Day 001

To kick off my year in Magic the Gathering (MtG) I'll mention the Pauper format which is what I mainly play casually on Magic Online (MTGO). It used to have a more varied metagame. What with the introduction of sanctioned pauper tournaments, room reorganisation and the recent removal of standard pauper, prismatic and two-headed giant I now mainly see tier 1 competitive decks in the just-for-fun room. To avoid boredom I mainly use rogue decks, Dark Cogs being one of those. The brainchild of Cyrulean, it's a bit too slow to set up in today's faster metagame, but you can often grind out wins and have some fun.

Dark Cogs
4 Leonin Squire
4 Trinket Mage
4 Aven Riftwatcher
3 Mulldrifter
2 Sanctum Gargoyle
4 Titanic Bulvox
4 Skred
4 Momentary Blink
4 Cloudshift
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Æther Spellbomb
1 Relic of Progenitus
9 Snow-Covered Island
6 Snow-Covered Mountain
6 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Ancient Den
1 Great Furnace
1 Seat of the Synod

Sideboard
1 Viridian Longbow
1 Bonesplitter
3 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
2 Sylvok Lifestaff
4 Apostle's Blessing
3 Gitaxian Probe

If you know your magic cards you probably already know the aim is to control the game by means of reusing comes-into-the-battlefield (CITB) triggered abilities of creatures. You've got evasion going so you can sometimes grind out a very slow victory from your flyers, but the real win condition is the trampling green morpher Titanic Bulvox; look, no forests! Rules bit: permaments are exiled face-up, so 'blinking' a morphed Bulvox brings it back onto the battlefield as a 7 power trampler. Counting flashback there are 12 blinks in the deck. You also get value by blinking any of the other creatures to reuse their CITB effects.

The cogs don't look much, but trust me, they're great tools to have, and you can tutor them up using your Trinket Mages and Recollect them with the Leonin Squire or Sanctum Gargoyle, so you'll be getting a ton of value out of them. They're really adaptable too; you can bounce and shock your own or your opponents creatures at instant speed, shock the opponent to the face, draw cards and exile from graveyards. The three artifact lands may also be fetched if you need colour fixing. The sideboard gives you more cogs to shore up bad matchups. You can be the beatdown with the Bonesplitter/Lifestaff, gain (even more life), or shoot stuff with the bow.

Aven Riftwatcher can gain you ridiculous amounts of life, and Skred can eventually bring down the biggest threats, so no need to fear the likes of Tron and Mono Black Control.