Law One: When Unopposed, Your Opponent Shall Not Have a Fifth Turn

Interlude: Tuesday at 7pm

Theo opens on a Virulent Sliver.

Heroes reply with a Faithless Looting, pitching two Sneaky Snackers. Are we going to take a Poison here?

No: Just a Gemhide Sliver... And some other kind of Sliver, we suppose?

Heroes follow up with a Highway Robbery, discarding a third Sneaky Snacker, bringing ALL THREE back.

"It's going to be really embarrassing when I lose this game," we say.

Big turn now: So many Crusade-Slivers. How many Slivers is that? Eighteen power but only six Poison, right? But still no attack.

Okay, here comes six. Going to have to have a pretty good Turn Four, but Eighteen isn't Twenty, and Six isn't Ten.

Winding Way for... A second Virulent Sliver (and like three other creatures, obvsauce).

AGAGAGAGAG.

1. It was, in fact, the coolest way I had ever lost a game of Pauper.
2. Got the next two, anyway.

The first immutable law of Pauper Burn is that, uncontested, almost every keepable Game 1 hand should kill on the fourth turn. What that means, is that if they don't mess with what you're doing - they don't gain six life from a Pulse of Murasa, they don't burgle one point by demanding you spend half a Lava Dart on a Wellwisher, or they don't outright kill you with a fast Spy combo before you untap - your mix of lands and spells through the first 10-11 cards should add up to 20 or more, almost like clockwork.

This is a decidedly different experience from the Burn decks of other formats. Like, a very handsome genius once wrote "Modern Burn is a Passable Combo Deck" ... Well, whatever label you want to pop on it (combo or no), Pauper Burn presents any number of extremely consistent four-turn clocks. I once cast my first spell on the third turn (a Guttersnipe) and then killed my opponent outright when he didn't remove it the next turn.

This first law has multiple foundational implications. The most important of which are 1) certainty, and 2) focus.

Certainty means that you are very, very likely to be able to kill your opponent on time via almost any keepable mix of lands and spells. Sometimes you will be flooded with Mountains (despite playing only 18 lands) but the spells you drew included a bunch of Highway Robbery and Faithless Looting, so that you can assemble a passable - and by that I mean "lethal" - mix of Red pips. Oh, and because you wisely have four Fireblasts in your deck, that you were Mountains-flooded simply means you can pay for two of them (along with whatever other spells you cram together) on, you guessed it: Turn Four.

There are so many different Turn Four kills that it's pointless to try to list them all. This is a deck with actual Lightning Bolt. The best card in MODERN Burn! So good we play four (if not eight) copies that can only target the face, and only at sorcery speed! Not only that, but in Pauper Burn, our Lightning Bolts often do four, five, or even six damage... Each!

Of course the most reliable way to win on turn four is just untapping with a Guttersnipe in play. That makes every Lava Dart deal six for only one mana. You can scale it up from there.

Focus means that you can ignore all the noise. What did your opponent just do? Cast a 5/5 for three? Does it have lifelink? No? Then who cares? How about a 6/5? Still don't care. He has open going into turn four? Okay, I might care now. I might care a lot, in fact.

Is that a 1/1 for ? I might care. Is it a 1/1 for ? I might really care. But then I look at my hand. A Priest of Titania might be really important... Or it might only be a distraction. A Wellwisher on the other hand? That starts to matter quite a bit more. But it might also only gain one life; and the timing of the game might say that it only ever gets to tap once. Focus means you may or may not care. Ask yourself a simple question:

Does whatever they just did either 1) actually buy them another turn, or 2) kill me before I complete turn four?

If the answer is "no" to both, you can probably just ignore it.

Focus means that, especially on the play, you don't have to respect, or even think about what it is the opponent might be doing. Yes, sometimes they have a silly Scorpion that gains two life, or they force you to discard a spell with a Duress variant. Yes, you'll have to think a little in those games. You'll - gasp - actually have to play Magic: The Gathering.

But in maybe half the Game 1s you sleeve up and sit down? You'll be on the play in a completely non-interactive context. Perfect play in these games is an overlap of discipline (DON'T get stressed about something that's not going to matter / DON'T give up your fourth turn kill needlessly) and simply finding the right line to count to twenty.

