Back in late 2011, I settled in with my six prerelease booster packs in the corner of my local game store, Anthem Games. The event was in celebration of Magic's newest release, Innistrad. As I worked on going through my sealed pool, I was enamored with the cards, the flavor, and the overall aesthetic of the set. By the time I finished with that one event, I knew one simple fact - something I'd never say on day one ever again: I think this might just be the greatest set ever made.

Fast forward several years later and Innistrad has become truly beloved by the greater Magic community, as well as the greater block that surrounded it. The plane spawned several additional sets that took place on it, as well as numerous individual designs in core sets, Commander products, ancillary releases, and more. Now, more than a decade from that original release, cards from each of these various products are being compiled into one epic release: Innistrad Remastered.

Much like the last couple of Remastered releases that included Dominaria Remastered and Ravnica Remastered, Innistrad Remastered brings with it a set composed entirely of reprints. For most formats, this does nothing more than inject a fresh supply of cards to the game with some new treatments along the way. For Pauper, the format of commons, it brings with it a bunch of cool new downshifts that become legal thanks to altering the rarities that impact said legality.

In the past, neither Dominaria Remastered nor Ravnica Remastered had the biggest impact on the format, with only cards like Spirit Link and Judge's Familiar showing up anywhere. Even then, it's typically a minor showing at best. Will these new downshifts make a big splash in Pauper? There's not many here this time around, so we're going to look at all of them and find out!

Abundant Maw

This is a pretty interesting one to start off with. In most situations, you're not casting this for the base cost of 8 generic mana. Instead, you're probably casting it for its emerge cost by sacrificing another creature. There's a pretty wide variety of options that you can sacrifice, ranging from the obvious big threat of Gurmag Angler or Tolarian Terror to more modest 3- and 4-drops that still cut out a substantial amount of the card's cost. This often provides a modest power boost (if not using something like Angler to cast it) and also does a substantial life drain even if the Maw itself is countered. The downside to this cast trigger is that it makes it not worth flickering compared to something similar like Vampire Sovereign that has become a popular top end in certain flicker heavy strategies utilizing Black mana.

Battleground Geist

Getting outright lords in Pauper is a real rarity, but unfortunately this one isn't exactly going to move the needle all that much. 5 mana is a lot for a power boost and is far too expensive for most decks to utilize reliably. Couple this with the fact that most common spirits aren't particularly playable (you can find a list here) and I don't really see this card going anywhere anytime soon.

Bound by Moonsilver

Pacifism effects have gotten better and better and still they see almost no play. There's some benefit to being able to move this card around, but it still lacks the current day ability to lock creatures out of activating abilities as well, which is pretty important. Additionally, there's not very many cards you care about transforming and you end up with a fairly unexciting downshift as a result.

Bramble Wurm

Typically, I don't look at big dump creatures with any particular fondness. Admittedly, though, some have seen play over the years like Annoyed Altisaur, though that comes with one or more additional cards with it. This begs the question then: do you consider gaining five life up front and possibly another five later to be like an additional spell? It's certainly not quite the life gain the similarly large Fangren Marauder gives you, but this one doesn't come with the restrictions of activating only off of artifacts. My gut read is that this doesn't see a lot of serious play, but that certain decks (Ramp, Tron) might want it in select builds for the large body and simultaneous life gain.

Conduit of Storms // Conduit of Emrakul

Having an aggressive creature that benefits you for attacking by giving you extra mana to do stuff with is always awesome. That said, three mana for a 2/3 is not where you want to be when it comes to aggressive bodies. It was pretty great that you can turn this into something bigger as the game goes long, but I don't think the rate here is particularly worth playing in a format like Pauper.

Drogskol Shieldmate

Oh, I like this one. The uses for this are pretty niche, but having a flash option to protect your board from sweepers is always quite welcome in my book. This might be a pretty big deal for Elves in particular, as while it isn't an elf itself, it is a creature that you can find off of Lead the Stampede or Winding Way. That's huge since one of the big things the deck has lacked for years has been a creature to deal with board wipes in this way for some time. The uses for this will be niche and infrequent, but it probably has a home here and there.

Epitaph Golem

This is pretty comparable to Malevolent Chandelier from Duskmourn: House of Horror and that card isn't seeing any play. As such, I wouldn't expect this one to be played either, though the slightly lower mana cost and higher toughness are both relevant points for anything looking for this style of card.

Essence Flux

More flicker effects are always cool to have in the format, particularly when they're only one time effects as opposed to the more powerful double flicker effects. Essence Flux has proven reasonably powerful in other formats throughout the years, but is much less interesting in a format like Pauper that lacks powerful spirits to flicker effectively. If we see one eventually worth flickering, this card's value goes way up, but right now other flicker effects are just better.

