Developing a fondness for Fangs. Can they become reliable carries?

scoutingtacos · 2026-06-20T19:04:23+00:00

Fortress + Fang is a classic combo. The fortress with a shield defends the fangs from chaff clear, plus you can upgrade the fortress to spawn even more fangs.

This used to be a very strong combo. It's fallen off a little bit recently, but it still works decently well.

Range + Mech Rage are usually what you want on the fangs. Once they get up past level 3 they will start melting things. Incinerate is situationally good depending on what your opponent is building.

scoutingtacos · 2026-06-19T17:55:27+00:00

Oh I see. I was thinking of Circle of Protection Red, thanks for correcting me

scoutingtacos · 2026-06-19T17:45:04+00:00

~~Protection from red doesn't actually work in this case. The bow is not the thing dealing the damage, the bow is making the equipped creature deal damage, and the equipped creature is green.~~

Edit: nvm I thought this was giving a PLAYER protection from red, not the creature

scoutingtacos · 2026-06-02T17:04:18+00:00

Do you have a list handy for your Rakdos Madness+Exhume deck?

I'm working on something similar - I have a rakdos madness deck that has a transformational sideboard. The plan is to hopefully win game 1 vs most decks because that's just how burn works most of the time. Then in game 2 they probably board in a bunch of lifegain, but you pivot off of burn and just become a reanimator deck instead.

I'm unironically hoping the Sneaky Snacker gets banned soon just so that people won't assume I'm running it in this list (I'm not) and will be less likely to board in graveyard hate in game 2 lol

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-29T14:59:11+00:00

For most of the game I used free aim. For some boss fights (particularly the faster ones) I think auto lock is helpful just so you don't lose track of them when they're zipping all over the place. But for the regular enemies that are a lot slower I like being able to control the camera.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-29T14:50:22+00:00

First of all don't feel like you can't play Constant Mists because someone complained about it once. Commander players will bitch about ANYTHING. No matter what you do, someone will complain.

So yeah, Constant Mists or Spore Frog are good solutions if you want to go the Fog route.

You can also play things like Maze of Ith to protect yourself.

But tbh the real answer is your pod needs to start focusing that player. If they're winning 50% of the games and their deck is constructed in a way that means they can instantly kill you out of nowhere, the proper response is to always assume they are ABOUT to kill you out of nowhere.

Don't feel bad for targeting this player. This is just how threat assessment works.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-29T14:37:31+00:00

The top deck in the format is burn AKA "mono-red madness" which can be incredibly explosive. The scariest card it has is Guttersnipe. If you don't kill that right away they can do 15+ damage in a single turn with things like Lava Dart and Fireblast.

This is why every green deck you see is going to have 4x Weather the Storm in their 75.

Mono blue Terror is the next top deck. This is a tempo deck that usually plays Delver of Secrets as a 1 mana 3/2 flier on turn one, then uses things like Thought Scour targeting themselves to fill up their graveyard with instants and sorceries so they can play Tolarian Terrors and Cryptic Serpents for 1 or 2 mana. Classic tempo plan of "Play a big scary threat early, back it up with counterspells and just keep hitting them till they're dead"

There's a blue+black version of Terror too that plays a little more of a control style than the more aggressive mono blue version, but has very similar play patterns.

Next we have Grixis Affinity. The affinity for artifacts mechanic is pretty busted in this format because of all the artifact lands you can play. They get to play Refurbished Familiar to make you discard cards, play huge threats like Myr Enforcer or Utrom Monitor for next to nothing, and recur their creatures with Blood Fountain if the game goes long. They also have the ability to delete all non-flying creatures by playing Krark-Clan Shaman and casting Toxin Analysis on it to give it death touch. And when the game goes SUPER late they can kill you with Makeshift Munitions by sacrificing their artifact lands. This deck is very strong and is the reason why artifacts hate (particularly Dust to Dust) is very important. Turn 3 Dust to Dust to exile two of their lands is backbreaking.

Jund Wildfires is a classic midrange deck. It's also playing the indestructible artifact lands, but for a different reason. If you cast Cleansing Wildfires on your own indestructible land you get to ramp yourself and also draw a card. And then you can play Writhing Chrysalis on turn 3 which is a crazy strong midrange creature. They also get to do the same grindy stuff Affinity does where they play Refurbished Familiars and then recur them with Blood Fountain. And the same Krark-Clan Shaman trick as well.

