2022 was a big year for Pauper. There's been a tremendous swath of new cards that have entered the format. With no less than six major releases adding to the card pool, there was no shortage of bangers. Unlike many sets over the last few years, almost every release brought with it some really powerful commons. Today, as we enter 2023, I want to take a look back at some of the most impactful additions of the year for Pauper. Let's dive on in!

Commune With Spirits and Spirited Companion

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty was the first new release of the year and it brought us a number of awesome and powerful cards for multiple archetypes. It was truly the crown jewel set, and that quality came through for Pauper as well. Commune with Spirits and Spirited Companion are both sweet buffs for the Bogles archetype.

Commune with Spirits is great because it helps find what you need to get you going. It won't find you a creature, but it makes it easier to swallow keeping a hand with creatures and few-to-no enchantments, or else hands with only one land. Being one mana makes it feel quite a bit better than Commune with the Gods, even though that could find creatures and this can't. They play different roles, but that works just fine when you're finding the goods.

Speaking of finding the goods, Spirited Companion also does fine work in helping you to get through your deck. The card fills multiple roles. Not only does it cantrip, but it's good fodder to have around if your opponents have an edict spell lying in wait. It also counts as an enchantment, making it further fuel your Ethereal Armors and Ancestral Masks. I may personally prefer the actual tutor of Heliod's Pilgrim often, but there's no denying the results of this popular pup. It's great and here to stay.

Moon-Circuit Hacker

As the previews for Neon Dynasty trickled in, few cards got people as excited and hyped up as Moon-Circuit Hacker. If you've been playing Pauper for a long time, it's not hard to see why. The similarities to Ninja of the Deep Hours - a staple of the format for years - were plain as day. There were a lot of great cards in this set, but none got the immediate attention this one did. Players were both scared and excited at once.

So, how'd it turn out? The card was strong, but the applications turned out to be a bit narrower than it might look at first glance! It was an instant hit in Mono-Blue Delver, and while it certainly didn't replace Ninja of the Deep Hours, it helped supplement the card well. Who's going to say no to more card draw and bouncing of Spellstutter Sprites, after all? Izzet Faeries has similarly made healthy use of it and to arguably much greater effect. Was it broken? Hardly, but it helped give a bit of freshness to an old classic, which is great in its own right.

Experimental Synthesizer

At roughly the same time Moon-Circuit Hacker was previewed, Experimental Synthesizer showed up in the final card image gallery dump. It's kind of funny in hindsight that it didn't get a ton of fanfare at the time. Cards like Spirited Companion, Moon-Circuit Hacker, The Modern Age // Vector Glider, Kami of Industry, and Thundersteel Colossus (because Tron) gained far more attention. I just remember reading this card, stopping dead in my tracks, and going, "What the hell? This card is insane!"

Turns out my gut reaction was quite accurate! Experimental Synthesizer has without a doubt been one of the most impactful cards of the year, helping power up Affinity and bringing Boros Skyfisher decks back to the forefront. It even helped bring back Kuldotha Rebirth as a serious player in the format once again! While it's no longer showing up quite so much in Affinity at this point, it's still an undeniable powerhouse and is a major player in the metagame today.

The Modern Age

A lot of players were hyped for this card when it was initially previewed. To the delight of many, it's become quite a popular card in Caw Gates and Familiars decks. It's a great way to filter through your deck, becomes a flying beater, and you can flicker it in a pinch for even more value. It makes for a great way to find the cards you need and close out games. I think more people were expecting it to show up in Faeries-style builds when it was previewed. Sadly, that didn't really happen, but it's found a great and loving home nonetheless.

Network Terminal, Breath Weapon, and Energy Refractor

Speaking of old decks getting some love, how about Tron? Tron got knocked down several pegs last year with the banning of both Prophetic Prism and Bonder's Ornament, but got a helpful boost by unbanning Expedition Map. Soon after those initial bans, we saw the printing of Network Terminal, which many players hoped would bring the old Flicker Tron lists back to the forefront. That didn't quite happen, but people certainly tried it for a bit there.

As the year went on, though, we got Breath Weapon - a more potent board wipe tailor-made for Tron decks, as it hit just as hard as Fiery Cannonade but without the non-pirate clause. All it needed was the right shell to come around and bring the deck back to power. As it turns out, with The Brothers' War at the year's end, we got just that. Energy Refractor gave players a whole new powerful way to filter mana, but in a way that proves to be somewhat slower than utilizing cards like Prophetic Prism and Bonder's Ornament. That's great, and even though it can make the end game a bit more oppressive if it gets to really go off, the slower build up has left Tron as a powerful deck, but not quite at the top of the pack like it once was. I'm especially interested to see where this one goes from here!

Reckoner's Bargain, Kenku Artificer, Gixian Infiltrator

One of the format's boogiemen over the past few years has absolutely been Affinity. Since the addition of the Modern Horizons 2 bridges as well as Deadly Dispute, the deck has been a force to be reckoned with. Even after multiple rounds of bannings, the deck continues to put up a strong showing. That's in no small part to these three new cards getting added to the format!

Reckoner's Bargain is no Deadly Dispute, but it fills a similar role. It's a great way to draw tons of cards, and by gaining you life, it makes you a bit more resilient to aggro decks in the process. Similarly, Gixian Infiltrator has been noted for being very similar to Atog. The big difference is that the Infiltrator can't do the sacrificing on its own, unlike Atog, but the pump sticks around forever. This makes it easy to build up and beat your opponents down with it.

