Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the strength of the Dimir Delver (also referred to as “UBxD”) deck in Pauper. People frequently debate whether something in the deck, or simply a strong blue staple in the format generally, needs to be banned. Suggested bans have included Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Augur of Bolas, Gitaxian Probe, Gush, Delver of Secrets, and Foil because of their power level and prevalence in Dimir Delver and similar decks, particularly when played together.
I am not so quick to sound the alarm on any specific card, however; there is clearly something wrong with the Pauper format, and I believe something needs to be done, but to understand what that thing is we need to step back and look at the origin of the problem. We cannot merely examine how it manifests itself in the most powerful and most played cards in the format.
Anyone who has played Standard since the release of Guilds of Ravnica is well aware that, very early on in the format, people were experimenting primarily with various builds of Red Deck Wins, after which Golgari Midrange was quickly developed to beat the red decks. By the time of the Pro Tour Jeskai Control was the best highly-played deck, partly because of its slightly favourable Golgari matchup. A few months have passed since, and now the metagame is in a fairly open space with Red, Golgari, Jeskai, Wx Weenie, Izzet Drakes, and many other decks doing well.
Almost all Magic formats go through similar life cycles. At first, linear aggressive/combo decks dominate because players try to do the most fast and broken things they can when unsure of what to expect. When in doubt, be proactive is a tried-and-true method in Magic. Quickly, midrange, tempo, or aggro-control decks (I will group these together as “malleable decks” for the purposes of this article because the important thing that they all have in common is the ability to switch roles against fast linear decks and control decks) are developed to defeat the fast linear decks (and, in the case of midrange, defeat the tempo or aggro-control decks). Eventually, control decks are developed to beat these malleable decks. These control decks tend to be weak to the fast linear strategies. Generally, the discovery of fast linear decks, malleable decks, and control decks over time results in open metagames, assuming that no strategy is oppressive enough to consistently defeat decks in more of these categories than it “should” according to the cycle. This is typically when the DCI bans cards. Another example of this occurring was the Return to Ravnica-Theros Standard five years ago, when the format went from being dominated by Blue Devotion to Black Devotion to UWx Control and ended in a relatively open space. Black Devotion, UWx, and Red Deck Wins were all top-tier and other decks were viable. By the end, there were playable decks at each level; fast linear, malleable, and control. Non-rotating formats follow a similar cycle, but there is an important part to this cycle that frequently occurs in non-rotating formats, though rarely in Standard. It is here where Pauper’s problem starts to become clear.
To illustrate what I am referring to, I would like to tell you a story about Legacy. Legacy began, as described by Adam Barnello in the first article of Channel Fireball’s Recurring Nightmares series, with a few decks. In 2003, there were Worldgorger Dragon combo, Food Chain Goblins, and Landstill. Two of these are combo decks, and the other is a control deck that plays a particularly linear gameplan. By the end of 2004, a collection of malleable decks and less linear control decks had developed, and the format became quite open.
By 2012, after some new printings, the format no longer followed the cycle that ends in an open metagame. Players had discovered that there was a “best deck”—RUG Delver. What did RUG Delver do that made it rise above the competition? The answer is simple: everything, and efficiently. RUG Delver is a prime example of a “turbo xerox” deck, using cheap card selection to find cheap threats and cheap answers. Whatever cards it needs, it can find. Because it does not need to play that many copies, it can get away with only the best versions of these effects. As noted by Brian DeMars in his article “Decks Like Death’s Shadow Will Always Become the Best Deck” (where he describes a similar phenomenon that occured in Modern in 2017), turbo xerox decks consistently rise to the top of these open metagames in non-rotating formats. The cardpool is so wide in these formats that once the metagame has settled down, it is possible to build a deck that can efficiently and effectively have game against all of the best decks, and play good card selection to find the tools for the matchup and put away those for other matchups. RUG Delver could punish greedy manabases with Stifle and Wasteland, but those cards are not as good against a Burn deck. It could use disruption like Daze and Force of Will along with the fast pressure of Delver of Secrets and Tarmogoyf to beat combo decks, but those cards lose out in a grind to decks with more card advantage. It could avoid removal with cards like Nimble Mongoose to win in these situations, and use Lightning Bolt to answer opposing threats and end the game. Selection like Brainstorm and Ponder accompanied these cards to let RUG Delver morph into whatever it needed to be. Xerox decks are malleable in the extreme.