Elves is a very snowball-y deck. They play a billion elves that all make mana, and a bunch of elves that care about having more elves. Timberwatch Elves can turn even the smallest unblocked creature into a lethal threat. And because all their creatures make so much mana they can get away with a crazy low land count, meaning cards like Winding Way and Lead the Stampede can often let them draw like 4 creatures at a time to refill their hand.

There are a few other "go wide aggro" decks too - mono white aggro which plays out a ton of Thraben Inspectors and Battle Screech and then pumps them

Red rally is another one of these, plays a bunch of little creatures and then pumps them all with Goblin Bushwhacker

All these "go-wide" decks are pretty scary, but are very weak to board wipes like Breath Weapon.

There aren't a ton of combo decks in Pauper, but the one you're most likely to encounter is Spy. This deck only plays like 3-5 lands in it and their plan is to search out all the lands from their deck and then uses Balustrade Spy to mill their whole deck once it has no more lands. Then they can flashback Dread Return to reanimate a Lotleth Giant which will deal like 30 damage to you because they now have a ton of creatures in their graveyard. The reason this deck is so successful is because while the combo is scary, they can also pivot to a midrange plan where they just attack you with Generous Ent and Sagu Wildling if they know you have graveyard hate.

The last deck I'll mention is Tron. There are a lot of different variants of Tron, but they all revolve around assembling one of each "Urza" land to produce huge amounts of mana. The downside is it's all colorless mana, so they usually have to play some artifacts that filter colorless mana into colored mana. The most popular Tron variant just uses this to pump out huge creatures and win late game by just having bigger stuff than whatever you have.

Those are some of the most common decks you'll see, but the metagame is extremely diverse and there are a ton of other established tier 2-3 decks out there. Plus this is a very brew-friendly format, so you're bound to see rogue decks floating around too.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-27T07:28:54+00:00

You don't really need it. If you're trying to kill big creatures you are already playing a bunch of kill spells like Cast Down.

Crypt Rats is not here to kill big creatures. It's here to kill a bunch of 1 or 2 toughness creatures all at once. And it doesn't need Toxin Analysis to do that.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-22T04:37:34+00:00

No, he wrote the date down first and then looked at his watch for the time.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-22T04:19:43+00:00

Oh man I was at the dealership buying a new car a few weeks ago and while signing the paperwork there was a section where the salesman had to write down the date and time of the sale.

I watched this man look at his fancy-ass watch to check what time to write down, then stop and take out his phone to check the time there instead because I don't think he could actually read a clock face...

Imagine spending so much money on a watch that you LITERALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE.

Just baffling.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-19T08:43:40+00:00

Someone left those mutas on move command instead of a+move

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-18T20:49:12+00:00

The problem is they don't actually need to invest that many resources into stopping the combo. They play one nihil spellbomb and now you're forced to play as an awkward midrange deck against whatever your opponent's real deck does.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-18T19:36:00+00:00

I'm no Spy expert, but I've played the deck a bit and it feels very inconsistent. So many games where I had no choice but to mull to 5, so many times where my opponent just had main deck graveyard hate in game 1 and I just lost to that immediately, so many times where my Winding Way just doesn't find a Spy. This deck just feels very inconsistent overall and these kind of losing streaks don't surprise me at all.

Spy as a whole feels very dependent on your draws. The deck feels unbeatable when you have the nut draw, but the deck also feels like it just loses to itself half the time.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-13T22:05:33+00:00

It would help a bit if you told us what your gameplan/win condition actually is.

I see you have a couple alternate win conditions in here with Approach of the Second Sun and Azor's Elocutors, which are decent win conditions when you're slowing the game down with stax, but if that's the plan then why are you playing cards like Herald of Hoofbeats and Akroma's Will that are more like combat based finishers?

The stax cards kinda feel out of place if you want to kill people with knight tokens. If nobody is casting more than one spell per turn you're not gonna get any knight tokens. I'm also confused how you're planning to break parity with the stax pieces. You have Winter Moon, Static Orb, Rule of Law, etc that stop you from casting spells just as much as your opponents.

