Hello, and welcome to the first of hopefully many Pauper guides here on Mystical Teachings!

I’ve been playing Pauper on and off for years, but I’ve never really seriously gotten into it before this year, when I decided to start devoting more time to it for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, I made plans to join Sodek and other friends for Paupergeddon in Lucca, seeing how good of a time they’ve had at the past few editions of the biggest Pauper event in the world. Secondly, constructed scene in my hometown has been on a rapid decline since Covid, and Pauper is the only format that not only weathered this storm, but flourished – over twenty people show up to game on most Tuesdays, which is an excellent result given that we often struggle to get eight people at our weekly Modern or Standard. Even though I mostly play online these days, I still find the paper aspect of Magic invaluable, both because I greatly enjoy playing with physical cards, and since it’s the best way to hang out with my friends on a regular basis. Finally, Poland has a fairly competitive Pauper scene – we’ve had a couple of nation-wide events every year organised by the C’mon initiative, as well as Polish Pauper Nationals, and one of said events was held in Poznań in April. We don’t get many large tournaments in my city, as basically every significant Magic event in Poland is organised, rightfully so, in Warsaw, so I tend to take any chance I get to compete in my hometown. Overall, I’ve had plenty of incentives to get into Pauper, and I picked it up again around March, starting with a deck that I’ve had the most reps with the last time I’ve dipped into the format – Terror.

Back when I was last playing it, neither Murmuring Mystic nor Cryptic Serpent had been downshifted to common yet, and Mono Blue Terror wasn’t a viable deck. Instead, the tempo deck du jour was UB Terror, combining one mana 5/5s with Snuff Out and Unexpected Fangs, which was particularly well positioned at that time. However, a lot has changed during my last Pauper stint two years ago, and I had to adapt to this new reality. Naturally, I gravitated towards the most familiar deck, and seeing that Mono Blue Terror picked up the majority of UB’s real estate, I decided to jam a few matches with it. I was particularly optimistic since Deadly Dispute, Basking Broodscale and Kuldotha Rebirth were all freshly banned, and especially that last one has been known to give Terror some fits. I’ve top 4’d the C’mon tournament in Poznań with the deck, before falling to Skura and his mighty Faeries in the semis, but I still felt like the deck was not quite right. My biggest takeaway was that Cryptic Serpent was fairly middling, while Murmuring Mystic impressed me greatly and made me consider other blue decks that can put it to a better use. After browsing MTGO results for a bit, I stumbled upon Skred, and after a couple matches I was hooked and haven’t looked back since.

Why Skred over Mono U or UB?

The most important question one has to answer when picking up an archetype is whether it’s a worse version of a different deck already present in the format. If the answer is yes, then it’s almost always advisable to keep looking for something else. In the case of UR, the closest neighbours are other decks playing Tolarian Terror in Mono U and UB, or at least it might appear that way at first glance. I intentionally avoided calling Skred “UR Terror”, because I feel that it plays out significantly differently from the other two, and sharing the card Tolarian Terror isn’t much of a unifying factor. It’s a bit like calling Spy “Jund Rumble” and RG Monsters “RG Rumble”, as both decks are using Malevolent Rumble – I’ll concede that the difference between Skred and its blue brethren is smaller, but you get my meaning. In my eyes, Mono U and UB are two variants of the same strategy: cantrip heavy, using Scour and Note to power up cheap threats that can win the game on their own. UB is a bit slower but has better removal, while Mono U is more streamlined and banks on its main plan being good enough to win, even when backed up by mediocre interaction like Deem Inferior, partially thanks to its superior manabase. Skred, on the other hand, is firmly a control deck that uses Tolarian Terror either as a way to stabilise the board against aggressive decks or to clock decks that aren’t interested in playing the attrition war. Most of the time though, the scary serpent is just a supporting cast to the true stars of the show: Murmuring Mystic and Monarch Pirates. There are hardly any decks in Pauper that aren’t scared of at least one of these four drops, and it’s fairly easy to warp the game around them with the right interaction to back them up. This is where the “red” in “Skred” really shines – no other colour in Pauper is even remotely close when it comes to efficient removal, and keeping the board clear is instrumental when even a single creature slipping through at an inopportune moment can spell disaster. I’m quite certain that Monarch is one of, if not the number one, most broken mechanics in Pauper, and building around it makes a lot of sense to me. So, if I had to give the elevator pitch of this deck, I’d say it’s the best deck at exploiting one of the strongest mechanics in the format, which is a pretty good place to be.

