I came 2nd with Boros Tribe at the Brighton 24 player win-a-bundle - Tournament Report
Hey everyone, I'm back with another tournament report!
I'm Wheels, I predominantly play combo decks and you can see my previous efforts from the London IPT where I came 25th with Dimir Whale Combo here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pauper/comments/1sw4wk5/steelfin_whale_combo_25th104_tournament_report/
This weekend just gone I played in my local Dice Saloon, Brighton's win-a-bundle Pauper tournament with 24 players competing over 5 rounds of Swiss to a top 8. For this tournie I've been playing the new Boros Tribe list that's a revamped version of a classic fringe combo, given new life by a powerful midrange engine courtesy of Secrets of Strixhaven.
Here's a mini tournament report to show my games and how they went. I firmly believe that this deck has a hell of a lot of legs and I see a lot of people dismiss it as a gimmick deck. Hopefully mine and others' results can convince you otherwise!
TLDR:
3-1-1 swiss, finished 5th for top 8, second place finish
Five rounds of Swiss:
2-0 Izzet Skred
0-2 Mardu Synth
2-0 Monster Tron
2-0 Walls Combo
ID Altar Tron
Finish 5th in Swiss
Top 8:
Quarter finals vs. Mardu Synth
2-0
Semi finals vs. Red Madness
2-0
Finals vs. Altar Tron
0-2
What is Boros Tribe?
Boros Tribe is a red-white combo/midrange deck centered around the two card combo of [[Tireless Tribe]] and [[Inside Out]].
Tribe is a 1 mana 1/1 that can give itself +0/+4 at instant speed by discarding a card from your hand. If you discard five cards to its effect it becomes a 1/21 and by casting Inside Out you can reverse the power and toughness of tribe making it swing for lethal damage. This whole interaction can be done at instant speed. It can also happen as early as turn two with tribe played on turn one and inside out cast on turn two swinging into an open board.
This deck has already existed for a while but Secrets of Strixhaven brought some much needed support for Boros decks in pauper with a suite of new Lorehold themed graveyard matters cards. We're using a playset of two of these cards:
[[Spirit Mascot]] is a 2 mana 2/2 that gets a +1/+1 counter every time one or more cards leave your graveyard.
[[Pursue the Past]] is a deceptively good discard draw two spell that gains you life, has flashback, and most importantly is a gold card. The reason this is important is that we're playing six eidolons in our deck. [[Aurora Eidolon]]
These spirits don't do a whole lot on their own but they act as the perfect discard fodder for our draw engine of 4 PtP and 4 [[Thrilling Discovery]]. If we have Eidolons in the graveyard they return to our hand when we cast one of our draw spells. At which point they can then be discarded again. So if we cast discovery we gain two life, we put a counter on our Mascot for every eidolon in the graveyard, and then we use those eidolons for the discard and go up three cards. All for the cost of just two mana.
These spirits are also great to combo with as they effectively give us two separate discards when we combo as they'll return to our hand on the cast of the hybrid mana Inside Out
Why Play Boros Tribe?
I was already vaguely aware of the old tribe deck before SoS but when I saw the new list getting league 5-0s on MTGO I rented the cards and gave it a go and instantly fell in love with it. I took it to our weeklies and went 3-0 twice with the deck, putting up results against some of the formats biggest boogeymen.
It has my favourite feature in any combo deck which is a powerful midrange spine that can grind out games when comboing either isn't going to plan or just isn't feasible against control heavy decks etc.
This deck might seem like a one trick pony but there are so any ways to get your deck over the line and out value your opponent, all whilst threatening a combo kill that can take them out as early as turn two.
It's also just weird and cool and has so many of those strange value based interactions that makes pauper such an interesting format where you try and eek as much as you can out of bad cards. God, I love Pauper. Alright then!
Here's my list for the tournament: https://moxfield.com/decks/K2-SOX2rtUeq4O673xV-mQ
Swiss Rounds
Round one: Izzet Terror 2-0
First game was against UR skred and this seemed like a decent but still relatively challenging match up. They've got counters, removal, and can present a lot of blockers once they're online which means we're going to have to deal with a fair few headaches to get online and an early win is very unlikely.
Game one I took the play and put out an early Spirit Mascot as my opponent hadn't yet presented red mana for removal only for the turn two mountain, skred. This made it pretty obvious what I was up against.
I baited out the early counterspells with Pursue the Past as the flashback makes it less of a lost card when countered and I also only have to discard if it resolves. That paved the way for a tapped out opponent for me to cast my tireless tribe into. Red decks hate this thing as it not only provides me value and threatens a win but also it dodges every removal spell they can cast by discarding to grow its butt.
