Dork Rituals: The Pauper Project #3

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Gattison

15 February 2018

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Dork Rituals: The Pauper Project

Issue 3: Stop Gushing Over Those Overpowered Cards

Hello fellow TappedOut.users, welcome back to Dork Rituals: The Pauper Project. My name is still Gattison, I still maintain the Obscure List of Obscure Lists, I still write theme songs for Magic decks, and I still like Thrulls too much. I'm on a mission to brew 32+ different paper pauper decks, one of each color combination (including 4-color & colorless), and I want to share some interesting things with you as I go.

One of the most interesting and cool things about pauper that I keep hearing from others is the fact that we have access to full playsets of certain cards that are banned (or restricted) in other formats. Cards that are too powerful for other formats... are "common" in pauper (get it? Or is that just confusing?). Let's take a look at some lists I whipped up, because I still like lists too much.

Let's start with what I feel is the obvious example here, the artifact lands. Ancient Den, Great Furnace, Seat of the Synod, Tree of Tales and Vault of Whispers. These five lands are banned in Modern. The fact that they are artifacts may not seem like a big deal at first, but it's the fact that they are also lands that makes them powerful. In a game where Affinity exists, being able to put four or more artifacts on the battlefield without having to spend ANY mana to do so was just too much synergy. Oops, banned. In fact, they were banned while still in Standard, are still banned in Mirrodon Block Constructed format, and were banned right from the very start of Modern's inception. Buuuuut you can use them in pauper.

Why though? It's because these cards, these artifact lands, don't win you the game, not directly anyway. They enable the other card that does win you the game. In Modern, they were (rightly) afraid of the dominance of a deck using artifact lands in conjunction with Metalcraft and Affinity (for Artifacts), not to mention specific cards, like Cranial Plating, Arcbound Ravager and Mox Opal.

With Metalcraft, having artifact lands in play is like reducing the requirements to "activate" Metalcraft by half in the first couple turns, and basically guaranteeing it after that. It's supposed to be kind of a challenge to activate Metalcraft, or else they would have just made Metalcraft abilities plain old activated abilities, or something. Artifact lands make triggering Metalcraft far too easy. The same goes for Affinity for Artifacts. If simply having an artifact in play reduces a card's cost by , and then that artifact also taps for (or a mana of any color), then those artifacts are basically generating mana for you. That kind of ramp is just too much for Modern. ::cough:: Modern Eldrazi ::cough:: Furthermore, having artifact lands activates Mox Opal insanely quick, they boost the effectiveness of Cranial Plating for literally any deck (remember you don't have to have in your deck in order to cast Cranial Plating, and you don't have to use it's second ability) and just serve as more sacrificial fodder for Arcbound Ravagers.

Now, what kind of evil, terrible, end-of-the-world, enemy-of-mankind things can we do with these artifact lands in pauper? CRANIAL PLATING!!! EVIL LAUGHTER AND WELL-TIMED THUNDERSTRIKES! Oh wait, no. (Oops, banned in pauper.) Ok, so then that leaves us with Myr Enforcer, Hunger of the Nim, turn one Frogmites, turn two Gearseeker Serpents, and Thoughtcast is basically errated to be "Draw two cards" for . Well, drawing two cards for one mana is pretty powerful, but I bet if the artifact lands were Basics also things would be different. Wizards would have printed them and then just banned them on release day.

The next group I want to look at is the "Power Draw" Package of Blue -drops: Brainstorm, Gitaxian Probe, Ponder and Preordain, along with the -ramp cards, Rite of Flame and Seething Song. First, alphabetically anyway, Brainstorm is the only one of these six cards that was never printed in a Modern set, thus it escapes being banned in the format like the rest of them. However, it is restricted in Vintage and actually banned in 1v1 Commander/EDH. Gitaxian Probe, as we are all probably aware, was only recently banned in Modern a year ago but is also restricted in Vintage. Next, Ponder is banned in Modern AND 1v1 Commander, and--of course--restricted in Vintage. Lastly, Preordain is banned in Modern and 1v1 Commander, but is actually NOT restricted in Vintage. None of which is of any concern to the pauper player. Pauper allows all of these cards, with no restrictions.

