The Power of Pauper: Trials of the Unbans
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 looking at just what the Trial Unbans have done over the past three months along with any predictions on the Banned and Restricted Announcement on June 30. In addition we've got some Challenges to look at, as well as a sweet Charity paper event.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
The Trial Unbans - High Tide and Prophetic Prism
Three months ago in the last Banned/Restricted Announcement, Gavin Verhey advised on two cards that were unbanned in Pauper as part of a "Trial Unban" period. The idea is that these cards would be unbanned and then revisited on the next BnR (June 30th), at which point a determination would be made on them. The first two Trial Unbans of this nature were High Tide and Prophetic Prism.
Let's talk about each of these cards individually, and where things seem to sit with those strategies a week before this next BnR Announcement.
High Tide
High Tide is a card that simply didn't really exist in Pauper as we know it today. It's one of those things that sat in that gray space between online legality and paper legality, since it never actually existed on Magic Online in a printing that placed it at common rarity. When the format was unified under one set of legality and ban lists, High Tide was preemptively added to the banned list because, well it is High Tide.
However, High Tide was selected to be one of these trial unbans largely due in part to the fact that the card was not considered to be exceptionally overpowering especially since many of the bigger payoffs for such an engine are all banned in Pauper. Another part of this is because of the desire to have another 100% spell-based combo deck in Pauper (outside of stuff like Poison Storm), as spell-based combo is beloved for its common intricacies by many players, and a vast majority of Pauper's combo decks are all creature focused in some fashion.
True to hive mind deckbuilding fashion, several versions of High Tide emerged in the wake of the unbanning and the deck started to settle into the Pauper metagame. In the past three months we've seen this deck have good results and bad, and frankly it has settled even more into of Pauper to the point where it just feels like another deck you can play in the format.
Now, from a pure metagame result perspective, High Tide's results have been mostly just okay. It's had a few good finishes, and solid league results, but for the most part it's not an overpowering deck at all. Pauper is so very wide that it just feels fine. There is an element of play experience that some players have expressed with the deck, where the games often feel rather slow and its always hard to tell if the High Tide opponent is even going to win or they fizzle out. Play experience is important as well as data/results, but taking all of this into account I still don't buy that High Tide needs to go back to the banned list at this time. The deck simply feels fine and it has its moments, but it also has its moments where it can't convert and the opponent gets a chance to capitalize on that and win the game.
I'm thoroughly fine with leaving High Tide right where it is, because it seems totally fine in Pauper right now.
Prophetic Prism
Prophetic Prism is a card that was banned in January of 2022 as one of the big first bannings by the Pauper Format Panel alongside Atog and Bonder's Ornament (a card that was also banned for the sins of Tron). It was banned primarily because of how powerful the card was in Tron. However, since then the format has changed pretty massively alongside both Modern Horizons 2 and Modern Horizons 3 in addition to the printing of Energy Refractor in Brother's War, and Tron was no longer the powerhouse deck that it was.
Prism was brought back primarily because of this aspect, and the wonder if the card would work well enough in tandem with Energy Refractor to make Tron a reasonable deck again in Pauper, especially since the deck had mostly dipped off the map for a while. There was some minor concern given at the time about having eight copies of this effect, but a lot of those cards exist in Pauper like that (Inspectors, etc) and often seem just fine.
And honestly, true to form, Tron has indeed been resurrected by the existence of Prophetic Prism in addition to Energy Refractor, but overall the deck's results have been quite medium at best. The deck is no longer the soul crushing power deck of its time in 2022, and I see it a lot less in Challenges over time, sometimes only seeing one or two to none at all in a Top 16. Pauper as a format has sped up immensely and the power level of many of the cards is much higher than it once was, and Tron's certainly attempted to adapt to that, but it hasn't 100% adapted to the point of being so overpowering that it is breaking Pauper.
I'm of the opinion that Prophetic Prism also does not need to go back on the banned list. It's not hurting the overall format and neither is Tron currently.
Predictions for June 30 BnR
For the most part, Pauper seems like it's in a solid place. New sets like Final Fantasy are giving the format plenty of new cards to try out. I think because of this, we will not see any changes in Pauper next week, and that's fine. Pauper is great right now!
Paup-ing Off For Charity
This past weekend was a super sweet event in Upstate NY, ran by the Upstate NY Pauper organization. The event was the Paup-ing Off For Charity event, supporting the Trevor Project and the Trans Lifeline. This event had 33 players in it, which is super solid, and the event itself raised over $1000 for charity! You can find out more over here.
You can find all of the decklists for this event here, but do not that they're in the process of being cleaned up a bit by the organizer so the names match correctly.
