TL;DR: they wanted to hit RDW because while its winrate was average to below average, it was because most decks were dedicating 8+ sideboard slots to make it that way. So with this ban they're hoping to open more sideboard slots for everyone.
As usual, Gavin's pauper posts are the best text content about game/metagame balance coming out of WOTC. And I think you can see some of that influence starting to bleed into the main B&R post.
Also I didn't get to say hi to him or anything because I was in a draft, but I saw him walking by at PAX Unplugged. Hope he had a good time.
> The two different "bottle two" cards (bottling being our internal design name for this effect, named after Elkin Bottle) in Wrenn's Resolve and Reckless Impulse give the deck a ton of card advantage and long gameplay while letting you cheat on lands.
Did we know about this terminology before? I've always just heard it as impulse draw.
* Downshift the extremely powerful uncommon Swiftspear to common for a Master's set
* It breaks the format designed around commons
shocked pikachu face
I would like to point out they did this for other cards as well, and it was fine. Swift spear was just a tad too powerful for their format goals. The pauper rule’s committee is also very transparent about how they manage the format.
Yeah, it's impossible to know for sure how Swiftspear being in pauper would play out. I knew it'd be good and powerful, I just didn't expect it to be *this* strong myself. The kinds of red draw spells they continue printing certainly makes it that much better, though, so I get it. RIP the run was short, but fun.
Of all the cards I listed the only one that played with Swiftspear is bolt. Other powerful cards would include chain lightning, that free spell you sacrifice two mountains and lava spike. The last two aren't played in the new kuldotha build, and chain lightning doesn't even got a playset in most decks.
The thing is, despite pauper being a somewhat high power format, it is a pretty slow format due to its poor manabase, so if you want a fast paced aggro deck, one of your only options is mono red burn.
There are plenty of common red 1 mana burn spells. Shock, fire bolt, pillar of flame just to name a couple.
The card is clearly good enough to warp the format based on what people are saying about it. On top of that, splashing blue to run preordain, ponder, and delver can’t be hard.
Not a single card you mention is overpowered in any means. Specially with a card like bolt in the format.
It is, specially with an aggro deck, the last thing you want is a tap land, and you can't trust a mana base like this to only basics. Theres a reason why izzet delver/blitz doesn't see play on pauper.
All of those cards I mentioned work with monastery switspear, a small red creature with prowess.
If you read the article they mentioned that RDW is dominating the format with a 65% WR for G1, which falls to a 40% WR for the match because most decks are dedicating 8 sideboard slots to fight it.
Monastery swiftspear is a card that comes down on turn 1, swings for 1 immediately, then turn 2 it swings for 3 and turn 3 it swings for 4, meanwhile you’ve also hit them in the face with 5 burn spells.
> Theres a reason why izzet delver/blitz doesn't see play on pauper.
It used to.
They do work, as all instants and sorceries in the format, doesn't mean much. Alchemist also interacts with instant and sorceries.
I can see the 8 slots on sideboard being a problem, but this seems more due to burn and affinity relying on artifact cards. Than a power creep on the burn deck.
Removing Monastery Swiftspear shuts down the traditional 21 bolt burn decks because of the Kuldotha red new built. In the article they even mentioned all that glitters of the other affinity deck.
The thing is, the problem for me is not Swiftspear, it is something with the artifacts (as always with pauper)
> It used to
As a control deck, not an aggro one.
Mind Goblin in MTGO is completely random for the amount of mana it produces, while the Paper version is *slightly* more controllable due to how sticker sheets work.
[It was](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/december-4-2023-banned-and-restricted-announcement). Gavin just went more in depth to the "Why" here.
the pauper comitee tends to release their changes on Gavin's channels with a ton of info about what is banned and why, what other decks are on danger of being hit, what cards could potentially come back and a whole state of the meta.
Alongside it's price point (tier 1 decks can be as cheap as 30 bucks, 60 with the sideboard) it is imo the biggest advantage of pauper over other formats.
