Pauper $1k Top 8 Decklists at Owl Central Games

Last Saturday we hosted our first major Magic tournament since our Grand Reopening, and it was a blast! We were super excited to see so many new faces checking out our brand new game room for the very first time. With the recently downshifted cards from the upcoming Zeta set, there was a lot of players trying something new among a pretty diverse room. After our 25 players duked it out over 5 rounds, we ended up with a Top 8 featuring 6 different archetypes, no Madness decks, and 16 copies of Baleful Strix. We are Owl Central after all.

Once we reached the Top 8, the competition let us know we were going to have a definitive winner. After two knock out rounds, we ended up with the finals of our very own store employee, Gavin Palmer, and long time local and Owl regular, Todd Murter.

Gavin Palmer entered the tournament with what’s been his deck of choice in recent events and reached the finals after surviving the Swiss stage with only one loss. Playing the elves varient of spy, Gavin not only paid homage to his OG deck of choice (Elves, duh,) but prepared for disruption by bringing a deck that could compete on multiple fronts.

Todd Murter’s deck choice was much different than his opponent. Instead of staking out the meta and choosing a top contender, Murter chose to blitz the field with a unique build, centered around the brand new owl itself, Baleful Strix. Calling the build Dimir Snackrifice, the deck combines the new hotness of Baleful Strix with the value of tempo interactions like Hard Evidence + Abjure and Sewer-veillance Cam. By the time he reached the finals, Todd Murter had only lost 2 games the entire day.

In the finals, the time honored game of chicken began. Combo vs interaction. Proactive vs reactive. Would Gavin find the opportunities to resolve his combo and kill his opponent with a Lotleth Giant? Would Todd be able to find enough counter Magic to stop his opponent from going off? Game One went to the combo player, as Gavin took the early lead in the match, but Game Two is where Todd’s Icarus-style deckbuilding came back to bite him. 17 lands was too little after a deft choice from Gavin saw his Masked Vandal remove one of Todd’s few lands in play.

Home field advantage led Gavin to victory, but we are sure that this won’t be the final time these two run into each other. Especially on Friday Nights, were Pauper is one of two formats you can play in our new Game Room. (shameless plug, I know)

A big thank you to everyone who came out and joined us for our Pauper $1k. We host a Magic $1k each and every month, rotating between our most popular formats, so rest assured our next major Pauper tournament will be here before you know it! Check out all of our Top 8 Decklists and try one of these decks out for your next Pauper format.

Click to view Top 8 decklists.

I hope you are looking forward to playing in more major competitive events as much as we are. Make sure to stay up to date with all of our upcoming major special events through our website, our Discord, our Email Newsletter, and more!