"Out of the Oceans: Simic Pauper"

"Out of the Oceans: Simic Pauper"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

The Pauper bug has hit me big time and one of the things that I have always wanted to build was a Simic deck. All of the pre-release cards that I have amassed have been pushing me down that path. Yes I wanted to make a Kaiju deck in EDH but have not found the inspiration for it. Playing with Pauper though I found a great abundance of cards that might be sitting in a dusty shelf somewhere or are languishing in some card shop bargain bin.

Here is the deck that I have come up with for my Out of the Oceans Simic Pauper deck.

3 X Cloudfin Raptor

3 X Crocanuara

3 X Omen Speaker

4 X Drakewing Krasis

4 X Frilled Oculus

4 X Battering Krasis

2 X Benthic Giant

4 X Shambling Shark

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25 Creatures

4 X Runner's Bane

4 X Voyages End

3 X Aqueous Form

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11 Spells

9 X Island

9 X Forest

4 X Simic Guildgate

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22 Lands

Sideboard:

4 X Stymied Hopes

4 X Spell Rupture

4 X Claustrophobia

Now on to the deck. With the exception of the Omen Speaker all of the creatures are Simic to the core and have the Evolve Mechanic. Now one of the inherent weakness of the mechanic is that creatures tend to reach their full "evolution" and just stop there. This is of course a common problem in deck building so I have made sure that there are creatures here that have varying Power and toughness so that things are always evolving all the way to the last drop. The last drop on the mana curve is the awesome hexproof 4/5 Benthic giant from Theros.

Now to play this deck the ideal draw would be to have the one mana cost Cloudfin Raptor on turn One and build it up as your mana curve goes higher.While the Cloudfin Raptor is evolving and it having flying then it will potentially dish out lots of hits before being taken cared of. Now this is for the early part of the game. Frilled Oculus , Shambling Shark and Omen Speaker at turn 2 evolves the Raptor in no time at all , for the 3 drops you have the krasis duo of Drakewing Krasis and Battering Krasis. As well as the Crocanuara which could take care of all the pesky flyers in the format because of its built in Reach.

Potential game finishers are the Benthic Giant or any of your evolved creatures with an Aqueous form attached to it.Hence Out of the Ocean...Into your opponents face.

Notice that the main board consists of Creatures because I have built this deck around the aggressiveness of these beasts. The sideboard does contain 2 sets of counters for specific match ups. An extra set of Claustrophobia as well if more creature control is needed.

The deck also features enough scry to set up the succeeding turns in Omen Speaker , Voyages End and Aqueous form.

For Defense the deck would rely on the Runners Bane for the 3 powered or less creature and the Voyages End for those creatures that are too big to handle. Or something without hexproof that has an ethereal armor attached to it. 

I look forward to playing with this deck list soon and very excited to know how it will stack up to the current kings of Pauper which is Boros and Ethereal Armor centric decks. In the meantime , it is time to keep on evolving.