Then there's Rite of Flame and Seething Song, both of which are banned in modern. It's comforting to know that even can ramp-the-ramp-outta-ramp sometimes, and not just (and "vintage" ). Did you know that the Modern format actually started out online in May of 2011? I didn't. Now we all do. Regardless, three months later it was sanctioned officially, becoming the Modern we're all familiar with now. A month after that and Rite of Flame gets the banhammer, alongside our friends, Ponder and Preordain. It didn't take long for people to realize how good those cards were and start taking advantage of it. Seething Song lasted a lot longer, not getting banned until over a year later. Jund decks were a "problem" in Modern around this time, and taking Bloodbraid Elf away from them wasn't enough, apparently Seething Song had to go too. (I can't seem to find an old Jund decklist to confirm whether Seething Song was actually in Modern Jund at that time, though, so if I'm wrong about that last comment, please let me know.) But don't worry about any of that. In fact, forget I even brought it up. All you need to worry about is the fact that they are commons, and thus you can have up to four of them in any pauper deck you want. Go nuts.

Even though I'm looking at a group of four draw spells and two ramp spells, all six of these cards caused basically the same problem for Modern, and as anything more than a one-of, in Vintage as well. They "sped" the format up too fast. Ponder, Preordain and now Gitaxian Probe all provide too much for too little. Digging three whole cards down into your library to look for the next step or piece of your combo, or your finisher, is like essentially skipping four turns ahead and picking the best card you obtained on your little time traveling trip into the future, and taking it back with you to the past, where instead of Marty McFly'ing everything up, you conquer an entire plane instead. Because in real life time travel would be powerful, not finicky movie plot device. Wait. ...Let me try that again. Casting a Ponder is like skipping up to three turns ahead, picking your best card draw from a future turn, and playing it up to three turns early. Brainstorm causes the exact same problem in Legacy. Preordain does basically the same thing, because you can scry two cards to bottom of your library and then draw a third if neither of those are good draws right now.

Meanwhile, Seething Song puts too much mana in your mana pool too early, as does Rite of Flame, although the latter can be even worse. First, you could look at it like this: the first time you cast it, you get . The second time you cast it, you get . The third time yields , and the fourth and final casting will net you FIVE red mana. Or, imagine this "godhand" T1 play: Mountain -> Rite of Flame (Mana Pool = , 2) -> Rite of Flame (Mana Pool = , 4) -> Rite of Flame (Mana Pool = , 7) -> Rite of Flame (Mana Pool = , 11) -> ??? This is possible on Turn One, mind you. It's incredibly unlikely, of course, but now at least you can see how this card can accelerate your game far beyond where you would normally be otherwise. Also, keep in mind that Rite of Flame looks for copies of itself in all graveyards, meaning if your opponent is playing them too, you can get even more mana out of this card.

So why do these cards remain unbanned in pauper, yet suffer the wrath of Häns Bämmer, Ban-Hammerer in other formats? Because there's a pretty strict cap, or limit, on the power level of what those blue cards are going to enable you to draw into, or that those red cards can help you ramp into. Put simply, no matter what you draw early with Brainstorm, it's only going to be as powerful as a common card. Your average common can vary pretty widely in power though, so let's look at the worst-case scenarios. Ulamog's Crusher, often referred to as the most powerful beater in pauper, is basically the eldrazi titan of pauper. Despite it having the terribly devastating Annihilator mechanic, it's still rather manageable. You can still interact with it, so it's susceptible to all your normal removal: destruction, exile, sacrifice and so on. Being an 8/8 puts it out of range of a lot of damage spells, -1/-1 until EoT (End of Turn), and -1/-1 counters, but not unreasonably, and it's an -drop, so casting it takes work no matter what, regardless of all the good borderline-overpowered ramp in pauper. As for what you can do with the ramp, you can cast an -spell, like Fireball--or, well, I can, you will probably have to use Kaervek's Torch or Rolling Thunder or something, or else get creative with something like Consume Spirit or Slime Molding. Without rares and/or mythics in the format, there's not really anything that you can draw that can auto-win the game for you, no matter how much of it you draw. Not even if you just keep drawing more elves.

The remaining two cards I want to look at stand alone, in my opinion. First among them, Lotus Petal is restricted in Vintage, and as on obvious homage to Black Lotus, the greatest, most sought after ramp card printed, it's easy to see how this card inherited quite a bit of power. Free mana gets abused, to an extreme extent if possible, and Lotus Petal provides exactly that. At only a third the power of it's predecessor, it's not outrageous, although it is interesting to note--as my friend eyes2sky pointed out to me--that Lotus Petal was reprinted three times, once online as an uncommon, and twice in paper as a mythic rare. Granted these mythic appearances were in a From the Vault set and as one of the Kaladesh Inventions, so I don't think this counts as an actual rarity-shift, but still. It's got that shiny, orange symbol on the side, there. Back to the point, though, at a four-of in Vintage, Lotus Petal would be too meta-dominant, but as a one-of, the occasional kick it provides is tolerable. But, you know what I'm going to say here. Probably something about how if you want to play a full playset of those sweet Lotus Petals you got, you can play either Legacy or Pauper. And then something about how you know what I pick. And then hit Enter.