The real heavy hitter addition here, though, was easily Kenku Artificer. Thanks to the addition of the Bridges, you can animate your artifact lands and, oops, you suddenly have 3/3 flying and indestructible creatures for your opponents to contend with! This one took a little longer to show up on Magic Online at first, but its footprint is definitely all over the format now. Regardless of whether or not action is taken on one of the artifact land cycles, as noted as being a possibility in the recent Pauper Format Panel update video posted this Monday, I have no doubt will continue to see this little bird artificer for a long while.

Inspiring Overseer and Jewel Thief

Streets of New Capenna unfortunately didn't bring a lot to the table in terms of Pauper. There were some interesting looking cards, but very little by way of true standouts. These two cards have stood head and shoulders above the rest, however, with both showing up in a decent number of various Ephemerate lists. Inspiring Overseer is far and away the more prominent of the two, as it provides a good flying beater alongside life gain and card advantage, while Jewel Thief largely just fuels treasures and brings the beats. They're not the most exciting cards, but they get the job done and are certainly doing a great job of it.

Goliath Paladin, Aarakocra Sneak, Underdark Explorer, Vicious Battlerager, Stirring Bard, Avenging Hunter, and Trailblazer's Torch

Oh boy, and now we get to the initiative cards. It took a while for them to get onto Magic Online, but their initial appearances at in-person events looked very promising. This led to a big push from players to get Daybreak Games to add them to the program following their omission due to the program's transitory phase. Once there, though, it didn't take long for players to feel like something was wrong. Based on a combination of player feedback and hard data, the Pauper Format Panel took quick and decisive action, banning four cards: Aarakocra Sneak, Underdark Explorer, Vicious Battlerager, and Stirring Bard.

The remaining cards - Goliath Paladin, Avenging Hunter, and Trailblazer's Torch - are certainly no slouches, but they're hardly breaking the format right now. None of them is showing up in the highest tier decks, but each one is still making regular appearances in different brews. Right now, as I write this, players have been trying their hand at a new version of Turbo Initiative. Whether or not it ends up being a top deck again, there's no doubt we'll continue to see the initiative in Pauper as time goes on.

Basilisk Gate

Basilisk Gate is hardly the only gate from Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate to make a showing in the format in the past several months. Citadel Gate, Cliffgate, Heap Gate, Manor Gate, and Sea Gate have all been showing up in a variety of decks. None of them would be seeing any kind of play, however, if it weren't for Basilisk Gate. That card is the glue that holds it all together and without that card powering up massive pumps, Gate-focused decks wouldn't even be a twinkle in the eye of most Pauper players.

The most popular version of the deck is the Azorius one - Caw Gates - which focuses on playing a tempo-control game until it kills you with pumped up Sacred Cats, Squadron Hawks, and flipped Modern Ages. Various Naya-focused Ephemerate lists have also been running it. Their game plan is to overwhelm you with value plays until they're ready to beat your face in with a beefed-up creature via the Basilisk Gate. As long as this powerful new land exists in the format, it's going to be hard to imagine a world without Gates. It'll be interesting to see where it lands in the coming year!

Dark-Dweller Oracle

When this downshift got previewed for Double Masters 2022, it was a pretty clear no-brainer for the Goblins Combo deck. The deck loves sacrificing goblins to go off, and this provides a pretty clear upgrade over previous options to dig into your deck via sacrificing. It slotted in cleanly and has been a staple of the archetype ever since. Goblin Combo has fallen out of favor a bit over the past few months, but don't think it's completely out of the picture just yet! The deck even managed to take down the Pauper Challenge on Magic Online this past weekend!

Monastery Swiftspear and Dwarven Forge-Chanter

Oh man, and now some big hitters! With the advent of Monastery Swiftspear, Burn got a true facelift for the first time in quite a long while. Previously you'd often see a playset of creatures swapped out for another, but the spells would largely stay the same. That's what happened at first when Monastery Swiftspear was downshifted into Pauper, and it was even tried in some Izzet Delver builds given the comparison to other formats' lists of the past.

What ended up happening was the deck was completely revamped from the ground up. Now Burn is almost unrecognizable. Gone are the days when it was a deck full of Lightning Bolt variations that you'd throw in quick succession. Now instead, you have a deck that generates consistent value while attacking hard and fast to take life totals down quickly. With the addition of Dwarven Forge-Chanter, the prowess angle got even more potent. The combination of being a strong deck and an easily accessible one makes it easily one of the most popular decks Pauper has seen in years!

Smash to Dust

This one's a little simpler and more small-scale, but it's been making a very strong appearance across the format. Several decks play this, largely because it's so versatile! Two of the top dogs of the format are Affinity and Kuldotha Red, both of which can be very hampered by this card. Similarly, Azorius Caw Gates runs enough weenies that you can hit them pretty hard too. There's even some solid collateral damage to Walls Combo in the process as well! This makes for a card that slots perfectly into a ton of decks that play Red. It feels a little innocuous, and isn't the splashiest card people are talking about all the time, but it's definitely become a notable player pretty quickly!

Tolarian Terror and Fallaji Archaeologist

Last but not least is the big serpent itself. This card caused a complete reinvention of Dimir Tempo-Control strategies. Instead of focusing on the Faeries strategy, it moved closer to what the old Dimir Delver strategies looked like: decks full of cheap removal and countermagic to build up to a massive threat like Gurmag Angler and Tolarian Terror. Fallaji Archaeologist from The Brothers' War helps this strategy as well, providing a solid version of Augur of Bolas to find potent spells while filling your graveyard and providing a respectable blocker. The result is a powerful deck that can stand strong at the top of the metagame!

2022 was chock full of powerful cards that left an impact on the format in many ways, and numerous others made appearances in much smaller ways. When you look at things overall like this, it's clear just how many awesome commons we've been getting lately. 2023 is just getting started and with Phyrexia: All Will Be One coming in hot right around the corner, I've no doubt we'll see even more great cards this year!

Paige Smith

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