Let's take a look at the Top 8.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Elves | 1st | Abbott Hardison |
| Mono Black Pactdoll | 2nd | Chris Bacon |
| Mono White Aggro | 3rd | Peyton Gregory |
| Familiars | 4th | Ian Ouellette |
| Mono Blue Terror | 5th | Eric English |
| Mono White Aggro | 6th | Mike DeNora |
| Madness Burn | 7th | Jacob Reed |
| Mono Blue Terror | 8th | Kevin Swanson |
What a super interesting Top 8, especially with two Mono White Aggro lists here! Love that deck. At the end of the event it was Elves that won!
Very straightforward looking list here. I love seeing stuff like Essence Warden in the sideboard for matchups where gaining life is very substantially necessary.
In Second Place we had the Mono Black Gardens/Pactdoll deck.
This deck is super sweet. Black Mage's Rod is a very powerful card and a lot of fun to play around with.
Pauper Challenge 32 6/20/2025
The first Challenge event of the weekend was the Friday event. This event had 57 players thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Faeries | 1st | barff |
| High Tide Combo | 2nd | Beicodegeia |
| Jund Wildfire | 3rd | Walker735 |
| Bogles | 4th | Denisevich |
| Dredge | 5th | AguaTonificada |
| Burn | 6th | Muka33 |
| Burn | 7th | ICT95 |
| Madness Burn | 8th | outZEROo |
Fair bit of Burn-related stuff in this Top 8, but the end of the event was won by Mono Blue Faeries.
Quite a clean looking list here. One big thing to note is new card Humbling Elder, which can not only be bounced with ninjutsu, but also just flashing it in to reduce the power of an attacking creature is super solid.
In Second Place we had High Tide Combo.
We talked about this deck quite a bit already, but it's nice to see that it's good but doesn't seem too insane. Hidden Strings without a creature to cipher onto is amusing, but the point of the card is to be able to untap multiple lands at one time, which is very nice to have in a deck like this.
Also in this Top 8 we had Dredge.
Town Greeter looking great even with no Town synergy. Sometimes just having four more copies of the same effect (Satyr Wayfinder) is really the best part of a new card like this, and you don't even need to worry about the extra synergy to make the card good because it's already doing the good thing you wanted it for.
Pauper Challenge 32 6/21/2025
The second Challenge event of the weekend was the Saturday event. This event had 50 players thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Terror | 1st | discoverN |
| Madness Burn | 2nd | Bong0411 |
| Jund Wildfire | 3rd | TrueHero |
| Izzet Terror | 4th | SpockVidaLoka |
| Mono Blue Terror | 5th | Luminati |
| Burn | 6th | CounterTopGarchomp |
| Gruul Ramp | 7th | Yugi_Moto |
| Jund Wildfire | 8th | Mazzo_95 |
Reasonable spread of decks here. At the end of the event it was Mono Blue Terror that won.
Pretty much one of the cleanest decks in the format in terms of sheer numbers. You know the math is done on a deck when you see 3's of things.
In Second Place we had Madness Burn.
This is interesting because it's also super duper clean. Lot of the deck here is eschewing cards like Alms of the Vein but it focusing more on the important madness spells like Fiery Temper and also leaning on noncreature spell damage effects like Guttersnipe and Kessig Flamebreather. Really neat stuff.
At the bottom of the Top 8 we had Gruul Ramp.
Super straightforward list, and it seems like we're back to being able to Ponza people! Land destruction rejoice!
Pauper Challenge 32 6/22/2025
The final Challenge event of the weekend was the Sunday event. This event had 72 players thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here. The Top 8 is below.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Elves | 1st | Elfu |
| Mono Blue Faeries | 2nd | DB_Sodeq |
| Jund Wildfire | 3rd | CHRIS-Mtg-02 |
| Izzet Terror | 4th | SpockVidaLoka |
| Jund Wildfire | 5th | _blaze66 |
| Mono White Aggro | 6th | dragtar |
| Mono Blue Terror | 7th | John1111 |
| Jund Wildfire | 8th | Walker735 |
Fair bit of Jund Wildfire in this Top 8. At the end of the event though, it was Elves that won.
What stuck out at me on this was the sideboard. Spellstutter Sprite is interesting and unique for sure, but also Armadillo Cloak and Fang Dragon. Wildly interesting choices. Curious to see how they played out here.
In Second Place we had Mono Blue Faeries.
Very similar list to the other one that did well this same weekend with just some slightly tweaked creature numbers across the board.
Also in this Top 8 we had Izzet Terror.
Campfire in the sideboard as a way to recycle your deck if you need to is quite interesting. I just really like this deck because you get to cast both Lightning Bolt and Skred.
Around the Web
- Pauperganda has a video on Black Burn. Check it out here.
- Bryant Cook is performing some BLACK MAGIC. Check it out here.
- Kalikaiz is going Go Go Choco/Mog with a recent video. 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!
BOROS CHOCO/MOG.
SUMMON THE FAT CHOCOBO.
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!
