Pauper: 5 Beginner-Friendly Decks to play in 2025

Magic: The Gathering is a game of constant change, and the 32 years since its official launch have created a wide variety of competitive and casual formats. These environments can often be challenging for new players: choosing a deck, understanding the rules, and knowing what works and what doesn't in a tournament are all obstacles to consider.

In this series of articles, we present good entry points to the main Magic formats, with five decks that are relevant in 2025 while also being intuitive to learn and even popular among top players. Today we begin with Pauper, where Mono Red Rally and Mono Blue Terror are two of the main contenders in the Metagame, while other strategies are present in the lower tiers and making results in Leagues and Challenges!

Mono Red Rally

Mono Red Rally is the most straightforward Pauper Red Aggro variant today, trading the traditional Burn plan for a go-wide Aggro, combining Burning-Tree Emissary with Rally at the Hornburg for an explosive early game combined with Goblin Bushwhacker.

Its ideal play consists of a Great Furnace on the first turn, followed by Goblin Tomb Raider for Burning-Tree for Rally the following turn. If that's not possible, Voldaren Epicure or Clockwork Percussionist are other aggressive one-mana drops that allow for more explosive sequences with Tomb Raider, in addition to enabling Galvanic Blast's Metalcraft to deal four damage with just .

Since we have a go wide deck, Goblin Bushwhacker allows for some turns where we can end the game with a massive power boost with our creatures. Unlike the Burn version, we have more permanent power, but at the expense of being more vulnerable to board wipes like Krark-Clan Shaman or Arms of Hadar.

Mono Black Aristocrats

Mono Black Aristocrats is an Aggro archetype with synergies between effects that sacrifice creatures and cards that provide some benefit when creatures die or are sacrificed. Its main game plan involves using Bloodthrone Vampire or Carrion Feeder as sacrifice outlets that increase their own power while triggering Mortician Beetle as a complementary threat—then cards like Rite of Consumption can end the game outside the combat, but the permanent power of our creatures makes them difficult to deal with and punishes non-interactive and slow decks.

Most of the creatures we run put a token into play when they die, which can also be sacrificed to increase the power of other cards. We also have spells like Supernatural Stamina and Unearth for recursion, as well as Village Rites and Corrupted Conviction as sources of card advantage that interact with our game plan.

Mono Blue Terror

Mono Blue Terror is a relatively easy deck to play but difficult to master. It's a Tempo deck focused on two fronts: the first involves playing Delver of Secrets on the first turn, transforming it, and protecting it with cheap interaction in the hopes of it carrying the game on its own. The second line uses Tolarian Terror and Cryptic Serpent as cheap mid-game threats to end the game while delaying the opponent's turns.

To speed up the casting of larger creatures, Thought Scour and Mental Note put up to three spells into the graveyard with a single card and interact with Brainstorm to remove useless cards from the top and improve draw quality. Additionally, cards like Deem Inferior interact with the board and reduce the cost based on the number of cards we draw, and Counterspell provides an unconditional means of responding to any opponent's threat.

Despite the straightforward plan, Mono Blue Terror requires, to be played optimally, a thorough knowledge of the archetype's matchups and what works against each opponent. Knowing what to counter with Counterspell and/or when to save a specific interaction is essential to winning the most challenging games, while there are some moments when going into turbo mode and feeding the graveyard as quickly as possible will be your ticket to an easy victory.

Elves

Speaking of decks that are easy to pilot but difficult to master, Elves is an Aggro-Combo strategy based on the interaction between creatures of the same type to generate absurd amounts of mana with Priest of Titania and Quirion Ranger, which eventually transform into a Nyxborn Hydra for lethal damage.

However, this is just one of the deck's lines: Quirion Ranger allows you to untap any creature when returning a Forest to your hand, and when combined with Timberwatch Elf, it also offers another way to create a massive power boost.Wellwisher has the same interaction to gain life against aggro.

To maintain our resources, we have Lead the Stampede and You Meet in a Tavern, which also acts as a pump for all your creatures, and Elves naturally tend to have a lot of them in play.

Despite the straightforward game plan, knowing the correct order to execute each ability and when/where to use Quirion Ranger is essential to knowing how to master Elves. Furthermore, this archetype benefits from non-interactive Metagame, and if the opponent uses plenty of cards like Krark-Clan Shaman or Breath Weapon, it's also necessary to know when to play around them without slowing down your strategy too much.

Bogles

Like Elves, Bogles is an Aggro-Combo that benefits from a non-interactive metagame and especially from the lack of specific answers against it in the maindeck and/or sideboard.

Its game plan involves "building your own Megazord" with a Hexproof creature like Slippery Bogle or Gladecover Scout, which bypasses Pauper's traditional removals. We start with an Aura, followed by another, and before we know it, we have a creature enchanted with Armadillo Cloak and Ethereal Armor or Ancestral Mask attacking for ten or more in a single turn with Trample, sometimes ending the game in one or two combats if we stack the right enchantments.

Of all the decks on this list, Bogles is probably the most straightforward and easiest to understand. Its challenges involve playing around with what your opponent might use against you, like cheap mass removal and sacrifice effects like Tithing Blade or Extract a Confession, but the plan of this deck is essentially the same in almost every game.

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!