This is my second "no netdecking" Pauper homebrew. That said, I'm pretty positive that I'm not the first person to come up with this deck or combo.
I was inspired to brew this when Pauper was sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast as an official, endorsed format on June 27th, 2019, bringing a once fan-owned format out of the shadows to join Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and Commander. The implications of this are many, from Pauper Pro Tours (or "Mythic Championships" as they call them now) to the now-certainty of Pauper-focused sealed product.
What excites everyone the most is the unified banlist! No more confusion over what is and isn't legal. With this unification, over 400 CARDS join the format.
The one I'm most excited for, as I'm sure many people are, is
Ashnod's Altar
. It's one of my pet cards. It powers my
Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
commander deck, and every other commander deck I've played with an Aristocratic focus. Instead of playing aristocrats, I intend to use this as it was intended: a broken combo piece. I have no doubt that there will be players out there who find ways to break this card harder than what I have before you today, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway.
Deck Strategy
My first post-Sanctioning brew will be Sultai, or . This is a combo-control deck, one loaded with top-deck fixing, countermagic, and tutors, some of the best Magic has to offer. The goal of the deck is counter the opponent's biggest threats while digging through the deck to get a combo together, then converting infinite mana into a win condition.
Card Choices
The centerpiece 3-card combo in this deck is the following:
Pili-Pala
+
Presence of Gond
+
Ashnod's Altar
Pili-Pala
is a combo creature that is so strong for a common that it even sees fringe ultra-budget play in MODERN. Enchanted with
Presence of Gond
, it can tap to make a 1/1 elf which can then be sacrificed to
Ashnod's Altar
for which is used to untap the scarecrow, making one mana of any color. This loop can repeat infinitely at instant-speed, generating infinite COLORED mana.
We then use that infinite colored mana to cast our whole hand and dump that infinite mana into a sink for instant victory on our turn.
The combo can serve other purposes. In the in-between phases where we have the combo together but haven't found a win condition yet, we can use the elf tokens as chump blockers indefinitely to buy ourselves time against creature decks.
Other card choices
Bloodrite Invoker
: This is one of two infinite mana sinks this deck contains. Once we have infinite colored mana we just cast this creature and
Lightning Helix
our opponent to death. In the rare cases you have to use it as a chump blocker, it trades up rather well with 3 power. However, it does fall prey to an
Electrickery
wipeout, so be careful. As insurance, it's preferable not to cast this card until the
Pili-Pala
combo is online and you also have countermagic in-hand.
Dimir Guildmage
: This creature, recently down-shifted from uncommon in Ultimate Masters, is our other infinite colored mana sink. It isn't as good of a win condition as
Bloodrite Invoker
as its abilities are sorcery-speed, so it's our last resort for victory. However, he still gets the job done as a combo extender as he isn't required to tap. We can force our opponent's hand by first making them discard their entire hand with his second ability. If our opponent has removal, that's when they'll fire it off. Once our opponent's hand is completely empty, we then activate his first ability repeatedly until we draw a counter and either a tutor or
Bloodrite Invoker
, at which point we cast it and win the game on the spot. If, for some freak reason (and this is highly unlikely to happen), all of our Bloodrite Invokers are dead and our ways to get it back are spent, we activate the Guildmage's first ability over and over and over again at sorcery speed targeting our opponent until they mill out and insta-lose. Also, this should only be done if they are completely tapped out, as they WILL draw a faster answer this way. Have a counter in hand if you find yourself using this last resort.
Ponder
,
Preordain
,
Brainstorm
: The blue trifecta. Any Pauper deck that has blue runs a playset of at least one of these. We use them to dig for our combo pieces and fix our draws right out of the gate. There are no better Magic cards out there for this purpose.
