The Power of Pauper: Upstate NY Pauper - Holiday Edition
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 taking a look at the Upstate NY Pauper's "Pauping Off for Charity" Holiday Edition event! In addition we've got some Challenges from last week to look at and a look back at Pauper in 2025. This is our final article of 2025! What a wild year it has been.
I will note some weirdness this past week with the 12/18 Challenge. It seems that the bracket published on Daybreak's end, but none of the decklists. For this reason we won't be trying to cover this event.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
Upstate NY Pauper: Pauping Off for Charity - Holiday Edition (12/20/2025)
This past weekend was the Upstate NY Pauper's Holiday charity tournament, held in Rochester, NY at The Game Cave. As part of the entry, attendees also brought non-perishable food items to donate in order to support local food banks during the holiday season, which is super awesome. They had about 23 people it looks like from the Spicerack page, which is a solid charity tournament turnout. The event even had some really cool custom medals that were awarded to the Top 8 finalists.
You can find all the decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | Player Name |
|---|---|---|
| Mono Red Rally | 1st | Ted Koppers |
| Mono Red Rally | 2nd | Steven Etter |
| Infect | 3rd | Graydon Beadle |
| Elves | 4th | Abbott Hardison |
| Jund Wildfire | 5th | Michael White |
| Gruul Ponza | 6th | Brianna Westervelt |
| Jund Wildfire | 7th | Ian Storm |
| Elves | 8th | Brian Reagan |
Honestly a pretty reasonable Top 8 here. At the end of the event it was two Mono Red Rally lists that faced off.
The differences between these two are rather minute, especially in a mirror match. They're both trying to do the same thing here, realistically.
Big thanks to the folks at Upstate NY Pauper for reaching out. This looked like a fun event, and I hope to see more charity events in the future. It's always great to give back to the community, especially during the holiday season.
A Look Back at 2025
2025 was a very interesting year for Pauper with a lot of shakeup in the format over time. At the beginning of the year we had a massive set of bans in March that attacked multiple decks in the format.
These three were banned in order to take down a notch a lot of decks that abused these cards heavily, reducing the triad of pillars that had arisen in the format until this time. However... at the same time we also received our first ever trial unbans in the form of High Tide and Prophetic Prism. Trial unbans were a new concept introduced by the Pauper Format Panel as a way to see if certain cards would be too broken or if they would be safe to actually unban and keep in the format.
2025 continued on with new sets adding interesting new cards. Both Final Fantasy and Edge of Eternities added new things to Pauper as a whole, and seemed to make the format more interesting rather than outright broken. During this time, it was ascertained that Prophetic Prism could remain in Pauper without issue. Tron was not the overpowered monstrosity it once was in the format, and overall the format seemed to adapt to its existence.
High Tide on the other hand was slowly proving that it was not a fine card in the format. After having its trial extended a few times, and notably having data communicated that showcased how bad the deck actually was at the time, the card was finally re-banned in November of 2025. During this time, the deck had grown not only in popularity, but its win rate had steadily increased over time as players figured out the correct shell for the card to exist in. At the end of it all, the trial unbans were generally regarded as a good thing because of how it allowed players to finally see if certain cards truly would be bad for the format. It took a bit more time than expected to see if Tide was truly bad, but that data was good to be able to say definitively that it should remain banned.
All in all, outside of the format shakeups through BnR, the format at large remained relatively stable in terms of set releases, which mostly went through Standard this year, with only one release (Innistrad Remastered) occurring through downshifts. I am pretty happy with the thought that cards coming through Standard can impact the format in positive ways. Many of Pauper's major issues have largely occurred due to downshifts, so while they're always exciting they do often cause issues for the format.
I think 2025 was a pretty good year in general for Pauper, and I am really looking forward to 2026!
