The Power of Pauper: Turtle Power
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 full Cowabunga with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In addition, we've got an update on the MTGO Decklist Debacle from last week, and some Challenges plus an RC Qualifier to look at.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
MTGO Decklist Update
We have an update on the MTGO Decklist Debacle from last week. In what amounted to functionally 3-4 days worth of community feedback and pressure, Wizards of the Coast has decided to reverse the decision and revert the change entirely back to the existing Top 32 publications of decklists that existed prior to the announcement last Tuesday. You can find the announcement here.
The community pressure on this change was overwhelmingly against it, and for a lot of good reasons. The official reasoning for this was a claim that players were somehow inferring incorrect metagame information from online results to tabletop events. Reducing available information however will never force players to be "more creative about the metagame" or make better decisions about the metagame (the age old "puzzle" metaphor. Especially in older formats, it makes the formats look even worse, not better.
Wizards does state in their announcement that much of this decision was driven by the fact that there's a lot of MTGO data compared to tabletop data, and would like to figure out better ways to give aggregators (like Goldfish) a better representation of tabletop data and would be going back to the drawing board to figure out how to do this. Much of this relates solely to Standard, where they are trying to further drive tabletop engagement. There's a lot of ideas thrown about on how they can achieve this, so if you have feedback for them please reach out constructively and give it!
Thankfully Wizards was able to hear the feedback and listen to the community on this. I really appreciate seeing everyone recognize what an issue this was and step in and provide solid constructive feedback on the change.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming!
Totally Tubular Dudes - TMNT for Pauper
We're back in the end of spoiler season for another Standard set and this set is focused on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! There's a lot of interesting commons in this set, and it also has some cool new mechanics such as Sneak (a fixed version of Ninjutsu that also goes on spells), so let's take a look at the cards in no particular order. As always if there's something I've missed, let me know in the comments below.
April O'Neil, Kunoichi Trainee
I think this could be actually pretty good in Mono White Heroic style decks. Being able to scry on ETB is good, and the can't be blocked by power 3 or greater is still relevant no matter how big April is. So you could make this really big and still punch through big board states.
Utrom Monitor
A 3/3 flier with Affinity for artifacts is really sweet and is probably playable in one of the Affinity pile decks. It doesn't seem hard to get this to cost U.
Leonardo, Big Brother
This could be rather sick in Mono White Aggro, because of all the tokens and stuff. You could sneak this guy in as a finishing move/Fireball effect to close the game out. Sneak for W is REALLY good.
Anchovy & Banana Pizza
A Food that destroys a creature on ETB is kind of sweet, even if it does cost 4 mana, but like, there's definitely something there.
Oroku Saki, Shredder Rising
Sneaking in another draw effect is kind of cool. I love seeing some more Ninjas and this set had the big potential to have many more in the first place.
Guac & Marshmallow Pizza
Slightly goofy art aside, this card does do some things with having Flash, only costing one and a cool effect. Printing more Food in general is only good for Cauldron Familiar decks and there's bound to be some cool payoff down the line.
Jennika, Bad Apple Big Sister
A 3/3 that comes with a 2/2 is pretty on rate for five mana, but it can also be plainscycled. Is this good? It probably isn't, but who knows.
Mouser Foundry
Any artifact with the words "enters or leaves" has a pretty reasonable chance to be played in Pauper. Between cards like Glint Hawk and Kor Skyfisher, as well as sacrifice outlets like Fanatical Offering these kinds of cards generally end up being good at some point. Making a 1/1 Robot every time is pretty sweet, and then the upside is you could sacrifice it to deal three damage to a creature.
Uneasy Alliance
A Pacifism effect is kind of neat, but then late game you can get rid of the creature to get a 1/1 out of it.
Raphael, Tough Turtle
I feel like there could be a sweet token deck here. I know a lot of the Mono Red Rally decks make a bunch of tokens so just having extra reach with the Alliance trigger is pretty sweet.
Hamato Guardian Stance
A one mana combat trick, but we know Mono White Heroic is a thing that exists. Whether this makes the cut, I am not sure, but having more options is always cool.
Ice Cream Kitty
Oh heck, yet another cool Food card and this one is a Food creature even. The ability it has to convert tokens and creatures into cards is pretty good event at sorcery speed. A 1/3 is also good at two mana, and you can even cash it in for 3 life if you really need to.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/19/2026
The first Challenge event of the week was the Thursday event. This event had 50 players in it thanks to the MTGO website. This event unfortunately fell in that window before the decklist change was reverted.
You can find the Top 8 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Grixis Affinity | 1st | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Mono Blue Terror | 2nd | Luminati |
| Elves | 3rd | Shiib |
| Gruul Ponza | 4th | Ixidor29 |
| Grixis Affinity | 5th | Beicodegeia |
| Dredge | 6th | seasonofmists |
| Golgari Gardens | 7th | __Noob__ |
| Jeskai Ephemerate | 8th | FranBenitez91 |
Pretty good Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was Grixis Affinity that won.
Kind of intriguing to see a cutback on an effect like Fanatical Offering. The numbers on this list are pretty interesting, but I have to imagine that Luffy has done the math as this is a deck they know inside and out from all their results with it.
In Second Place we had Mono Blue Terror.
This is another pilot that really knows the Mono Blue builds quite well, as they've continually done very well with it. Can't go wrong with 16 Islands!
