While it’s been nearly a month since the last banned and restricted update, it’s still sending out ripples in competitive formats. Over in Pauper, for example, the now-unbanned Bonder’s Ornament is seeing a ton of action, specifically in Temur Control lists. With this artifact in tow, this once-niche deck now has a serious shot at success in the format.
Temur Control In MTG Pauper
Over the last few weeks, this new take on Temur Control has been going from strength to strength in Pauper, landing good Challenge finishes and League 5-0s aplenty. For the most part, players are working with the same shell that existed before the Bonder’s Ornament unban here, but the newcomer boosts the deck in two subtle, yet important, ways.
For starters, Bonder’s Ornament makes your mana much more forgiving, letting you cast double pip spells like Lórien Revealed easier. It also provides a great draw engine in the late game, giving you an edge against other slow decks like Turbo Fog. In these matchups, Campfire essentially lets Temur Control play its whole deck twice, and Ornament lets it outpace opponents doing the same.
Ornament aside, it’s business as usual for Temur Control here. It relies heavily on the Skred/Snow lands package, along with Ground Assault and Breath Weapon, to keep the board in check early on. This solid removal core is then backed up with a Counterspell suite, and more specific answers like Heritage Reclamation to handle corner cases.
Once you’ve stabilized the game, Temur Control can start deploying its range of powerful threats. Writhing Chrysalis is a full-on Pauper classic at this point, representing the best on-rate body you can buy. It’s joined by Azure Fleet Admiral, as a draw engine, and Murmuring Mystic, as a token-generating win condition. If you can get Mystic down early, you can actually play a reasonable tempo game with all your removal.
A Long-Term Plan?
While its influence has certainly been growing recently, Temur Control isn’t quite a tier one player in MTG Pauper just yet. Its big problem is speed, as some of the top decks right now, Mono-Red Madness and Affinity, are capable of very quick starts.
Though Temur Control can eventually stabilize with Skred and Breath Weapon, it’s relatively weak in the early game, which gives these decks time to run it over. The extra edge of Bonder’s Ornament doesn’t make much difference here, either.
On the other hand, Temur Control does have a fair bit of game against the slower Pauper decks right now, like Mono-Blue Terror and Jund Wildfire. Your removal and draw suites let you outlast both, with Terror in particular lacking a deep enough threat pool to really oppose you. While Wildfire is more well-stocked in this regard, as long as you can counter Nyxborn Hydra you should be fine.
The fly in the ointment here is Tron, which is a tough slower matchup because it also plays Bonder’s Ornament. This essentially nullifies your draw engine, forcing you to play fair and likely lose to a flicker combo. It is possible to claim victory here by playing more of an aggressive game, but Tron is still a tricky matchup.
Overall, Temur Control got a lot better with the unbanning of Bonder’s Ornament, but most of its key issues remain. For this reason, it’ll likely take another significant shift to put this strategy in the upper echelons of the format.
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