Maindeck card choices

Let’s start with the list I’ve played last weekend at Paupergeddon Lucca to an uninspiring, even if positive record of 5-3:

You can find a downloadable copy of the decklist here

After seeing some innovations from other Skred players, as well as based on my own experiences of both playing in the event and discussing with my friends, I’ll assuredly try to experiment with various cards. I’ll cover all of the cards in the deck, as well as all of those I’ve either tried or plan on trying, to the best of my ability.

Creatures

As I previously mentioned, in my mind Terror is closer to being the worst creature in the deck than the hallmark threat of the deck. I’ve been pondering cutting it, but I haven’t found anything better and it’s a solid roleplayer that tends to shine when the four drops aren’t that great. A good example of this would be High Tide, where having a cheap threat that clocks fast and doesn’t require taking the shields down for a turn is precisely what the doctor ordered. Another matchup where neither Mystic nor Pirates shine particularly bright are various Red decks. These decks are usually quite fast, which means that four drops can often come down too late to matter. Some of them are great at stealing Monarch, which makes Pirates into a liability against them, and all of them will have Pyroblasts, which is particularly backbreaking against Murmuring Mystic out of an aggro deck. If you’re playing against a slower deck, like Jund, it’s perfectly fine to trade one for one on cards with Blast, and you can even craft a gamestate that will allow you to outplay said Blast. However, against most red decks, tapping out for a four drop that gets answered for one mana is often a death sentence. I tend to keep a small number of both Mystics and Pirates against red decks, and the particular split depends on which flavour of red I’m facing, but against all of them Terror is the primary threat.

With all that being said, in most matchups both Mystic and Pirates will be at least decent, and usually at least one of them will be amazing. I like splitting them three and three, and relying more on the Crimson Fleet Commodore than Azure Fleet Admiral mostly because the latter gets hit by Pyroblast just like the Mystic. I could even see running three Commodores and zero Admirals just to further improve against Pyroblast, especially given that my sweeper of choice is Fiery Cannonade. I would recommend keeping the total count of six four drops in the deck, with the possibility of moving some to the sideboard if your local metagame is particularly skewed in a direction that makes one of them poor. For example, Pirates are pretty bad against go wide creature decks like Faeries or some builds of Red, so if these decks are popular in your area, I would consider moving a Pirate or two to the sideboard.

I haven’t really found other creatures worth playing in Skred. Back in the day people used to run Augur of Bolas, but I think it’s just too underpowered to play in the contemporary Pauper. In basically all matchups creatures are amongst the best cards in your deck, so not finding them is a significant downside, and three cards are few enough that it’s too easy to miss with it for my taste. One other interesting idea that I’ve considered prior to Paupergeddon was splashing green mostly for Wrything Chrysalis, but I ultimately dismissed this idea as the deck is already quite heavy on four drops and Chrysalis doesn’t seem necessarily better than Mystic and Pirates and assuredly isn’t better enough to warrant splashing in a format where adding even a second colour to the deck already comes at a steep price.

