XPDC and Pauper Extended have now run a full eight events into the Zendikar metagame, and three premises have emerged quite conclusively:

1.) moromete is dominating this event;
2.) Rats Teachings is the most successful deck;
3.) Green blows.

Outside of a not-so-fluke Goblinstorm victory and a just-miss by Affinity, the victors of the past eight XPDC events have unfailingly resorted to the incremental yet overwhelming hand and board advantage provided by Pauper Extended’s wealth of “enters the battlefield” creatures. These decks are so dominant in the playoffs, in fact, that they truly define the metagame, even amid a broad field of rogue decks.

Parlor Tricks, Cogs and Stripes, Rats Teachings, and (somewhere) Orzhov Blink are four extremely powerful competitors in the Pauper Extended metagame with one strategy in common: use, re-use, and abuse the “enters the battlefield” abilities of creatures. Unless we experience a radical about-face in the metagame, you WILL encounter this ETB strategy if you play in an XPDC event.

But fear not, gentle reader: there is at least one silver bullet in the quest to disrupt the dominant game-plan. It is a simple, elegant, four word phrase that can occur up to eight times in your decklist without a violation of any deck-building requirements: “Counter target creature spell.”

Does your deck have room for EIGHT copies of Essence Scatter? Should it? If the metagame is any indication: YES, yes it should.

This card has the advantage of being effective in every Pauper matchup you care to face, while being EXTRA potent in matchups against the decks that are winning most of these events (and therefore gaining publicity, and being net-decked, etc).

Of course, if you’ll note in the above graphic, there is one and only one common trait shared by each and every one of these winning decklists: Blue. The winning lists, the decks we’re trying to hate out, the very Establishment itself can make effective use of the weapon we aim to turn against it.

Perhaps, however, such a shift to a slower, more control heavy metagame may swing the doors wide open for those aggro decks to come rushing in, overpowering all the Essence Scatters in the world with sheer number and bulk, and in a whooping cry of “¡Viva la Revolución!” overtake the Pauper Extended world we have all come to know so well…