Pauper: The Curious Case of Writhing Chrysalis

But should Pauper have a Tarmogoyf? Is a 4/5 or higher for two mana too much work for the format? Yes, it bypasses most of the interactions available in the Metagame, which brings up the second point about this creature and its place in Pauper.

Just to name a few of the widely played cards that Writhing Chrysalis dodges:

Also, spells like Snap are pretty bad at delaying a Chrysalis because it generates value on the cast.

On the other hand, the best cards to deal with it today are:

Of these, only Cast Down and Snuff Out are among the most played cards in Pauper today, with Thraben Charm in a distant third place. Spells like Destroy Evil are very conditional, but could gain more spotlight since they work against four of the five main archetypes in the Metagame today: Affinity, Broodscale, Terror and Gruul Ramp.

On the other hand, cards like Skred and Defile are too slow to deal with Chrysalis but necessary to hold off Kuldotha Red, while Journey to Nowhere, Unable to Scream and Extract a Confession are too conditional.

It's always possible to just counter Writhing Chrysalis and continue the game, but given how easy it is to cast on turn three, it's hard for a Faeries player to set up Spellstutter Sprite, while other decks can't count on Force Spike to force out their opponent's greedy mana.

The problem is, no matter what you do, your opponent will have already generated value. We don't have Consign to Memory in Pauper to deal with both the cast and the trigger, so when faced with a Counterspell, your opponent will have two Eldrazi tokens to speed up the next turn, or even to chump block on later turns.

This same dilemma is seen with removals. Yes, Cast Down and Snuff Out deal with the bigger creatures and are two of the most played cards in Pauper, but the tokens stay.

They'll cast other powerful cards in the following turns - an Avenging Hunter or a Boarding Party, or they'll be fodder for the Basking Broodscale and Sadistic Glee combo, or they'll ensure that your opponent optimizes the use of colors in their deck by paying the colorless costs with tokens - in the long run, the value they'll generate will be felt, and let's not even mention what might happen if your opponent have another Writhing Chrysalis in their hand that will soon be looking at you as a 6/7.

Finally, Chrysalis has Reach, and one of the inherent aspects of Pauper since the last decade was the importance of Flying in the format.

Historical staples like Spellstutter Sprite and Kor Skyfisher benefited greatly from being able to attack “over” blockers and create micro-interactions, like Ninja of the Deep Hours to reuse ETBs, not to mention the abundance of new creatures that have come out in the last few years that also made this mechanic important for the competitive Metagame.

Chrysalis single-handedly changed the dynamic of Flying because now all of these creatures have to deal with it, or hold interactions specifically for it - a problem inherent in other cards that we commonly debate banning, like Krark-Clan Shaman or Basking Broodscale, and also in cards that were banned in Pauper in the past, like All That Glitters.

Before the release of Modern Horizons 3, green was by far the weakest color in Pauper, usually serving as support and splash for Weather the Storm in Black Gardens, or occasionally appearing in focused archetypes like Elves or Walls Combo, but traditional Big Mana like the various Cascade decks that emerged with Commander Legends had long since ceased to exist.

Writhing Chrysalis helped bring this strategy back by providing a super efficient mid-curve powered by the already known engine of Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl, which was also complemented by Malevolent Rumble, bringing this archetype back to the scene as one of the best competitors while also revitalizing other Midranges like Jund Gardens, which had also been declining in the last few months.

A creature like Tarmogoyf is only as good as its body in two situations: maintaining attrition in the game and pressuring opponents in non-interactive games. Writhing Chrysalis is excellent in the first case, but terrible in the second.

Consider any archetype that is faster and less attrition-oriented, focused on closing a specific combo and/or creating an unbeatable board position. In these cases, Chrysalis' value comes down to being a four-mana 4/5 or a 2/3 that puts two "extra mana" into play - which is a lot of value on its own, but negligible when you don't have to worry about interacting with it.

But except for Broodscale Combo and, to some extent, Dredge, all other non-interactive archetypes are limited to Tiers 2 or 3 because the quality of answers is much higher than it once was: a Breath Weapon or Drown in Sorrow is an almost instant defeat for Elves, excessive removal is a problem for Walls, and graveyard hate that is already necessary for other archetypes delays many turns for Dredge or completely stops its chances of winning the game - the result is that, although Chrysalis does not excel in these matchups, the Metagame is more hostile to these decks.

The answer depends a lot on each player's view on how its insertion into Pauper is beneficial or detrimental to the format's overall health. If we were to weigh the pros and cons of the card as presented above:

Pros

Cons

Conclusion

Given the arguments above, there is no doubt that Writhing Chrysalis is a divisive card in the Pauper community. Like other cards that are pillars of the format, it straddles that famous fine line where it only needs a small push or the right combination in a new expansion to make it too prevalent.

The support it receives from Malevolent Rumble, the way it entered the Broodscale Combo and made the archetype much more efficient, or the way it is finding its way into other lists that are not Ramp and do not care about Eldrazi make this card an easy target for ban requests.

My current stance on Pauper is that the format doesn't need bans and the main justification is that removing any card from the format today would mean unbalancing the competitive metagame - yes, there are five or six decks that have been at the top for a long time, but Pauper has always existed this way, even back in the days when the best decks were limited to Faeries, Monarch, Tron and Stompy.

There are a few cards that we could consider, and they have already been mentioned in other articles or videos. In one of them, for example, I mentioned the possibility of “trading” Deadly Dispute for Prophetic Prism, thus maintaining the manafixing that some lists require without the decks having access to an Ancestral Recall when sacrificing Ichor Wellspring.

I also commented on how Krark-Clan Shaman is an absurd limiter for go-wide decks like Elves, but I have to admit that as long as Breath Weapon and similar spells exist, and we don't have access to cards like Imperious Perfect, Elves will continue to have problems with sweepers with or without it, and Shaman plays a fundamental role in holding back threats like Writhing Chrysalis or Basking Broodscale.

Another recurring statement in my Pauper content is that banning Basking Broodscale or Sadistic Glee is a matter of when and not if since two-card combos tend to be improved until they reach Metagame dominance - it hasn't happened yet, it could take years to happen because apparently the current Pauper card pool doesn't allow the deck to continue evolving, but it will eventually reach that point, and we should let the hammer fall on it only when that moment comes.

As for Writhing Chrysalis, I'm much more interested in the changes it could cause if Broodscale Combo or Deadly Dispute / Krark-Clan Shaman didn't exist than imagining a format without it.

There are few times when a card is so powerful that it acts as a counter to the entire Metagame just by doing good things and bypassing the format's main answers to it. If the feels bad exists, it's because your deck isn't prepared to deal with it, and if it isn't, it's a good time to consider what changes could be made to get around the Chrysalis factor.

It may be impossible to imagine, today, what changes to make to deal with Chrysalis without automatically losing to other decks, but it seems more prudent to understand that this is a matter of the Metagame as it stands today rather than directing anger at a single card - and in these moments, it's good to remember that no Metagame lasts forever.

Thanks for reading!