A Homage to Tithing Blade in Pauper for Magic: The Gathering

Tithing Blade is a fantastic card and I’m so happy it got added to Pauper. I love the tiny advantages you can get in this format thanks to blink effects like Kor Skyfisher and Glint Hawk as well as Deadly Dispute and Reckoner’s Bargain. 

Tolarian Terror and Cryptic Serpent are the bane of Pauper’s existence at the moment and printing this card gives the format a breath of fresh air as more decks now have access to powerful answers for these undercosted threats.

Another very important ability of Tithing Blade’s back side, Consuming Sepulcher, which lets you play around Counterspell, eating your opponent’s mana while you simply flip the card over and start draining your control opponent turn after turn. 

I want to show you two decks that exploit this card, starting with Orzhov.

Playing Kor Skyfisher and Glint Hawk and returning permanents to hand that will gain you more advantage later in the game is something I love to do in Pauper and Tithing Blade lets me go from Boros to Orzhov and now have clean answers to those Serpents.

Giving up on Experimental Synthesizer won’t be easy, but that means we get our card advantage via Goliath Paladin and Thorn of the Black Rose.

If you want to take a much slower approach and play a control deck instead with Tithing Blade, you should check out Golgari Gardens, a mono-black control deck splashing green for Khalni Garden and Avenging Hunter.

Tithing Blade here will not be able to be recurred, but you can sacrifice it to Deadly Dispute, Fanatical Offering and Reckoner’s Bargain to keep the card advantage flowing and making sure you don’t run out of answers. 

Just like Orzhov, you have both the monarch and initiative to turn the corner and quickly kill your opponent and in this deck, they play a great role since you have plenty of removal spells to keep them off of dealing you combat damage. 

Both these black decks will struggle against combo decks like Familiars, Jeskai Ephemerate or Fog Tron, who don’t need creatures to win and will grind you with card advantage and will set up a turn where they can counter your key interaction.

Murmuring Mystic is another new addition to Pauper that got downshifted in Commander Masters. The card is fantastic against those black-based removal spells, since you can protect it with Ephemerate, Dispel or Counterspell, creating a large number of Birds that will steal the initiative and quickly turn the corner.

Jeskai Ephemerate is a deck near to my heart that I played to a Top 8 at Paupergeddon almost two years ago. Thanks to Lorien Revealed, you have now a better mana base as well as some good hits for Augur of Bolas and a mana sink. 

This deck is now having a resurgence with the metagame having so many black-heavy removal spell decks that suffer the blue card advantage engines. 

The Pauper format keeps on evolving by getting a lot of new cards set after set, keeping the format fresh.