The Power of Pauper: No Bans in Pauper!
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of The Power of Pauper! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be talking about the Banned and Restricted Announcement from this past week and why there were no bans in Pauper! In addition we've got some Challenges to look at from last week.
Also, Paupergeddon is this weekend in Italy! Hopefully we'll be able to cover the event and see how Pauper shakes out here.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Banned and Restricted Announcement - June 30, 2025: No Bans for Pauper!
We had a Banned and Restricted Announcement this past weekend, and with that there were no changes to Pauper! You can find the full article here, but I will also embed Gavin's video on the topic of the announcement below to watch.
So, right off the bat we can establish that since the bannings of Deadly Dispute and company, the Pauper format has had an extremely diverse set of archetypes that are all viable. This is a great thing and something I've seen personally with the format since the bannings.
In addition, the PFP has made a firm decision on the fate of Prophetic Prism. The format has shown that this card isn't an issue and that the trial unban has gone well enough that Prism is no longer considered to be "trial unbanned" and is simply just "unbanned" as Gavin states in the video. This lines up well with what we talked about last week that Tron hasn't really proven itself to be a dominating force in the metagame even with having access to both Prism and Energy Refractor. This is great to hear.
The topic of High Tide is the more contentious of the two trial unbans. Gavin notes in the video and the article that while High Tide only has about a 50% win rate, but many of its matchups are extremely poor, and in Gavin's own words "the lowest win rates I've ever seen for an archetype in any format." High Tide has a 10% match win percentage against Faeries, and a sub-30% win rate against Burn decks. Both of these decks are extremely popular. This kind of data would very much suggest that High Tide is not a problem for Pauper, and that's something personally that I agree with.
However, there is some contention on the play patterns of High Tide, specifically around the amount of time it takes to execute the combo and that this is reminiscent of other formats like Modern where decks like Eggs / KCI had similar problems. I personally think that its hard to compare to KCI because that deck also exploited some pieces of the rules that weren't immediately apparent to players who didn't fully know the rules like the KCI player did, and that High Tide is a little easier to follow along in that respect. Furthermore, I do get that it can be frustrating to sit and wait to see if they actually win, because the deck is very non-deterministic sometimes.
That being said, it is called out that Pauper has a lot of decks like this. Deck like Cycle Storm (which have a better win rate than High Tide but a smaller play rate), Walls Combo, Goblins Combo, etc. are all very loop-intensive combo decks. Even Familiars has its moments of "gain a billion life in a single turn then eke out the game with 2/1s to win". Gavin calls out that it's hard to tell how much of this problem overall is because High Tide is new and exciting.
Because of how this deck is evolving, how the format is evolving, and how opinions around it are also evolving, the PFP is deciding to extend the trial unban for High Tide and give the deck some more time to figure out if the card truly does need to be banned. As stated in the video, if they do re-ban it, it's banned for good. In addition, with Paupergeddon occurring while this article is being published on July 4, this large tournament can give the PFP a lot more data to work with for paper play to make some determinations.
I am fine with extending the trial unban at this point. It makes sense from the PFP's standpoint because High Tide is a card that needs a lot more than three months of data to fully grok. They have also noted that they are not going to wait until November 24th (the next BnR window) to answer on the status of High Tide as a trial unban, that more than likely they would come back in August to deliver a final verdict, but that it would be a Pauper only ban window at that time. It's also noted that Pauper does not currently need any other bans or unbans, which is great.
Either way I am excited to see what happens next. I think both cards were great unbans, and that High Tide should remain in Pauper. It has very much proven that its not domineering, and spell-based combo should be given a chance to breathe here.
What are your thoughts on this BnR? Let me know in the comments below!
Pauper Challenge 32 6/27/2025
The first Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 60 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono White Aggro | 1st | Denisevich |
| Mono Blue Terror | 2nd | discoverN |
| Jund Wildfire | 3rd | _blaze66 |
| Elves | 4th | D3dalo |
| Dredge | 5th | AguaTonificada |
| Izzet Terror | 6th | SpockVidaLoka |
| Grixis Affinity | 7th | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Jund Wildfire | 8th | ElkVinci |
Fairly diverse Top 8 here. At the end of the event, Mono-White Aggro emerged victorious.
This deck is incredibly strong and aggressive. It can very quickly get off the ground and get damage on the board, and cards like Thraben Charm give it a ton of flexibility. Super cool deck.
In Second Place, we had Mono Blue Terror.
Sideboard copies of Gut Shot is very intriguing, honestly. It cleans up a lot of small threats (like most of the Elves creatures).
Also, in this Top 8 we did have Elves.
Having a sideboard play of Valakut Invoker and using all the mana you generate from Priest of Titania to dome the opponent for 3 damage per 8 mana is kind of cool.
Pauper Challenge 32 6/28/2025
The second Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 51 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono White Aggro | 1st | Kampo |
| Grixis Affinity | 2nd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Mono Blue Terror | 3rd | oskiyaa |
| Madness Burn | 4th | Bong0411 |
| Dredge | 5th | Natalino_91 |
| Elves | 6th | ilciad88 |
| Mono Blue Terror | 7th | Luminati |
| Mono Blue Terror | 8th | i_b_TRUE |
Honestly this is another reasonable Top 8. At the end of the event, it was Mono White Aggro that won again.
Salt Road Packbeast seems like a fun card for this deck, but really it's Summon: Choco/Mog that is super solid. Having just a repeatable +1/+0 stapled to a 3/3 for FOUR turns in a row is wild, and playing more than one is absurd.
In Second Place, we had Grixis Affinity.
Speaking of Final Fantasy cards, Black Mage's Rod here seems incredibly good. There's lots of noncreature spells in Affinity, so this just boosts all of them and gives the deck even higher reach to close games out.
Also in this Top 8 we had Grixis Dredge.
This version of the deck fell off slightly it felt like, but I like it. This is certainly a version of the deck I'm considering building for paper play.
Pauper Challenge 32 6/29/2025
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 77 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Madness Burn | 1st | NMT_Sco94 |
| Izzet Terror | 2nd | SpockVidaLoka |
| Mono White Aggro | 3rd | jwaves |
| Jund Wildfire | 4th | _blaze66 |
| Jund Wildfire | 5th | Walker735 |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 6th | Beicodegeia |
| High Tide Combo | 7th | Edo_01 |
| Ephemerate Tron | 8th | A_AdeptoTerra |
Very solid Top 8 as well here too. At the end of the event it was Madness Burn that won.
This version of the deck has been making the rounds, and I do think it's probably a bit cleaner than the version trying to cast black madness spells too like Alms of the Vein or Kitchen Imp. Having persistent damage threats like Kessig Flamebreather and Guttersnipe seems quite good indeed.
In Second Place we had Izzet Terror.
Pretty straightforward list here. There's something great about just playing blue and red spells together.
Also in this Top 8 we had Jund Wildfire.
We've seen this deck a ton lately, and frankly, it's just a very good deck. It rides a solid mid-range line while having a bunch of powerful cards in it. This is very much deserving of the Jund name.
Around the Web
- Bryant Cook has a video on Mono Red Prowess. Check it out here.
- Pauperganda also has a video on Red Prowess. Check it out here.
- GiorgioCombo has a guide on what to play for Paupergeddon. Check it out here.
- Kalikaiz also has a video on Red featuring Red Mage's Rapier. Check it out here.
The Spice Corner
As League results are now spread out across the week, let's dig in and find something spicy!
PERSISTENT. PETITIONERS.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Pauper!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGPauper Discord Server.
Until next time!
