Pauper's Christmas Wishlist - Green Cards

In the last month, I started a series of articles with a list of cards that the Pauper community would like to be reprinted or cards that could be interesting to have access to the format, composed by the opinion of different communities and groups together with some cards that I find particularly interesting to Pauper and that could be reprinted as common at some point in the future.

Some cards will be off the list as they are part of a cycle, and I will be talking about card cycles in a separate article.

Today, let's talk about the green cards

Green in Pauper is found in a similar, but opposite spectra: The main way to build green decks in the format is through Aggro decks like Stompy or Bogles in addition to combo decks like Elves and Walls, but the color is also of great importance for Control archetypes like Tron, Turbo Fog or Bant Flicker for making cards like Moment's Peace, Weather the Storm and Pulse of Murasa available.

Then serving as an auxiliary color for decks that seek to pull the game into the late game.

There is a general consensus in the community that Green today needs better creatures that can give a boost to archetypes like RG Aggro or that would help Stompy or Elves keep up with the additions that other decks like Faeries and Tron have gained in the last year .

In a format that is surrounded by Blue-Based Decks and where the best removal has been Cast Down, a built-in protection like Autumn's Veil would be an important addition to the format to ensure that your threats enters the battlefield and limit the interaction that a significant part of the decks can have during a turn.

It could be very well used on deck sideboards like Elves, Walls and Bogles to protect certain combo pieces or specific spells, but I can't imagine decks like Stompy needing this type of card as it is a totally reactive interaction.

In a format where aggressive decks don't have access to good fetchlands, Become Immense tends to become an a slow card to be used with multiple copies on Pauper.

The deck that would potentially benefit the most from this would be Infect, which has not seen much game on the competitive scene since the ban of Invigorate and had a slight reappearance with Arcum's Astrolabe, but Become Immense do not solves or collaborates in anything so that the deck becomes more consistent, since it would still depend on a specific set of cards to be used in the first turns and Infect is not a deck that wants to go to the late game.

Outside of Infect, the card could be used as a 1 or 2-of on Stompy as a way to maintain reach in mid-game, as the deck uses a significant amount of low-cost interactions and could take advantage of the destroyed creatures in the early game to pay the Delve cost.

Fecundity has two uses for the format: The first is to serve as a recovery valve for decks of creatures that are vulnerable to sweepers like Elves, as it would help to find more cards to recover their position on the table and to find other ways to fill your hand like Lead the Stampede, or to punish removals on certain creatures in decks like Walls.

The second utility is to serve as another payoff for Aristocrats decks, which tend to be in Golgari colors, serving as a means of maintaining the flow of deck interactions and helping the deck to never lose its gas.

NOTE: As mentioned in a WhatsApp group after the article was released, Fertility would serve as a HUGE addition to the Goblins Storm deck, potentially allowing the archetype to draw the entire deck and turn all of its creatures into "free cycling" spells.

As Goblins Storm today is a Tier 3 or even Tier 4 deck, I believe it would be interesting to give the archetype a little push with this card.

I mentioned in the blue cards article that a deck like Mill-Fog could have additions that help with the archetype's clock, since its biggest weakness is the time it takes to win the game.

On the other hand, adding better cards from Mill also means adding better cards to fight Mill, since today the best option in the format is to use Feldon's Cane, and there is no more definitive answer against Mill than Gaea's Blessing, since the card can be used in any sideboard as its main ability against Mill works without having to pay any costs.

It is not a card that would have a big impact as long as Mill is just a deck that appears occasionally in Metagame, but it is a tool in case the dec one day become more relevant within the format.

I would love to put Scavenging Ooze in that slot, but it is a card that is naturally outside the standards of what we expect for Pauper and would be a hyper-efficient creature because it grows with creatures in graveyard and Pauper is a creature-based format.

Still, following the logic that Pauper needs cards today interact significantly with graveyards, Ground Seal offers a good job for green as it doesn’t allow spells like Pulse of Murasa or abilities such as Mnemonic Wall to target cards in graveyards.

A 2 mana 2/2 Trample creature is not necessarily a bad card for Pauper, as it could have its power increased with several cards used in Stompy like Elephant Guide or Hunger of the Howlpack.

But the main attraction of Kavu Predator lies in the fact that it is an efficient body that grows with lifegain effects, which are recurring in the format often incidentally in the form of cards like Lifelands, Navigator's Compass, Radiant Fountain, Pulse of Murasa, God-Pharaoh's Faithful, among others.

Kavu Predator therefore serves as an efficient evasive body that punishes decks for trying to stop Aggro decks through lifegain, while benefiting from the significant amount of lifegain that naturally already exists in the format.

With so many decks using flying creatures, Kraul Harpooner is an effective threat that could be used on Stompy or other G/x decks as a way to interact with flying creatures in a body that serves as a more aggressive play than cards like Scattershot Archer

It is worth noting that, in addition to fighting a flying creature upon entering the game, Kraul Harpooner also has Reach, which means that it can serve as a great blocker against Faeries or Bird tokens when needed.

Apart from that, Kraul Harponeer is a 3/2 body for 2 manas that can be played together with Burning-Tree Emissary and that helps to further improve the matchup that the archetype has against Faeries.