I've said before that Premodern Burn is the best Gear One Burn deck I've ever played, because so few competitive Burn decks over time have had access to both Lightning Bolt and Fireblast. Pauper Burn has all of that, but overlapped with a format where the opponent can't play a 12/12 on turn two with double free Counterspell protection.

Law one grants its chosen an incredible superpower. Congratulations on selecting Pauper Burn. You now have access to it.

Law Two: When They Zig, You Shall Zag Away All Their Stuff

Interlude: IT DOESN'T MATTER

What the hell am I supposed to sideboard out here?

I know I'm bringing in these seven two*-for-ones... But what am I taking out?

If I take out Voldaren Epicure and Kessig Flamebreather, my curve will suffer.

Faithless Looting is kind of the worst card in my deck, especially against so much card advantage... But will my few Mountains and many discard and graveyard spells flow without it holding the sixty together?

It turns out: IT DOESN'T MATTER

A new player next to me asked what he should take out for Hydroblast and Blue Elemental Blast in his Terror deck. Should he swap away Counterspells? Counterspells are only okay against Flashbacks and so many cheap cards; whereas Deem Inferior - at four mana no less - is kind of an embarrassing Magic: The Gathering card against Voldaren Epicure. What about Delver of Secrets? It's outclassed by both Lava Dart and Sneaky Snacker.

I told him: IT DOESN'T MATTER what he took out: Hydroblast, contextually, is the very best Counterspell (half the mana) and the plausible - and cheap - answer to a resolved Guttersnipe of every Blue mage's dreams. Can he find a card in his deck that Hydroblast isn't simply better than?

In that same way I took solace in the fact that probably IT DOESN'T MATTER what you side out for Searing effects the way it does in Modern Burn. The rules of Pauper are different, and the Searing / Smashing type cards both forward your agenda of damaging the opponent to death while keeping them from killing you first, simultaneously. As long as you're not siding out Lightning Bolt, Grab the Prize, or Fireblast, every one is likely an upgrade.

Despite being an excellent Turn Four deck; dare I say an excellent Gear One deck, Pauper Burn is an almost peerless Gear Two deck.

This seems counterintuitive because Pauper Burn lacks the quintessential Gear Two card: Grim Lavamancer (which was Rare in Torment). Beyond that, it doesn't quite have the overabundance of "Searing" effects that @basicmountain taught Our Hero to play in Modern and even Legacy Burn decks.

Pauper Burn is not a slouch in that department - I've been playing three Searing Blaze and four Smash to Smithereens in my Rich Bucey's list - but it doesn't create the permanents-hostile environment that has made for so many successful Modern PPTQ and RCQ runs by the Ancestral Recall twins.

Instead, Pauper Burn creates an overlap of passive damage, grinding, and perpetual action that forces opponents to win in an unfair fashion. It's almost "over-the-top or bust" ... Especially in sideboarded games.

Passive Damage

Pauper Burn has two things going for it that make it such a daunting Gear Two deck. It shares variations with both its Modern and Premodern Burn cousins.

"Searing" effects

Effects that manage the opponent's battlefield presence (i.e. steal the opponent's mana) while reducing their life total make for effective grinding. In a Burn deck that benefits from The Philosophy of Fire, such effects also masquerade as card advantage. Again, such effects are not unique to Pauper Burn, and you can argue that from this perspective, it makes for a worse Gear Two than Modern Burn.

Where Pauper Burn laps the Modern archetype that spawned Gear Two language is in the overlap with Passive Damage.

Siding in Sulfuric Vortex / siding up to four Sulfuric Vortexes against decks like Elves in Premodern was an unlock innovated by Lanny Huang that completely transformed how the most popular deck was played in the best format. Previously a naive Burn mage (like myself) would side out Sulfuric Vortex because "it didn't affect the battlefield". My model being Modern Burn where we swapped out efficient Lava Spikes or high damage Boros Charms for Searing Effects one-for-one.

What I missed in the format change was that a source of Passive Damage removed the tyranny of choice. I no longer had to think about whether to kill the opponent's creature or save a direct damage spell for their face. The Sulfuric Vortex was all the damage I needed in the short term. I could now manage the opponent's battlefield 100% with my burn spells, let the Vortex kind of whittle them down, and then kill them with whatever I had left at which point they had got in range. The Vortex did all the work and I didn't have to make very many decisions.