Removal

As I’ve already established, Monarch is, at least in my mind, the most potent card draw engine in Pauper, and removal, both single target and sweepers, plays an absolutely crucial role in defending this incredibly important game piece from going over to the opponent. There are virtually infinite one mana removal spells available in red, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to killing creatures: Skred. It might not have the versatility of Lightning Bolt, nor its immediate damage output, but if the game goes long enough, it’ll kill close to any creature in the format, barring some gigantic Nyxborn Hydras, and it’s rarely outpaced on the curve. Getting to deal with anything on the other side of the table for one mana is incredible, and it allows for some backbreaking turns in the midgame, such as killing the only opposing creature and dropping a Pirate on turn five, or casting multiple interaction spells at once to catch up. Unfortunately, four is the maximum number of Skreds one can pack in the deck, and there’s a somewhat steep drop-off after it. The most popular secondary removal is the iconic Lightning Bolt, but I’ve been liking Galvanic Discharge instead. Going upstairs with Bolt definitely has some value in any deck, but I’ve found myself wishing for extra reach extremely rarely when playing Skred, so in my opinion this aspect of the card is significantly less important here than in more aggressively slanted archetypes like Faeries. It’s not uncommon for me to draw first blood on turn ten or even later, when I have the board squarely under control, so I’ll gladly give up the extra reach for the flexibility of Discharge. Killing an early creature with the first copy and banking some energy for later to shoot down a bulkier threat comes up quite often, especially since many decks in Pauper has both one and five toughness creatures: Jund with Refurbished Familiar and Chrysalis, Mono Blue Terror with Delvers and Terrors, RG with Arbor Elves and Chrysalis/Avening Hunter and so on. Using the leftover energy feels very relevant to me, and it happens in every other game or so against the decks listed above, so for the time being I’m happy with Discharge over Bolt. There are two other interesting candidates as far as removal goes that I haven’t given a try yet. First of them is Torch the Tower, and the second is Suplex. Torch has been off my radar until Bernardo Torres and Marcio Carvalho played it at Paupergeddon Lucca, both securing an impressive 11-3 record. There’s a good deal of both death triggers and recursion in Pauper: Clockwork Percussionist and Sneaky Snacker in red decks, Blood Fountain in Jund/Affinity, Myr Retriever in Tron and so on. There aren’t many three toughness creatures in the format, so the difference between two and three damage isn’t as significant as it is in for example Modern, and Murmuring Mystic provides a steady stream of tokens to pay the Bargain from time to time. With all that being said, I’m still not convinced that Torch is better than Discharge, but I can see it being the case and will try it on my own at some point. Finally, we have Suplex: the most versatile but at the same time the priciest of the bunch. Both two mana and sorcery speed are hefty downsides, but the possibility of maindecking artifact hate in the format where Jund is one of the most popular decks has some appeal. I think I’ll shelve it for now, maybe run a single copy to give it a try, but if Bridge decks ever become an alarming portion of the metagame, I’ll keep Suplex in mind. Some people might suggest simply maindecking Cast into the Fire instead, as it’s already a proven sideboard card in the format. Personally, I think that the removal part of it is just a tad too bad for a maindeck card – if it could kill a two toughness creature then we’d have an entirely different discussion, but with the card printed as is, I’m happy with relegating Cast into the sideboard.

Sweepers are another big upside of red over any other colour in Pauper. Both the instant speed and being easy on mana handily trumps Drown in Sorrow and similar cards in black, and white, a colour traditionally known for sweepers, doesn’t have any contenders whatsoever at common. As far as the particular card choices, there are two frontrunners: Breath Weapon and Fiery Cannonade. Breath Weapon used to be the go-to sweeper in Kuldotha heyday, with the premier aggro deck sporting multiple Pirates that dodge Cannonade. However, with the shift towards more burn-heavy builds, the only aggressive Pirate still seeing play is Goblin Tomb Raider, which isn’t even in the majority of red lists right now (which admittedly might change in the future, with the success of Franek Komsta and Rally Red at the last Paupergeddon). While not being able to kill it is certainly a downside, I feel that not killing Crimson Fleet Commodore is a significant enough advantage to make up for it. This one is certainly a judgement call, and I wouldn’t fault anybody for sticking to Breath Weapon, but I urge you to at least weigh pros and cons of both.

Countermagic

Similarly to removal, there’s a clear best counterspell with a markedly worse supporting cast to round out the roster. The countermagic in question is the actual factual Counterspell, which has been getting the job done for over thirty years and counting. Answering anything for mere two mana is excellent in Pauper, which is significantly slower than other constructed formats in which Counterspell is legal. The next best thing when it comes to catch-all countermagic is likely Lose Focus, and boy is it a downgrade. It’s quite likely the worst card in the deck, and I’ve been looking for decent alternatives to it for a while, but came up short. The closest one I found was Aether Spike, which might be interesting with four Galvanic Discharges, but I haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet and I might very well never do so. The last catch-all counterspell I’ve considered is Foil, which used to terrorise Pauper in tandem with Gush, but have been all but absent since its partner in crime got banned, and rightfully so. There’s some value in having a free spell that allows one to tap out more aggressively on turn four, especially against combo decks like High Tide, but the alternative cost of Foil is a bit too steep to pay in my opinion, so ultimately I haven’t tried it out.