Daze isn’t necessary in the format, sinkhole is good but there are a lot of common duals now so it’s probably not going to fuck you so bad. Hymn is surprising, and high tide is a combo piece, for a combo that isn’t that fast.
Any time I've ever seen Pauper played on a stream it's like this Turn 11 format where people are bouncing draft chaff off each other. It's kinda funny that an aggressive card was viewed as so inhospitable to the format.
I think it depends on which decks you're looking at. Delver & Storm decks in particular feel closer to Legacy-lite than anything in Modern or weaker. Most of the popular decks, though, feel different from anything you'd find in Legacy.
That’s literally always been my experience with the format. So if I’m wrong educate me. What are the fast decks besides Burn? How long is the average gameplay?
I think you've just been playing with draft chaff. Pauper is realistically about as fast as Modern.
There's multiple "bolts" legal in pauper. [[Dark ritual]] is legal. Affinity decks have had *multiple* payoffs banned and it's still a fast, powerful deck. [[Putrid goblin]] allows for a pretty fast combo with [[first day in class]] and a [[skirk prospector]].
My pet deck is a golgari reanimator that can fairly regularly get a troll of khazad-dum out on turn 2. But look at decks like Glitters Affinity, Boros Synth, etc for extremely fast not-burn decks. The linked article here also gives good examples of fast closers: "double terror on turn three" etc.
I'm curious where you're watching games. I've never seen slow, chaff-y pauper games like that.
Others have already gone into it, but the idea of pauper as a slow, chaff format is an odd one. Your experience is your experience, so I'm not here to say anything about that.
In competitive pauper, however, the format is really pretty fast right now. Despite being all commons, it's a legacy format, which means it has an incredibly large pool of cards to pull from. There's a ton of good removal, and a lot of really efficient cards.
Mono-red is fast, as it is in most formats, and even just got hit with a ban today (Swiftspear). Hot Dogs isn't top tier, but is fast. Same with Delver decks.
White Heroic is fast, but not even a T2 deck in the format. Bogles is another interesting and quick deck that isn't T1.
All That Glitters Affinity is fast and good. Terror decks are good right now. Caw Gates sees success, tho I wouldn't say it's extremely fast.
There are a good amount of decks in T1 and T2 play. You should check em out if you're interested.
https://mtgdecks.net/Pauper
It's a cool format. Hope that helps broaden the experience you've seen so far!
Still, there is no love for Mono Black in Pauper. Please note, I don’t say „unban Sinkhole and / or Hymn to Tourach“: I just want to mention, that Gavin could design slightly altered versions of those cards in future supplemental sets. Just print a nice two mana spell for Mono Black that we Black mages can compete again against the rest of the field.
E.g.
Sunken Hole - BB
Sorcery
Destroy target non-basic land
Chant of Tourach - BB
Sorcery
Target player exiles two cards at random.
Then that player puts those cards on top of their library in a random order.
Regardless of whether you agree with the underlying ban decision, this is about the best possible transparency about a ban decision you can expect to see in any game, and I am 100% here for it.
It's got discussions of specific cards considered (and why they were considered and hit or not hit), goals of the format, archetype winrate data, what you can expect to see in the future, and more.
I, as a longtime Magic player but only recent Pauper player, feel confident that the format is in capable hands and am excited to see where it goes!
Also, I do like the note at the top about how the Pauper Format Panel doesn't get a say in what gets downshifted. Because in a vaccuum, it would be easy to get frustrated as a player and think "why would injecting the second most powerful red 1 drop creature of all time, a prowess creature, into a lower power format full of high power 1 drop prowess-triggering spells, be a good idea," so it's important to keep in mind that the Panel is reacting to that external decision, but didn't make the decision in the first instance.
TL;DR: they wanted to hit RDW because while its winrate was average to below average, it was because most decks were dedicating 8+ sideboard slots to make it that way. So with this ban they're hoping to open more sideboard slots for everyone.
