PAUPER: LEGACY FOR THE BROKE(N)
Let’s not mince words, dear reader.
I want to make it clear where I stand: Pauper rocks. I have a deep love for Magic’s most accessible competitive format, and I’m hoping I can show you a reason to love it, too.
Pauper gives players the richness and complexity of a non-rotating format, for the cost of a Commander preconstructed product. There’s room for all kinds of play experiences, strategies, and exploration of new possibilities. There are no fewer than 8 candidates for ‘best deck’ at any time, and as the card pool grows with new releases – even more options emerge. Did I mention the cost of entry is dramatically lower than other competitive formats?
Let me reiterate for emphasis – you can pay a fraction of the cost for a competitive deck in Modern or Legacy, add 5 bucks on top of that – and you’re ready to play in one of RIW’s weekly Pauper tournaments. (Wednesdays at 6pm!)
In this article, I’ll break down my experiences in Pauper so far. I’ll compare it to my impressions of other competitive formats across three criteria – 1.) Accessibility, 2.) Richness of play, 3.) Community.
COST OF ENTRY – LOWER THAN YOU MIGHT EXPECT
Pauper’s low entry barrier is a product of its founding principle – only cards printed at Common are legal. As an Eternal Format – one with a non-rotating legal card pool – Pauper boasts a dazzling amount of playable cards. And of those tens of thousands of options, a decent chunk of them are quite good!
How about a concrete example to show I’ve done my homework? I will concede a bias here, dear reader: I love Burn in all its forms. I’ll offer the financial breakdown on Pauper Burn, and the deck composition as it compares to other formats’ Burn decks.
I play Burn in as many formats as possible because it is consistent, it’s got fairly simple decision trees, and there’s something exhilarating about the game states Burn creates. Picture it. You’re empty-handed. You’re dead on board. You’ve blocked, and removed creatures as intelligently as you could to buy yourself one final draw step. One final breath. Your deck is full of Lightning Bolts and functional reprints. 2/3 of your draws kill the opponent. Only one of you can win this game and advance to the next round. It’s them, or you.
Oh, what a thrill. Just like a Western. But, I digress. Back to Pauper.
Kuldotha Burn is the nastiest Burn strategy that has ever been Pauper-legal. Players can expect to pay $62 on average to own it. Compare that to the average Modern Burn deck at $493, and the Legacy counterpart at $298. To compare, the cost of the Pauper Burn deck is only 12.5% of the cost of its Modern counterpart, and 1/5 the cost of its Legacy counterpart. The numbers speak for themselves. For a fraction of the cost of other Eternal Formats, Pauper allows players to pick up strong cards, powerful decks, and for another 5 bucks after that – to hop right into the action at RIW Wednesdays at 6pm!
I’d like to offer another nugget regarding card prices here. There is considerable overlap in the ‘core’ cards between the Modern and Legacy versions of the deck, and a lesser – but still meaningful – degree of overlap in the Pauper version. The cost of the Burn ‘core’ – the cards with the most transferability across all versions of the deck – ranges from $14 -$20.
If I’ve sold you on trying Burn – or if you’re curious – the cards in question are four copies each of: Monastery Swiftspear, Lightning Bolt, Lava Spike, and Rift Bolt. These cards, and their interactions with the rest of the deck, illustrate the beautiful simplicity and brutal efficiency of paying the least amount of mana – to do the greatest amount of damage. Rinse and repeat until the opponent is dead.
Ahh, Burn. It’s good stuff.
CARD POOL – YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW
Magic: the Gathering has existed since 1993. With cards releasing reliably every year since start, there are a lot of cards for the enterprising player to choose from. Regardless of what level of play, what kind of experience, or format they may have in mind. Consequently, Pauper’s experience is more like Legacy than it is like Modern.
Having the entirety of Magic’s history to draw from, the strange mechanics of eld, nonlinear power creep, and corner-case interactions – the complexity that emerges from the sheer density of stuff you could encounter on the field – blossoms.
The amount of available cards in Pauper provides both benefits and drawbacks. More choices mean more complexity, but more options indirectly leads to more power. Or, at least the ceiling of players’ power feels higher in Pauper compared to other constructed formats.
The all-Common rarity restriction serves as an upward limit to the standard of play. Noteworthy, doesn’t limit the ‘power level’ per se. More accurately, all decks in the format fight on a nearly even playing field as a result. This indirectly loops back to my first topic, regarding cost of entry. Money piles are not necessarily the best decks in the format. Let me elaborate on that further in the next section.
COMMUNITY – COMPETITIVE REFUGEES, WE SEE YOU!
It’s easy to get burned out on Modern, Legacy, and especially Standard. In my experience, in these formats, the best decks – or the same 4 decks jockeying for top spot each week – tend to be highly expensive. I’ve found Pauper especially welcoming to people fleeing the rat race and money-pile creep of other competitive formats, like myself.
I’ve only been playing Pauper for two months now. I started playing Pauper at RIW, and it’s hard to consider going anywhere else. Already, I’ve had opponents become friends and share notes for how to be better competitors to each other. It’s not that other communities haven’t had this camaraderie, mind you. However, the ease of entry of Pauper makes the stakes feel a lot lower. It feels as though we – as competitors – don’t stand to lose by telling our competition how to put up a better fight. Quite the opposite, I’d argue.
Community is a rather nebulous concept once removed from the dictionary definition of a group with a common interest. As I’ve experienced the pauper community at RIW, I would tell players to expect to see the same handful of people every week. I would tell players to expect the competition to bring their best, and that the competition expects the same of them.
But – this isn’t your average tournament, because Pauper is not your average competitive format. To review: 1.) For the cost of a Commander preconstructed product, players can pick up a top contender deck; 2.) There is no shortage of options for ‘top contender deck’ as the card pool in Pauper is massive; 3.) Win or lose, we would be happy to have you back at RIW, same time next week.
I’ll see you on the field.