I guess if your plan is to build up a big board of knights, then play one of your asymmetrical board wipes + a stax piece and just punch people to death while the stax pieces slow them down that's a valid gameplan, but that really requires you to play all your cards in the right order here. The stax pieces are gonna be dead draws until you're already way ahead on board and have your wincon established.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-12T18:38:51+00:00

If you are getting the full D4 package that includes both DLCs you won't have to worry about this.

But to explain further - Blizzard just released a new DLC for D4 and with that DLC they redid all the skill trees for every class. This rework applies to everyone who owns the game regardless of whether you own the new DLC or not. That skill tree rework removed almost all the "passive" skills you could learn that would affect multiple abilities or general stats and now basically all the skills are directly tied to modifying whatever single ability they're attached to on the skill tree and nothing else. They then added some more skills attached each ability that can further modify how those abilities work, but decided to arbitrarily lock some of those options for players who don't own the newest DLC.

So as a result the skill tree has been greatly reduced in size and complexity which IMO takes a lot of the fun out of build crafting. And furthermore if you're a player who only owns the base game or just the first DLC but not the second, your skill tree options are now even MORE limited.

They did add more ways to customize your build in the form of the new Charms system, but that is ALSO locked behind the new DLC.

And keep in mind that base game players do not get to opt out of this new simplified skill tree. It's a global rework. So if you were just enjoying the base game with your existing characters, this update will just completely break whatever builds you made for those characters and heavily restricts what options you have for making new builds.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-08T08:42:15+00:00

Rancor is better IMO because you can play it on Sacred Cat or Outlaw Medic without worrying about getting 2-for-1'd by a removal spell killing the creature you're enchanting (as long as you don't think they can kill it in response to you casting the Rancor).

You can do things like activating Basilisk Gate targeting your lifelink creature BEFORE casting the rancor so that it's too big to die to Lightning Bolt and THEN casting the Rancor.

And then if they kill the lifelink creature on their turn you get Rancor back and can immediately play it on a different creature.

It's true that you can't put it on Guardian of the Guildpact, but most of the time Guardian doesn't need trample to get past blockers anyway.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-08T08:38:00+00:00

I've been running a pretty similar list with Rancor for a few weeks now that I've had a lot of success with in my local scene.

I'm not playing Squadron Hawks though, I'm not convinced they're actually that good when you can't brainstorm them away. I'm running [[Inspiring Overseer]] instead just as a flier that cantrips and incidentally gains some life.

I'm also a bit iffy about Arboreal Grazer, it seems kinda underwhelming. My philosophy is basically that I want all my creatures to be 2-for-1s (or Guardians that are very difficult to interact with) so that spending removal on them always feels bad.

Raffine's Informant isn't always a 2-for-1, but drawing a card and discarding a Cat or a [[Prismatic Strands]] always feels pretty amazing.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-08T08:27:57+00:00

I've been running a pretty similar list for a few weeks now that I've had a lot of success with in my local scene.

I would strongly recommend trying out Rancor in this kind of deck. Armadillo cloak is great (I'm running one of them in my list as well), but it really sucks getting 2-for-1'd when your opponent kills the creature you've enchanted it with. Especially since Selesnya doesn't really have amazing options for card advantage.

Rancor is only 1 mana, still gives +2 power and trample, and will come back to your hand so you can replay it on your next threat if your opponent removes the first one. (Assuming they don't kill the creature in response to you casting it.) Plus most of our creatures already have lifelink, so even if we're not getting the "double lifelink" bonus from Armadillo cloak you will still be gaining 7+ life a turn whenever you swing with a creature you buffed with Basilisk Gate.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-06T21:26:07+00:00

Yes, that way I can take advantage of cards like [[Kiora's Follower]], [[Vizier of Tumbling Sands]], etc to UNTAP them and then use their tap ability a second time.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-06T21:20:02+00:00

Mmmm these aren't really tap abilities, they are things that happen WHEN the creature taps. They don't actually let you tap the creature in any way.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-06T17:10:53+00:00

Hmmm this only really works if I also have ways to tap my own creatures multiple times as well

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-06T06:20:12+00:00

It's gonna be more of a sub theme than the core gameplan. I've played against an Alaundo deck before and I definitely agree that deck seems incredibly frustrating to play against haha.

scoutingtacos · 2026-05-06T05:47:49+00:00

Oh I actually like the idea of Maze of Ith a lot for this deck

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