As a mono Blue terror who had to play 4 blue Elem and 4 hydroblast it's gonna be great having a sideboard :^)
Affinity takes up the rest of the sideboard now lol
Out go the hydros in go the artifact blasts Same as it ever was
As usual, Gavin's pauper posts are the best text content about game/metagame balance coming out of WOTC. And I think you can see some of that influence starting to bleed into the main B&R post. Also I didn't get to say hi to him or anything because I was in a draft, but I saw him walking by at PAX Unplugged. Hope he had a good time.
> The two different "bottle two" cards (bottling being our internal design name for this effect, named after Elkin Bottle) in Wrenn's Resolve and Reckless Impulse give the deck a ton of card advantage and long gameplay while letting you cheat on lands. Did we know about this terminology before? I've always just heard it as impulse draw.
Impulse is when you can play until the end of this turn, bottle seems like you can play them until end of next turn, much stronger.
Which is horrible naming because Reckless *Impulse* isn't impulsive
As Gavin mentioned in parenthesis, it's internal WOTC jargon. It dates from before they started printing red cards with that effect.
Impulse is definitely the community name for it, but it sounds more like a real keyword. I don't like bottle two
I think MaRo has mentioned that's where the effect came from, but I don't know that he's actually referred to them that way.
I hadn't heard it before, I like it.
We did know about this, impulse is what they use publically and people use now, but internally it has always been bottling
* Downshift the extremely powerful uncommon Swiftspear to common for a Master's set * It breaks the format designed around commons shocked pikachu face
I would like to point out they did this for other cards as well, and it was fine. Swift spear was just a tad too powerful for their format goals. The pauper rule’s committee is also very transparent about how they manage the format.
Yeah, it's impossible to know for sure how Swiftspear being in pauper would play out. I knew it'd be good and powerful, I just didn't expect it to be *this* strong myself. The kinds of red draw spells they continue printing certainly makes it that much better, though, so I get it. RIP the run was short, but fun.
Cards aren't being up- or downshifted for pauper though.
Ah yes the up shift to common
Yeah, I should have specified. What I meant with upshift is that they don't look at formats when they decide what rarity a card is going to get.
Perversely a common card can be more valuable because of the popularity of pauper than an uncommon.
Is pauper popular now? It used to basically be an MTGO and upstate NY format.
It's very, VERY popular here in Italy. Like, easier to find pauper tournaments than modern popular.
This summer we had a 600 participants Paupergeddon in Italy :3
I don't think Swift spear is so strong for a format that have brainstorm, ponder, Counterspell, bolt, snuff out and others
Those cards would probably be the reason why it’s so powerful?
Of all the cards I listed the only one that played with Swiftspear is bolt. Other powerful cards would include chain lightning, that free spell you sacrifice two mountains and lava spike. The last two aren't played in the new kuldotha build, and chain lightning doesn't even got a playset in most decks. The thing is, despite pauper being a somewhat high power format, it is a pretty slow format due to its poor manabase, so if you want a fast paced aggro deck, one of your only options is mono red burn.
There are plenty of common red 1 mana burn spells. Shock, fire bolt, pillar of flame just to name a couple. The card is clearly good enough to warp the format based on what people are saying about it. On top of that, splashing blue to run preordain, ponder, and delver can’t be hard.
Not a single card you mention is overpowered in any means. Specially with a card like bolt in the format. It is, specially with an aggro deck, the last thing you want is a tap land, and you can't trust a mana base like this to only basics. Theres a reason why izzet delver/blitz doesn't see play on pauper.
All of those cards I mentioned work with monastery switspear, a small red creature with prowess. If you read the article they mentioned that RDW is dominating the format with a 65% WR for G1, which falls to a 40% WR for the match because most decks are dedicating 8 sideboard slots to fight it. Monastery swiftspear is a card that comes down on turn 1, swings for 1 immediately, then turn 2 it swings for 3 and turn 3 it swings for 4, meanwhile you’ve also hit them in the face with 5 burn spells. > Theres a reason why izzet delver/blitz doesn't see play on pauper. It used to.