Finally, we have Gush, which has an interesting little history. It was outright banned in Legacy, and restricted--what a surprise!--to a one-of only in Vintage at the same time in 2003. Four years later in '07, "they" un-restricted it, meaning you could now playset the card in Vintage decks again. Well, that literally lasted one whole year, and then it was re-restricted. So, maybe it's too powerful for Vintage, or maybe not, currently we seem to think so, but it's still banned in Legacy, where pre-mending planeswalkers go to die, so that says something. Whatever it says though, pauper players aren't hearing it, because we can playset this all day, in every deck if we wanted to. We would probably collectively get it banned in pauper as well, of course (lol), but we'd have a blast doing it. Insert your own "evil-wink" emoji here.

To be honest though, Gush seems to be the "big one" that surprises people when they hear about it being legal in pauper. People build decks around this card. People write books about this card. No, seriously. Sometime last year, in 2017, Stephen Menendian--a renowned Vintage player--released a 350-page ebook (now also available in paper) entitled Understanding Gush: Strategies and Tactics (3rd Edition). That's right. 350 pages. THIRD edition! Gush is actually considered one of the most complicated cards in all of Magic's history (with Brainstorm close behind), and Stephen's book discusses strategies, tactics, decklists, advice on timing and other cards that synerize/combo with it. From what I understand this book covers a LOT more than just "how to cast Gush." What other pauper card has books written on it? (Probably Brainstorm, lol, now that you bring it up.) Granted the book discusses things from a Vintage perspective, but I'll bet a lot of the strategy and timing talk is translatable to the pauper format.

But let me stop Gushing over a book I have yet to read, and instead let's look at why Vintage players are only allowed one, and why Legacy players aren't allowed any. As far as Legacy goes, it's because there, players are already allowed to playset Brainstorm, Ponder, Gitaxian Probe and Preordain--as well as Serum Visions, which I haven't mentioned yet because it's "weak" enough to still be allowed in Modern. Sheesh, can you believe I just said that? Anyway, with all that draw-power in Legacy already, Gush would just be too much, again. Well, pauper can playset all of these card AND Gush, you might say, but remember, in pauper, no matter how much you draw, they're all going to be common-power level cards only, and that does not break a game.

Consider the following series of plays. Imagine it is mid to late-game, you have more than two Islands in play, you have Evolving Wilds and Gush in hand and you drew a Brainstorm.

1. Play Evolving Wilds. Then, both your Islands, floating .
2. Do not spend your mana yet, _instead_ pay Gush's alternative cost of returning two Islands to your hand. You could return _any_ two Islands you control, but return the two you tapped already. Draw two cards.
3. _Now_ spend to cast Brainstorm. Draw three cards, and put the two Islands in your hand on top of your deck. (Still floating .)
4. "Crack" your Evolving Wilds, searching up a basic land, probably an Island, but it could be anything. (Still floating .)

So, what you have done here, is you have drawn FIVE cards for the cost of one mana, the dreaded one. Meanwhile, you have shuffled away the two lands you put on top of your deck, randomizing the top card of your library and increasing your chances of drawing the finisher you need at this stage of the game--if you haven't drawn it already. In the end, you still have one mana floating as well, that can now be used to help cast one of the FIVE cards you just drew. And it all only cost you one mana! (The pros are probably doing this right now as I write this, in January, at GP Santa Clara, GP Houston, GP Indy and GP London. We'll see soon.) In pauper, the "power level" of Gush is is immediately dumbed down a bit, because there are no true dual lands in pauper. In pauper, when you float two mana from a Gush, it's going to be , which limits the scope of its power. You will end floating a , and that's it. In Legacy, or Vintage, this is not so. Vintage players "misbehave" when allowed to playset Gush, because they use things like ABUR dual-lands and "real" fetches to allow them to play cards outside of . Legacy players are far worse, of course, but who can blame them? It's their duty. When all you want to do is walk the planes and conquer stuff, but every other planeswalker out there wants to kill you, you have fight back with the most effective methods. Or you'll die. Death, dude.

But pauperwalkers? We're just having fun, goofing around, being big kids, playing bloody knuckles and punchbuggy with some softcore spells. In pauper, you aren't trying to draw some busted mythic and cast it early so that you can shut your opponent out. You aren't trying to power out some $40 rare that isn't broken, but still gets you the win, either. In pauper, when you ramp, or draw, or cast a spell, it's pure, for lack of a better word. You aren't taking advantage of some overly powerful card that only happens to be such because it was designed for a Standard and a draft experience where such things would never be a concern. You're just doing what does, or what does. Or what does, and so on and so forth. Common cards kind of define a color and what it can do, thus when you "power out" some big green card in pauper, you're not really putting out a guaranteed game-ender, you're just being , playing a deck that does things. When you get into rare and mythic territory, that's when color identities and power levels and scopes start getting blurry and complicated. Down here in the Commons, it's very hard to break out of a color's restrictions and shortcomings, keeping things quite balanced and fair most of the time.

