While the current top-tier metagame is fairly well solidified, Pauper has one of the most diverse lower-tier mixes of any Magic: The Gathering format. There are a ton of interesting decks that have been viable in the past, but have fallen out of favor as the tides have shifted. Despite this, the deep pool of options is a major part of Pauper’s appeal. One such deck is Serpentine Curve, a unique take on Control that leverages the titular sorcery for MTG Pauper wins.
We haven’t seen this deck around for a while, and it hasn’t put up positive tournament results in just under a year. This week, however, FSZLAIEN has brought it back. They piloted a new take on the deck to two separate 5-0 League finishes, proving that the Serpent still has teeth in current Pauper. Their new innovations may not be enough to earn the deck a consistent place in the metagame, but these results are certainly a good start.
Serpentine Curve Is Back In MTG Pauper
As MTG Pauper archetypes go, Serpentine Curve is actually one of the simpler ones out there. The goal here is ultimately to play a grindy Control game, using cheap interaction to keep your opponent at bay and card draw to keep things flowing. In doing this, you’ll load up your graveyard, which allows you to drop Serpentine Curve to create a game-winning threat.
To this end, the deck plays a number of cards that can easily boost your graveyard count. Pieces of the Puzzle is essentially a three-mana draw two here, given the 38 instants and sorceries in the list. Even better, it lets you put three cards into your graveyard, buffing Serpentine Curve and pushing through land pockets. This plays nicely with Frantic Inventory, another draw spell that scales up if you have other copies in your graveyard. All of this draw power is crucial to ensure that you actually find Serpentine Curve, since there are only two copies in the deck.
Redundancy is really the name of the game here since, without Serpentine Curve, this deck essentially becomes a pile of card draw and little else. To support this, a full set of Augur of Bolas gives you some nice digging power and serves as a solid early blocker. Brainstorm helps out a ton here as well, giving you a cheap way to find Serpentine Curve or some necessary interaction when you need it.
Let It Snow
Speaking of interaction, it’s the other key part of the Serpentine Curve game plan in MTG Pauper. You can’t just sit around until you have a big enough graveyard, after all, or your opponent will run you over.
In this department, FSZLAIEN introduces a fairly significant innovation to the archetype. They’ve added a full playset of Skred, as well as 16 Snow lands to support it. Skred is an incredibly efficient removal spell, scaling up with your Snow lands in play to the point where it can easily take down the biggest creatures in Pauper. It may take longer to get going than Lightning Bolt, the deck’s other main removal spell, but it can also deal with Tolarian Terror and Writhing Chrysalis, which Bolt can’t really do. Considering the lack of opportunity cost associated with including it here, it makes a ton of sense for the archetype.
On top of this pair, FSZLAIEN also runs Breath Weapon for additional removal. Weapon doesn’t deal enough damage to remove any of your own threats, so it’s all upside here. It’s also very well-positioned in the current aggressive metagame. Paired with a full playset of Counterspell, there are plenty of tools here to deal with your opponent’s threats while building up to your Curve turn.
Capping off the deck, we have a single copy of Fling. When combined with Curve, this is essentially a finisher. It’s not hard at all to create a 10-power token, at which point one attack plus Fling can finish the opponent off from full life. This adds an explosive element to the deck, which can really catch opponents off-guard after spending most of the game in durdly Control mode.
Behind The Curve?
Serpentine Curve isn’t a new deck, but it hasn’t seen any results in quite a long time. Perhaps the addition of the Skred package is the extra boost the archetype needed to get back on the horse in the current metagame.
Skred certainly does a lot against the best decks at the moment. Mono-Blue Terror is a huge part of the metagame, so having a cheap answer to both Tolarian Terror and Cryptic Serpent is fantastic. The card also does serious work in the Jund Wildfire Matchup, against Writhing Chrysalis and Nyxborn Hydra. Serpentine Curve also has the option of going bigger than these decks with its token, which is very difficult to remove outside of Cast Down.
That said, the deck still has plenty of issues in the current Pauper format. The biggest one is just how fast everything is at the moment. Madness Burn, the top deck at the moment, has so much early pressure and reach that you’ll pretty much never get to cast Curve against it unless you draw obscenely well. Mono-Blue Terror isn’t particularly fast, but it does have enough countermagic to completely ruin your day. As soon as they figure out that Curve is your only real win condition, the match is close to over.
Because of these problems, I have a hard time seeing Serpentine Curve carving out a niche for itself in MTG Pauper soon. It is definitely one to watch, mind you. If more players like FSZLAIEN continue to tweak and iterate on the list, it could gain an edge at some point.
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