MTG Salvation

Cascade seems like a lot of fun for Pauper, but I wonder how "competitive" it will really be.

Fiery Cannonade is about to change Pauper forever. We haven't had a board wipe this cheap before, as far as I know. This one is instant speed and hits fliers. This is really good for red decks.

Champion of the Flame is also a really good downgrade. I can't wait to see some people piling on Leonin Scimitars and other janky equipment and going to town with this guy. Oh, and Bonesplitter, too...

Crimson Fleet Comodore is a great Monarch card for Red. Having Trample makes it good at stealing the Monarchy back. 5/2 are perfect stats, too.

Slith Ascendant makes me hope we get to see the whole set of Sliths. The Red one in particular would be great.

Benevolent Blessing is a better version of Cho-Manno's Blessing, which is hard to imagine. Looks like Mono-White Heroic got a good boost.

I love that they reprinted Cuombajj Witches with the Seb McKinnon artwork that was originally for MTGO. These are beautiful.

Jalum Tome and Howling Golem both give repeatable card draw in colourless, which is pretty exciting!

Good call on the Maelstrom Colossus. I did not read Cascade well enough. Having to recast it over again definitely makes this a lot less good than I thought, but still a very powerful and value-producing card that I think many players will want over Crusher. Even if it just Cascades into something like Prophetic Prism or Ancient Stirrings, you're still coming out ahead on cards in a world of Cast Downs.

Oh wow, Fleshbag Marauder is a really nice downgrade! Thanks for mentioning it.

HOLD ONTO YOUR SEATS EVERYBODY!

Blue just did it again...

Fall From Favor

This card is about to change how we play Pauper.

Hey Folks, we've got a brand new season of spoilers already. These supplemental sets are often where we get the best new goodies for Pauper, so it's an exciting time.

This set contains both brand new cards and downshifted reprints.

The Diamond cycle has been downshifted to common (Marble Diamond, etc.). I think these are probably playable in some decks. It gives certain colours access to ramp that didn't necessarily have it this efficiently before. I'm not sure where they would see play in particular though.

Maelstrom Colossus is probably on of the most interesting cards to come out so far. This is finally good competition with Ulamog's Crusher for "best fatty". This one feels especially relevant now since Ghostly Flicker effects are commonplace in Tron decks, giving this colossus an easy home as both a finisher and a value engine.

Natural Reclamation is expensive, but the potential value out of this is extraordinary. I've love to kill an artifact land and get a free Blastoderm, for example.

Forceful Denial is good along the same lines, but maybe a bit harder to use, since leaving up 5 mana to counter a spell is not great, but Blue manipulating its library might improve Cascade results.

We got much needed reprints of Thorn of the Black Rose and Entourage of Trest. I assume Palace Sentinels will also appear soon. These cards are obscenely expensive on MTGO.

Makeshift Munitions is making its way to common. I think this is a great card that should be somewhat playable in Red decks that play tons of tokens or artifacts. It might make for some interesting control-oriented Aristocrat decks. I love it! It's Pauper's Goblin Bombardment!

There are a few black commons printed, but they all seem pretty overcosted for Pauper.

Are there any printings/downshifts that you're excited for?

Have you heard of Penny Dreadful? This is an MTGO-run format that is basically the same thing as what you're describing. No cards over $0.01 can be played. The format shifts every three months to update the card pool. Decks that became popular suddenly become out of price range, requiring adaptation on the part of the player.

It's a really cool idea, but it does require of lot of adaptation on the part of the player. Unless they are fully enfranchised in the format, it can be very daunting to have to update/change decks so frequently.

That being said, Penny Dreadful players developed many good tools for tracking card prices that you would most likely be interested in. Perhaps they could be changed/adapted to fit your "IRL" model. Instead of "Penny Dreadful", it could be "Dime Dreadful", haha.

If a creature would die when both Void Maw and Rest In Peace are on the battlefield under the same controller, do they decide how the card is exiled? If there is a choice of exiling to be made, what happens when these cards are controlled by two different players?

Marauding Blight-Priest seems pretty fantastic. The stats are decent and it's 2 mana cheaper than Epicure of Blood. I just wish it was a 2/3 and not a 3/2.

Pretty interesting set for Pauper, considering it's not a masters set.

As for Tormenting Voice... Yeah I agree it's overprinted. They could stand to change it up more often. I mean, it has more printings than Colossal Dreadmaw by a good margin! Not to mention Thrill of Possibility has been in M21, Theros AND Throne. Enough already!

Do you think Cleansing Wildfire will see some play?

Nahiri's Binding seems pretty decent as a cheaper version of Faith's Fetters.

This article is very interesting. Worth a read! https://puremtgo.com/articles/tron-still-problem-pauper

Addressing the play pattern that Tron has focused on is a very complex issue. CWeaver believes banning the Tron lands would be the simplest solution.

I generally agree, but I have to admit I have mixed feelings about Tron lands leaving the format altogether. I feel like they are a pillar of Pauper and a selling point for the format for people coming from Modern. It would be like banning Delver of Secrets, essentially the poster-child of the format.