Well there you have it, folks. A quick tour through some of the most powerful and helpful cards in pauper, and why pauper is the only affordable format where you can even play some of these cards. Thanks for coming back, and as always feel free to respond in the comments below to anything discussed in the article above, especially if you feel I might have missed something important, or gotten something wrong. Or if you just have something you want to contribute. Remember, my main goal is to create good, productive discussions about pauper, so don't hold back. Questions are always welcome also, because you just don't know until you ask. For instance this week I want to know what cool tricks some of you have pulled off in pauper using Gush. Or if you can think of anything innovating to do with it in the format, or maybe you'd like to point out an obvious combo or synergy that I didn't. Do you think any of these cards are actually banworthy, even in pauper? If paper pauper catches on and organized play becomes a reality, do you Foresee any of these cards, or others getting banned in pauper?

And with that to think over, now I'll leave you with the traditional Pauper Highlights, and until next time, stay safe everybody!

Pauper Card Highlight

So what card should I highlight to supplement this list? Well, since I'm finishing this up post-January 15th, I think I know what I can tack on at the end here...

In the middle of January of this year (2018), Wizards of the Coast made their most recent Banned & Restricted (B&R) Announcment. Another common card, Attune with Aether got the axe, and is now being considered in other formats. Most people are probably thinking how they can abuse counters in Modern now, but us pauper players are not most people.

There are a total of 26 energy-mechanic cards accessible to us in pauper. Plus we have Thrummingbird in the format, as well as... five other proliferate cards? That's it? Well that's disappointing, but still. Attune with Aether is ours now, pauper people, let's see what we can do with it!

Pauper Deck Highlight

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Vinestorm

Pauper Leto_II

SCORE: 1 | 236 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS

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Here's a Temur Storm deck that I think used to be a thing in a pauper, before I started playing. You Storm-off with Sprouting Vines, getting a bunch of lands to fuel a Kaervek's Torch. The non- mana is provided by things like Lotus Petal and Chromatic Star.

With Grapeshot, Empty the Warrens and Temporal Fissure banned online, Storm players have to get creative. So they did, with decks like this. The reason I'm highlighting it now, however, is because Leto_II is running a full playset each of Gush and Brainstorm. That means he's playing the long-game, bouncing lands and digging deep for combo pieces. Lands that he can easily retrieve with Sprouting Vines, of course. Take this deck out for a spin, and see what you can do with the draw power in this deck.

Pauper Resource Highlight

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Cantrip Like I Do: A List of Pauper-Legal Cantrips

Pauper Gattison

SCORE: 26 | 28 COMMENTS | 9865 VIEWS | IN 19 FOLDERS

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You may have noticed that a recurring theme among the cards discussed in tonight's article was drawing cards. Not all of the cards I talked about were draw spells, but enough that you can see how powerful an effect it is. Ensuring you do not run out of cards and enter "topdeck" mode, digging as deep as you can into your library to look for the-best-card-for-right-now, and reliably filling your hand with spells you can cast are all clear paths to victory.

With that in mind, peruse the resource I provided above. While not "true" draw spells (I don't think anybody has made a list of pauper draw spells, yet), in my opinion, because they only draw one each, replacing themselves, as they say, this list of cantrips can help you find budget alternatives to the pauper staples you're missing, on the hunt for, or simply don't have, at the very least, or supplement the ones ones you are using, hopefully in some creative or innovative way.

The Pauper Project

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Gluten-Free Cheerios

Pauper* Gattison

SCORE: 9 | 11 COMMENTS | 2830 VIEWS | IN 5 FOLDERS

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Speaking of Storm... This deck is just an idea, so consider it a skeleton rather than a finished deck, but in it, you will see that I am trying to take advantage of both Gitaxian Probe and Brainstorm to enable a Pauper Storm deck. I decided not to take the easy way out in paper and just use a Storm card banned on MTGO, this time though. Instead I found Astral Steel, and decided I would try and use that as my Stormer. Supplement that with Elusive Spellfist and bunch of -drops and you see where my mind is at.

I have no idea if this will end up viable in the format at all, but casually, it seems like a fun idea, and who knows, maybe it'll work. Let me know if you try it, and happy brewing!