Paradise Druid is a creature that works very significantly for a deck like Bogles: It has Hexproof that can be permanently maintained with cards like Sentinel's Eyes while helping to correct the deck's mana ( which is usually a bit problematic and the reason for many mulligans) and can even give a body that can be sacrificed for an Edict effect, thus preserving the creature that has permanent Hexproof.

Overall, although it is relatively dangerous to give Bogles one more Hexproof creature, I believe that Paradise Druid would help fix many of the deck's consistency issues.

Pendelhaven Elf has some very important functions for Pauper Elves:

The first is to allow one more angle of attack for the deck, where you can make all your dorks and other 1/1 creatures become creatures that survive bttle against most creatures of the format today.

The second, of course, is to serve as a recurring protection against cards like Electrickery or Fiery Cannonade and which can be found with Lead the Stampede or Winding Way.

I'd say it looks like a healthy addition to the format and it could put Elves back to the Metagame even in the presence of Fiery Cannonade, in addition to serving as yet another wincondition for the deck.

Much like Pendelhaven Elder, Reclamation Sage would be another card of great use for certain decks like Elves, Walls or Slivers because it can be used alongside cards like Winding Way and Lead the Stampede without decreasing the consistency of these cards.

Reclamation Sage also has the upside of being a relatively ok creature at the board by having a 2/2 body while being a great target for cards like Ephemerate or Ghostly Flicker in matchups against Affinity or Bogles.

Recently, Big Mana decks like Temur Cascade, Gruul Ponza or the current version of Walls (which also bets on creatures with Cascade) have done good results in the format, and it is an archetype that until recently had little visibility or viability in the format.

Sifter Wurm would be another great payoff for these decks as it is a threat with Trample and a considerable body and which ETB effect helps to compensate for the damage done in the early game by Aggro decks, while also filtering the top of the deck to find the cards needed to keep the threat flow coming or find the answer your need, as well as serving as an occasional decent setup for a card with Cascade.

Sixth Sense is, in my particular view, the most dangerous card on the list.

Bogles is already a deck that is among the best in the format today, and one of its main weaknesses is precisely the difficulty of recovering if the opponent resolves its first threats, and Sixth Sense is a card that significantly mitigates this weakness and makes combat a much more complicated thing for the opponent, since on many occasions the best option is to let the Bogles player do the damage since you can still try to win the game by racing.

Adding a deck some way to have a "refill" the cards in your hand that can help you find Auras like Rancor or Armadillo Cloak seems like a pretty dangerous addition to an archetype that some decks already have have a hard time interacting.

This card has been cited several times among players from different communities and with a relatively large amount of debate as to whether it would be too strong for Pauper or not.

On one hand, Strangleroot Geist is a low cost threat that has haste (making it a great topdeck especially if you have a Rancor in your hand) and that needs two removals to deal with efficiently.

On the other hand, the card does not interact well with Burning-Tree Emissary and is fragile for a significant portion of the format's removals today, especially Journey to Nowhere and Fall from Favor.

Stompy has grown in once more in Pauper today due to being the best deck against Faeries, making it a great meta-call as its proactive plan with efficient spells and creatures tends to be enough to make many decks play defensively.

However, Stompy would still suffer significantly in a world where Fall from Favor did not exist and Tron returned to the status of the best deck of the format, and as I said earlier in the other articles in this series, Pauper is lacking quality creatures that can serve to diversify the spectrum of Aggro decks, which in the last year has played, mostly, trying to go under the other decks before these decks can lock them out of the game in any way.

In this reality, I believe that Strangleroot Geist could be a significant addition, as it is a threat of immediate impact at the board and that requires specific answers or combat tricks to resolve.

One thing that green lacks in Pauper are good creatures for Midrange decks.

Of course, we have cards like Blastoderm that can occupy this slot as a difficult to interact threat with and with a significant clock, or Penumbra Spider as a permanent that forces a 2 for 1 and that is a difficult creature for the best deck of the format to handle, but these creatures are simply not enough.

Temur Sabertooth has exactly what a Midrange in format would need to play with green: Interactions.

The card works as a pseudo - Kor Skyfisher for creatures, being able to constantly replay, while protecting itself, cards like Lone Missionary, Phyrexian Rager, Monarchs, among others, turning it into the perfect card for Midrange decks to consider adding green.

At the end of the day, it seems to me an addition that, although possibly easy to abuse in Pauper, would be healthy and open up another range of possible archetypes for Metagame.

Wall of Blossoms is a simple card, but it could be an impactful addition to several decks of the format like Bant Familiar, Tron, Walls and Turbo Fog in addition to creating another card that could help in the construction of decks like BG Midrange.

Despite mainly favoring decks that the community usually has a certain disgust for promoting long games, Wall of Blossoms seems to me not only a plausible addition to the format but also healthy and that ends up creating yet another safe valve for creatures more aggressive can be printed in the format.

And here we end the Green Wishlist, if any card that you would like to be in the format is not in the list, feel free to leave it in the comments!

In the next article, we will travel to Ravnica, where I will be listing the multicolored cards that could enter the format.