"Pauper Battles: Overwhelmed by the Darkness"

"Pauper Battles: Overwhelmed by the Darkness"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

Like a proud father I tracked the progression of one of my pet decks The Mono Black Devotion deck which I called The Dark Cultists. That week it was in the hands of Ed Tanyag , someone who confessed that he did not play any Standard deck and was mostly a Control EDH player in our group. He asked me if I had a deck to lend because he wanted to play Standard Pauper. I gladly handed over the deck because I wanted to see how it would run.

I knew the deck was strong because of the numerous test plays that I have gone through with it but I was way to enamored with my Mono-White I'd tap that deck to play it this week so Ed would go and show me the way. The deck under his guidance performed really well. 2 straight wins , one of them a Rush Boros Deck from a previous weekly champion.

The deck only hit a snap when it came against a variation of the Orzhoz Ethereal deck made by Lem Francisco. The thing that I enjoyed was that this deck was something that I also designed. Most fathers hate it when their children fight. I enjoyed this one fight because it was between 2 decks that I believed in. I was excited when the ethereal armor stopped The Dark Cultists.

The 4th and final round of this Standard Pauper tournament saw me go head to head with Lem because we had similar 2-1 records. The last round though was a beautiful execution of my decks main features. Attacking on turn 2 with 2 Ethereal Armors on a Hopeful Eidolon. The 7/7 Lifelink creature was too much to deal with. I needed a decisive victory over the Orzhov Ethereal this time around because it fought me to a standstill the previous week. All those freaking ox's!

The real highlight for that week for me though was when Ed piloted the Dark Cultists to a 3-1 finish and a sweet revenge of sorts against Anton and his U/B Miller deck that has killed me in two successive weeks. Though Ed , Anton and Me had similar 3-1 records Ed won out on the tie breaks. I was happy because someone who has never played standard decks mastered the deck easily and out of nowhere became champ! Even beating the decks creator! ( I make decks so good they beat the crap out of me hahahah). 

I am proud of the The Dark Cultists and Orzhov Ethereal for consistently winning. It was cool going up against them. I hope to see more interesting decks in the future. Maybe this will be the last week for creature based decks as there is a rise in U/B Miller decks in the other communities. The scene is really heating up and I am proud to be a part of it. Time to get ready for the Mill wave.