Pauper Burn has an even better Sulfuric Vortex in Guttersnipe. In fact, the overlap of Searing Blaze and Guttersnipe - especially when combined with Perpetual Action (below) - basically undoes a Sagu Wildling or Nylea's Disciple every turn while preventing the opponent from ever actually damaging you. It's like being wrapped in Sue Storm's forcefield while her brother's nova flame is leveling a city block at the same time.

If you untap with a Guttersnipe in play you can literally just kill all your opponent's stuff in the short term and the Guttersnipe will do plenty of damage to the opponent. Damage that will really add up. Damage that will seem insurmountable (unless they literally go over the top). Or, I suppose, they can just kill the Guttersnipe (which none of them can, let's be honest).

Grinding

Trying to match cards one-for-one with Pauper Burn is a fool's errand. Unless you're specifically the Golgari Food deck or Boros Bounce (both value Lembas decks)... You basically can't. Opponents are tearing their hair out wondering if they should have killed the Sneaky Snacker or not, when the reality is that if they did you get them with one Gear and if they didn't you get them with another. The whole question is kind of pointless if they're trying to trade resources with you.

Something like 25% of your spells back pocket two more spells while putting power in play. The whole concept of attrition becomes inapplicable. You have to cut off Pauper Burn's engines or pick another path. You can race. You can play an Armadillo Cloak. You can have a fist full of your own Searing Effects. I guess those are all some kind of racing. You can, of course, also go over-the-top.

What you can't do is expect to get through a neverending stream of 2/1 attackers with your 5/5 that doesn't have trample or Counterspell / Duress a bunch of creatures that no one paid for.

Again, unless their deck is built in a particularly hate ful way, there is almost nothing better for Pauper Burn than the opponent trying to contend card-for-card with you, especially in sideboarded games. Not only because they can't (see above), but because if they're using their cards to kill your creatures that are just going to come back or Counterspell your cards that also have flashback or madness or cost no mana... They're not killing you. And like a great many Burn decks, Pauper's has an Inevitability Gear that opponents may be unwittingly falling into.

Perpetual Action

Pauper Burn has two unique elements that make it, contextually, so good (and in fact, so much better than most other Burn decks in their respective formats). The first is the overlapping Modern and Premodern incentives to playing Gear Two in sideboarded games. The second is its sheer volume of card drawing.

One of the pitfalls of Gear One in Modern Burn is simply running out. "Great job doing 17 damage, chump," is the disembodied voice that haunts the dreams of historical Modern Burn mains.

Because of all its card drawing - or just filtering, that transforms Mountains into Fireblasts that eat up other Mountains - Pauper Burn doesn't really run out of action. I mean, it could... Only the games tend to end before that happens because of all the other stuff going on.

When you overlay Perpetual Action onto the Passive Damage of Guttersnipe or Kessig Flamebreather, you 1) keep damaging the opponent (passively) while 2) drawing into more [perpetual] action to either 3) sustain the game going in Gear Two toward an Inevitable conclusion, or 4) just ending it because of your tonnage of action (which was, did I mention, perpetual). This deck attacks the opponent from so many directions simultaneously most counter-strategies end up looking pointless.

Last night I played a Faithless Looting to discard two Sneaky Snackers. My opponent (wisely?) immediately played a Rotten Reunion to exile one of them. But when I played my next filter spell the next turn, I still got the other Sneaky Snacker; and though he had a 2/2 Zombie, my opponent had used at least half a card and was now going to be clocked. Would the other half of the Rotten Reunion be used on the Faithless Looting I had already deposited? And if so, would that be better or worse than just not committing mana to a non-card while I was attacking and stockpiling burn spells? I really don't know! Rotten Reunion did seem like kind of a cool card; and he did pre-empt what would have been the first 2/1 flyer. But to be clear: It was half a card for one-fourth of a card, and I still had two-fourths value left over. Not to mention two fresh cards in hand. I really don't know.

Law Three: Thou Shalt Make Weather the Storm Boring

Interlude: The "other" game I actually care about

Over the 2015 NBA Finals, LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers posted what can only be considered a legendary set of performances: Almost 36 points per game, 13 rebounds, and close to 9 assists. By contrast in 2012, when he won his first Finals MVP, LBJ put up 28 / 10 / 7... Lower counts in almost every major counting area.

But instead of James, the 2015 Finals Most Valuable Player award went to a Warriors benchwarmer (though admittedly onetime All-Star), whose major contribution to the title can be summed up as "making it so that LBJ wasn't even more dominant than he was in actuality." Andre Iguodala was eventually made immortal as the only NBA Finals MVP to have never started a single regular-season game.