While it might seem from this like an unbeatable menace, turbo xerox has one key weakness. In Legacy, Death and Taxes and Maverick decks playing Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Miracles decks playing Counterbalance, and “Stompy” decks playing Chalice of the Void were developed to fight RUG Delver by making these cantrips much weaker. This kept RUG (now Grixis Delver and UB Death’s Shadow) off its engine, forcing the xerox deck to draw the cards that are weaker against those decks. This makes the highly efficient threats and answers seem much less so. This is the start of DeMars’ xerox vs prison dynamic, the final step in the life cycle of a non-rotating format. At this stage, the best decks are turbo xerox decks and prison decks that beat xerox by blanking their decks or making them less efficient.
Pauper has gone through this cycle—mostly. It started out with fast linear decks like Affinity and Storm, to which Mono-Blue Delver and a malleable build of White Weenie were developed as answers, and Cloudpost Control became an answer to White Weenie. Eventually, Storm, a combo deck, and Delver, a xerox deck, rose to the top. After it became clear that Cloudpost and Storm were simply to degenerate for the format and were banned by the DCI, Delver rose to the top alone. Excepting the eras of Esper Familiars and Izzet Drake (both incredibly powerful combo decks that were eventually banned), a Delver deck, whether Mono-Blue, Izzet, or Dimir, has always dominated Pauper. People less familiar with Pauper might read this and wonder why prison has never been built to prey on these xerox decks, and the answer is that cards such as Thalia, Counterbalance, and Chalice have never been printed at common, and likely never will. I was one of the people who originally worked on the initial hyper-efficient build of Dimir Delver before the downshift of Foil. Part of my reasoning was that there would be no natural repercussions in Pauper for building the most efficient deck possible, unlike in Legacy. More recently, Foil has been downshifted to common and Dimir Delver has made up 19% of decks played in Magic Online challenges since (based on data from Magic Online player pproteus). Because no prison decks can be developed to beat Dimir Delver, people are simply adjusting their Dimir Delver lists to be better in the mirror—in some cases even splashing red for cards like Pyroblast and Terminate. Rather than xerox vs prison, Pauper is becoming xerox vs xerox-that-beats-other-xerox. This is not the nature of a healthy format.
So, what can be done? People have worked on building other malleable decks, such as “Boros Bully,” which runs cards such as Battle Screech and Journey to Nowhere that stack up well against Dimir Delver’s threats, but pproteus’ data shows that it is actually slightly unfavoured against Dimir Delver. This makes sense according to the format cycle; the reason xerox rises to the top is that only decks that fight its engine are strong against it. Merely fighting what xerox finds with its engine is not enough because it will simply find other cards or adjust its decklist so that it can fight those “answers” effectively. Turbo xerox is not an archetype, it is a philosophy.
It is highly unlikely that Wizards of the Coast will print at common or downshift cards like Thalia, Counterbalance, or Chalice to enable prison decks. Furthermore, as someone who has spent a lot of time in the Pauper community, I have heard from many people that the the lack of cards like this that shut off specific strategies is part of what they enjoy about the format. My own experience supports this; as someone who has played my fair share of Thalias and Counterbalances in Legacy (Miracles is one of my go-to decks), part of why I play Pauper is to get away from cards like this. So clearly, adding a prison deck to Pauper is not the solution to its xerox problem, or at least not one that we are likely to see.
Instead, I do believe that something needs to be banned to make xerox descend to the level of all other decks. The xerox engine needs to be weakened. Before you stop reading because you expect me to be yet another person writing an article on why Preordain should be banned, I encourage you to keep going. That is not, in fact, what I am about to suggest.
