The Power of Pauper: The Tide is In
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 have a Banned and Restricted Announcement related to Pauper! While this isn't a huge change, it is a change that removes a deck that could show up in last week's Challenge events, so we will not be discussing those events this week and return to keeping an eye on things going forward. In addition, we're doing out set review for Avatar: The Last Airbender this week!
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Banned and Restricted Announcement November 10th, 2025 - High Tide is Re-Banned
On Monday, the Pauper Format Panel and Gavin Verhey added onto the official announcement that High Tide had officially been re-banned in Pauper after its trial unban last March. You can find the full details of this banning explanation here. This is highly worth the read, since as always the PFP does a great job of giving solid transparency and understanding behind their decisions, and we're going to reference this and the video from Gavin during this discussion.
The idea behind trial unbanning was to unban a card on a probationary basis and see how things went and go from there. Wildly, the other card that this happened with, Prophetic Prism, is no longer under that probationary status because its existence has proven just fine in the format. High Tide though, is a card that never really existed in current Pauper until March as it was pre-banned when the format's legality solidified. The idea was to see how the card would exist in Pauper. This has proven to be a very nuanced topic and discussion, and High Tide's existence in the format really required much more time and data to truly understand where the deck would land.
I think this is a great time to showcase Gavin's video on this topic. I recommend watching this, as it helps a lot with understanding the why of this banning.
I've been on record as stating that I didn't think that High Tide was a big negative for the format, and I do still think that it would be nice to have a spell-based combo deck like that in the format. However, Pauper does not quite have the tools to manage this sort of deck, which makes it sort of rough on the format, so I can agree with the PFP's decision here, and here's why.
High Tide's initial results in the format were fairly slow. Players were trying to find a version of the deck that worked, using cards like Psychic Puppetry and Splice onto Arcane. The deck didn't have great results, and even in the last BnR update when the trial was expanded, the deck at the time had some problematic matchups. But over time, the deck's win rate crept from around 50% up to above 55% and has been sitting at the top of the overall metagame since then. For data reasons alone, I can definitely understand a deck having a 55%+ win rate to be a real problem, and I'm okay with a change in that regards with that data showing the deck needs to be banned.
However, it's not just the win rate that caused High Tide to be re-banned. There's two other factors that Gavin explains that, in combination with the win rates. The first one of those is tournament logistics and problematic gameplay patterns.
The current version of the deck was extremely slow to execute the gameplan. Even experienced pilots could have turns that exceeded ten to fifteen minutes to execute the combo and win the game. Gavin himself and others in the PFP have played this deck quite a bit, and explain that their own direct experiences showcased that the deck was not only powerful but also that it was extremely slow to win games with. This inevitably causes the play patterns to not be pleasant for both players, and compounds tournament logistics and cause rounds to run over time in paper events. This provides a poor event experience, and players have not been happy with that.
Gavin does point out that there are other decks that do take a while to execute, but they are easier to interact with than High Tide is, because most of the decks that are combo based in the format rely on creatures, such as Familiars, Walls, Cycle Storm, etc. Pauper is uniquely situated to manage creature-based combo decks, but not so much to manage decks that operate from the hand. The card pool is just more set up to deal with these things.
The final factor is format impact overall. Because of High Tide's polarizing matchups, it's done two things. First is that the decks that have really good Tide matchups (things like Terror, Faeries, decks that play countermagic and whatnot) have pushed themselves into really good spaces in the format, but then at the same time the decks that go underneath Tide (Mono Red aggro/burn decks primarily, Madness, etc) also have pushed hard because they try to kill the Tide player before the deck is able to get off the ground, which is often not until Turn 4-5. This has created a very polarizing effect on the format overall, and the format relatively was becoming "do you have a sideboard card that beats this deck?" and "how many sideboard cards did you draw?" That level of polarity isn't good for Pauper, and I definitely agree with that. I'm not sure I 100% believe that Tide's presence was pushing out Midrange, because Jund Wildfires definitely still seemed to be a deck that was everywhere, but that deck can also have some really strong aggressive starts and it has a lot of post board disruption.
