Pauper Deck Tech: Kiln Fiend
Aggressive decks tend to flourish in Pauper. Control and midrange strategies usually rely on efficient spells or unique effects to facilitate their game plans. Often, these cards and their effects are shifted up in rarity in order to balance them out: as a result in Pauper the metas shift to more beatdown strategies that take advantage of limited focused creatures.
Kiln Fiend works off the shell of the Modern Prowess decks by running out efficient creatures that benefit from combat tricks. We're trading away the evasiveness of Boggles for a more ground-based approach. Kiln Fiend runs similar to Burn, but offers a flexible game plan that tends to fare better against the control matchups in Pioneer. Many counters in the format target Instants and Sorceries that creatures can dodge, and removal tends to force the opponent to take a turn off. The most popular decks run three primary creatures: Monastery Swiftspear, Festival Crasher, and the titular Kiln Fiend. Festival Crasher and Kiln Fiend operate the exact same, getting a +2 and +3 power boost when instants or sorceries are cast. This works similar to Monastery Swiftspear's prowess which offers a +1/+1 until end of turn per instant and sorceries. Swiftspear acts as your premiere threat, and two hasting Swiftspears on turn 2 with Mutagenic Growth offers six damage for effectively 2 life and 2 mana. Due to Crasher and Fiend requiring 2 mana and not hasting, it's rare for any turn two kills to be presented, but certain effects can secure kills on turn 3 with a good curve and lack of responses from a midrange or control opponent.
Fiend decks will often race their burn counterparts, but eek out an advantage in their defensive and combat trick packages. Burn decks can outspeed even a good draw, but lose without realistic board presence or reacting to threats on the board. When faced with removal, Fiend runs protection in Apostle's Blessing and additional toughness in Mutagenic Growth. Two other mechanics tend to edge Pauper Fiend over other aggro decks: Phyrexian mana and efficient card-draw. Most effects draw cantrip, and can draw into ‘free' or cheap cards with Phyrexian mana costs. This results in explosive turns that often cantrip through several cards to secure damage or to waste enemy resources. As such, many opening hands for Fiend rock only one or two lands and trust for their cantrips to carry them through turns two and three to close out matches.
Another important effect in Fiend is flashback, which ensures spent cards can still give options on hands that feature too many lands. Reckless Charge pumps to insane damage, Lava Dart kills and pumps your creatures, and Faithless Looting can refill your hand for specific answers then turn on additional flashback options. Fiend is often able to flex into a midrange strategy by removing threats, or trampling over them with a critical mass of three or more creatures. This flexibility, ease of piloting, and raw damage makes Kiln Fiend one of the best decks for getting into Pauper. There's few decks that hose Fiend due to its flexibility, which means that it can be a simple and direct way for players to learn and memorize other decks in the format.
Kiln Fiend sideboards always feature anti-graveyard options, primarily Faerie Macabre for other decks that seek to utilize efficient flashback and delve, such as Affinity. Flaring Pain can be mainboarded as a one-of to deal with Fog effects from combo decks. Pyroblast is a powerful sideboard option that acts as an anti-blue counter on one mana. This targets many of the CawGates strategies, as well as the efficient Blue control shells that tend to be utilized in Familiars or Blue-Black builds. Pyroblast can also just shut down the mono-blue Faeries deck and is the priority for sideboarding.