Also in this Top 8 is Gruul Ponza.
This is fairly straightforward, but I love the miser Structural Distortion as a land destruction effect that also deals damage.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/20/2026
The second Challenge event of the week was the Friday event. This event had 54 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 Red Rally | 1st | boom_bust |
| Rakdos Madness | 2nd | mehanske |
| Rakdos Madness | 3rd | grajtow |
| Grixis Affinity | 4th | Beicodegeia |
| Dredge | 5th | seasonofmists |
| Grixis Affinity | 6th | galeogiao |
| Mono Red Madness | 7th | Mate_wosk |
| Grixis Affinity | 8th | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
Quite a bit of Madness here, but the event ended up being won by Mono Red Rally.
Super clean and aggressive to the core. This deck's gameplan doesn't change too much and that's okay, it doesn't need to.
In Second Place we had Rakdos Madness.
The Rakdos variant is much more spell-heavy when trying to push through the damage than its Mono Red counterpart, which balances out the spells it needs to reliably trigger Guttersnipe and Kessig Flamebreather with being able to also attack with those creatures. This version doesn't have those cards, so it uses stuff like Vampire's Kiss and Alms of the Vein instead.
Outside of the Top 8 we had a showing by Familiars.
I think things have been rather rough for this deck as of late. It's still a deck I readily enjoy playing around with, but it does run across a bit of a wall in the current metagame.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/21/2026
The third Challenge event of the week was the Saturday event. This event had 43 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Azorius Gates | 1st | manohito |
| Grixis Affinity | 2nd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Jeskai Ephemerate | 3rd | ChaoticMTG |
| Mono Red Madness | 4th | MahThor |
| Jund Wildfire | 5th | _blaze66 |
| Mono White Aggro | 6th | Deodato |
| Elves | 7th | E_Kaminuma |
| Dimir Terror | 8th | alevale9722 |
This is a pretty diverse Top 8. At the end of the event it was Azorius Gates that won.
I kind of like Gates right now. Cheap threats, counterspells, and this version splashes a little into both green and red for some cards. Open the Gates is a good way to ensure you have your Basilisk Gate to close the game out with. Rancor giving trample is groovy.
In Second Place we had Grixis Affinity.
Very much the same list that Luffy won the other event with. If it's not broke, don't fix it!
At the bottom of the Top 32 we had Bogles.
Very straightforward build of this deck for sure. Mask of Law and Grace is a pretty sick card out of the sideboard. Being able to turn your big threat into something that can smash through the aggro decks which are predominantly black or red is pretty cool.
Pauper Challenge 32 2/22/2026
The final Challenge event of the week was the Sunday event. This event had 37 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 Blue Terror | 1st | Luminati |
| Grixis Affinity | 2nd | Beicodegeia |
| Rakdos Madness | 3rd | _Batutinha_ |
| Mono Red Madness | 4th | Mahers |
| Elves | 5th | blastoids |
| Boros Moxite | 6th | viashinoperuano |
| Azorius Gates | 7th | PNascimento |
| Azorius Gates | 8th | yahakara |
Fair bit of Madness and Gates. At the end of the event though it was Mono Blue Terror that won.
Island comes down, Brainstorm be cast. You can't explain that! I do love the Murmuring Mystic in the sideboard though.
In Second Place we had Grixis Affinity.
Hunter's Blowgun is a pretty sick card. Giving Krark-Clan Shaman deathtouch at any moment is pretty cool.
Further down the Top 8 we had Boros Moxite.
Hopefully by the time this article actually publishes I will have a legitimate classification for this deck ready. If it still says WUBR, I'm sorry I got busy, but I think it's time this one got nipped in the bud. It's a pretty cool deck and looks like a ton of fun.
Pauper RC Qualifier 2/22/2026
This past weekend we also had a RC Qualifier for Pauper! These events are pipelines to the Regional Championships tabletop events, with the finalists both receiving an invitation to them. This event had 176 players thanks to the MTGO website, which is super cool to see!
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Blue Faeries | 1st | lucasneveess |
| Jund Wildfire | 2nd | EiJunCHN |
| Jund Wildfire | 3rd | Mikibairon96 |
| Elves | 4th | Shiib |
| Grixis Affinity | 5th | Beicodegeia |
| Mono Red Rally | 6th | ATmagic |
| Jund Wildfire | 7th | kuldothared |
| Rakdos Madness | 8th | Ed_Elric |
Good amount of Jund in this Top 8. At the end of the event though it was Mono Blue Faeries that won.
This is a pretty sweet list. It seems that Illvoi Galeblade floated back out of these lists after seeing a little play. It will be interesting to see if there's any cool playable Ninjas from TMNT.
In Second Place we had Jund Wildfire.
This deck really does get to just play all the best cards in Pauper. It is truly Jund.
Further down the Top 32 we had Tron.
I really want to get around to building Tron in paper to have in my collection of Pauper decks. This build is pretty cool, but I think if I end up building Tron it will be the Ephemerate version.
Around the Web
- Heartyshow has a new video on Mono Red Madness. Check it out here.
- Our good friend Alex Ullman has his weekly recap! Check it out here.
- The Common Cold Snap has a new episode. Check it out here.
- MTG Homebrew Network has a video on Infect Gates vs Food Tron. 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!
Jund SKRED.
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!
