What is Vintage Pauper? It's the working title for pauper as an eternal format played in paper. Any common, any time. As for a banned/restricted list, for this article I operate under the assumption that Cranial Plating would be banned and Strip Mine would be restricted. These matters are up for debate and I encourage everyone who is interested to head over to the brand new Vintage Pauper forum (it will be up this evening) to voice their opinions. Now, on to the article!

The last two BPDC events have had attendance in the upper twenties -- 28 and 24, respectively. This hearkens back to the earliest days of the event, when the hype factor was at an all-time high. Nowadays, with Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block already the largest Block environment ever, and poised to become even larger and richer next season with the introduction of Eventide, I think people are attending BPDC just because they like the format!

And what's not to like? In a world where Blind Hunter and Aven Riftwatcher rule the day (Extended and Standard, respectively), it's nice to see a format where the lifegain is so poor as to give mono-red a fighting chance. More than a fighting chance, really, as that archetype is the only one with two gold medals ( ) to its name. White weenie, aided by a scrumptious aura called Steel of the Godhead, helped Rickwins1971 rick a gold medal and trophy of his own at BPDC 3.03.

But the news of this past week at BPDC 3.04 was the triumph of a new kind of deck, a deck with plans for a late game. A deck with great care and attention to the metagame. A deck filled with strong cards and ways to get those cards back after they've been used up. A deck... filled with treefolk.

My Grand Entrance into PDC

A Classic PDC primer by gimmie

When I decided to begin playing PDC, I knew I wanted to play the Classic format. I started looking for a deck with a winning history and one that would fit my play style. After some loose testing, Grand Entrance fit the bill nicely.

Here is the list.

4 Events, 4 Different winners and 13 different Top 4 decks. CPDC continues to be a tough event to get a handle on. Some trends can be seen though if you look into the numbers a bit, so let break things down and see what they are telling us...

Monday evening, sixteen Paupers answered Shadowmoor's call, lining up along the walls of the BPDCCOM Conference Center. (Sixteen is quite a bit below the 28 present for BPDC 1.01's Kamigawa kickoff, but I'll chalk it up to the incredible popularity of that favorite of blocks...) SypherSun warned me before registration even began that new match tables and sideboarding had been lagging, but little did we know that the BPDCCOM Conference Center, and indeed the entire framework of MTGO v3, seemed to be under assault from a wrecking ball. Or so it felt. However, the patient and even-tempered among us waited through the ridiculous lag to eventually crown a champion of BPDC 3.01 -- Boin, piloting "Warrior Sligh."

Before moving into Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block, let's take a second to reflect on some wisdom shared with the community by the victor and near-victor of BPDC Season 2.