Gisa's Bidding

With Rakdos Madness being a very real deck these days, I'm quite interested to see if this makes the cut there at all. Most of the spells that deck tries to make use of are much cheaper, but 3 mana for two tokens is a solid rate. The deck isn't my particular area of expertise so I'm unsure that it's worth playing, but I imagine there will be players that look to try it out and see if it makes the cut in the long term.

Hanweir Watchkeep // Bane of Hanweir

I loved playing this card in draft and Cube way back in the early 2010s soon after the original Innistrad came out, so it's cool to see it get a Pauper downshift as well. There's some very real payoff potential to being able to have access to a 5/5 for 3 mana, but setting up to make this happen is much harder. It's not something only you can control, meaning there's a fair amount of volatility depending on what your opponent does. That's not particularly great, especially when it lacks the upside of other similar werewolves at higher rarities on either side. Here, the front side is just a big dumb blocker, which isn't the worst, but not where you want to be at 3 mana - particularly in what's likely an aggressive deck.

Harvest Hand // Scrounged Scythe

There's some very real two-for-one value to be had here as you can play the creature on the front side and then have it convert into an equipment later. The problem is that the creature side isn't a particularly exciting rate and neither is the equipment either. The only place this makes sense to get the most value out of the equipment is White Weenies with a higher than usual number of humans, and even there it's just not the kind of rate you want in that sort of deck.

Imprisoned in the Moon

This is a neat one, as it was previously downshifted in Shadows Over Innistrad Remastered on MTG Arena, but wasn't legal in Pauper. Now it's common here and it does, in fact, enter the format of commons. As cool as it is seeing a card like this downshifted, it's far less practical in Pauper than it is other formats. In Commander, there's no shortage of powerful options to shut down with this. In Pauper, there's no planeswalkers and few - if any - worthwhile value lands. That only leaves creatures and there are several better and more efficient options for stopping creatures in Blue. Heck, even the recent Unable to Scream is only a single mana, which makes Imprisoned in the Moon look like a joke in comparison. Leave this in the other formats where it belongs.

Seize the Storm

There's a certain group of players out there that loves playing Serpentine Curve. This card essentially fills the same role but is in Red and costs one more mana. The fact that it also has flashback is a bonus given that you can cast it twice, meaning you get two bodies out of one card, albeit for a lot of mana. This one does have the additional bonus of allowing you to better take advantage of cards with flashback though, so the utility of cards like Firebolt, Deep Analysis, Think Twice, and perhaps even Mystical Teachings and Chainer's Edict go up quite a bit. In short, if you're someone who already enjoyed playing Serpentine Curve, this one's worth checking out, but it's not likely to be a major player in the wider competitive meta anytime soon.

Tower Geist

This card is pretty darn sweet, but it's tough to recommend this effect at 4 mana. For lower costs you can usually set up your deck to get comparable value from cards like Augur of Bolas, Fallaji Archaeologist, and Sea Gate Oracle. If you really want a flier that can do this effect, this is a fairly solid option, but I imagine most decks will lean into the cheaper options before touching this.

Village Messenger // Moonrise Intruder

Oh boy, is this another one-mana 2/2 for Kuldotha Red to terrorize people with? Not quite. While it's nice to get a 1/1 haste creature that gets bigger later on, the simple fact of the matter remains that this is harder to flip than it looks. Kuldotha Red loves casting as many spells as possible, going to the degree that it pulled card advantage engines to let it cast even more spells. Because of this, Village Messenger is unlikely to ever flip into Moonrise Intruder, and if it does it will probably be from your opponent only for it to flip back over again after your next turn. This means the card is little more than a Raging Goblin most of the time which isn't worth it. In select metas where you're more likely to run into players holding spells, though, it might get a little better. Still, it probably won't be as worthwhile as the creatures that normally have 2 power in almost every relevant situation.

Wild-Field Scarecrow

Wild-Field Scarecrow is a classic of both Limited and Commander play because it acts as good mana fixing, deck thinning, and provides a solid blocker early on. This excellent play doesn't translate quite so well to Competitive play, however, as 3 mana is a lot for a big blocker and then needing to dump in even more mana later on. As such, this probably won't be anything notable for Pauper proper, but might be a fun addition for the Pauper Commander players of the world.

That wraps it up for this year's Remastered set! I think on the whole, the set falls pretty closely to the last couple Remastered releases in terms of overall impact. That is to say there's some cards that may be worth playing, but they largely feel fringe or niche at best. I'm looking forward to seeing where these various cards land in the overall meta in the coming weeks. Which cards are you looking forward to playing?

Paige Smith

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