Personal Update

Well, 2021 has been very interesting to put it mildly.

After a down turn in work and being based at home the truth was revealed, the customer whose contract I worked on revealed they had lost their primary customer. This led to several of us put on furlough again with our only hope being our employer getting another contract to place us on, until then we’d be furloughed.

This led to a rather large amount of free time and during the run up to Strixhaven I had increased my writing output so much I released two articles a week rather than one per fortnight.

Now my status has changed again after updating my CV and uploading it to several job sites. I have now been head hunted and offered a new job which I have accepted.

I’m still on my induction period and adjusting to the new role, I’m back at my regular written article every fortnight but hope to be publishing weekly again at some point, though with the UK opening up and the opportunity to play in store this may remain more of an ambition than an actual rate of publication.

Unbanning Cards for Pauper

There are many opinions on cards that should be banned, however, once we mention the possibility of unbanning cards the screams are so shrill, they can wake the dead.

Today I am going to look at what, if any card we could or should unban.

Arcum’s Astrolabe

My favourite card so needs to come back, I just love those grindy mirror matches when you go to time and everyone has another fifty minutes to wait for those extra turns to be played out.

Arcum's Astrolabe

Cloud of Faeries

Ah free mana, don’t we just love free mana and if we don’t want free mana we can draw a card from cycling. What could possibly go wrong?

Cloudpost

A lovely innocuous card, who wouldn’t like to ramp into Kaervek’s torch for the win.

Cranial Plating

My first experience of Cranial Plating was being brutally killed off in a Pro Tour Qualifier from an Extended Affinity deck. I have no issue seeing an equipped Vault Skirge menacing the skies

Daze

Blue mages get a bad rap, at least give them a solid reason to be disliked.

Empty the Warrens

Goblins! Who wants to play magic anyway? Just sit back whilst your opponent stresses that they have the win or not. We have Suffocating Fumes and Fiery Cannonade for instant speed removal to keep it in check nowadays.

Empty the Warrens

Expedition Map

How can a card with a box topper variant that looks so sweet be banned, to be fair this card was banned for the sins of Tron, the ban hasn’t made any difference as Crop Rotation is actually better.

Fall from Favor

Now blue should have card draw, should it come with one of the best removal in the format? Maybe this card just needs the companion treatment and errata it. Rather than 2U, make it 1UU to reduce its impact to the fringe decks.

Frantic Search

It never ceases to amaze me that cards can be so innocuous they get a reprint in Commander deck during 2020, whilst we continue to have no organised philosophy for Pauper, controversial cards like this one will be knocking on the door to return. Part of Pauper’s fun for many is the inherently unfair cards that create ridiculous game play experiences.   

Gitaxian Probe

I have some spare FNM versions I need to sell, unban this now to appease my bank manager. Well, not strictly true I want some old bordered foil Ponders.

Grapeshot

This is very similar to Empty the Warrens and we also potentially have Weather the Storm to crush dreams.

Gush

Apparently, this card will never be unbanned, the reason being the financial liability from the mass walkout from the game as a whole.

High Tide

Wasn’t this banned without seeing play with the differences between paper and online printings? That doesn’t seem very fair, we missed the opportunity to cry foul and scream at Wizards like affronted teenagers.

Hymn to Tourach

Mono Black has been a Tier 2 deck for so long, it is BB so, realistically a black centric card and I am sure the Brazilian players would be having street parades.

Invigorate

Why worry about grindy slow matches? Just bring back the fastest win con ever and make people sweat about dying before they have played all three Tron lands.

Mystic Sanctuary

Gutted this card bit the dust, my poor friends are getting tired of my blue centric Commander decks where I use my banned Pauper cards.

Peregrine Drake

I missed playing with these as I lived in an area that wasn’t fans of Pauper. Can we unban, let me grab four foil copies and then emergency ban them to add to my Commander pringles collection.

Peregrine Drake

Sinkhole

How can anyone not appreciate the original artwork for Sinkhole? For the artwork alone we need to let this card have a run out to stimulate another pointless debate on which card art is better or original printing verses newer printings in foil.

Temporal Fissure

They printed this! Okay, even I cannot find a reason to bring this back into the format. I mean, I would have to build the deck, test it with my wife Rachel and I don’t think my back could take that many nights on the sofa.

Treasure Cruise

Oh, this card was so awesome. When it was standard legal I managed to get a foil playset to pimp out my deck. It was amazing though when suddenly everyone could splash an island for the crazy broken value of this spell. Mono Red no longer existed, it was all Izzet, even Mono Green Aggro become Simic Aggro.

Tron Lands

Oh, they aren’t banned? I assumed they were as very little talk about them needed to be banned recently.

Urza’s Factory

Yes, well technically not banned as it is an uncommon but hell yeah, lets down shift this card so it becomes legal, and we can use tron mana fairly to make Assembly Worker’s.

Some Final Words

Pauper is a great format, on the whole it takes an awful lot to get a card banned though. However, unlike other formats we haven’t seen anything unbanned. Maybe with the latest card pool we could look at some cards returning to freshen up the format.

And finally, if you are raging and ready to go all keyboard warrior on me, as I publish this article it is 1st April. Gotcha!

Pauper Side Boarding

My latest Pauper Article where I look at the options for side boarding in Pauper.

The article is longer than usual due to the amount of subject material at hand, I aim to make it a resource page going forward so any feedback about additional useful cards would be welcome.

If you like what you read, please comment and share.

#mtgpauper

https://oncommonground.home.blog/pauper-side-boarding-options/

The Time Spiral Remastered Timeshifted Commons.

My latest Pauper Article where I look over Tine Spiral Remastered Timeshifted cards with my personal favourites.

Whilst we are not getting new cards or new downshifts of note to talk about, you can expect to see cards in the older frame appear at your local store,

If you like what you read, please comment and share.

#mtgpauper

https://oncommonground.home.blog/time-spiral-remastered-timeshifted-cards/

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