Pauper Challenge 32 12/19/2025
The first Challenge we can cover was the Friday 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 Blue Faeries | 1st | barff |
| Grixis Affinity | 2nd | LuffyDoChapeuDePalha |
| Grixis Affinity | 3rd | PedraStone |
| Grixis Madness | 4th | ManoRibeiro13 |
| Grixis Madness | 5th | moon11 |
| Elves | 6th | Boucha |
| Mono Blue Terror | 7th | Luminati |
| Grixis Madness | 8th | edgo |
Lot of Affinity and Madness decks. At the end of the event it was Mono Blue Faeries that won however.
Neat list here. Force Spike is kind of cool. Harrier Strix is also a neat card that lets you ensure you can do ninja things by tapping down a blocker.
In Second Place we had Grixis Affinity.
I definitely feel like if there's one player who has continually defined what the Affinity deck should look like, it's certainly Luffy. If you want to play this deck, this is the place to start.
Also in this Top 8 we had some Grixis Madness.
Black Mage's Rod is a sick card for this kind of deck, because it does cast a bunch of noncreature spells, so getting to add damage on top of those spells is always great (especially since most of those spells are causing damage or life loss).
Pauper Challenge 32 12/20/2025
The second Challenge we can cover was the Saturday event. This event had 47 players in it thanks to the MTGO website.
You can find the Top 32 decklists for this event here.
| Deck Name | Placing | MTGO Username |
|---|---|---|
| Turbo Fog | 1st | Pinolo_Cosmico |
| Mono Blue Terror | 2nd | Luminati |
| Familiars | 3rd | EhDM |
| Golgari Gardens | 4th | True-Name-Nemesis |
| Spy Combo | 5th | asWerty |
| Mono Red Rally | 6th | galeogiao |
| Grixis Affinity | 7th | amarobr |
| Mono Red Rally | 8th | GilbertoAntunes |
Reasonable spread of decks here. At the end of the event it was Turbo Fog that won.
What really draws me into this list isn't the main deck, no it's the sideboard juke. Just juking in four Writhing Chrysalis is kind of wild, not going to lie. I love it, because it's the hallmark of a deck that knows it can circumvent hate with a good juke.
In Second Place we had Mono Blue Terror.
10/10 no notes. Super clean and straightforward. I will admit, one copy of Ponder is wild, but I have to assume some math was done.
Also in this Top 8 we had Familiars.
Woof. Being able to Ghostly Flicker an Archaeomancer and a Stonehorn Dignitary is gross, especially when the Flicker only costs U. Wild take on the list because it's only playing one copy of God-Pharaoh's Faithful, when usually that is a four-of.
Pauper Challenge 32 12/21/2025
The final Challenge we can cover was the Sunday event. This event had 62 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 Madness | 1st | O_danielakos |
| Jund Wildfire | 2nd | Heisen01 |
| Familiars | 3rd | TSPJendrek |
| Grixis Affinity | 4th | Angus91 |
| Bogles | 5th | Ixidor29 |
| Dimir Faeries | 6th | Al_bertoR |
| Turbo Fog | 7th | Kirblinxy |
| Jeskai Ephemerate | 8th | ChaoticMTG |
Pretty diverse Top 8. At the end of the event it was Mono Red Madness that won.
Very straightforward and aggressive. This deck's game plan is to get your life total to 0 quickly, and it does it well.
In Second Place, we had Jund Wildfire.
I feel like as long as the core of this deck is intact (the Ichor Wellspring/Writhing Chrysalis core) then you can probably just wrap in any threats you want. I like the mana efficiency and synergy of things like Gixian Infiltrator though.
Further down the Top 8 we had Bogles.
Any list playing Spirit Link is automatically super cool. Also, just actual factual Lifelink.
Around the Web
- Alex Ullman has a report on first four weeks of Avatar Season. Check it out here.
- Pauperganda is celebrating a 10 year anniversary! Congrats! Check out their video here.
- GiorgioCombo is building their own KCI. 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!
Mono White Heroic adapting to use Learn cards to fetch new ATLA Lessons? Pretty sweet.
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!
