Of the manyMagic: The Gatheringformats, Pauper is one of the most unique and, in theory, budget friendly options available. It’s an eternal format, with any card of common rarity since the beginning of Magic’s release being playable (save for its banned list). With a 60 card deck minimum alongside a 15-card sideboard, there are many options for deck-building within the format.
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While Pauper theoretically has the most sets to choose from alongside other eternal formats like Vintage and Legacy, its unique restriction of requiring only common rarity cards greatly cuts down the potential card pool. This offers some unique challenges and pitfalls that other formats do not have, requiring just as much planning and consideration as the other formats to make a competitive deck.
1Playing With An Improper Amount of Lands
Lands are the most essential part of Magic. Having too few opens you up to missing out on casting spells, while having too many ensures many dead draws when you need useful cards.
Pauper lacks many of the most important fetch lands and mana fixers that have become staples in other Magic formats. This means that finding the most optimal amount of lands is critical, probably even more so in Pauper. There are a few options forversatile lands in Pauper, but not many. At most, you will want to play at most two colors, as more will be extremely difficult to implement effectively.
2Not Knowing Your Deck Archetype
Many decks in Magic adhere to an archetype, which define how they are meant to play. These archetypes include aggro, midrange, combo, tempo, and control. These archetypes affect things what you should be playing, how you should be playing it, and what your win con is.
While these archetypes aren’t strict, especially in Pauper, knowing which your deck adheres to can help you organize your cards and determine what are needed. For example, aggro decks seek to win the game as soon as possible and thus should not have draw spells that can draw the game out.
3Not Playtesting
Playtesting is especially important in formats with a limited selection of cards, such as Pauper. Optimizing your deck is all about knowing how it plays and how reliably it can win. For Pauper, the best options for playtesting new decks are online, with the best being MTG Online as it fully supports the format and is, mostly, cheap. MTG Arena is viable for newer sets, but is not well-supported, nor does it have as many cards as would be available to paper or MTG Online players.
This aspect is especially important in Pauper due to the general fast speed of the format and experiencing a variety of different decks is critical to get the feel of how fast the game is likely to go, so you may tune accordingly.
4Disregarding The Meta
While the meta can be discouraging for some, it should nevertheless be heeded. Even if you’re not playing the meta, knowing whatartifacts are common in Pauper or what the newest Aggro decks are is a very useful tool.
The meta list is essentially free information on what decks are popular and should be used by meta players and non-meta players alike. For meta players, it offers up-to-date information on new cards to incorporate into your decks. For non-meta players, it is useful information on what you need to prepare to play against.
5Trying To Plan Against Every Deck
With the limited options available in Pauper, it is simply not practical to prepared your deck to counter every other deck. Doing so, even in control decks, will only leave your deck unable to push its win conditions.
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Removal is critical in most decks, but learning which removal spells are the most effective and versatile is key to surviving in competitive Pauper. Besides, preparing against niche decks is what the sideboard is for.
6Forgetting The Sideboard
While you shouldn’t gear your deck to counter every possibility your opponent has, that isn’t to say you shouldn’t be prepared for them. The sideboard is a useful tool that you can use to play against opponents your deck may otherwise be unprepared for.
Ignoring this tool is a recipe for disaster when you come across a deck your deck can not otherwise compete with.
7Not Knowing How Fast Your Deck’s Win Condition Is
Pauper can be a very fast format due to the lack of effective counter and removal options, and many decks aim to take advantage of this. Knowing how fast your deck operates without opposition is crucial information, as you should aim to end the game at that turn count every time.
Likewise, for control players, it is important to have counters at each of these stages to disrupt much faster decks. There are many fantasticburn options in Pauper, so control players will need how long to last to enact their own win conditions and have ways to survive until then.
8Not Knowing The Best Cards In Each Color
Barring new entries from recent sets, the card pool is largely known and established. Thus, finding the most efficient cards in each color is much easier relative to other formats and should be exploited.
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No blue control deck is optimized without Counterspell, which is one of the most effective counters in any format, much less Pauper. Likewise, Deadly Dispute is a staple of black decks and thus should be considered if not included outright. There are many staples in Pauper that are too good not to at least consider, at least in the competitive scene.
9Playing ‘Trap’ Cards
Pauper, due to its more limited selection, requires a more thoughtful selection of what cards to keep than other formats. While there are many cards to choose from, most are not viable. These cards are ‘traps’, or cards that are simply not viable for the format despite their apparent power. The format is fast, requiring very fast responses to stay in check, and most common rarity cards simply cannot be played at the speed they need to.
Likewise, trap cards are also cards that need other cards to be valuable. Unless the cards can combo to win outright, needing other cards to make creatures or other spells useful opens you up to easy disruption or are too slow to be useful in most contexts. They may seem appealing at a glance, but that’s a trap you should avoid falling for.
10Not Playing To Your Strengths
The most critical thing to know when putting together a Pauper deck is to always play to your strengths. If you’re playing an aggro deck with the aim to win by turn four, then everything in the deck should be geared toward that. Disregard draw spells and removal, the goal is to reliably burn down the opponent by turn four. Likewise, for the other archetypes.
While this arguably reduces your versatility, that is what the sideboard is for and should be used as such. Every card in your deck should be built to accomplish your deck’s goal as quickly and reliably as possible. Deviating from that opens your deck up to mistakes and can easily cost you the win.