Evolving Wilds
,
Ash Barrens
: We're playing a three-color deck and need these to grab basics as a way to passively fight the nonbasic hate in competitive Pauper land destruction decks, but these cards serve double-duty. When combined with the blue trifecta, these fetchlands give us near complete control over what we draw and keep in our hand, especially with
Brainstorm
. A clutch play involves dropping an
Evolving Wilds
, casting
Brainstorm
, drawing three cards, putting two cards from our hand that we don't want on top of the deck, cracking/cycling the fetchland and flushing the unwanted cards away for fresh draws. In the end we create a makeshift knock-off
Ancestral Recall
that is very close to being as good and get a +1 in card advantage.
Drift of Phantasms
,
Shred Memory
,
Muddle the Mixture
: These are copies 13-24 of our three primary combo pieces. How? They all have the Transmute ability, which lets me pay 3 mana of varying combinations to pitch the card and tutor for a card with equal CMC. They spike the consistency of the deck to a ridiculous degree especially with the blue trifecta of draw-fixing.
Muddle the Mixture
and
Shred Memory
can grab
Pili-Pala
while
Drift of Phantasms
can grab either
Presence of Gond
or
Ashnod's Altar
. In isolation, they still have fantastic utility in the Pauper format.
Shred Memory
can inflict some serious damage against graveyard-based decks like flashback, madness,
Tortured Existence
and Dredge at instant speed.
Drift of Phantasms
is a great turn 3 drop against aggro decks with its big flying booty, chump-blocking goblins and tokens for days to buy us time.
Muddle the Mixture
is still a great draw even after we've assembled the combo, as we can use it to counter spells that try to remove our combo pieces. These are the glue that makes this deck playable.
Unearth
: This reanimation spell can bring back ANY creature in this deck (they're all CMC 3 or less), and is included in case a combo piece gets countered or destroyed. We don't run too many. Cycling is some nice utility in a combo-control deck. If we don't need it, it replaces itself.
Counterspell
: We're a blue deck. We play this card. It's just what we do. Hold it tight, save it for when your opponent is casting a game-winning combo piece of their own, a lethal bolt, or removal targeting any part of your combo.
Sideboard choices
Dispel
,
Foil
+
Deprive
+
Groundskeeper
: If you're up against another combo deck or a control deck that is packing loads of removal and counters, it never hurts to just add more countermagic. In a desperate situation, playing
Deprive
followed up by a free
Foil
is just badass. Why do you think we're running a good number of basics? Side in a
Groundskeeper
or two to get the Islands you pitch back if you bring in the full set of
Foil
s.
Groundskeeper
is also good tech against Pauper Ponza.
Capsize
: An alternate mana sink in case we're up against more aggressive decks. We use the infinite mana to trigger Buyback and cast the spell repeatedly, returning every creature and land to the opponent's hand so they have no board state, forever, and can't come back. It's also a just a good thing to side in to buy time while we put the combo together. Can be tutored by
Drift of Phantasms
.
Soul Burn
and
Drain Life
: Alternate finishers against removal-heavy decks. Can be tutored by our Transmute cards.
Dark Ritual
, more copies of
Unearth
: For matchups where we're playing non-interacting, hyper-linear combo decks that are just trying to race us and we need to field permanents faster. The Ritual allows for a turn one Altar, turn one Pili-Pala, or turn one Transmute with
Shred Memory
.
Nature's Claim
: Artifact and Enchantment hate. We don't care about our opponent's life total. We're an instant-win combo deck, remember?
Tormod's Crypt
: Another new unified Pauper edition. Gotta include catch-all graveyard hate that's better than
Shred Memory
Elven Cache
: If your opponent is packing enchantment removal and you fail to counter it, this card can get
Presence of Gond
back.
Shrivel
: Stops go-wide token strategies.
Fun tricks
-
You can use
Presence of Gond
to functionally counter your opponent's
Chainer's Edict
. In response, tap your creature, make a token, and sac that instead. It forces your opponent to 2-for-1.
-
If your opponent is playing a go-wide token deck,
Pili-Pala
is a 2/2. Attack, make them waste a token or two, then untap him after combat with his own ability. If you have the combo online and its your opponent's turn, make a token and chump-block with it. You can do that once per turn to chump
Gurmag Angler
indefinitely.
I hope you guys enjoy this silly deck. Hopefully it performs well.
