General Strategy Survive any early aggro rushes by exploiting Pauper's absence of Skullcrack effects and abusing Gnaw, Wardens, and Brownscale, establish Tortured Existence engine and the mana to use it, and outgrind the opponent with Deathspark, Rats, and Blightpriest. Post board if Dawnfluke or Auramancer are needed, side out the Mountain and red cards for the Plains and any relevant nonred cards.
Naming Convention
TortEx - Abbreviation for 'Tortured Existence', the namesake card enabling this strategy.
High Life - Self-named variant focused on using life gain to outlast aggro rushes.
Soviet - Self-named variant that uses a semi-transformative sideboard to be capable of running a total of four different colors; 'Soviet' is a play on a Legacy four color deck called Czech pike, but given the current political climate I want to find another name that is less real world related but also has that old school slang feel.
Card Choices
Quote:
BGx TortEx Core
Tortured Existence - Namesake
Golgari Brownscale - Plays a crucial role in the Engine and allows me to gain life over time
Stinkweed Imp - Similar to Brownscale, but instead acts as a last resort dredge if a particular answer is needed
Commune with the Gods - Fills the yard while searching TortEx or a creature into my hand
Spore Frog - Ever played against Turbo Fog as an aggro deck? This is like that but forever
Crypt Rats - Sweeper and Finisher all in one; mana intensive, but that's why the ramp and life gain are ran
Sakura-Tribe Elder - Recurrable Rampant Growth that can fog a non-evasive threat
Groundskeeper - Allows me to reuse any milled basic lands, which is good when I run out of natural land drops
Krosan Tusker - Similar to Groundskeeper but I just tutor from deck then cantrip; decent beater/blocker also
Grave Scrabbler - TortEx enables Madness, and this gives us a 2/2 and double Disentomb for and only two cards
Manabase - Heavy on Black to allow for more TortEx activations; Karoos help squeeze more mana out of fewer lands and can reset other nonbasic lands in a pinch.
BGx Options [*]Fume Spitter - Removal for X/1s and can out neg anyncrrature given enough TortEx activations [*]Fleshbag Marauder - Removal that bypasses the meed tontarget [*]Wickerbough Elder - Artifact/Enchantment hate that can be reused with Fume Spitter
High Life Package
Essence Warden - Life gain cant be stopped in Pauper, only raced; we also play a lot of creatures naturally so easy to meet trigger and generally useful effect is good
Marauding Blightpriest - Turning life gain into offense
Gnaw to the Bone - A massive amount of lifegain that will set aggro and burn back if it resolves
Jungle Hollow - Not really a major inclusion, but the life gain and color fixing feel more useful than Bojuka Bog's ability
Soviet Package [*]Death Spark - Additional removal and grinding potential [*]Ingot Chewer - Affinity and artifacts in general have been extremely strong lately [*]Auramancer - Not having TortEx on board hurts us a lot [*]Dawnfluke - Burn's counterpart to Spore Frog; also does work against Delver and Bolts as a whole [*]Manabase - 7 lands that could produce any color (Thriving and Barrens) plus minimal color intensity for tertiary colors (both in terms of costs and number of cards) enables more fluid swapping without taking away from the primary and secondary colors[/list]
Metagame Considerations
Manic Vandal - The Bridge cycle from MH2 has proven problematic, so having an answer available is nice
Faerie Macabre - Flicker Loops with Mnemonic Wall are extremely powerful, and only instant timing graveyard removal can do anything against it
Lignify - Decent answer to several problematic strategies including some Tribal, Stompy threats, and gamechanging abilities; does nothing against Flicker loops though
Evil Presence - Two of the best strategies--Tron and Wildfire--exploit the format's lack of effective nonbasic hate to do crazy things; while this will only slow them down especially when adding Flicker Loops, that is better than letting them run away with things
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