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Mastering Poison Storm in Pauper: Deck & Sideboard Guide
Intro
Pauper is known for grindy games intermingled with fast Kuldotha and Glitters kills. When taking up the format, I knew I wanted to somehow break this dynamic.
Poison Storm is a creature-less deck that abuses the current makeup of the format. When I see turn two Lembas, I know I’ve won. Their removal is dead and most cards are irrelevant.
It’s not a storm that you might recognise from Legacy or Modern. Rather, it has multiple small storm turns that kill over the course of a longer game.
when I see turn two Lembas, I know I’ve won
This is the list a known Pauper content creator and my co-tester, saidin_raken also known as kalikaiz, has been championing.
(5 - 0)
100% in MTGO Pauper League #7928 — 25-Mar-2024
$61/68.97 Tix
Maindeck (60)
| Artifact [7] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Pentad Prism | $0.35 | |
| 3 Everflowing Chalice | $0.35 | |
| Instant [11] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Experimental Augury | $0.79 | |
| 3 Prologue to Phyresis | $0.49 | |
| 4 Weather the Storm | $0.49 | |
| Sorcery [24] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Contentious Plan | $0.49 | |
| 4 Infectious Inquiry | $0.35 | |
| 4 Vivisurgeon's Insight | $0.35 | |
| 4 Deep Analysis | $0.35 | |
| 4 Lórien Revealed | $3.49 | |
| 4 Thirsting Roots | $0.69 | |
| Land [18] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Hickory Woodlot | $0.79 | |
| 4 Peat Bog | $1.99 | |
| 4 Saprazzan Skerry | $1.99 | |
| 1 Snow-Covered Swamp | $1.29 | |
| 4 Snow-Covered Island | $2.29 | |
| 1 Snow-Covered Forest | $0.99 | |
| Sideboard [15] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 3 Serrated Arrows | $0.35 | |
| 3 Bring the Ending | $0.35 | |
| 2 Arms of Hadar | $0.35 | |
| 3 Moment's Peace | $2.99 | |
| 4 Seal of Removal | $0.35 | |
$69.12 Tix @cardhoarder
$1.73 / Week @cardhoarder
$49.48 @tcgplayer
$73.61 @cardkingdom
Visual View
Similar Decks
Proxies
Archetype Analysis
Magic online format
Apprentice and MWS .dec
Let’s dive in!
The Premise
The idea behind the deck is to play a prisony-turbofoggy type of game where you try to stay alive as long as possible, giving the opponent one or two poison counters every turn. In the mid-to-late game you will have gone up 10 poison, resulting in your win.
We can argue whether phenotypically it should be classified as combo, prison, or something else entirely. What’s key to observe is that it does not play out as your typical combo strat. It neither aims to nor is it capable of closing games fast. You might sometimes turn five kills but I wouldn’t bank on it. The strength is not speed (like Cycling Storm) but resiliency. It does not use the graveyard and does not run out of cards easily. This is its selling point.
Card Choices
Lands and Ramp
Normally, I don’t break down the land base makeup but I will make an exception here, as it plays a vital role. The key mechanic of the deck is proliferation, so naturally you want to pair it with all sorts of counters.
We play two mana rocks that have (charge) counters on them which can be proliferated. It, therefore, means that the mana spent to cast a proliferation spell off of Prism is essentially free. If you play Contentious Plan off double Prism, it’s literally free. This is one of the best mechanisms to storm off.
The land base is in my view one of the better reasons to play the deck. We know how busted Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are. Here we have a pauper-worthy imitation of those.
Depletion lands, like Saprazzan Skerry, give you two mana every time it’s tapped. They do deplete after two uses, but this is where proliferation comes in. With proper sequencing, they will never run out of counters and you will have two mana off your lands every single turn.
Poison
We have two ways to actually give opponent poison - Infectious Inquiry and Prologue to Phyresis.
Prologue is an excellent way to give that first poison, especially as it can be played on the opponent’s upkeep or end step to elicit action. Lists typically play 3 copies, as after the first poison any subsequent copy is just bad on rate - two mana draw a card.
Inquiry is card advantage *and* poison which is arguably the best place to be. The deck is blue green but Inquiry is a great reason to add black as the third colour. The life loss isn’t meaningless so you have to be careful how you play it out. At times, you’ll need to hold off until you’ve gained a bunch of life with Weather.
Proliferation
This particular list has a grand total of 16 proliferation effects. Their goal is to uptick the counters on your mana rocks and lands, and naturally the poison.
Each is a bit different in their nature. Experimental Augury provides nice card selection, Contentious Plan is just a catrip, Vivisurgeon’s Insight is really good card advantage, and Thirsting Roots is the cheapest and fastest.
