The Pauper Gauntlet competitor #6: DelverFiend by Farfishere

The Pauper Gauntlet is coming to mtgolibrary. You can submit your Pauper brews starting August 31st right here. Please do not submit any decks yet.

Some of the deck lists of the competing decks that are pre-qualified by different means will be presented here. This is deck #6.

Earlier blog posts:

Deck #1 Illusory Tricks: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/06/pauper-gauntlet-competitor-1-illusory.html
Deck #2: Love Train http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/06/pauper-gauntlet-competitor-2-love-train.html

Deck #3: Exhume Control   http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/07/pauper-gauntlet-competitor-3-exhume.html
Deck #4: Izzet Control. http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/07/pauper-gauntlet-competitor-4-izzet.html
Deck #5: The Green One. http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/07/pauper-gauntlet-competitor-5-green-one.html

DelverFiend is a UR aggro/combo deck that tries to go off with Kiln Fiend or Nivix Cyclops and a ton of sorceries/instants to make one or two attacks that hit the opponents for 20+ points of damage very early in the game.

There are many different builds of the deck. I interview master deck builder Deluxeicoff about the deck in this video. 

I ran that build in the first season of the Pauper Gauntlet. A year has passed by and I decided to turn to one of my other favorite brewers - Farfishere - as he recently took down a major pauper event playing DelverFiend to win the tournament.

Farfishere is most famous for making the obnoxious Time Walking deck in Modern called Taking Turns. I talked about that deck in an earlier blog post here on mtgolibrary: http://mtgostrat.com/2014/04/modern-noob-one-deck-leave/

This is his DelverFiend build:

DelverFiend by Farfishere

4 Delver of Secrets
4 Kiln Fiend
4 Nivix Cyclops

4 Apostle's Blessing
2 Artful Dodge
1 Dispel
4 Gush
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mutagenic Growth
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Shadow Rift

8 Island
5 Mountain
4 Terramorphic

SB
3 Dispel
4 Flame Slash
3 Gigadrowse
4 Reckless Charge
1 Steel Sabotage

You can follow Farfishere's brewing and ask him questions on his facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Farfishere

Learn more about the Pauper Gauntlet here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/06/the-pauper-gauntlet-is-coming-to.html

Some sideboarding advice from Farf himself
Against Delver: -1 Artful Dodge, -4 Apostle's Blessing, +2 Gigadrowse, +3 Dispel,
Against MBC: - 4 Mutagenic Growth, - 2 Artful Dodge, +3 Dispel, +3 Reckless Charge
Against COP: Flaring Pain

Never sideboard out Gush, Preordain or Creatures.


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The Top Decks of Pauper: DelverFiend

In this series we will walk you through the top decks of Pauper as played on Magic Online. Pauper is the Magic Online format where you are only allowed to play commons.  These are the official rules: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/pauper

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

 Today I will discuss the deck with the most names in Pauper: DelverFiend

This deck is also known as ... don't hold your breath ... Wee Fiend, ClopsFiend, Cyclops Fiend, Eye Candy, Izzet Cyclops, UR Fiend, Blue Red Delver, Wee Xerox, Cyclops, Thunderpants ... well, the list just goes on and on. I call it DelverFiend. I try to force all my videomakers to call it DelverFiend. Pauper to the People calls it DelverFiend. Lets just call it DelverFiend. 'Nuff said.

 

Example  deck list

Here is a recent list from player shoveldude35 who managed to pilot this list to a 3-1 finish despite a current metagame filled to the brim with creature kill spells.

9 Island
2 Izzet Guildgate
7 Mountain
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Kiln Fiend
4 Nivix Cyclops
4 Apostle's Blessing
3 Assault Strobe
3 Distortion Strike
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Manamorphose
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

Sideboard
3 Dispel
3 Essence Scatter
2 Flame Slash
4 Raze
3 Vapor Snag

About the deck
The metagame is really wrong for this deck right now with MBC and blue base control decks such as UB Trinket Control running rampant.

However, the metagame is still in flux after the bannings of Cloudpost and Temporal Fissure. When Stompy returns in force, DelverFiend is there to prey on it.

The strategy is simply to get a Kiln Fiend or a Nivix Cyclops on the battlefield and then deal 20+ damage in one round. The deck can easily goldfish on turn 3 or 4 but is very vulnerable to removal.

 

Financial implications of the deck
This is a very cheap deck, except for the Hydroblasts and Pyroblasts you should probably play in your sideboard (even though shoveldude35 did not). This is an excellent budget deck for learning about Pauper. The whole deck without hydros and pyros costs about eight tickets on mtgotraders, cheaper at the wikiprice bots.
 

Learn more about DelverFiend

I interviewed Deluxeicoff about the deck when he had his DelverFiend phase and he had some great insights (and another deck list proposal): http://puremtgo.com/articles/pauper-chat-deluxeicoff-episode-2-elves-and-delverfiend

 

Do please note that this was pre-bannings, though.

 

My contact information
Twitter: @MagicGathstrat, youtube.com/magicgatheringstrat, magicgatheringstrat.facebook.com and mtgostrat.com