Pauper: White Weenie Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

The deck we're going to talk about today is excellent to start with in Pauper. In a way, it's a simple strategy to play, cheap, but it proved to be very competitive for the moment Pauper is going through, mainly because it plays amazingly well against two decks that appear frequently, Affinity and Burn. I will explain more about it in the sideboard guide.

The Mono White, or White Weenie, as many like to call it, proved to be a resilient deck in several matchups and came up with several 5-0 in the Pauper leagues.

The deck has been gaining strength in recent sets, as one or more cards always arrive that are useful for strategy, most of them generating value when they enter and/or drawing and replacing cards in the hand. Some examples are:

- Innistrad: Midnight Hunt: Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom, Cathar Commando and Search Party Captain;

- Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty: Spirited Companion;

- Streets of New Capenna: Inspiring Overseer.

The deck also has 2 types of removals, Journey to Nowhere which works for any creature and Last Breath, which has a limitation but is an instant.

In addition to the creatures that are always generating value, the deck has Battle Screech, which with just one card generates up to 4 creatures.

We can see that we generate many creatures, but they are all weak with a maximum of 2 power - so we will need something to be aggressive. For that, we have Guardians' Pledge, which, in addition to helping in the attack, will be essential to protect us from Electrickery, Fiery Cannonade and Suffocating Fumes.

Here we have an aggro deck, so our stance is usually to try to play many creatures that draw other creatures, and with a good board, be able to finish them with Guardians' Pledge. But since it's not always possible, so we use some lifegain to buy us time with creatures like Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom and Inspiring Overseer, in addition to the manabase with Radiant Fountain and Kabira Crossroads.

Speaking of manabase, this will establish a bit about the mulligan. Our deck has some 4-mana cards, so having some mana in the starting hand is critical, as well as having draw creatures in that hand, as we're going to try to loop one creature to find others.

vs. Affinity

As I said, this is a great match for us. I consider this for a few points: we have many creatures with evasion and Affinity has few removals; we managed to get aggressive fast; on the sideboard, we have two of the most used cards at the moment, Dust to Dust and Revoke Existence, which, if well-played, can give us a lot of advantage.

Side in:

Side out:

vs. Rakdos Burn

Here is also a match that has everything to be good because we have many cards with lifegain, including our land drops, Radiant Fountain and Kabira Crossroads, in addition to creatures like Inspiring Overseer which gains 1 life when it enters the battlefield. But our main life resource is Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom.

It is worth to remember that this sideboarding is only good if Rakdos is using an artifact manabase. If not, I would just put Last Breath, which I can also use on my creatures to gain 4 life.

Side in:

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vs. Gruul LD

This is a pretty bad match for us. Our deck has some high-cost cards, and we want and need to do more than one spell per turn — and without resources, things get complicated.

Another detail is that if our opponent starts to generate the value of their deck, we have too few removals to deal with their threats. The opponent's creatures are stronger than ours, and that will prevent us from attacking.

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vs. Faeries

I will quote the Blue-Based together as there is little to no changes. Overall, here we are going to have a 50/50 game and the details can be what makes the difference.

We have 2 precautions. The first is about counterspells — our biggest concern is Spellstutter Sprite, which deals with almost everything in our deck, leaving us behind in the game and making us lose resources.

The second is about removals because in Izzet there will be Electrickery and Fiery Cannonade and in Dimir, Suffocating Fumes, so we'd better avoid playing all our creatures at once to not get out valued by a sweeper. If you can, it's good to have a backup Guardians' Pledge.

An important point in this game that many forget are the Desert, which are great against Faeries, since it deals with any faerie who doesn't become a Ninja post-combat, and it also kills Moon-Circuit Hacker.

Our side is also prepared for this matchup, as we will also have a sweeper, Holy Light, for Game 2 and Game 3.

Side in:

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vs. Mono White

In a mirror, luck tends to help and define the winner, that is, practically whoever draws the best and finds the most creatures first ends up winning the game. But if the two draw similarly, we will have that board locked, where no one attacks, and the game can go on for a long time until someone takes action. If you watch the gameplay, you'll see we went through this live.

The sideboard in this matchup is complicated, there's not much to change and especially what to take away, since each creature can make a difference, so I end up taking out 2 lands since I imagine the game can get stuck, and I'd rather avoid drawing badly later on, even if it means running low on lands on the midgame.

Side in:

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This is another deck that I nominate you to play. It's fun, cheap, simple and has a lot of good matches to play on Pauper these days.

Any questions or suggestions, just leave it here in the comments, and I'll come back to talk about it!

Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoyed the reading.