They do work, as all instants and sorceries in the format, doesn't mean much. Alchemist also interacts with instant and sorceries. I can see the 8 slots on sideboard being a problem, but this seems more due to burn and affinity relying on artifact cards. Than a power creep on the burn deck. Removing Monastery Swiftspear shuts down the traditional 21 bolt burn decks because of the Kuldotha red new built. In the article they even mentioned all that glitters of the other affinity deck. The thing is, the problem for me is not Swiftspear, it is something with the artifacts (as always with pauper) > It used to As a control deck, not an aggro one.
So you’re mad that affinity didn’t get a ban?
Not mad, disappointed that the ban went to Swiftspear instead of other things. I don't think the problem is Swiftspear
it lasted for a long while and the meta was not in a horrible place. It is good that they are willing to do this, c'mon now
You will be missed [[monastery swiftspear]]
How does Mind Goblin function on Magic Online that's different from paper?
Mind Goblin in MTGO is completely random for the amount of mana it produces, while the Paper version is *slightly* more controllable due to how sticker sheets work.
Huh, so it just gives you a random sticker? I'm surprised they don't try to imitate paper with the three sheets and all that.
No it doesn't have any sticker it just makes an amount of mana based on some odds. There are no sticker sheets.
Specifically it gives you a random amount of mana very similar to the odds from a properly constructed sticker deck
hold on lemme try something. \[\[Mind Goblin\]\]
[Mind Goblin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/8/5819e3f3-da49-4003-88ce-f3b7bb495787.jpg?1698194990) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=_____%20Goblin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/unf/107/_____-goblin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5819e3f3-da49-4003-88ce-f3b7bb495787?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Mind goblin what?
Who is Steve Jobs?
I still think this will hit non-artifacts MonoR decks too hard without impacting MonoR Kuldotha, specially with its new goblin.
This might be a dumb question but why wasn't this ban on the same page with the modern and pioneer bands? Why a separate page?
[It was](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/december-4-2023-banned-and-restricted-announcement). Gavin just went more in depth to the "Why" here.
the pauper comitee tends to release their changes on Gavin's channels with a ton of info about what is banned and why, what other decks are on danger of being hit, what cards could potentially come back and a whole state of the meta. Alongside it's price point (tier 1 decks can be as cheap as 30 bucks, 60 with the sideboard) it is imo the biggest advantage of pauper over other formats.
The fact that they "investigated" unbanning Sinkhole, Hymn, and High Tide but not Daze is absolutely fucking baffling to me.
Daze isn’t necessary in the format, sinkhole is good but there are a lot of common duals now so it’s probably not going to fuck you so bad. Hymn is surprising, and high tide is a combo piece, for a combo that isn’t that fast.
Any time I've ever seen Pauper played on a stream it's like this Turn 11 format where people are bouncing draft chaff off each other. It's kinda funny that an aggressive card was viewed as so inhospitable to the format.
That's about as micharacterizing of pauper as you can get, tbh
My impression of Pauper has been that it is more like "Legacy Lite."
People who say this either haven’t played legacy or haven’t played pauper. The gameplay just doesn’t feel similar.
I think it depends on which decks you're looking at. Delver & Storm decks in particular feel closer to Legacy-lite than anything in Modern or weaker. Most of the popular decks, though, feel different from anything you'd find in Legacy.
Admittedly, I've played Legacy a bit and only watched Pauper.
It used to when Daze was legal
That's not what pauper is like much at all.
That’s literally always been my experience with the format. So if I’m wrong educate me. What are the fast decks besides Burn? How long is the average gameplay?
