Pauper Miracles

by pnswlkerKING on 01 August 2018

Main Deck (60 cards)

Sideboard (0 cards)

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Deck Description

This is a really fun deck that I have been putting together for some time now. Basically, how it works is to attempt to use a bunch of cantrips such as Brainstorm, Preordain, Telling Time, and Ponder to control the top card of the deck until we can get a Thunderous Wrath on top. Meanwhile, we can use Moment's Peace and Fog to prevent lethal damage that would be dealt to us, since sometimes it takes a while to find the Thunderous Wrath. Once we get a Thunderous Wrath in your graveyard, it is pretty consistent to the win, where we use Reclaim to put the Thunderous Wrath back on top of the library and cast it the next turn. If we are short on Reclaims, don't worry, there is Mnemonic Wall to return it from the graveyard to your hand. Below this general description, you will find a list of the cards in the deck and reasons for their inclusions. Please feel free to leave any comments for the deck as well as the sideboard, due to the fact that I have yet to put it together.

First the lands:

4x Evolving Wilds: This is a three color Pauper deck, and Pauper is a format where it is very hard to mana fix because there isn't access to any powerful dual lands. Due to this fact, a three color deck must play four copies of this to help with mana fixing. However, there are some setbacks. When we know we want something that's on top of our library, we cannot use Evolving Wilds, otherwise it will screw up the order of the top of the deck. This really isn't great when we have a Thunderous Wrath on top, but don't have a red mana source. Luckily, we can use cantrips to push the Thunderous Wrath back and hope to find a Mountain or dual-colored land with red.

1x Halimar Depths: Although you would think Halimar Depths would be amazing in a deck that wants to control the top of its library, there are a couple problems with running more than one copy. First, I don't want to be drawing into a tap land all the time, since Pauper is a quick format. Playing tap lands is quite slow and clunky, especially against mono-colored decks that play basics such as Delver and MBC. Second, we have a ton of cantrips, so it gets really repetitive to use a cantrip, then have to spend the time rearranging the top three cards of the deck when you already know what two of them are. However, Halimar Depths can be a very valuable resource in moderation, which we can fetch with Crop Rotation or even bounce with Izzet Boilerworks.

2x Khalni Garden: This is one of those cards that is pretty solid in our deck, but again, in moderation. It provides a chump blocker for the most part, against faster decks, when we don't have the mana to cast a Fog or Moment's Peace. It then basically turns into a Forest that we can bounce for value with Izzet Boilerworks. Khalni Gardens is also a great target for Crop Rotation if we have nothing else to do.

1x Rugged Highlands and 1x Thornwood Falls: These lands provide for mana fixing and help as another target for Crop Rotation if we are really desperate.

Now the spells:

4x Brainstorm: Brainstorm is one of the most important cards in our deck for many reasons. First, it provides a solid turn 1 play and gets us major card advantage from the beginning of the game. Second, if we happen to play it on turn 1, then any Thunderous Wrath that we happen to have in our opening hand we can shove to the top and draw it on turn 2. This makes for an even more powerful turn 2. In the later game, we might have a Thunderous Wrath in hand by accident and not had red mana to play it when we drew it. In this case, we can use a Brainstorm to get that back to the top of our library. If we don't have a Thunderous Wrath in hand, we can always search for it as well, Brainstorm allowing us to go three cards deep. It also makes for a great Reclaim target if we are stuck in a position without a Thunderous Wrath or one in hand with no way of casting it.

2x Crop Rotation: We run 2 Crop Rotation for mana fixing as well as defense. The two main targets for Crop Rotation are Halimar Depths and Khalni Garden, both of which can get us out of tough positions. Since we can't take away from the overall speed of the deck, we need alternate ways to find our ETB lands, which are few and far between. Because of this, we only run 2 Crop Rotation both due to space in the mainboard and that we only have 3 lands to actually fetch. Crop Rotation also provides and alternate way to shuffle our library if so need be.

4x Ponder and 4x Preordain: Ponder is the more valuable card here, mostly because it digs one card deeper than Preordain. However, it has a downside here, too, which is that we have to keep two of the cards on top. This can become problematic when there are no good cards on top and we waste two turns. But, using Ponder followed by a Preordain is amazing when this scenario happens. We can use the Ponder and get the best card from the three, then cast the Preordain and scry the other two to the bottom. Ponder and Preordain both as cantips and top-deck setters are vital to the deck's success in finding Thunderous Wrath.

4x Reclaim: As part of the combo of our deck, Reclaim is a great way to not only get back Thunderous Wrath from our graveyard as the win-condition, but also to get cantrips, fog-effects, and even Mnemonic Walls back. Reclaim can save us from death in a lot of scenarios. One of the best non-Thunderous Wrath combos is that we can Reclaim to put a card on top, then cantrip to get the card back into our hand. This is a complicated way of casting a Mnemonic Wall effect, but remember the whole idea of the card is to keep it for returning Thunderous Wrath. Because Reclaim is instant speed, we can cast it on our upkeep (in the case that we don't have mana open on the opponent's turn) and draw into Thunderous Wrath for our draw step.

2x Magma Jet: Magma Jet is used for two reasons, none of which are strong enough to allow it as a 4-of. Most importantly, it allows us to scry twice into our deck and pick out any cards we don't want. We can also use it on the opponent for the most part. A lot of times, casting 4 Thunderous Wrath will leave the opponent at 1 or 2 life because they are playing gain-lands. Magma Jet will finish them off.

4x Moment's Peace and 4x Fog: The fog-effects are used to hold off the opponent long enough to cast 4 Thunderous Wrath, usually by turn 7 or 8. One of the major problems with the original deck and other Miracle decks online was that they played cards like Lightning Bolt and burn spells to take care of the opponent's creatures. Most of the time, however, the burn spells couldn't keep up with the amount of creatures being played, especially in the late-game. This meant that instead of the interaction of destroying creatures, we can ignore the creatures altogether. This strategy is a main part of our deck because without it, we often die before we can cast 4 Thunderous Wrath.

4x Telling Time: This is a great card, not only because it digs 3 deep into our library, but it also gets rid of 2 of the cards that would be put on top instead of just one. This helps with bad draws. Telling Time is also instant speed, which allows us to use it if the opponent doesn't want to swing in and we had mana open for a Fog or Moment's Peace.

3x Mnemonic Wall: We can return basically every other card in our deck from our graveyard with this card. However, we mostly use it to return Reclaim for huge value as basically another three copies of Thunderous Wrath. Therefore, we will have 11 copies of Thunderous Wrath that could be cast potentially.

4x Thunderous Wrath: Ah, the miracle win condition. This card can be completely broken when played correctly; no explanation needed on this one!

Deck Tags

  • Pauper

Deck at a Glance

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Mana Curve

Mana Symbol Occurrence

01801014

Card Legality

  • Not Legal in Standard
  • Not Legal in Modern
  • Not Legal in Vintage
  • Legal in Legacy

Deck discussion for Pauper Miracles

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