Pauper: Red Deck Wins - Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

The search for a successor to Pauper's most popular deck in recent years continues. Kuldotha Red dominated the leagues due to its combination of being a very efficient archetype, easy to understand and pilot, while also optimizing players' time in Magic Online Leagues due to its speed.

With the banning of Kuldotha Rebirth, the deck is dead and now players are looking for new ways to create the next Red Aggro that will set the clock of the Metagame.

In addition to the most recent versions of Synthesizer Burn, another variant that has been showing results is Red Deck Wins, which compensates for the loss of the last ban with more one-mana creatures combined with efficient damage spells and Goblin Bushwhacker.

In this article, we delve deeper into this Mono Red Aggro variant of Pauper, with a Sideboard guide for the new Metagame!

This list is slightly different from what we've seen in some Leagues and Challenges, with the main difference being the inclusion of Galvanic Blast, Gingerbrute and the reduction of lands to sixteen.

The entire Red Deck Wins costs only one mana, except for Goblin Bushwhacker. Sixteen lands, combined with cards like Clockwork Percussionist and Voldaren Epicure, guarantees the three initial mana you need and have fewer bad topdecks in longer games.

If we prefer, we can even swap Gingerbrute for Experimental Synthesizer to guarantee more one-mana draws, but at the cost of making Goblins that rely on other creatures to attack worse.

The rest of the list essentially follows the same line as Kuldotha Red, but instead of trying to go off with three 1/1 tokens and Goblin Bushwhacker, we focused on having larger bodies with more 2/2 creatures for one mana to offset the damage potential and give opponents playing End the Festivities or Suffocating Fumes a bit more trouble.

Maindeck

Our 2/2s for . All require a condition to work.

Goblin Cohort and Mogg Conscripts are the easiest to enable in the early game, but the worst as the game goes on. Playing them on turn one, followed by one of our artifact creatures and Goblin Tomb Raider already guarantees five damage on turn two, with the potential to extend this greatly with a Goblin Bushwhacker and another one-drop the following turn.

Jackal Familiar requires board position to function properly, which isn't hard to do from turn two onwards, but it also makes it a terrible topdeck when we're behind.

Goblin Tomb Raider is the most consistent of these as it only requires one artifact in play, and with sixteen of them in the list, it's easy to sequence turns to have a 2/2 with haste for one mana.

Our enablers for Goblin Tomb Raider and Galvanic Blast.

Clockwork Percussionist offers another body with Haste and guarantees an extra card if it is destroyed, and Voldaren Epicure, in addition to dealing damage to the opponent when it enters and creating an artifact token, can be used to filter the hand and remove lands or cards that are not very useful while searching for the last Burn spell to close the game.

Gingerbrute does a little bit of everything: it passes over blockers, enables all 2/2 one-mana drops, and can be sacrificed to gain life — which seems irrelevant until we are in the race in a mirror match.

To seal the game, Goblin Bushwhacker has a similar function to the one it had in Kuldotha Red, providing explosive turns. Ideally, we want to play it after pressuring the opponent with a few 2/2s for , and follow it up with another one-drop, where we can total up to 14 damage on turn three.

Our late-game interaction and reach.

Lightning Bolt is the best one-mana damage spell ever released in Magic and remains as effective as ever, plus we can use it to clear blockers out of the way if our Aggro damage potential is higher.

Galvanic Blast is the second reason to play many artifacts in the list. Four damage for grants us a range that deals with Myr Enforcer while also putting a considerable amount of pressure on the opponent.

Chain Lightning is very close to Lightning Bolt, but it is my least favorite Burn card, and I would consider swapping it for Goblin Grenade or Reckless Abandon, but that swap would create more bad topdecks in certain matchups.

As mentioned above, sixteen lands seem like the ideal number for a list focused exclusively on one-drops. Great Furnace complements twelve mountains to increase the amount of artifacts in the list and allow a Goblin Tomb Raider to attack with Haste from the first turn.

Sideboard

Since we have more deckbuilding concessions, we need to respect the limitations of this archetype and include cards that fit its needs.

In this case, we have Gorilla Shaman as the primary artifact hate, since it enables Goblin Cohort and Mogg Conscripts while being able to attack Affinity's mana base.

Relic of Progenitus, on the other hand, interacts with Galvanic Blast and Goblin Tomb Raider and is the best answer in the format today against Tolarian Terror, Dredge and other graveyard-dependent decks.

But there are cards that we can't afford to not run, and we need to make some sacrifices to include them in Games 2 and 3.

Pyroblast is a must-have in a Metagame that is moving towards more blue decks, especially with the recent rise of High Tide lists, but it also works against Faeries, is our best answer to Tolarian Terror, and responds well to Tron cards like Ghostly Flicker or Mnemonic Wall.

End the Festivities could replace some copies of Chain Lightning in the maindeck if X/1 creatures become too prevalent. We currently use it in the Sideboard against Faeries, Elves, and some versions of White Weenie.

Affinity

IN

OUT

Unfortunately, this version is very susceptible to Krark-Clan Shaman, so our best route is to load our Sideboard with Gorilla Shaman and hope we can deprive the opponent of their mana in the first few turns, while we pressure them with the other creatures.

High Tide

IN

OUT

Winning before the opponent can close the combo is all that matters in this matchup, but we need to hold Pyroblast for key cards like Merchant Scroll and High Tide, and Mogg Conscripts becomes the most redundant card we can remove from the list since we also need ample amounts of Burns to close the game outside combat, given that Murmuring Mystic is a common side-in.

Ephemerate Tron

IN

OUT

This is one of those matches where, if it gets too common, it's worth including two Flaring Pain in the Sideboard. The current results don't show Tron as a contender for the top of the Metagame, so we're trying to deal with it in the race while responding to cards like Hydroblast or Mnemonic Wall.

Mono Red

IN

OUT

Depending on the list, the ideal option is to make no changes at all. End the Festivities fits into the builds with more X/1 creatures, but the builds with Experimental Synthesizer and Kessig Flamebreather are best answered with a well-timed Chain Lightning instead.

Blue Terror

IN

OUT

Terror has a lot of cheap Tempo or removal plays, so we want to avoid Jackal Familiar as it's pretty bad without other creatures in play. Gingerbrute is the least efficient of our artifact creatures in this list, and swapping it for Relic of Progenitus is the wisest choice.

Faeries

IN

OUT

We need to be more responsive to what Faeries does while preserving our board position; so, eight cards are used to control the stack and the board, at the expense of the consistency of Galvanic Blast, which in this game functions more often as removal than as a damage spell.

Gruul Ramp

IN

OUT

In this game, we need more interaction in the first two turns against Arbor Elf and a way to stop the Eldrazi tokens from forcing multiple chump blocks, so End the Festivities becomes our best tool.

That's all for today.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!