A classic combo that I’ve personally never seen in action. There is something about combo decks in Pauper that feels unappealing to me.

When I brought up Pauper in my local MTG discord, some players said that Pauper was too linear and much like two ships passing in the night and that’s why they don’t think it’s such an interesting format. They mentioned they played Pauper once and realized that they had no interaction at it was merely a game to see who could combo off first.

I guess I have a bone to pick with that take on the format which leads me to steer away from combo decks. My local area is extremely Commander-dominated, which I think warps the players’ perception of how to win a game of magic.

In commander you mostly need to win big by doing insanely busted things. The other day, a friend of mine who hasn’t played Pauper was looking at my [[Reality Acid]] deck, which is a control deck that wins slowly with [[Kor Skyfisher]] and [[Mulldrifter]] beatdown, and he struggled to understand how the deck was meant to win. There were no huge bombs or combos to “win big” with, so to him it felt like a deck that was “going nowhere”.

I think seeking that kind of big win experience can draw a Commander player towards mostly combo decks in Pauper, thus playing into the perception that Pauper is just linear decks passing in the night.