![]() The format still has an important share of creatures that a Shock would kill or help to kill after combat, Spell Pierce is a great early-game answer for decks like Affinity and is never dead against Burn, and Faithless Looting has the constant utility of filtering your hand - having it all in one slot is adding massive flexibility to your deck. ![]() I'm disappointed that we only had one charm from the Return to Ravnica cycle, after all some of them like Azorius Charm and Golgari Charm would be very interesting, but Izzet Charm is definitely the best among them ( Boros Charm came out in Gatecrash) and I don't think there's a time when this card isn't useful in Pauper. I intend to do an article next week focused on decklists and ideas on how we can get the most out of the new staple, so stay tuned! ![]() In the end, Monastery Swiftspear will serve as a thermometer: if its addition doesn't break the format and even collaborates to balance the Metagame to a healthier state, it means we can consider other powerful creatures to get a downshift in the future, but if it eventually polarizes tournaments and proves to be too efficient, we'll get a sense of how far the "better creatures" line can go. However, the question remains whether this will be enough to knock Affinity out of its distant place as the format's best deck, and a one-drop that grows exponentially and punishes lists that spend the first few turns on setup might just be what Pauper needs to handle it.Īnd as expected, its downshift has already created a dozen topics about bans on Burn - about that, keep calm before hitting the panic button, and unlike the current Affinity due to Bridges, there are numerous answers that make a bad match against Burn much more tolerable, such as Weather the Storm, Lone Missionary, Circle of Protection: Red, Hydroblast, among others that can easily mitigate the potential turn 3 kills it offers. Now, out of these options, which should be the most successful and take full advantage of the format's new best one-drop? Besides obviously Burn, I think the Izzet archetypes with Delver of Secrets and Izzet Charm can have a good return with this addition, but my main bet goes to the same strategies that resort to Seeker of the Way, allowing for explosive openings with both creatures while accumulating card advantage with other low-cost spells. This means that Monastery Swiftspear fits into so many possibilities that it's impossible not to consider it an instant staple for several decks: Burn, Kiln Fiend, Boros Synthesizer, Tribe Combo, Izzet Tempo, Gruul, Heroic, among many others - I can even imagine Affinity testing a few copies of it, although I'm not certain if that's a good idea. It wildly alters the nature of most red spell-based archetypes because absolutely everything you play will be rewarded with it, and it's important to note that Prowess triggers with any non-creature spell, including artifacts and enchantments. I always mentioned that Pauper needed better threats, and Monastery Swiftspear is above any power level expectations I had: for comparison purposes, in an imaginary world, I would consider a Goblin Guide downshift to be more logical and reasonable than Monastery Swiftspear. The staple of pretty much every eternal format has arrived at Pauper - and it will definitely be Double Masters 2022's most impactful addition to the format. Vampire Sovereign is the Siege Rhino we have at home: it has evasion, costs an extra mana, and has a smaller body that doesn't survive Galvanic Blast, but interacts just as well with Ephemerate as the old Standard and Modern staple would, which leads me to believe that it is an incredibly decent option for several Black-Based Midrange categories and even an option for Cascade strategies, and will likely see play if the format slows down in the future. If you want to know my opinion on this matter, even with the Abzan colors not having its version of Ardent Elementalist, I believe a 4/5 body with Trample that generates a Lightning Helix for four mana and reusable with Ephemerate and Kor Skyfisher, in a format where players can pilot Five-Color Cascade without much mana issues thanks to Thriving Lands and Gates, doesn't seem like the healthiest thing in the world - especially if we consider what Affinity does today as an anomaly. On the day of writing this article, I had an interesting debate about how much Siege Rhino would really impact Pauper and whether it would break the format these days when it was mentioned as the perfect threat against Affinity.
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