One of the downsides to a number of competitive formats is things can get pretty stagnant. This is especially true in the land of Pauper where top decks usually stay at the top for a long time with little variation. Brews get tried and usually fail, but every so often you see some odd lists pop up that are neat or interesting even though they don't get the level of play the top decks do. These often fall to the wayside - forgotten until someone decides to dredge them up once more.

Today I'm here to show you one such deck that put up a sweet 5-0 on Magic Online about a week ago and got the Pauper community buzzing a bit. That deck is White Weenies.

White Weenies | Pauper | CarlosZ, MTGO League 5-0

• Creatures (31)
• 3 Elite Vanguard
• 4 Daybreak Chimera
• 4 Icatian Javelineers
• 4 Kor Skyfisher
• 4 Leonin Skyhunter
• 4 Loyal Cathar
• 4 Savannah Lions
• 4 Thraben Inspector

• Instants (3)
• 3 Guardians' Pledge

• Enchantments (8)
• 4 Journey to Nowhere
• 4 Sentinel's Eyes

• Lands (18)
• 18 Plains

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Leave No Trace
• 2 Lumithread Field
• 2 Standard Bearer
• 3 Dust to Dust
• 3 Sunlance
• 4 Lone Missionary

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Also called Mono-White Aggro, the deck relies on running a lot of cheap, easy to cast creatures and attacking with them. Sound familiar? It's a bit like Stompy! The difference is that Stompy has better pump spells to close out the game and a narrow piece of countermagic in the form of Vines of Vastwood.

Why play White Weenies in the first place if Stompy just does the same thing but better? The simplest answer is simply players having different playstyles. In truth, I'll be honest in saying I'm surprised I haven't tried this archetype out myself yet. For some, there's a certain appeal to one color over another and how that color's version of a deck works. White Weenies, Stompy, and Burn, for example, all do the same thing: deal as much damage as possible in as little time as possible. They all have the same end goal but they each go about things differently.

The advantage to White Weenies is the pump spells you get in your arsenal. Rather than being pinpoint focused like Vines of Vastwood, Hunger of the Howlpack, or Rancor, White Weenies rocks spells that will pump your whole team.

The main mass pump spell we're using in this list is Guardians' Pledge. Since all of our creatures (aside from any flipped Loyal Cathars) are White, it's not hard to see this pumping for a ton. That's not the only choice either. Ramosian Rally has been quite the favorite in the past, since you can cast it for free. It does only give +1/+1 and not +2/+2 but free is better than three! Even if you can't find one of these, it's not hard to find copies of something like Charge, which was released in Dominaria just a couple years ago and should be very readily available.

Removal is kinda interesting in Mono-White as well since we're a bit limited at common. Still, we do have a couple sweet options in the form of Journey to Nowhere and even Fallen Empires classic Icatian Javelineers. Don't forget that we're playing Kor Skyfisher either, which can replenish the counter on your Javelineers and allow you to mow down even more creatures.

The big reason the deck is seeing an awesome resurgence is because of the new Theros Beyond Death card Daybreak Chimera. It's not a stretch to assume that you can probably go turn one Thraben Inspector, turn two Loyal Cathar, and a turn three Daybreak Chimera with mana left open. With that kind of set up, the Chimera is essentially a 3/3 flier for two White mana. That's a bargain rate, especially when you consider cards like Watchwolf were unheard of once upon a time.

Daybreak Chimera isn't the only new card we're seeing though. Sentinel's Eyes comes in hot as well to help give the deck a little bit of oomph. Even better is that it's not hard to bring back if it goes to your graveyard. This card looked like a slam dunk in Mono-White Heroic primarily, but it seems to be making its way square into other decks, which is excellent.

Beyond these cards, there's a lot of other ways you can build your weenies deck. We've seen plenty of times in the past where players break out a more token based version of the deck. This includes cards like Raise the Alarm, Gather the Townsfolk, Triplicate Spirits, and, of course, Battle Screech to swarm the board with tokens to go in for the kill. Just be wary that all of these make 1/1s, meaning they're more susceptible than ever to hate like Electrickery and Scattershot Archer and the like.

There's honestly a ton of different ways you can go about doing one of these decks. Theros Beyond Death brought some sweet new options, with the Chimera sitting pretty firmly at the top. There's still plenty of options to try out, but that shouldn't be hard given the price point of the deck. In paper, it's roughly only $20 and only six tickets on Magic Online. That's some great value for a decent, if often forgotten archetype.

Get out there and channel your inner Craig Wescoe with some Pauper White Weenies today!

Kendra Smith

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