Snow Goblin Aristocrats in Pauper

Hey guys o/ Here's Ari and in today's article we will have a look at a Rogue deck of the Pauper format: The Goblin Aristocrats.

I recently featured on the Mana Delver youtube channel a deck tech from a player called aokis that made 5-0 in an MTGO league.

My goal is to talk about the changes I've made to this list to suit my playing style, but first, as I try to write articles for all levels of players, I'd like to comment on the name of the deck.

We usually classify as Aristocrats the decks that use creature sacrifice as their main strategy to generate value and win their games. This nomenclature started at the time of the Innistrad Standard with the cards Falkenrath Aristocrat and Cartel Aristocrat. Since then several decks have appeared, in various formats, named Aristocrats. In Pauper we have Golgari Aristocrats which is a well known deck in the format, but the fact that it has no card that makes mention of the name Aristocrats can confuse anyone who does not know the origin of the nomenclature.

The art of playing with rogues decks

Do you know that urge to play with a rogue deck? I confess I had not felt for a long time, but the Goblin Aristocrats aroused this dormant feeling.

I was always interested in playing with decks created around less popular cards. Putting my deck building in action, doing a lot of testing and keeping track of changes, winning consolidated format decks, and getting positive feedback from other players are some of the motivations that make me enjoy playing with these less competitive decks.

At Pauper, I've played a lot with Rakdos Madness, Suicide Black, Eggs ... They didn't bring me great results, but they certainly all bring back memories of the good times I had at MTG.

For those who do not know the deck, in short the Goblin Aristocrats uses various goblins that through cards like Goblin Chirurgeon and Goblin Sleeder can be sacrificed to interact with other cards on the deck like Mortician Beetle and Falkenrath Noble.

The Pauper Winter

Pauper is currently experiencing a time when many decks are using Arcum's Astrolabe to correct the base mana and break attempt to explore the card with some other interaction.

Dissatisfied with some parts of the deck, and suffering mainly from the mana base, I decided to follow the format trend and appeal to the snowy mana base.

The aokis list uses 22 lands, and a considerable portion of them enters tapped. Although the deck is midrange, I came across a number of situations where the fact that having lands entering tapped turned in a huge disadvantage.

I am currently playing with the following snowy list:

Mana Base

Using Arcum's Astrolabe, you can decrease the number of lands from 22 to 19.

Ash Barrens and Evolving Wilds: They are important for fetching the snowy lands. I'm a fan of Ash Barrens, but I don't use 4 just to lower the chance of coming with 2 in the starting hand.

Great Furnace and Vault of Whispers are on the deck to interact with Kuldotha Rebirth and Krark-Clan Shaman. You can increase the number of artifact lands and use Galvanic Blast instead of Lightning Bolt. Testing is required to ensure that we will not miss snowy lands to cast the Astrolabe early in the game.

Artifacts

The original list used only 6 artifacts (4 lands and 2 Sylvok Lifestaff). I chose to use more artifacts, precisely because of Kuldotha Rebirth and Krark-Clan Shamman. The snowy list uses twice as many artifacts and we still have the option to use more artifacts lands as mentioned above. About the artifacts, I see the possibility of making some changes like decreasing 1 Prophetic Prism and increasing 1 Ichor Wellspring or maybe back with 1 copy of Sylvok Lifestaff to main deck, since I realized that the deck has a tricky match against Burn.

Removals

Although Terminate is one of Pauper's best removals, I chose to use 2x Goblin Grenade, it couldn't be any different, the deck has a lot of synergy with the card and its damage can be maximized if it has one or more Falkenrath Noble in the field.

The Lightning Bolt is important for removing an opponent's key creature or dealing with an Ephemerate. It is versatile and ultimately can end the game. Galvanic Blast would be an improvement, but the function would remain the same.

Sparksmith as well as Warren Weirding (side) are our tutorable removals. I like Sparksmith because depending on the situation it is interesting to control your opponent's table and deal a lot of damage using our 1/1 goblin cards. Not to mention that sometimes the opponent spends all his removals on Sparksmith and is unresponsive to our other threats.

Creatures

Although we play with a lot of "insignificant" goblin tokens, the deck has creatures that are only good in isolation but very strong when they are together on the battlefield.

The Goblin Chirurgeon gives a lot of consistency to our deck. It makes life very difficult for our opponent who will suffer to remove our main threats, Mortician Beetle and Falkenrath Noble, if the surgeon is in the field. Regenerating any of these creatures means that in addition to keeping them alive, you still have trigged their abilities.

Important reminder: You can only regenerate a creature that would be destroyed. But not if it is sacrificed or given -1 / -1 markers, ok?

The Goblin Sleeder is on the deck along with the Surgeon and the Krark-Clan Shaman (side) to enable the sacrifice of our creatures. If the opponent happens to have no blockers for the Falkenrath Noble or Mortician Beetle, this is the perfect situation to maximize turn damage with the Goblin Sleeder. It is also useful for our creatures to stay alive during combat exchanges.

Goblin Matron is very important on the deck, I don't have much to say about the card, only that I use 4 copies, because I always want to have it in hand to get the goblin I need according to the situation of the game.

And to wrap up the article, Kuldotha Rebirth went very well on the deck giving more meaning to the use of the Astrolabe and fueling our sacrifices. It's always important to keep the table full of goblins. And the post-side Kuldotha Rebirth proved to be a great way to recover from a mass removal.

Lastly, had experienced some situations that I had many goblins on the battlefield I am considering using 1 copy of Goblin Bushwhacker to be tutored by Matrona in these situations.