Was Iguodala the "best" player? No. Despite the presence of future Hall of Famer Steph Curry in that Warriors lineup, James produced the best performances for either team in 2015, while fighting relentlessly shorthanded due to injuries to All-Star teammates Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. But was Andre the most valuable? It's hard to imagine Golden State winning the 2015 Finals if LeBron were even a micromote less contained. The Cavs took an early series lead, and were literally 9 minutes out of the NBA title despite an historically short and injury-riddled rotation! But, of course, it would have been disingenuous to award the MVP to LBJ when Golden State were the ones hoisting the Larry O'Brien at the end of six contests.

One of the few limiting factors of Pauper Burn is that Weather the Storm simply exists. Pauper is a strange format with incredibly powerful answers - Hydroblast, Pyroblast, Smash to Smithereens, Tormod's Crypt, and of course Weather the Storm itself - but that very few answers to those answers can be played. In Premodern you can mitigate opposing life gain with Sulfuric Vortex, for example. Carpet of Flowers dances with Parallax Tide; but can be itself Annulled. Almost necessarily because of the complexity (or really lack of complexity) of Commons, there is far less card-for-card answers-for-answers interplay in Pauper.

A corollary to this is that if someone wants to beat you, they certainly can. There is a deck that is almost nothing but Nutrient Blocks, Lembas, and Cauldron Familiars. Almost every card in their deck seeks to counter almost every card in your deck better than one-for-one. When they add Weather the Storm, you will almost have to gamble playing into it. This law is for dealing with everybody else.

In the Pauper format the opponent can typically have a wildly powerful counter-punch; but your only counter-counter-punch may be to play better. Eep!

So: The third law is to ape the MVP Iguodala. You can't deny the existence of Weather the Storm any more than you can keep LeBron James from scoring nearly 40 points per game. But you can contain it. And if you do, you can - ahem - weather 38 points, 13 rebounds, and the first two road losses. It might suck. It might feel pretty bad. But you can still take the match, the matchup, the trophy home.

1. The first way I'd recommend going about this is to make playing Weather the Storm boring for the opponent. They have Weather the Storm in their sideboard because they want it to be exciting. They want it to be fireworks. Make it white bread. White bread has a lot of calories. Believe it or not, sliced white bread was one of the a major quality of life innovations of the last century. But at the end of the day: It's white bread. No one is writing home about white bread.

I beat a Jund player last week who lost the game with Weather the Storm in his hand. Every turn I would kill his last play with a Searing Blaze or Smash to Smithereens and attack for between 2-5 damage with Sneaky Snacker or even Guttersnipe. I wasn't trying to be powerful. I was trying to chunk down his life total at a manageable rate. What's he really going to do? If he casts Weather the Storm he gains what? Six life? I just Searing'd him for three and attacked for more than that. I'm not going to lose to Weather the Storm here, and he's not building his defenses.

Back in 1998 Jamie Wakefield thought he had figured out the Living Death matchups by playing Repopulate in his Secret Force sideboard. "When they cast Living Death, I'm really going to show them!"

This probably worked out once or twice. But he didn't even conceive of the games the opponent would just get a two-for-one creature with Survival of the Fittest every turn, eke out a small amount of value, and never really expose himself to a massive Repopulate swing.

When I say make Weather the Storm white bread, this is what I mean: Don't let them Repopulate your Living Death. Their Weather the Storm is LeBron James. It exists to try to put up 40 points and 13 rebounds. But you don't have to let it win the game.

2. Ultimately this means making Weather the Storm strategic rather than exploitative. It's there. It's good. It's always good and is likely to generate an advantage. It is strategic and value-bearing in the opponent's deck. Almost by definition it will always create a card-for-card advantage. It's like when we used to side out Boros Charm for Searing Blood against beatdown decks in Modern Burn. Searing Blood dealt five, even if only three of it went to the opponent's face. Searing Blood was basically "always good" in part because the other two damage it dealt prevented you from taking damage. This is what we want to turn Weather the Storm into: A card that should be in the opponent's deck that is always good.

NOT a card that singlehandedly wins the game whenever they draw it.

White.

Bread.

LOVE

MIKE

*Really, two-point-five-for-ones; see The Philosophy of Fire.