4 Questions with Walker

With the recent win of the Pauper Showcase Qualifier event, Walker735 aka Paolo Donfrancesco qualified for the Pro Tour, the MOCS and the Regional. A true Godtracker of Jund!

Let's start with Jund, I want you to weight the factors of your deck choice: best deck, pet deck and expertise. Do you choose Jund only because you think it is the best deck in Pauper right now or because of the comfort pick factor?

Both. On one hand, with only four days to prepare for the event, Jund was the only deck I could confidently play at these stakes. I have about 1.5k matches with Jund, while with most other Pauper decks my experience ranges between 10 and 200 matches. So, if I have a pet deck, it's definitely Jund. You could even call it my "baby", since I had the biggest role in the deck's development from the start.

On the other hand, the reason why I've played a disproportionate amount of matches with Jund is that it has consistently been among the top three best Pauper decks during the last two years, even occupying the #1 spot for most of the time. I like Jund's play style, but believe me: it gets boring after you play a thousand times against the same decks. At most tournaments, I simply can't justify playing anything else.

When you play an invitational where you know the names of all your opponents, there is always the possibility of making a meta call and bring a deck that is good against them. But the existence of Jund basically nullifies this possibility, because rather than playing a weaker deck that should be well-positioned, you can simply adapt Jund's flex slots to beat what you're expecting to face.

What do you think of qualification system we have right now?

I've always been a big fan of the MOCS circuit on Magic Online. Having the champions of each format battle against each other for such high stakes is very exciting, and the very idea of a format champion is a huge goal for the players of that format.

Many people chase the MOCS qualification for the cash and invites it brings. Now that I'm here, I care about those things too, but for 6 years, I've dreamt of winning the Pauper Showcase Qualifier because I wanted to be the best Pauper player, and I only considered the cash to be a way of guaranteeing the prestige of this title.

When I had just started playing Pauper, the amazing Pauper Player's Podcast by Frucile published the interviews to the top4 players of that year's Showcase Qualifier (it was actually called Pauper Championship at the time). I'll link here the interview to the champion Kirblinxy, but from there, you can also check out the other three ep. 18-20.

These interviews inspired me to take the format more seriously and try to get in that position. For the first time, something like that felt achievable because I only needed to play a 50$ deck from the comfort of my home (as delusional as that was).

I have fond memories of when I played my first Showcase Qualifier by renting for a day the only computer station at a casino in Dublin, because it was the only facility that would stay open through the night. And I like nerding on this stuff so much that I recently asked Kirblinxy to make a spreadsheet with the historical data of Pauper Showcase Qualifiers.

The only critique I have for the current showcase system is that I don't like Last Chance events. Nobody likes single-elimination tournaments, and for good reason. But I do understand that it's a way for Daybreak to make players burn play points, and that has an overall positive effect on the game's economy.

How are you going to live the MOCS and the PT preparation? Tryharding all the formats, place your bet in a specific portion letìs say Modern or chill your way?

While it's true that I've barely played other formats, having checked all my boxes in Pauper makes me willing to find new goals, and the invites to the MOCS and the Pro Tour will challenge me in new ways. I'm sure that those tournaments will be great experiences even if I don't win a single match, but I don't want to go there just as a tourist. I want to get there well-prepared. It will be hard and it will be very different from what I'm used to, but I'm willing to try and put in the work. Finding a team will be essential, I hope that someone will be willing to take me in, but I'll have to ask around and see how that works.

Are you satisfied of the current state of Pauper in the competitive world?

This is the hardest question. Pauper is home to all kinds of players, thanks to a perfect balance of competitive and community-driven elements. As much as I like the idea of having more opportunities in Pauper, upsetting the current balance would carry the danger of ruining the vibes and make Pauper unrecognizable.

A solution that I'd be willing to entertain would be to have just 2-3 more PT slots per year come from Pauper. Enough to entice some Pauper players, but not enough to make the average Pauper tournament participant be someone who is specifically looking for an invite.