Pauper: 5 New Decks from the Secrets of Strixhaven Season

Secrets of Strixhaven had a relevant impact on Pauper, especially with the new Pursue the Past, which put Sneaky Snacker even more in the competitive spotlight by making it easier to include the creature in new variants of established archetypes. Despite that change, most strategies showing up in Challenges still look the same, and the new set's inclusions for the format appear, as far as we can tell, healthy.

Beyond the established environment, this season also served as space for some new strategies to emerge or for old favorites to reappear in Leagues and Challenges with new coats of paint. In this article, we present five new and/or less common archetypes in tournaments featuring bold or innovative choices to tackle the Metagame.

Boros Inside Out

I had doubts about including Boros Inside Out in this list, since the deck has grown considerably since Secrets of Strixhaven's release, but it was a dead archetype in the competitive environment before the new expansion.

This variant takes advantage of the new Pursue the Past alongside the Dissension Eidolon cycle to generate card advantage with looting effects, turning them into discard outlets that also fuel Tireless Tribe and the famous combo with Inside Out; just play a multicolored spell, and each Eidolon will return to hand to be discarded.

Like the Eidolons, Sneaky Snacker joins the list to generate value from looting effects while also adding a "go-wide" and "fair" line that complements the combo-kill, making it harder for the opponent to take the right posture during the match.

Snacker Gates

The interaction between Pursue the Past and Sneaky Snacker has also become a complement to Gates decks. Like Inside Out, the archetype already has some level of graveyard interaction, and the new looting spell makes it easier to add Snacker as a card you don't need to cast but that frequently guarantees a flying threat on board to be the primary target for Basilisk Gate in longer games.

Mono White Robots

Mono-White Robots has appeared in some 5-0 League runs, but hasn't yet made Top 32 of a Challenge. The deck runs zero-mana creatures like Ornithopter alongside Springleaf Drum to accelerate the cast of creatures whose cost is reduced by the number of creatures the player controls. Once they're on board, Leonardo, Big Brother and Spider-Man, Web-Slinger can bounce them to be cast again, guaranteeing extra draws and more power on board each turn.

Temur Midrange

A new Skred variant appeared in Leagues last week, with a generous green splash for a package mixing ramp and win conditions.

Spider Manifestation untaps whenever the player casts a spell with mana value four or greater, and can be played as early as turn two. With it, you can cast Monarch creatures on turn three while still holding up red mana for interaction, or ramp a Writhing Chrysalis, which will ramp into more bombs in following turns.

Simic Fog

In recent months, Turbo Fog has been gradually shifting toward Golgari with a blue splash for Stream of Thought, but Embrace the Paradox brought the spotlight back to Simic variants.

The new spell — a powercrept Urban Evolution — lets you stay untapped for Fog or Arcane Denial effects and, if you have leftover resources, cast it to put more lands on board and guarantee more ways to prevent damage. Ramp makes it easier to sequence spells and allows for a more proactive play before casting Weather the Storm on the opponent's turn and speeds up paying multiple Replicate instances with Stream of Thought.

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!