The Top Decks of Pauper: Stompy

In this series we will walk you through the top decks of Pauper as played on Magic Online.

We will be using this tier page as the basis or our walkthrough: http://mtgostrat.com/pauper-tier-listing/

The second tier one deck we will discuss is Stompy.

Example  deck list
Stompy did undergo a lot of changes due to the recent bannings, but the deck did revert to a classical list, making old material about the deck more useful than recent.

This is a representative list for the new metagame. It was played by GerMagic in the Pauper Daily Event on 10/12/2013 to a 3-1 result.

17 Forest
4 Garruk's Companion
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
2 River Boa
2 Safehold Elite
3 Scattershot Archer
4 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk
3 Young Wolf
3 Gather Courage
4 Groundswell
2 Hunger of the Howlpack
4 Rancor
4 Vines of Vastwood

Sideboard
2 Fog
2 Gleeful Sabotage
3 Hornet Sting
1 Matsu-Tribe Sniper
1 River Boa
1 Scattershot Archer
3 Silhana Ledgewalker
2 Vault Skirge

About the deck
This may look like a weenie attack strategy but it is actually a very complicated deck to play. You will have to know your combat math very well to suceed with Stompy in the long run. The amount of tricks you can do with Quirion Ranger and all your growth effects is insane. Every time you play the deck, you learn something new.

This deck has game against everything.  The Ledgewalkers and the Hungers of the Howlpack work very well against Control. Skarrgan Pit-Skulk (and the often played Shinen of Life's Roar) makes things very hard to block.

I have played 100+ matches with the deck and decided not to play it in Daily Events, as I still make too many mistakes. I normally play a UB Control list that I will address in a later blog post. That deck has a ton of different decisions to make, but it is still easier to play than Stompy.

Read Quirion Ranger and start to think about what you can actually do with that card. It is mind boggling.

Financial implications of the deck

The two money cards in the deck are Nettle Sentinel and Quirion Ranger.  Rancor used to be very expensive, but after being reprinted in M13, its not a big deal anymore.

As all Pauper cards, Nettle Sentinel and Quirion Ranger fluctuate enormously in price, depending on which deck is the most popular in the metagame (does Stompy have a good matchup against it or not?) and old sets being drafted. You could probably just set your bots to buy both cards at 1 tix and sell at 3 tix and you would make a profit in the long run. That is, if you are buying the promo version of Quirion Ranger. The Visions Quirion Ranger is a little more expensive.

Right now, Nettle Sentinel has fallen from 3 tix to 1 tix, so it is probably time to stock up on the card. Both cards are also played in Pauper Elves, which increase their value.

Spore Frog, which is sometimes played in Stompy, also has some value, but overall this is one of the cheapest competitive Pauper decks.

Learn more about Stompy

This is Deluxeicoff's legendary article about the deck which is a must-read for anyone interested in playing it: http://puremtgo.com/articles/pauper-stompy?page=1

I interviewed Deluxeicoff earlier this year about Stompy: http://puremtgo.com/articles/pauper-walkthroughs-stompy-deluxeicoff