"Pauper Battles: Riding the Boros Ambulance"

"Pauper Battles: Riding the Boros Ambulance"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

One of the reasons I got back into magic was when I realized that I could make kick ass decks with cards that you just bought for one peso. I introduced my friend Mark to this and got him hooked in the game again as well. Yup Pauper magic was in my blood and I had not played a game of it for awhile. My brother has been pestering me to make a pauper deck for some time now so we could compete in the weekly Tournaments in SM North Edsa. With the lack of access to my cards and lesser time to brew I was stuck. I went there on a Sunday anyway because I wanted to play. I asked my friend ST if I could borrow his deck so I could participate. After play testing it by myself this 60 card deck felt really different. It was efficient and something really felt right about its speed and mana curve. Still, I have an untested deck and a pilot who was very rusty from not playing any competitive standard decks in a while. I had no sideboard and would have to compete with what was in the deck.

I would not have known that I would go on undefeated for 3 rounds and succumb to the eventual champion of the tournament this week. It felt great and pauper was a very exciting format to be in. There was no mass removal and creature aggression was the name of the game. I nicknamed the Deck , Boros Ambulance after an article I wrote about Tajic and boy was it right on the money. It trounced creatures and players alike. I had to admire the design and efficiency that went with the design.After the tournament I just had to go and build my own copy of the deck.Hats off to ST for styling this one. 

Here is the deck list that I competed with. 

9 X Plains

9 x Mountain

4 X Boros Guildgate

4 X Daring Skyjek

3 X Azorius Arrester

3 X Master of Diversion

4 X Cavalry Pegasus

4 X Gore-house Chainwalker

4 X Skyknight Legionnaire

4 X Wojek Halbediers

4 X Shock

4 X Lightning Strike

4 X Celestial Flare

Now the great thing about this deck is that the most expensive thing in it is the Lightning Strike which is valued from anywhere between 15 to 20 pesos. The deck revolves around the Red White Boros Humans and the single Rakdos in the form of Gore-house Chainwalker.

Cavalry Pegasus is essential to the over all strategy because it allows all attacking humans to gain flying when they attack and yes all of the decks creatures are humans. Boasting of 26 creatures there is no shortage of attackers in this deck. They are very aggressive too since most of the time they are powered at 3. Cost efficient as well because the higher casting cards are at the mere 3 mana range and have built in evasion like flying in Skyknight Legionnaire and the tapping triggered ability of Master of Diversion.

St has talked about this deck quite a bit in his blog but I am still writing about it to point some more of the decks awesome strategies. Azorius Arrester is a great deterrent because it delays a lot of creatures while adding another creature that could fly off later with the Cavalry Pegasus.

The aggressiveness factor of this deck is very high and couple it with great creature control then you really have a winner. Celestial Flare takes charge when a lone massive creature attacks you. The sacrifice effect is really great in this regard because there are some decks that have the Hexproof Benthic Giant or Gladecover scout. Lightning Strike and Shock are good for burning other creatures which happened in my 3rd match with Joey. We literally had a shoot out of creatures. The deck though had more creatures than Joey had bullets and he succumbed. The Burn in this deck is also good at just shooting someone if they are down to 2 or 3 life.

Some weak points that I do seem to observe however is that a well played Shrivel or Overloaded Electrickery will certainly ruin your day because of all the 1 toughness creatures that this deck is running. Even the 2 powered ones are not safe so the key is to just be patient and not cast too many creatures in play when you do not need to.  

Over all though the deck finishes fast and opponents are always pressured to be on the defensive side since the amount of damage is always piling up. I look forward to playing my own version of the deck again soon and let us see what the competition has done to adjust not being put on the Boros Ambulance.