Once that was on board it became a matter of grinding out my opponent. One thing about terror is that their card draw is actually not very good so I could refill my hand a lot quicker than they can whilst slowly chipping away at their health with tribe swings. Once they tapped out to grab the Monarch I slammed down a second Mascot and grew it with loads of eidolon triggers. From there I bolted the blocker, swung big and got their health total low. They tried to protect themself with a Murmering Mystic for repeatable blockers and I used [[Fling]] on my mascot to deal damage straight to face.
Game two was far more trivial as I found both sideboard relics in my opening hand and ate every card in their graveyard. Even protecting one of the relics from a Cast into the Fire by using the [[Loran's Escape]] to give it hexproof. Turns out it can target artifacts! My opponent did a good job of denying my card draw when I was relatively empty handed but as soon as I started to recuperate hand size the game swung very dramatically in my favour with them not being able to cast a single snake.
Round 2: Mardu Synth 0-2
Round two ended up being a bit of a write off. Mardu synth is not a great match up for this deck due to the high quantity of removal it plays. Including black removal which is a lot harder to deal with. They eat up decks that care about their creatures and we really care about our creatures.
But in hindsight I played this game all wrong. Trying to race my opponent game one with a risky hand that ended up starving for lands and then playing reactively and hopelessly in game two putting myself on the back foot and losing the card draw war. This will be vindicated later! Watch this space.
Round Three: Monster Tron 2-0
Monster Tron is one of my most favoured match ups. Whilst we can end up losing on a grind-off, Monster Tron has effectively zero answers for our combo until they hit tron, and even then they're all sorcery speed. Round one you can be as aggressive as you like and hold up one white to dodge a killship with Loran's Escape. Their big beaters aren't as big as your Mascot by the midgame so you can comfortably block anything they swing at you. Once your mascot hits 8 toughness nothing they have can kill it unless they're playing some kind of x spell or a Scour From Existence which in this case they were not. Game one ended with an early combo, maybe about turn 3/4?
Game two ended up a little bit more grindy with some back and forth caused by my opponent bringing in [[Vines of Vastwood]] to protect his own creatures and also to give my Tireless Tribe shroud in response to an attempted combo, fizzling the Inside Out. Unfortunately even with multiple attempts with Monstrous Emergence to bring down my creatures and a successfully halted combo attempt, by destroying his board with multiple casts of [[Shenanigans]] off the dredge and a large enough Mascot, the entire round was over in about 10 minutes.
I will say we did play a casual game after just to pass the time and it lasted way longer but even in the long grindy games where we're swapping back and forth on equal footing, being able to just combo out of nowhere and your opponent having no instant speed interaction other than a few sideboard cards that have been used in earlier fights means the game can just outright end even when they're winning.
Round Four: Walls Combo 2-0
I was really unsure going into this matchup. This isn't one I've played against before and my opponent Alfie plays Walls almost exclusively so is well versed in the weird lines you need to hit to pull off a quick game. He admitted he was also not familiar with the matchup though, so we were both going in a little blind save for the fact that I know the walls deck and how it works a lot better than Alfie knew tribe. In the end though, as with all combo mirrors, it was effectively a question of which route to take. Try and play control or try and out race them. In the end I knew he wasn't going to be able to interact with my combo in the way that I could with his so I opted for a bit of a tempo strategy.
Game one started with a tribe on board followed by bolting my opponent's turn one caretaker to limit their non green mana production. As we pointed out between us, walls were in a spot where they couldn't afford to tap out for mana as they needed to hold up a blocker. So in the end, they were forced to play a little slower than they wanted. This ended up not mattering a huge amount because on turn three I top decked an [[Escape Tunnel]] making tribe unblockable and presenting lethal on just the third turn of the game. Ouch!
Post sideboard I've added in more removal to try and stop their combo with more consistency than just the few bolts in main deck. Unfortunately for my opponent this was a really rough game for them, having kept a slightly risky one lander relying on the fact that their caretaker would provide them the second mana they needed to get casting the spells they needed. I bolted the caretaker straight away again on my turn one and it was basically over from that point. A clean win but I'm really interested to see how this match up would have gone with some better luck on my opponent's side.
Round Four: Altar Tron - Intentional Draw
Once I'd hit three wins the top players did some math and it seemed almost certain an ID would get me into the top 8 so I got the handshake from the other player in the same position and went to go get a sandwich.
Final position at the end of Swiss 5th place on 10 points.
