An Interview with Allesandro Moretti, the Pauper Masters Online's Champion

Last Sunday was the grand finale of the first season of Pauper Masters Online, where 24 players competed for four rounds plus the Top 8 games for the title of champion.

At the end of the four rounds, the event's Top 8 was defined by a mix of expected decks in the format and decks that spectators particularly didn't expect to get that far.

The top 8 players with their respective decks were:

A_AdeptoTerra (Storm)

Liv_One (Jeskai Affinity)

JherjamesB (Infect)

FSoeiro (Boros Bully)

Mosskirin (Jund Cascade)

Toko_Pretin (Izzet Affinity)

Patraoo (Boros Bully)

Doug_XD (Izzet Affinity)

At the end of the event, after having made a 3-1 result in the Swiss rounds, and defeating Toko_Pretin, FSoeiro and Liv_One in the Top8, the player Alessandro Moretti, known in Magic Online as A_AdeptoTerra was consecrated as the first champion of the Pauper Masters Online with his Storm deck!

Alessandro's list follows a traditional pattern of Storm lists, but stands out from the rest by using fewer copies of Peat Bog and no copies of Sandstone Needle, opting for Sulfur Vent to have access to blue mana, which then gives you greater opportunities to be able to respond to the mirror match with Echoing Truth.

The list also opts for using Ransack the Lab on the slot that commonly belongs to Sign in Blood, but which works equally well or even better as the mana cost is less restrictive, it digs deeper, and the card collaborates to accelerate the use of Cabal Ritual.

The great MVP of the matches that I saw from the player, in my opinion, was Introduction to Annihilation. The 5 mana sorcery that can be tutored with First Day of Class essentially allows the deck to deal with cards that commonly present a challenge for Storm to close the combo, such as Krark-Clan Shaman and Crypt Rats.

AdeptoTerra is actually well known in the Pauper community for his expressive results in the format's leagues and Challenges, and the day before the Pauper Masters, the player had managed to reach the Top 32 of the ManaTraders Series that took place on Saturday.

After the event, I had the opportunity to interview him and learn a little more regarding his opinion about the tournament, his games, and his vision for Pauper.

Check it out below!

Congratulations on winning the Pauper Masters Championship. Can you tell us more about yourself?

Hello everyone. I'm Alessandro Moretti, an Italian MTG player and Pauper content creator, my nickname in MODO is A_AdeptoTerra.

How did you get to know the Pauper Masters events?

I found about Pauper Masters thanks to the social media; Cards Realm shared one article about the event and I had in mind trying one of their events because they seem well organized, and the entry fee is really low.

You qualified for Pauper Masters on the Last Chance Qualifier, and then managed to win the Pauper Masters Championship, both times playing Storm. What made you choose this deck?

I decided to play Storm for at least two reasons: first I like combo decks and I always loved Modern Gifts Storm, so being able to play something with the same theme had a huge appeal on me; the second reason is that I needed to test and understand how 4 maindeck copies of Galvanic Relay would work. Until mid-June I preferred Shred Memory over relay in a split 2-2, but Galvanic Relay is much more flexible and powerful, but I still wasn't sure if the card was worth it, because waiting one extra turn to kill your opponent can be an issue. We can also say that I wasn't expecting to face any mirror match, which can be not that much fun to play sometimes.

What was the most difficult or challenging game you have played during the tournament?

Probably the win and versus Elves and the semifinals against Boros Bully.

Elves can be considered a negative matchup for Storm because it is hard to deal with Wellwisher, Timberwatch Elf and Dispel at the same time. Luckily, in game 3 I could Duress a Dispel and my opponent had then left only a single Wellwisher as a menace. In turn 3 I got the right call to cast Ransack the Lab instead of Night's Whisper, to try to find Chatterstorm and combo-off, and it worked. Not enough squirrels to kill them in 1 turn, but plenty to force them into bad chumpblocks and make that Wellwisher worthless.

Boros Bully can be in my opinion hard to deal in game 1; without Flaring Pain, their Prismatic Strands can buy enough time to kill me with their Battle Screech in combo with Rally the Peasants. Actually, the interesting games are the post-side ones, where in game 2 I could almost kill them after a mull to 5 and double Cleansing Wildfire. I needed extra mana to cast more spells, so the land denial somewhat worked. In game 3 I had the annoying dumb start that makes Chatterstorm what is it: turn 2 on the play 6 2/2 hasty squirrels and turn 3 kill. My opponent had Fiery Cannonade in hand, but not the time to play it.

On the finals, you played against Liv_One, on a match where, on game 1, he had a maindeck Echoing Truth. You cast Chatterstorm and went to combat, and then cast another Chatterstorm after he played Echoing Truth. Were you expecting him to have that card in maindeck?

Yep, I saw some lists getting results with maindeck Echoing Truth in Affinity, so I tried to play around it. Obviously, I was able to do that only thanks to the fact that my opponent was in mana screw and did nothing for the whole game, just keeping 2 mana open to counter my combo

What do you think of the current state of the format? Do you think something should be banned? If yes, what would you ban?

Pauper right now is in a bad spot. I think that at least 1 ban is necessary: Chatterstorm should go, the deck is too much fast and resilient and unless you ban something like 4 other cards, you can't keep the green version of Empty the Warrens in the format. I also think that removing another couple of problematic cards from the format would be great, but right now, Storm is the problem.

"Everyone has some different vision about what Pauper is about or what Pauper should be. What do you envision for Pauper as a format?

In my opinion, Pauper is the grindy format where planning and being interactive should be the best way to play the format. For that reason, I think that cards like the Monarch creatures should be removed from the format. I'd like to have some more complex hate cards, like Scavenging Ooze or Dryad Militant and also more engines or enablers, like Witch's Oven, but it is difficult and less enjoyable and more problematic cards seems to stack on the format, WotC is not wise in that sense.

Is there anything you'd like to say to the Pauper community or to our readers?

Keep playing Pauper, the format is cool!

So, congratulations to player A_AdeptoTerra for becoming the first Pauper Masters Online champion!

If you want to know more about him, you can find him on Twitter and on Twitch!

Stay tuned because later this week we will be releasing news about the second season of the event!