Bant Midrange (Pauper)

This is a Bant Midrange deck built around playsets of Thraben Inspector, Abundant Growth, Kor Skyfisher and Dream Stalker. To my knowledge Thraben Inspector and Abundant Growth are (post-Astrolabe ban) the cheapest available cantrips that are also permanents to bounce with our 2-drops. Dream Stalker is a better blocker than SGO and cheaper, but isn't inherently card advantage without the bounce setup.

The tricky part of this deck is that this setup puts us in 3 colors from the get-go. We do have incidental fixing with 4 copies of Abundant Growth and 2 copies of Prophetic Prism, but our mana base takes a hit by including 2 copies of Evolving Wilds.

Removal is also tricky for this deck, with 4 copies of Journey to Nowhere in the main out of necessity. If they whiff, we can always bounce them with Kor Skyfisher or Dream Stalker, which is a slight bonus. We should also be able to get double blue by turns 3 and 4, and by that point we can begin holding up mana for 2 copies of Counterspell, 1 copy of Dispel and our other Instants that are included in the main.

The deck includes the Mulldrifter and Ephemerate soft combo but doesn't go all in on it. I'm trying out a 1 and 1 split of Ephemerate and Momentary Blink in the main, with an additional Ephemerate in the sideboard.

I really like Adventurous Impulse in decks like these, because it fixes for mana early while becoming a good tool to search for our more expensive creatures in the late game. The package of Palace Sentinels and Entourage of Trest is there to fight in the late game against Boros Monarchy and Control.

Because of all of our incidental fixing, we have a transformational sideboard plan that lets us take out the main deck Counterspells and some of our slower cards for the powerful red cards in Electrickery, Pyroblast and Ancient Grudge, which should help us fight against Elves, Affinity and Delver. This does mean that we must take up one of our sideboard slots with 1 Mountain.

I'm not sure if this deck is great, but I've been wanting Bant Midrange to work in Pauper for a while and I'm testing it out at a local event this weekend (11/23/19).