With broad countermagic out of the way, let’s get into more specialised tools. The first group of those are one mana counterspells, and the choice can be twofold: Spell Pierce or Dispel. I’ve been getting indoctrinated for months by Skura to believe that Dispel is the best card ever printed and Spell Pierce is hot garbage, which is why I ran the former for the majority of my adventure with Skred. However, I decided to test Pierce for myself and it actually performed quite well. I can get why Dispel is better in a deck like Faeries, where every card matters, the average card quality is lower and getting up on resources is significantly more challenging, but in a deck with so much lategame power as Skred, I think that the versatility of Spell Pierce in the early game trumps it being a poor topdeck later in the game. There’s certainly an argument for splitting the difference on them as well, as drawing multiples of either of them can be rough at times, but for now I’ll stick to Pierces.

Lastly, there’s another class of countermagic that’s rarely seen in Skred but one that I’ve been enjoying in small quantities: creature counterspells. I mostly treat it as removal, and usually cut into my kill spell count to accomodate for them, which might be a bit dangerous but I’ve been liking it so far. I haven’t gone too deep with it – just a single Essence Scatter over the fourth Galvanic Discharge, or more broadly the eighth removal spell. My reasoning behind it is that there are multitude of creatures you’d rather fight on the stack than in play (Refurbished Familiar, Clockwork Percussionist, Guttersnipe, Monarch/Initiative creatures, just to name a few), but the inefficiency of Scatter makes it hard to run too many copies. I think having one or two in there is a good way to round out the interaction suite and makes securing late game a bit easier. I could even see playing Exclude instead of Scatter in a meta heavily dominated by slower decks, but in a format where red decks and Faeries are prevalent, I’ll stick to the cheaper alternative.

Cantrips and card draw

One of the main appeals of blue decks in Pauper is that one gets to play a wide array of the most powerful card selection ever printed. Brainstorm is an automatic four-of in any deck capable of sending away the unwanted cards, and Ponder’s digging power is unmatched at its mana cost, which is why I’m happy with the playset of each of them. The stock third choice in this category is Preordain, but I’ve been liking Dreams of Laguna instead, and I’m quite certain that it’s a better choice for this slot. In the past, I’ve tried cards like Think Twice and Behold the Multiverse to squeeze a bit more card advantage in the mix, as I’ve been lacking it sometimes, especially in matchups where Pirates aren’t particularly great. Both of said cards performed fairly well, but they tend to be somewhat of a liability early on, especially compared to an efficient card like Preordain. Enter Final Fantasy and Dreams of Laguna, which is a perfect middle ground between the digging power of Preordain and the card advantage of Think Twice. With that being said, it’s a bit of a luxury in my opinion and not a necessity. I’ve been running three copies for a while now, and would be perfectly happy with the fourth one, but at the same time I can very well see going down to two if I ever need space for other cards.

Sideboard card choices

Blasts

While Blasts are technically both counterspells and removal, they’re so crucial to the landscape of Pauper that they deserve their own category. Skred has a somewhat unique privilege to run both red and blue Blasts, and most lists gladly exercise it. The right balance of various Blasts is trickier to achieve compared to other sideboard cards, due to their effectiveness coupled with the possibility of playing up to eight copies of each. Most lists will play four red Blasts, but determining whether it’s a better number than five, six or even three is quite hard. Personally, I’m comfortable with either four or five copies, and the limiting factor on them will usually be how high in demand sideboard slots are at any given moment. As far as blue Blasts, there’s an upward trend in Skred lists of playing even as many as four copies, whereas when I picked up the deck a few months ago, most people only ran two. I’m right in the middle with three and two Campfires, which will be discussed in the appropriate section. I’ve found this split compelling mostly due to the fact that there aren’t any archetypes other than red decks against which I want the full playset of blue Blasts, and Campfire is a more impactful card than Hydroblast versus most varieties of Red. This narrative can be pushed even further, as I don’t really want the third Blast against anything but red decks, but I think that efficiency is key against them and three Campfires can be a bit awkward, hence the choice of three Hydroblasts and two Campfires.

