Cogs and Stripes is a sleeper giant of the PDC Extended format. Only a few select Paupers understand the latent power of this Swiss Army deck-of-all-trades. The time has come once again, however, to pull back the curtain and reveal the raw power, the smoke, and the mirrors. Behold!

So let’s take a look at this monster:

4 Looter il-Kor
4 Mulldrifter
4 Steamcore Weird
3 Kor Skyfisher
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Trinket Mage
2 Aven Riftwatcher
2 Leonin Squire

4 Skred
2 Essence Scatter
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Bonesplitter
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
1 Viridian Longbow

7 Snow-Covered Island
4 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Azorius Chancery
2 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Ancient Den
1 Great Furnace
1 Izzet Boilerworks

SIDEBOARD

3 Wispmare
3 Subterranean Shambler
3 Negate
2 Momentary Blink
1 Essence Scatter
1 Steel Wall
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Aven Riftwatcher

Quite a list, no? The Trinket Mage fetches the cogs, the Leonin Squire gets them back from the graveyard once you’ve used them, and the Kor Skyfisher gives you a chance to do it all over again! Looter il-Kor is an evasive guarantee of damage and gives you a way to cycle through the dross into some money cards. He is also a great friend of Bonesplitter. Otherwise, the creature suite is pretty self-explanatory. It plays like a traditional Blink-focused “enters the battlefield” deck.

The snow-covered lands are in the deck to power Skred, but if you’re on a budget you can certainly replace the lands with conventional basics and Lightning Bolt doesn’t do too shabby a job in Skred’s spot.

With only two Essence Scatter maindeck, it’s obvious they’re meant to be saved for situations which would put you at card disadvantage, or tempo disadvantage. Mournwhelks, Rats Chittering or Ravenous, Mulldrifter come to mind. Countering a simple ground-pounder is not the best way to use those Scatters, as most of your creatures have some means of evasion. The Longbow gives you a way to win from a stalemate or helps boost the effectiveness of your removal spells or creature combat.

To get the most mileage out of your deck, you must consider how every piece works together to build incremental card advantage. The default mode of this deck is control, despite the presence of several aggressive card options. (Kingritz, the deck’s eternal champion, advocated possibly removing Bonesplitter, though I can’t say I agree with that move…)

To the sideboard. Wispmare is a seldom-seen choice, but provides enchantment removal on a flying body. Subterranean Shambler comes in against Spore Cry or Goblinstorm. Negate could help in burn or counterspell matchups and against aura-heavy aggro decks. Momentary Blink helps fend off decks with copious amounts of creature removal spells. The extra copy of Essence Scatter should come in against other “enters the battlefield” Blink decks like Orzhov, Parlor Tricks, or the mirror. Steel Wall helps in aggro matchups; Relic of Progenitus against any “graveyard matters” decks, and the extra Riftwatcher against fast aggro or burn decks.

According to data entered by players into Gatherling, this deck has been piloted only three times at XPDC Season 6 so far. Two of those three times it made the finals. (The third instance was a player who lost connection and dropped after round one.)

Make Cogs and Stripes YOUR success story, too.