"Pauper Kings: Not The Drones You Are Looking For"

"Pauper Kings: Not The Drones You Are Looking For"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

During the Battle For Zendikar hysteria that seemed to grip everyone I was in the middle of a very bad case of Writers block and could not come up with anything even if my life depended on it.

It is however a new year and I have accepted my friend St's challenge to write at least 600 words every day.And so here I am again with another Standard Pauper deck that in my opinion was not really going to fly without the other pieces coming in from Oath of the Gatewatch. There was simply not enough Drones to make a mono-colored deck that will be fitting of the name "Not The Drones You Are Looking For" or NTDYALF.

So to start off with my first standard pauper deck of the year what we have is a tool box of certain abilities that have made black the color of choice for a lot of us. If you would notice all the creatures on this deck are Drones from both lineages of Ulamog and Kozilek with the exception of Kozileks Pathfinder who is certified Big Brother Eldrazi to these little ones. He serves a different purpose here.

4 x Evolving Wilds

10 x Swamps

8  x Wastes

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22 Lands

2 x Kozileks Pathfinder

4 x Sky Scourer

4 x Sludge Crawler

4 x Slaughter Drone

4 x Kozilek's Shrieker

4 x Dominator Drone

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22 Creatures

4 x Altar's Reap

4 x Untamed Hunger

4 x Tar snare

4 x Bone Splinters

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16 spells

So to start with I wanted to have a land filter in the form of Evolving wilds. Always handy when you want to thin out your deck to get more Eldrazi critters in your hand. And believe me you would want a lot of colorless creatures in your hand as the game progresses with this deck.

I decided to build around Sky Scourer. I mean look at him sucky kissing that rock into oblivion. Isn't he adorable? So not only is his worthy of those Urutsokidoji nightmares from your childhood he is also great when his other fellow eldrazi come along to make him stronger. A +1/0 is not something to sneeze at when that creature has flying and could sucky kiss you to death unmolested.All the creature spells in this deck would trigger Sky Scourer. So how do you get more creatures?

Altars Reap! The old Innistrad trick of attacking and then sacrificing a creature that would die any way because of a massive blocker also works well here or on any aggro deck with a lot of attacking creatures. Use it to replenish you hand to trigger the Sky Scourer or simply to have more Eldrazi Drones on the floor for your Sucky Tentacle parties.

If you feel that the power levels are a bit low you could always use Untamed Hunger to make sure that your creatures would hit their targets because of Menace. And that added +2/+1 would help too.

Bone Splinters and Tar snare are both excellent spot removal. At instant Speed too! For the little creatures use the Tar Snare if it grows into unmanageable proportions then Bone Splinters is always there to make an unfair exchange on your behalf. I am disappointed a bit that they reprinted Grasp of Darkness as an uncommon. It would have been awesome here.

Dominator Drone is your direct damage specialist here. He comes in really handy when you can no longer attack due to multiple blockers already clogging your attack lanes.

And if all else fails. Call Kozilek's Pathfinder. I always include some big Monster finisher in my Standard Pauper decks and who could resist not adding this guy. I mean for 6 colorless mana you basically have a 5/5 finisher on your side. His ability also means that without a reliable removal spell your opponent will be taking damage again and again. Simply put you will always have mana to make this smasher unblockable. 6 mana in fact! 6 blockers that would not matter as the Kozileks Pathfinder finds its path to your opponents face.

So there you have it! Will "Not The Drones You Are Looking For" find a way to your hearts and sucky kiss you dry? Have that removal ready. They will menace their way to you.