Brainstorm is such a strong part of the turbo xerox engine in many formats that it is widely considered the best card in Legacy. It is also restricted in Vintage and has come up in ban discussions for Pauper. However, a card that makes you pay a mana to “draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order” is not very good on its own in the most powerful constructed formats in Magic. It is only a somewhat better Reach Through Mists, and clearly much worse than Ponder and Preordain. What enables Brainstorm’s power, as many Magic players know, are fetchlands and other cards that shuffle the library. With these, turbo xerox can draw three cards, then put back two cards that are meant for a different matchup or are bad at the specific point in the game, and shuffle them away, likely never seeing them again that game. It is almost as good as Ancestral Recall—with cards that shuffle the library. Likewise, Ponder, while good without fetchlands, is much better when you can choose to draw any number from zero to three of the top three cards of your library in your next three draws (counting the draw from the card itself). Without fetchlands, Brainstorm is nearly unplayable and Ponder is still playable—but much worse. Preordain is still quite strong, but goes from being the worst of the three to the best of the three.
I believe that weakening cantrips in this fashion would both keep the xerox engine strong enough to be played by those who like the playstyle, but weak enough that those who do not can play other decks. Fetchlands also enable cards like Gurmag Angler to be cast for less in the Dimir Delver deck, making them even more key to the deck’s efficiency. Gitaxian Probe is the other key culprit in the deck, and many others. The information it provides allows Dimir Delver to cantrip perfectly and play perfectly around the opponent’s available interaction. Paying zero mana to have perfect information, and a prowess trigger and/or a card in the graveyard, while functionally running a 56-58 card deck is everything xerox wants in one card.
Without Gitaxian Probe and fetchlands, Dimir Delver would be forced to run only Thought Scour and Mental Note to enable its Brainstorms and Gurmag Anglers. Izzet Delver would run just Ponder and Preordain and have its late-game somewhat weakened. Mono-Blue Delver, though, would be completely unaffected. I believe that this would weaken the current xerox decks enough to open up Pauper’s metagame. Mono-Blue Delver is weak to other xerox decks. The other xerox decks, without the ability to consistently Brainstorm well in the lategame or cast Gurmag Anglers by turn 3-4 with perfect information, would finally have exploitable weaknesses.
It is, of course, possible simply to ban Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain, and avoid the fetchlands and Gitaxian Probe ban by removing the xerox engine, but there are some problems with this. First, Pauper is known for being a format in which people can cheaply enjoy the complex and interactive gameplay of these xerox decks. This is one of the main attractions of the format. I believe that by banning fetchlands and Gitaxian Probe, more decks can be viable without taking away this charm. Second, cards like Opt, Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand could be played instead, and xerox would still not disappear. Card selection spells in other colours, like Faithless Looting and Ancient Stirrings that currently enable busted xerox-style strategies in other formats, might also be played. This is what has happened in Modern with Ponder and Preordain banned. It is almost impossible to remove turbo xerox from a non-rotating Magic format, so I believe that instead of trying to ban the engine altogether we should weaken the engine bring it down to the level of other decks. Third, I do not believe that turbo xerox being strong is bad for a competitive format. Magic is supposed to be a game of skill more than luck, and xerox strategies reduce luck and make the game more about knowing what you are supposed to find and when. They are an interesting challenge to play with and against for this reason.
I also do not believe that xerox decks should be weakened by banning cards like Gush, as some people have argued. While Gush is an incredibly strong card regardless, I believe that it is only so strong because it combos well with Brainstorm and fetchlands, and because cantrips help to find it when drawing two cards is what is needed. It is not that Gush finds cantrips, it is that cantrips find and synergize with Gush. Additionally, banning Gush would make the Tireless Tribe combo deck virtually unplayable and significantly weaken Izzet Blitz, while weakening the cantrip engine would merely hurt them somewhat. I want any bans to make the format more open, not simply to remove the strongest colour from it. Thus, I hope the DCI bans four cards in Pauper this month. However, I hope that rather than Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, and Gush, they are Ash Barrens, Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, and Gitaxian Probe.