A common line is to play turn one Hickory Woodlot and turn two play Island or Swamp, deploy Pentad Prism with two counters, and use the floating gree to cast Roots, proliferating the land and Prism. With a similar setup you can use the floating green and one Prism counter to cast Augury or Plan. A similar pattern occurs with Everflowing Chalice.
There is no good rule of thumb on how to sequence your proliferation as it all depends on the counters on lands, whether you have a mana rock, how much mana is available, and if the opponent has any poison. But if you goldfish the deck numerous times you’ll start to learn the patterns and how to yield the most proliferation thanks to better sequencing.
Card Draw
You need to cast a critical mass of spells which necessitates a lot of resources at your disposal. As you prolong the game, you don’t want to end up just topdecking mana rocks or lands. It’s still debatable how much raw card advantage you need, as most cards at least cantrip.
Currently, the consensus is to play Lorien Revealed as a land / card draw split card and Vivisurgeon very naturally fits the deck.
Deep Analysis is a pure card advantage card that does not otherwise synergise with anything. This is a flex-ish slot that you might trim down or even cut entirely. However, its importance really shines against blue decks as you can brute force card draw - compared to Lorien or Vivi which getting Pyroblasted feels awful.
Staying Alive
this deck sometimes feels like turbo fog
You need to stay alive, as you will die pretty fast if you just keep casting two-mana card draw spells. Some lists include maindeck Moment’s Peace but the ‘stock’ is Weather the Storm.
While we don’t cast a flurry of spells very early in the game, a Weather for 3 or 4 is enough to stabilise nicely. You can also use the first 3-4 turns to set up properly and then try to soft-storm with Weather as the icing on the cake. Since Pauper decks can’t really present super early lethal, you do have that time. Weather plays a key role and this deck sometimes feels like turbo fog because of it, especially post-board when you add Moment’s Peace.
Tips and Tricks
- You can play Pentad Prism when you don’t have two different colors. You can pay a colour and a colorless, resulting in a Prism with 1 counter.
- Always prioritise taking counters off Prisms that have the most. You need to avoid ‘deading’ Prisms as 1 counter is infinitely better than 0, since 1 can be further proliferated.
- If possible, tap Everflowing Chalice last, as its counters will increase over the course of your turn.
- If your hand is solid and you’re not looking for anything specific, play Contentious Plan over Experimental Augury.
- You can play Weather the Storm on the opponent’s turn, taking advantage of their own spell count.
- If an opponent has graveyard hate like Relic of Progenitus, you can still play and flashback Deep Analysis if you flash it back immediately. That’s thanks to how priority works.
- In long games, keep count of proliferation and poison effects so you know whether you can still win and if you should hold off proliferation until you get that first poison in.
- Thirsting Roots has two modes and finding a basic does come up.
- Always double check whether you can afford not to cycle Lorien Revealed. The Draw 3 effect is relevant very often.
- You can proliferate opposing -1/-1 counters, and other detrimental counters.
Sideboard Guide
Azorius Glitters
In this matchup I lower my curve, trim artifact ramp as it walks into Dust to Dust, and become much more controlly. The plan is to stay alive and slowly but surely chip away at their poison count.
Seal of Removal can be played early and cashed in when they attempt to put Glitters onto a creature.
Mono Red Kuldotha
Gaining life and fogging combats is great but at some point their board will grow so much they will out-damage your preventative measures. If you expect a lot of Mono Red, I suggest playing more mass removal, even 4 or 5.
Golgari Gardens
I am tempted to just resubmit but I think Bring the Ending is great at one particular thing - countering initiative. Their deck is like 50 cards that are irrelevant and just a couple that make some impact. I want Bring the Ending for those few cards that matter.
Dimir Terror
Serrated Arrows is great at putting that first -1/-1 counter on an opposing Angler or Augur of Bolas, and then you can proliferate it up and kill them.
Bring the Ending is mainly here to combat their countermagic but I could very much see not even siding it in. I like it as a way to force them to fight over their own threats rather than my cards.
Be careful as a skilled control player can choke you on your proliferation or poison spells.
Azorius Familiars
Very close to a bye, similarly to Gardens. They don’t really have relevant interaction but you might encounter some number of Prohibit, Counterspell, Dust to Dust.
They don’t have any pressure though so you have all the time in the world to keep making land drops undisrupted.
Conclusion
And this is Poison Storm! If you want to bring some uncertainty to your local metagame and confound opponents, there is no better choice!
And remember to hold my hand and pass the turn together.
Cheers!