Spoiler season for Zendikar Rising has only just begun but we already have quite a few commons to talk about!

Feed the Swarm is officially the best enchantment removal in Black, without a doubt. The fact that it also destroys creatures means it will most likely find its way into maindecks in small numbers. Pharika's Libation was already good enough to see play; this is a mana cheaper and is targeted removal. The mana cost is right and the life loss should be negligible.

Anticognition is a worse Essence Scatter in the early game, but turns into a really powerful counterspell in the mid/late game. Getting 8 cards in the opponent's graveyard is not hard to do for control decks. This should also be interesting to see with Thought Scour. It should go great in Dimir tempo and control decks. Maybe Turbo Fog could find some use for this.

Akoum Hellhound is a colour-shifted Steppe Lynx, which saw fringe play in the early 2010s. It's always good to pay attention to functional reprints like these because they create redundancy for a specific strategy. Could Boros Landfall be a thing in the future?

Have I missed any other interesting cards, in your opinion? Let us know!

Hi killer_eye,

Absolutely! Frantic Inventory is a great draw spell, just like Accumulated Knowledge. I have been playing a full set of both in my deck and haven't looked back.

What do you think of this?

I'm splashing Black for Blightspeaker and Venomous Changeling. You don't need that much mana to splash Rebels since you often don't even pay coloured mana for them anyways.

I'm pretty satisfied with the mana base. I feel comfortable going to 23 lands with Orzhov Basilica and Cave of Temptation gives some finishing power to our rebels without requiring deck space... Oh and it also fixes your mana and comes into play untapped.

We got a good number of downgraded cards from Uncommon to Common in this set:

Ancestral Blade
Crib Swap
Crusader of Odric
Sanctum Spirit

Frogify
Vedalken Infuser

Bone Picker
Cast Down

Balduvian Rage
Kazuul's Toll Collector
Orcish Vandal
Rapacious Dragon
Abrade

Conclave Naturalists

Everflowing Chalice
Golem-Skin Guantlets
Iron League Steed
Magnifying Glass
Skinwing
Surge Node
Myr Retriever

I think that's all of them. What are you most excited about? Are there any cards here that you think will made an impact on the format?

Cast Down seems to be the very best 2-mana removal in Black they've ever had at common. Step aside, Victim of Night.

I'm really hyped to play Bone Picker. Black got its own Delver of Secrets that's even easier to activate!

White got the most downgrades after artifacts, but unfortunately, not much of it seems playable. Ancestral Blade is on-curve and potentially strong, but I can't see any deck wanting this right now. Crib Swap is exiling removal, but the 3 mana is more of a drawback than the 1/1 changeling it leaves behind. I could see it getting some play, though.

I'm pumped for Balduvian Rage, but only because it's going to go into my Zada, Hedron Grinder PDH deck. Aside from that, Rapacious Dragon is the biggest dragon in Pauper and making two treasures is very strong. Orcish Vandal turns your artifacts into free Shocks, which could have applications. Abrade was a staple Standard card, time will tell if it will make its way into Pauper sideboards, as competition for artifact hate and creautre removal is pretty fierce though we've never had both on a card this efficient I think.

Everflowing Chalice is such a powerful card, but I can't think of any ramp deck that would play it.

Myr Retriever is ripe with combos and has seen play in very successful decks in the past in eternal formats. Alex Ullman wrote an article about the potential power of Myr Retriever in Pauper: https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/myr-retriever-in-pauper/

Golem-Skin Guantlets is a fetchable Trinket Mage target that gets better with other equipment. With 2 other equipments attached, it offers more power than Bonesplitter.

Magnifying Glass is unforunately a bit outclassed by Bonder's Ornament, but maybe certain decks will want the extra permanents in play rather than cheaper card draw.

Surge Node is an extremely efficient card. There are very few cards in Pauper that actually use Charge counters, and even fewer that are even playable. Everflowing Chalice seems like the best fit here, but I think it will take more than that to make a deck want to play this.

All super insightful comments. Thank you!

I had not thought about how it would be translated into other languages. My native language is French, which is generally wordier than English. I'll have to take a look at a translation of Oubliette when I can get my hands on it (I don't even know if they translated Arabian Nights into French, actually). "Oubliette" itself is a French word!

It's interesting to note how similar in word count and character count Oubliette and Animate Dead are. Thinking a bit more about Animate Dead, I see a major difference in how intuitive it is over Oubliette. Animate Dead does pretty much exactly what you expect it to do just by reading the card name. The same can't be said for Oubliette, in my opinion.

Again, thanks for your thoughts. The subject is much deeper than I'd imagined.

Thanks for the reply!

Why couldn't they reprint Oubliette with the previous wording? I get that it sucks, but it reminds me a bit of the Animate Dead situation. Could they not have done the same thing?

What do you think is the most problematic thing about the current wording? Is it the noting of counters and quantity?

In the end though, I agree with you. This felt like the best way to reprint this odd-ball. I imagine it will see more play now with increased accessibility.