The ultimate decision was "Is High Tide making Pauper better?" and Gavin says after adding up all the reasons above the conclusion was no, and the card needed to be re-banned. That being said, the PFP is still happy with the trial unban experiment, and I think it was a great idea as well, and I hope they continue to try these trial unbans to see what can be unbanned for the format.
Gavin also does note that they are keeping an eye on things like Terror (although it's possible that could be related to how good High Tide has been as a response) and also decks like the new Spy Combo builds that have been floating about.
As always, I greatly appreciate the PFP and their thorough and transparent decision-making process as well as the processes that lead them to this decision. It's great that we have such awesome folks keeping Pauper on course and stewarding the format, so truly thank you to them for their tireless work.
Flameo Hotman! Avatar: The Last Airbender for Pauper
We've got a new set coming soon in the form of Avatar: The Last Airbender! This set has quite a lot going on for it, and for Pauper specifically I think the biggest aspect of it is the return of Lessons as a card subtype on Instants and Sorceries. It's important to point out that there are no cards with Learn in the set (the mechanic from Strixhaven that would fetch Lessons from the sideboard), but cards with Learn do see something of a play in Pauper with cards like First Day of Class in Goblins, and that deck usually plays a few Lessons in the sideboard to account for that. We are eventually going back to Strixhaven though, and while its possible Learn doesn't return for that set, the chances there are pretty high.
As always we're going to go through the commons, here but there's a lot so we won't be going through every single one. However, we will at least touch on the Lessons for sure.
Airbending Lesson
Airbending is a pretty interesting mechanic that lets you exile something but then you can recast it for 2 rather than its mana cost. Thus, using Airbending on your own permanents is kind of sweet. Getting to draw a card while getting the airbending value is kind of cool with this card.
Sandbenders' Storm
On the other side of the elemental wheel we have Earthbending. Earthbending being able to make a land a creature is strong, and if that land dies or is exiled it just returns tapped. Earthbending combined with stuff like Bridge lands from MH2 seems very good. And this is also a playable effect of being able to destroy a creature with power 4 or greater, which Destroy Evil sees play so.
It'll Quench Ya!
A Quench effect on a Lesson is fairly interesting, especially at a fairly fine rate of two mana for a conditional counterspell.
Octopus Form
The ability to give +1/+1 and Hexproof with an untap is cool, but also a Lesson, so able to fetched with existing Learn spells.
Callous Inspector
A one mana 1/1 with menace is already pretty good on rate, but having the ability to generate a Clue on death is kind of cool. Not sure if it sees play but the effect is neat.
Dai-Li Indoctrination
A discard spell that also can be a creature if you need it to be is flexible and interesting.
Deadly Precision
We have more than enough of these around the format that I think this one probably isn't good enough, but it does sacrifice artifact or creature.
Earthbending Lesson
Four mana for a straight-up 4/4 land is not terrible. Also a Lesson, so that's a consideration.
Origin of Metalbending
This is pretty cool, actually. A Naturalize effect that's also a protection spell is pretty flexible. I could see this seeing play somewhere.
Ostrich-Horse
Another self-mill card that also gets bigger if you don't return a land with it, which is fairly possible in the kind of decks you'd want to play this in.
Vindictive Warden
Another infinite mana sink card and by far cheaper than most of them are. I could see this getting played for the activated ability and nothing else.
Abandon Attachments
This is actually quite good on rate. Being a Lesson helps too, but this is very good to be able to instant speed discard draw two.
Aang's Journey
This is quite solid honestly, since its a Lesson. Most of the ones played tend to be colorless ones regardless, so having a ramp spell is kind of cool for two mana that also gains you two life.
Zuko's Exile
Oh this one is actually very good. Being able to exile an artifact, creature, or enchantment is really flexible removal, and giving them a Clue in exchange is usually not terrible. I like it.
Around the Web
- GiorgioCombo has some Pili-Pala going on. Check it out here.
- Heartyshow is also talking about Avatar. Check it out here.
- The Common Coldsnap has a new episode. 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!
FOOD.
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!
