What is Paupergeddon?

Paupergeddon is a series of events that take place three times a year: in Rome (Autumn Edition), Milan (Winter Edition), and Pisa (Spring Edition) - all in Italy. It's organised by LPI - Lega Pauper Italia. These tournaments gather as many as 700-800 players at a time! You could easily call them Pauper Grand Prixs. They are competitive two-day events with really good prizes.

LPI also has a ranking of players based on their Geddon and local performances.

As of writing of this piece, I can proudly claim to be in the top8 (out of 1k+ players) of the ranking thanks to performances such as winning Geddon Trios, Top4ing Geddon Rome, winning Polish Nationals, but also Top8ing a local seasonal league.

There is also a special tournament once a year for players who accrued at least 300 points in a given season, battling for the title of the Pauper Player of the Year! And it's all a grassroots initiative.

The Current Metagame

The meta has changed quite a bit since last Geddon. Nowadays, it's a format where a ton of decks are viable, but there are still three key pillars - Affinity, Kuldotha, and, Glee.

Glee is particularly controversial, as it's a super powerful two-card combo that remains at the very top despite being targeted heavily. Players load up on Snuff Outs and countermagic yet the strategy refuses to give in, standing firmly as the hallmark tier 1 (tier 0?) deck of the format.

All three decks mentioned above affect whether the deck you want to play can compete in the format at large. Kuldotha is a speed check, Affinity is a grind check, and Glee is a combo check. If you don't play any of the top three you want to have enough card advantage to keep up with Affinity, enough interaction not to get Gleed, and not clunky so as not to insta die to Kuldotha. As you can imagine, it is a tall order to check all three boxes.

There are decks that tackle the issue in some other way. As an example, let me give you my beloved deck that I've played at each premiere event I've played - Mono Blue Fae. I am not faster than Red, don't grind better than Affinity, nor can I interact with creatures much. However, the combination of evasion, on-stack interaction, insane efficiency, and super clean manabase makes it a contender. 

Nevertheless, numerous decks are lurking just beneath the tier1 surface, because they fail to compete against one of these decks. Tron decks can grind well, but have a card time against Broodscale - they need to 'splash' Snuff Out to compete. UB Fae is a slower and grindier Fae variant - but that actually makes it *less* good against Affinity, making the matchup extremely unfavourable. Set-up decks that grind well like Familiars in turn struggle to keep up with Kuldotha.

All in all, it's clear that there is a very clear litmus test on what one needs to succeed in the current format.

Tournament Preparation

As I very much intend to attend every Geddon, I am indeed going to Lecco as well. However, I needed to come up with a way to prepare for the tourney with all the info I had available.

I was semi-locked on Blue Fae, as I don't think there is merit in changing a winning horse - unless proven otherwise. And so, I tried to be proven that Fae is not the way to go. 

I played Leagues and locals which decreased my confidence in the deck quite a bit. I, however, quickly identified the reason as to why that's the case. Fae is a surgical knife that slices into the top of the metagame - and since smaller size tourneys are comprised of so many pet decks, I tended to struggle. I kept queuing into Elves, Walls, White Weenie, or Gruul Monsters. Thankfully for me, I do not expect those in the winners' metagame at Geddon itself.

I opted to do focus testing. I met up with a couple of respected players and we play a gauntlet of Fae vs other tier 1 strategies. Much to my satisfaction, this is where Fae did indeed perform substantially better - despite facing 'stronger' decks. This is also my advice to you - play against players you respect in a focused session. Not only will you play more games compared to tournaments (less downtime), the games quality is going to be much higher.

Needless to say I locked in Mono Blue Fae.

Funnily enough, because of my previous performances and popularising the deck in general (i.e. creating content and setting up a dedicated discord with now almost 400 players), now I had to worry about the mirror. 

There was also one new deck that has picked up a ton in popularity thanks to Walker735 , who's actually the third in the EU ranking put above. That deck is a fair Jund Wildfire strategy. It combines the grindy aspects of Affinity and Chrysalis - which is arguably the best creature in the format. 

It is particularly annoying against Fae, as it's a threat that I cannot Annul. The presence of this deck alone pushed me to include two maindeck Nullify in my deck - as a card that tags both Chrysalis and Refurbished Familiar.

How to pick a deck?

If you don't have a single deck that you know you'll play, how should you choose one? There' also the two-day tournament dynamic where day1 you'd rather be good against the Other category, while day2 against the top3-5 decks. With that in mind, it would seem that Kuldotha and Glee could be solid choices, as they can properly punish worse decks while still competing at the highest level, as they themselves are a part of the top three. Fae is great for day2 but much less so for day 1.

I like strategising deck choices as a thought exercise but in the end I don't think you can really narrow it down enough to make a very correct choice.

My personal approach is the following. I *know* which tier decks I am going to have to face to win (Kuldotha, Affinity, Glee) and I *don't know* which nontier decks I'd happen to face. Therefore, I base my deck choice on the ones I can realistically predict.

Conclusion

I am super excited to compete at the highest level of Pauper competition and am already waiting for the Pauper Player of the Year tourney in a couple of months!

It's a great, budget-friendly that I cannot encourage you more to try out for yourself!