Artifact hate

This is where I struggle the most in terms of deciding on the right mix of cards. I’ve been fairly unimpressed with Cast into the Fire, as games against Affinity and Jund tend to drag out significantly, and destroying their land early often doesn’t matter all that much. That being said, Cast opens up the possibility of a nut draw, especially against Jund, and going turn two Cast into turn four Pirate will win a lot of games. I have dismissed it after playing a couple of matches against Jund and Affinity with it, especially given that I felt quite comfortable going into the long game against both of these decks. That being said, after playing a bit more and discussing it with my peers, I came to the conclusion that I might’ve been off with my initial assessment. To be more precise, I might have underestimated how impactful an early Cast can be against Jund’s shaky manabase, and I will give it another shot. It has the added value of being a removal spell, but I’ve already gone on the record about how unimpressive that part of the card is to me. Overall, I feel like the ceiling of Cast is very high but the floor is quite low, which is why I’m undecided whether it’s worth running. Annul, on the other hand, has performed quite well for me – it’s an efficient, no nonsense card that takes care of the problem for cheap and has some amount of versatility due to tagging enchantments. It’s not as flashy as Cast, and will almost never win the game on its own, but it’s a solid workhorse that tends to be underappreciated. Ultimately, I feel that some split between Casts and Annuls is the way to go, but I’m still unclear on the details. One other card worth mentioning is Gorilla Shaman, but as long as Jund is the premier Wellspring deck in the format, I don’t really see a reason to run the old monkey.

Campfire

By far the most unique and at the same time easiest to underestimate card in the sideboard in my opinion. While the second ability has some corner case uses, the overwhelming majority of Campfire’s potential lies in the innocuous first ability. Gaining two life per turn against Burn decks is pretty close to drawing an extra card, which sounds insane when put like this. Imagine a one mana artifact that draws a card for one mana each turn – this card would clearly be extremely overpowered in Magic in general, let alone in Pauper. This makes Campfire basically into a win condition against the right opponent, as long as one can slow down the initial onslaught of burn spells and aggressive creatures. Having another card to play towards against the red decks is particularly valuable in Skred, as neither Mystic nor Pirates are great in that matchup, and with just four Terrors as desirable payoffs, it’s easy to get burned out in the midgame after trading resources without finding a win condition. That being said, Campfire is not all upside – it’s kind of slow, doesn’t affect the board and can turn otherwise blank Smash to Smithereens into a deadly weapon, which makes flooding on them less than ideal, unlike Hydroblast that has a lower ceiling but far greater floor. Additionally, the more creature-focused the opposing red deck is, the worse Campfire gets – for example, against Rally Red it’s merely okay instead of being a slam dunk like it is against Burn. Because of all that, I’m happy with two copies in the field with varied red decks, and I would only consider the third one if Burn becomes the sole Lightning Bolt deck in the format. 

Countermagic and removal

When it comes to both counterspells and removal, there aren’t many options left that haven’t already been covered, between the maindeck and the various categories of sideboard cards. Running more copies of maindeck inclusions like Spell Pierce or Fiery Cannonade is certainly a reasonable choice, especially the latter if one expects a good deal of go-wide decks. As far as purely sideboard choices, I’ve been liking Envelop in small quantities, as it covers a rather broad range of decks and helps with proper mapping. It’s not stellar against any deck in particular, but having one or two against Lead the Stampede, Burn or Exhume decks is certainly valuable. Two other cards I’d consider in this category are End the Festivities and Curfew – both are quite narrow but effective, and I’d only reach for them if I expect Faeries and Bogles/Heroic respectively to be abnormally popular.

Graveyard hate

Although true graveyard decks aren’t terribly popular in Pauper at the moment, there’s still a good deal of recursion and graveyard reliance in the format. Because of that, Relic of Progenitus is a fairly common sideboard card among Skred lists, but one that I personally don’t love. I wouldn’t fault anybody for playing a few copies, and I did run one myself at Paupergeddon, but I find it extremely cuttable and it’s probably the first card to go if I need more sideboard real estate. The main reason why I’m not higher on it is that the graveyard isn’t the main focus in any of the matchups where it’s boarded in – sure, it’s nice to blank opposing Blood Fountains and Sneaky Snackers, or to slow down Tolarian Terror, but none of these are focal points of the game, at least from Skred’s perspective, and it’s fairly easy for Relic to line up awkwardly against the opposing draw. On top of that, UR has its own graveyard synergies, even if they’re fairly minor, so I’m not particularly thrilled about having gravehate in my Terror deck (unless I plan on board out all Terrors when boarding in Relics, which is something I’ve done in the past against Blood Fountain decks). Overall, Relic is a pretty middling card in my opinion, and I would recommend running either zero or at most one unless Dredge or Spy emerges from the depths of tier three.

That’s all I’ve had to share about Skred with you today, hope it was a good read. I’ll be back soon with the sideboard guide, so be sure to check it out as well when it drops if you’re interested in playing the deck. We’re pretty excited about making Pauper a focal point of our content, and I can’t wait to engage with such a fierce and devoted community!