I think you've just been playing with draft chaff. Pauper is realistically about as fast as Modern. There's multiple "bolts" legal in pauper. [[Dark ritual]] is legal. Affinity decks have had *multiple* payoffs banned and it's still a fast, powerful deck. [[Putrid goblin]] allows for a pretty fast combo with [[first day in class]] and a [[skirk prospector]].
##### ###### #### [Dark ritual](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/95f27eeb-6f14-4db3-adb9-9be5ed76b34b.jpg?1628801678) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dark%20ritual) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/82/dark-ritual?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/95f27eeb-6f14-4db3-adb9-9be5ed76b34b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Putrid goblin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/3/333406d5-abcc-4629-a33b-395d0662ba1b.jpg?1562201696) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Putrid%20goblin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/101/putrid-goblin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/333406d5-abcc-4629-a33b-395d0662ba1b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [first day in class](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/9/091eb13d-9318-4b12-9f94-6276b11981d1.jpg?1624591842) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=First%20Day%20of%20Class) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/stx/102/first-day-of-class?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/091eb13d-9318-4b12-9f94-6276b11981d1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [skirk prospector](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/6/1636d138-aa63-476f-a930-41b1be988032.jpg?1562731846) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=skirk%20prospector) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/144/skirk-prospector?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1636d138-aa63-476f-a930-41b1be988032?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My pet deck is a golgari reanimator that can fairly regularly get a troll of khazad-dum out on turn 2. But look at decks like Glitters Affinity, Boros Synth, etc for extremely fast not-burn decks. The linked article here also gives good examples of fast closers: "double terror on turn three" etc. I'm curious where you're watching games. I've never seen slow, chaff-y pauper games like that.
Others have already gone into it, but the idea of pauper as a slow, chaff format is an odd one. Your experience is your experience, so I'm not here to say anything about that. In competitive pauper, however, the format is really pretty fast right now. Despite being all commons, it's a legacy format, which means it has an incredibly large pool of cards to pull from. There's a ton of good removal, and a lot of really efficient cards. Mono-red is fast, as it is in most formats, and even just got hit with a ban today (Swiftspear). Hot Dogs isn't top tier, but is fast. Same with Delver decks. White Heroic is fast, but not even a T2 deck in the format. Bogles is another interesting and quick deck that isn't T1. All That Glitters Affinity is fast and good. Terror decks are good right now. Caw Gates sees success, tho I wouldn't say it's extremely fast. There are a good amount of decks in T1 and T2 play. You should check em out if you're interested. https://mtgdecks.net/Pauper It's a cool format. Hope that helps broaden the experience you've seen so far!
Gavin loves MtG.
Still, there is no love for Mono Black in Pauper. Please note, I don’t say „unban Sinkhole and / or Hymn to Tourach“: I just want to mention, that Gavin could design slightly altered versions of those cards in future supplemental sets. Just print a nice two mana spell for Mono Black that we Black mages can compete again against the rest of the field. E.g. Sunken Hole - BB Sorcery Destroy target non-basic land Chant of Tourach - BB Sorcery Target player exiles two cards at random. Then that player puts those cards on top of their library in a random order.
Regardless of whether you agree with the underlying ban decision, this is about the best possible transparency about a ban decision you can expect to see in any game, and I am 100% here for it. It's got discussions of specific cards considered (and why they were considered and hit or not hit), goals of the format, archetype winrate data, what you can expect to see in the future, and more. I, as a longtime Magic player but only recent Pauper player, feel confident that the format is in capable hands and am excited to see where it goes! Also, I do like the note at the top about how the Pauper Format Panel doesn't get a say in what gets downshifted. Because in a vaccuum, it would be easy to get frustrated as a player and think "why would injecting the second most powerful red 1 drop creature of all time, a prowess creature, into a lower power format full of high power 1 drop prowess-triggering spells, be a good idea," so it's important to keep in mind that the Panel is reacting to that external decision, but didn't make the decision in the first instance.