, if this resolves you're putting your opponent on a very short clock. One issue that the card has on Mimic (the obvious target) is the fact that it still gets hit by Galvanic Blast, which sucks because affinity has them main board, so the surprise factor is short lived sometimes. In these cases, enchanting a Kingpin's pet and putting it out of reach with 5 toughness is completely viable. Also, if you're in a race against burn, enchanting a Nip Gwyllion or Tithe Drinker are very viable options as well. The card is very flexible in the deck and almost never leaves the deck post-boarding.
Extort/Pillory/Removal: Sometimes, you get those games where beats isn't enough. Whether it be tons of blockers/lack of a mimic/what have you, you need a way to stay in the game. Fortunately, this deck is very good at that. Lets say you play your turn 2 Mimic, which immediately draws removal on the opponents side and they start to establish board presence. In this situation, you have a plethora of removal (Unmake/Pillory/Journey/Doom Blade) to satisfy yourself until you can get an unearth or other creatures out. One thing the deck does hilariously well is attrition your opponent. Having two pillories out while casting extort is no laughing matter for your opponent, because he'll be taking upwards of 4-5 indirect damage per turn depending on the board state. This plan is very effective against affinity as it normally doesn't have a way to deal with your guys after using up their galvanic blasts, so you can play your mimics, draw removal, then play your extorters and get to work.
Sideboard:In the sideboard there are a couple things that I will address for each card.
Apostle's Blessing: This is a card i've gotten to play with for a little and I'm not entire sure about. It absolutely hoses decks like affinity where you normally only have to deal with 4 removal spells max. So, having the one mana and two life to pay to protect your dude is really useful. However, I'm not entire sure If thats what I want in the matchup. Either way, its in right now because it destroys most targeted removal.
Beckon Apparition:This one isn't as strong as it was when cloudpost was still a thing. Being able to exile ghostly flicker to stop the fissure combo was a must to win the match. Now, I think it's still good against decks that run Mystical Teachings and can also be good as a surprise blocker, but it needs testing in the current meta.
Castigate/Duress:A must for Izzet Blitz. Being able to snipe one of their creatures or a problem spell from their hand is so crucial in winning the match up. Castigate also has the added bonus of triggering your Nightsky Mimic which means I like it a bit better than duress, however being able to snag a phyrexian probe on the play is a big game. They're good in a number of other matchups as well, both in their own ways (duress against instant/sorcery heavy, castigate against creature heavy) but the fact that they give you info and mess with your opponents game plan make them both solid cards.
Echoing Decay:Just so much value against multiple X/2 targets. Even against targets that won't die to it to set up a favorable block or a partial fog. The card is insane against delver if they go greedy and get multiple faeries/delvers out to kill. Also hoses goblins very nicely. Just a solid card that in some situations is much better than doom blade.
Mana Tithe:Oh boy, no one ever expects Mana Tithe. Its a card most people never really see coming. When you lose/win against a B/W beats deck, the last thing you expect is to get your T1 Delver countered. Its really only good for a surprise factor, but man does it win games sometimes.
Maybeboard:
Guardian of the Guildpact:If you can clog the board (which you should be able to) This guy is an all-star against Mono black control. He dodges all removal except for edicts and unmakes/pillories and puts your opponent in an awkward situation. The downside to the card is that it costs 4 mana and only puts down 2 power of threat on the field. While this is considered fairly bad in most cases, it just destroys some decks if it resolves which is why its in the maybeboard for further testing.
Unearth:Its already in the mainboard, its just a matter of whether I want a full playset of them in the main/side board. On one hand, its card draw or graveyard retrieval for mimic as well as an extort sink. On the other hand, it could very well be a removal spell and pass by just fine. I'm unsure what to do about the number so its staying at 2 mainboard for the time being.
Diabolic Edict:This isn't really a maybe card as it is an "I don't have the tickets to purchace yet" card. Edict is insane against hexproof, which is making a run in a lot of Scheduled Ques, and for a good reason, uninteractive creatures with big enchantments is pretty damn good, so you need to keep their dudes off the field and beat down with your own. This will almost assuredly make the sideboard when I can test it further.
Strengths:- Has Plenty of Removal- Has the ability of putting an opponent on an extremely short clock.- Can play an aggro-centered or control-centered role depending on the matchup (flexibility).- Can deal indirect damage through extort/pillory.- Deals with bounce very well through extort/mimic triggers.
Weaknesses: - Counterspells (Mono-blue matchup) and removal heavy decks make it so you can't develop an ideal board state and can leave you frustrated.- Electrickery/Krark-Clan Shaman/other 1 toughness removal really kills you if you can't get your creatures buffed with a divinity early as Mimic/tithe/gwyllion all have 1 toughness.
Conclusion: The decks is new in the format, so its success may in fact be due to a sort of surprise factor, but from the testing I've done I would like to believe that the deck is in a good spot in the current meta. It does very well against most of the current decks and with the banning of both cloudpost and temporal fissure, effectively neutering one of its biggest problem decks, Cloudpost, I believe it will continue to do very well in the future.
Afternote: Pauper is in a tough spot at the moment. The format itself has an illusion of balance because all the powerful T1 decks are all overpowered. This leads people to believe that the meta game is actually healthy, but in reality if you aren't running one of the top decks (which there are maybe a max of seven plain variations) you won't get much success thrown your way. What I'm trying to do is brew. Brewing in the format is very intimidating. Before, the kind of trial of tribulation was if you could beat cloudpost, you were T1. Now it seems like if you can beat either mono-black control or mono blue delver, the deck is T1. Unfortunately, this leads to a lack of creativity and very little variation in the meta game. Just look at any featured deck article on WOTC, the top decks are all the same. This isn't necessarily a bad thing that some decks are powerful (quite the contrary, if anything were able to win, then nothing would be very special) but if WOTC wants people to be attracted to Pauper as a format, they really need to ban out some of the arguably "overpowered" cards in some of the decks. But there is one I would really like to focus on.
Mono-Blue Delver: This decks is just not fun to play against, control or aggro. Delver has the benefit of a plethora of counterspells, draw spells, and powerful tempo creatures. What I really wanted to see instead of a cloudpost ban was a cloud of faeries ban or a ban on one or more of the counterspells. By banning cloudpost, WOTC is making it clear it is not in favor of diversity, quite the opposite in fact. If they would have stayed content with just banning temporal fissure, we would still see cloudpost around, but they would no longer be able to do the extremely irritating and non interactive combo that is Temporal fissure storm. Decks like Cloudpost capsize or U/R Cloudpost are fair decks that, while irritating to play against, don't run mind numbingly easy combo's that the opponent is forced to F6 through, knowing he has no chance of recovery. Even if you had to ban a locus, ban glimmer post. That way, you still have 4 post, and it wouldn't be as rampant, but they now no longer have the life gain able to support the nearly endless stall against aggro decks. Instead, they decided to cut an entire deck out of the format. This isn't a good move on Wizard's part. If we want to keep the format fun and interesting, we need to continue diversifying the format. Brew with some janky cards. Who knows what will happen. This deck, which has seen success was a spur of the moment thing upon seeing Nightsky Mimic and low and behold, it worked out in the end. The same could happen to a card you find too.
