Pauper has traditionally been a difficult format when choosing to play multiple colours, the best mana fixing lands are not printed at common so the majority of dual lands come into play tapped. This can be extremely risky in Pauper where you have decks like Stompy which can explode out of the gate and mass removal is pretty weak.
This has been the case since the format started and then Modern Horizons brought us Arcum’s Astrolabe. Overnight it was possible to reliably play three coloured manabase’s fixing colour requirements and drawing cards. Astrolabe’s appeared everywhere, Mono Black had them so Dimir Guildmage could be used to draw cards too. Decks like Tron got even better. Arcum’s Astrolabe started cropping up everywhere and Jeskai Snow became a dominant deck with online mirror matches a regular occurrence. After much fierce debate Arcum’s Astrolabe was banned and the format reverted back to an earlier time.
I enjoyed piloting Jeskai Snow, the mirror matches were an enjoyable skill test but to be fair my local play group really like their own paper decks e.g. Delver of Secrets. with virtually no Tron so my perception of the Pauper meta can be somewhat different.
Can Arcum’s Astrolabe be replaced ? Well Mana Cylix has existed since before Pauper was a format and see’s no play, Prophetic Prism sees play in many decks but is significantly slower.
So what answers do we have
Lifelands
These are the backbone of the format again to fix mana, the one life that they gain partially stems some of the potential life loss from lands coming in tapped. These lands can come in handy when bounced back to hand for additional life gain.
Karoo Lands
Karoo lands in controlling shells are perfectly fine. Sometimes you may have to bounce a comes into play tapped land but it may well not adversely affect your board or plays later in the game.
Shards of Alara Panorama’s
Panorama’s are not used as they are not only slow but tie up mana resources to search.
Mirage Fetchlands
Bad River, Grasslands are slow fetches that suffer from coming into play tapped. They may be useful as a budget option in Commander but even if they got a down shift are unlikely to see play as they only marginally better than Evolving Wilds or Terramorphic Expanse.
Tri-lands
We have two cycles of tapped trilands from Shards of Alara and Khans of Tarkir. Would a downgrade help ? Probably not as Expedition Map is no longer in the format which would be a fine way to find them. Add in the problem of coming in tapped they’d be hard pressed to succeed.
Lair’s
Another cycle of triple coloured land at Uncommon were the Lairs from Planeshift. They have the draw back of returning a land. This wasn’t so much of an issue with Karoo lands as overall they could put you up on mana in the following turns but the lair’s just feel to slow.
Ash Barrens
One of my favourite cards and the Commander staple is great for fixing your colours or just thinning your deck later in the game. Pauper decks are inherently powerful and tend to run less lands than say Standard decks. Drawing a land late in game can be critical and a way to mitigate that loss Is extremely useful.
Thriving Lands
And this brings is to Jumpstart and we have lands that home to ‘Thrive’ through adversity. Now coming into play tapped is still a problem and these lands don’t solve that issue but are so flexible it may well be worth it. Getting to chose the second colour they produce is the key to the conundrum as it allows for a more stable third colour without drastically affecting the make up of your deck. The benefits from a third colour were exemplified with Jeskai Snow which has reverted to Boros since the demise of Arcum’s Astrolabe. I’m keen to brew some decks using Thriving Lands to see what we can actually achieve. Boros Monarch could yet again become Jeskai Monarch with Mulldrifter back in the loop.
Are Thriving Lands the answer ? Possibly, they are certainly in demand and their current price tag of $0.99 implies there is a demand for the cards . However, much of this price may well be based on low supply due to Covid 19 rather than actual demand is yet to be confirmed.
Conclusion
Pauper is a great format, for a format based around common cards you can be genuinely surprised when someone plays a card you’ve never seen before. I regularly here “What ! That’s a common ! That’s insane !” and generally they don’t make them like they used to as very few new cards break into the format as you’ve such a vast powerful card pool already.
However, like any format it needs to evolve to stay current and relevant, stale formats with a fixed metagame get boring all too soon leading to them dying off.
On_Common_Ground 