Top 8:
Quarter finals: Mardu Synth 2-0
This was my most challenging match of the day. When we hit top 8 and final standings were being generated, both my previous Mardu Synth opponent and one other Mardu synth player were in the top 8, meaning I would almost certainly have to play against the deck again. This time, in a knock out situation! Cue the final standings and I'm playing against the other Mardu player in the quarters.
Immediately I thought about the mistakes I'd made in swiss and tried to figure out a different plan of attack to pull through against a very hard matchup. What followed was an absolutely nerve wracking grind fest where a single mistake on either side would spell disaster. We spent the whole game carefully inching around each other's plays and chipping away at life totals.
At the beginning of the game I basically refused to put a creature on the board unless I had a backup to replace it with or some kind of protection to give it a shield against my opponent's flood of removal. My game plan was to try and abuse [[Sneaky Snacker]] as much as physically possible, casting draw spells almost every turn to increment my life total away from an easy kill and to constantly apply pressure with snacker chip damage. I had a tribe on board to utilise as a discard outlet but mainly wanted to present it as a threat rather than spend too much resource on it to keep it around.
At some point in the game my opponent put down a Makeshift Munitions which provided constant threats to my board and, towards the end of the game, my life total. Before sideboarding I've got no way to get rid of it so that's when my gameplan started to shift. As my opponent continued to sac artifacts to try and stop Sneaky Snackers from killing them (I had a whole playset on the board at some point!) they were removing their bounce targets and stalling out the game but removing their own card advantage in exchange for chipping away at my life total. By now it was very low and if I didn't utilise my prismatic strands and life gain effectively I was dead to them sacking their own artifact lands.
This is when the Eidolons came in clutch. I started to hard cast the Aurora Eidolons onto the board and whilst they were only 2/2s they could present attacks whilst also allowing me to pay one white and sac them to prevent damage to myself or a creature. Eventually I had three on board, a prismatic strands in the graveyard and the game reached a bit of a deadlock. I put down a spirit mascot and started to go on the offensive. We swung back and forth at eachother and there was an agonising moment where I had the combo in hand ready to win on the next turn with a fling when my opponent popped off a pair of refurbs and I was forced to cast inside out just to get back eidolons and not discard more precious cards.
We were approaching endgame and I had gotten my opponent down to just three health with a board of 2/2s and a fling in hand. So close. Then they found some Lembas and pushed back up to 9. I thought the win had slipped away from me until I finally drew another inside out. my opponent had no cards in hand and could only interact with the munitions. I proactively popped an Eidolon to force their removal with two other eidolons and a strands that I could react with. They were forced to let it happen. I discard some cards, switch with inside out, then fling for the win.
An absolute nail biter. Game two played out about the same and honestly my nerves were so wrecked from the first bout I could barely remember the second apart from a cool moment where my opponent put 4 points of damage on my 5/5 Mascot then played electrickery to kill it and a snacker on board. I cast inside out to flip the snacker to a 1/2 and pull back eidolons from the graveyard to buff the mascot. Pretty cool! Ended in a cleaner win with a spirit mascot flung to face. redemption.
Semi finals: Red Madness 2-0
Game one, my opponent knew what I was on and slowed right down to play a control strategy. I had to carefully present and threaten Prismatic Strands at the right moments and hold up removal for any flamebreathers or guttersnipes, all whilst replenishing my life total with the card draw spells and tap lands.
Another really tense game here, as any game with red madness is. You never really feel safe even in the upper echelons of life totals, but the card draw spells and bolts had bought me enough time to start switching over to the more aggressive player.
After a few duels over burn spells including a heavy stack where removing their guttersnipe led to flashbacking lava darts, I eventually found a way to sneak past my opponent's defences and combo out for the win.
Game two was complete luck, my opponent kept an aggressive one lander and despite multiple digs couldn't find a second mountain until it was far too late and I capitilised with a quick win. On to the finals!
Final: Altar Tron 0-2
Wow. What a non game. My opponent offered to split but I wanted to see if we could take the deck all the way and it wasn't the most insane prize in the world so I opted to just play it out. Turns out I should have split! Game one mana screwed, game two flooded. Over laughably quick after an entire day of tournament grinding but at that point I was very happy with the result and honestly the second place prize was pretty cool too 😉
This was probably a match up I should have won with a faster combo and loads of hate in sideboard but given the luck I had in previous rounds where my opponents had lost to bad land luck it was inevitable that it would catch up with me eventually.
Overall a really fun day and I'm in love with this deck. I plan to take it to Bristol next month and will be testing with it in the meantime to make it fully sing. Thanks for reading and see you in Bristol if you're going!