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Far Wanderings: Pauper

Hello again fellow readers! I have decided to make a new series of articles for the blog starting from today, as you can see from the title - Far Wanderings would be a new series of articles where I go talking about a certain format/deck/topic about the game. No competition/banning reports in this series, it’ll just be a very specific somewhat narrow view of the selected topic I have chosen to write about.

So as for the very first article of this series, the topic I would like to rumble on today, well the name was already given away in the title, it’s Pauper! Pauper is quite a well-known format in today’s day and age, it’s the format where only commons are allowed as well as some cards that have had their rarity downgraded to common. Pauper is usually more popular on Magic Online, where there are daily regular events/leagues, with a good amount of participants as well.

“Pauper isn’t exciting right? It’s just commons....”

On that note you’re definitely wrong. Pauper isn’t just a format where people play under-powered commons, Pauper has been referred to many older players to be a “lite”  version of Legacy. The fact that it has a large pool of cards to play with, a fair banlist and it’s an eternal format does give it a lot to talk about. 

A small example of signature cards in Magic’s history that are common and see tons of play in Pauper

Due to Pauper having a huge card pool, a lot of iconic/familiar cards see actual play in Pauper. Such examples include:

Ponder

Preordain

Daze

Gush

Hydro/Pyro-blast

All 3 Tron lands

All original Mirrodin artifact lands

Atog

Mulldrifter

Capsize

Chromatic Star/Sphere

Ancient Stirrings

Expedition Map

Mystical Teachings

Rancor

Nettle Sentinel

Quirion Ranger

Vines of Vastwood

Slippery Boggle

Armadillo Cloak

Chainer’s Edict

Gitaxian Probe

Ancestral Mask

Doom Blade

Kiln Fiend

Chain Lightning

Rift Bolt

Lava Spike

Searing Blaze

Fireblast

Priest of Titania 

I mean..that’s a lot of good cards that have seen play in larger eternal formats, I don’t see why Pauper is being labelled as an “underpowered” format by a few. 

“Blue seems powerful in this format -  is the meta solved?”

A very frequently asked but simple question: to start it off, I’ll show a sample Delver list - which is probably Pauper’s oldest and best blue deck.

As you can see, the deck itself is strong, having a slight resemblance to a mono-blue Legacy Delver build. However, despite this being the most popular deck(probably in Pauper’s history), there are many decks which produce solid results, which I’ll show a few below.

Mono-Green Stompy

Murasa/Temur Tron

Affinity

Kiln Fiend Combo

As you can see through the decklists, all of the decks are very well designed. But what if I told you that many decks of different archetypes achieve a 5-0 on Magic Online everyday/week? Now that will probably take a lot of people aback.

As you can see, within 24 hours, 7 different decks end up with a 5-0 on a Magic Online league, with many and much more ending up being not so lucky with a 4-1. However, this clearly proves my point that Pauper is not like Legacy, in which it is not a blue-dominated format and it has a good, balanced spread of archetypes in the metagame.

So what’s Pauper’s biggest selling point?

One problem that runs in many formats of today is money. I mean some formats require a lot of money and commitment, something which I and majority of many other players have very little of. Pauper, running completely on commons is the perfect format to get into around with a small budget, yet being able to play powerful commons and build a top tier deck in a format all without the hassle of money

As you can see from this metagame screenshot, the cost of Pauper’s high tier decks are dirt cheap when compared to Standard’s,Modern’s and Legacy’s.

 When I mean Pauper is cheap, I mean you can build a top tier Affinity deck in Pauper including Atog and original artifact lands - being 15 times cheaper than it’s Modern counterpart. 15 times!! This also encourages many players who have played Modern or Legacy to dive into Pauper, as building a “common” version of their deck in Modern/Legacy is seen as a challenge in Pauper. Pauper is also an excellent format for any new players trying to dive into an eternal format without spending too much money in it, it teaches them the power level of cheap commons and brings them to a metagame where the power levels of most decks are very very close when compared to each other.

“Is Pauper being played actively in Paper?”

If you asked me that a few years ago, I would say no. But the community of the format has grown together with it’s popularity, now there are quite a lot of LGSs hosting Pauper events(not sanctioned of course due to Wizards seeing it as an “online” only format). With the biggest Pauper event being Card Kingdom’s Rags to Riches, combined with it’s large playerbase on Reddit, Pauper is continually being talked about almost everyday! It is definitely a unique take on eternal formats in today’s age, it might look small to a few for now, but it could prove it’s weight in the future with the current potential it shows today.

Conclusion

Pauper is still a growing format, but it is already attracting the attention of many players with it’s unique playstyle, strong metagame and cheap price. I do enjoy playing Pauper, however there aren’t too many stores in Singapore that would agree to host them. The future is looking very bright for Pauper though! All in all, I hope this was a good read and I’ll be looking forward to writing more Far Wanderings preferably one article every 1-2 weeks. Closing it off, follow the blog, check out more if you’ve missed them and flip those Delvers with Brainstorm! See ya!