With Pauper Leagues now being the new hotness on Magic Online, I thought I would join the hype. The format is super cheap; the most expensive deck is an outlier at around $85 online.
For a format full of fun interactions, I needed to find a deck that settled well with me—that something is aggro. So I settled with Mono White Tokens.
Mono-White Tokens
Creatures (16)
4 Icatian Javelineers
2 Soul Warden
2 Soul's Attendant
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Veteran Armorer
Spells (22)
2 Gather the Townsfolk
2 Journey to Nowhere
4 Raise the Alarm
4 Guardians' Pledge
4 Battle Screech
4 Ramosian Rally
2 Triplicate SpiritsLands (22)
18 Plains
3 Quicksand
1 Secluded Steppe
Sideboard (15)
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Journey to Nowhere
2 Lumithread Field
3 Obsidian Acolyte
3 Sundering Growth
2 Holy Light
2 Prismatic Strands
Main Deck
Squadron Hawk saw its debut back in Zendikar standard in the Cawblade deck. Now, this card shines once again in Pauper. A 1/1 flier for two isn’t the worst deal, and he’s resilient since he can pull more copies from your deck! He effectively draws three cards—that’s already insane, especially in white.
When I first saw this list, I was really confused about what this card did. Why did I need to give my creatures +0/+1? And then I realized the answer—Mono Black Control. This card alone shuts down one of their big removal cards, Cuombajj Witches.
This card is one of the best cards in the deck for a couple of reasons: 1) it produces fliers, 2) it has flashback for a next-to-nothing cost. This makes it very strong against the Blue decks, who have counterspells, and the black decks that rely on single target removal or sacrificing effects.
With so many tokens on the battlefield, what is one of the best things we can do? Pump them of course! Ramosian Rally is a card that not only pumps our guys at instant speed, but it also does it for only tapping an untapped creature. This card can kill out of nowhere.
Guardians’ Pledge is very similar to Ramosian Rally as it is an instant speed pump spell. It isn’t free, but the +2/+2 effect it gives is well worth the three mana spent on it. This card can kill out of nowhere, even more so than Ramosian Rally.
Sideboard
This is for those annoying graveyard decks—UB Teaching and UB Delver are the main ones that come to mind where this card is useful. It helps get rid of the food for Gurmag Angler in UB Delver and gets rid of the multiple flashback spells used in UB Teachings.
Pauper is a very creature dominated format, so having four of this card in the 75 is what I want. It is good to bring in against the other aggressive decks (Burn, Delver Fiend, Tireless Tribe, etc) as well as the midrange decks like Mono Black Control and Tron.
This is effectively a non-killable Veteran Armorer against the Mono Black Control deck. With the prevalence of the deck in the meta, I want to be prepared against it. It also has good utility in the mirror and against the Burn deck.
This another card that can blank the black removal found in Mono Black Control, UB Teachings, and UB Delver. It is important that we can get through the spells and creatures these decks have to do damage.
This card is versatile against a lot of decks – Mono Blue Delver with their Spire Golem, Affinity, and Kuldotha Jeskai.
This shines against the non-white aggro decks like Burn where all of their guys are 1/1s that are pinging you and your creatures. Just wrath them all away!
Not only is this card deck against the aggressive decks, it is also good against the all-out combo decks like Tireless Tribe, Infect, and Bogles. As well as buying time against the Elves, Delver, and other midrange decks.
We don’t really have a good way to interact with the Bogles deck, so this is our answer—just wrath all of the enchantments away before they can kill us. It isn’t as versatile as Sundering Growth, but it is a lot more destructive.
Conclusion
For less than $20 this deck is resilient and competitive. It has a good matchup against a deck that sees a lot of play, Mono Black Control, while also being able to put up a decent fight against the Blue decks and the other aggro decks with its ability to go wide instead of big. The only problems I have run into are with some rogue combo decks such as the Tireless Tribe deck that can win out of nowhere, infect style.
I hope that we see this deck put up more results and become more popular! It has already 5-0ed multiple leagues and I hope to do that soon.
If you have any questions about the deck, or anything else MtG related, you can get ahold of me on Twitter, @kintreespirit.
Thanks for reading!
Lexie Mettler is a Level 2 judge from Fort Wayne, Indiana. By day she is a student, by night she streams MTGO and practices for tournaments all over the Midwest.