Howdy, everyone! It's time for another rough, tough Pauper set review to go over all of the commons of the latest MTG expansion Outlaws of Thunder Junction. This Wild West themed set brings with it a whole host of new things to the game. In fact, it has some of the most all-new mechanics and/or general synergies than what we've seen in some time. How will it stack up for the world of commons? We'll find out shortly!

As a note, though I imagine this will be obvious to most people, this review will not be looking at either the Breaking News bonus sheet nor The Big Score subset. The former features cards only at uncommon or higher while the latter exclusively has nothing but mythic rares. Given this, there isn't much to talk about, sans a nifty Pauper playable Journey to Nowhere reprint on the bonus sheet.

With that all out of the way, let's get ready to dive in! As usual I'm going to first talk about the mechanics and the cards featured with them. After that I'll be talking about some other individual cards as well. Now then, let's do this!

Committing Crimes

The big new thing with Outlaws of Thunder Junction is the addition of committing crimes to the game. This is when you target an opponent, anything they control, or anything in their graveyards, meaning it's pretty easy to actually commit crimes. Only five cards care about committing crimes at common, though, so the impact they have here is minimal at best. Of those five cards, only two seem particularly decent: Seize the Secrets and Hardbristle Bandit.

Seize the Secrets is especially notable because of the colors Blue tends to get played with most in Pauper, in this case Black and Red. All three of these colors (including Blue itself) have lots of interaction, making the cost reduction practically trivial to achieve. Sorcery speed hurts it so you can't hold it for when you use an instant-speed removal spell, but it's hard to complain with a practically unconditional two-mana draw two. I'd almost be shocked if this card didn't see at least some amount of play somewhere.

Hardbristle Bandit is another two-mana mana dork with a set mechanic on it. In this case, though, it untaps when you commit crimes. Much like Seize the Secrets, that's trivially easy to pull off. Use the Bandit to cast a Lightning Bolt and then watch it untap. The once a turn rider makes it so you can't abuse it too much, but it's not hard to generate some solid value there. It's hard to justify playing over a more straightforward one-mana dork, but there's some very real play options here compared to your average two-mana one.

Lastly, I at least want to note Raven of Fell Omens for being close to good enough. There's maybe a potential use case where you play it in something like Mono-Black Burn to have a flying blocker that provides extra damage to your spells. However, that once a turn clause really puts a damper on just how much value you can really generate off of it. In multiples, it can be a force to be reckoned with, but too often you'll feel like you have to slow your roll on casting spells to make the most out of it, which isn't where you usually want to be.

Plot

Plot is a really strange mechanic that's hard to gauge without actually putting it into practice. Oftentimes, it basically amounts to just casting the spell at a later time for generally the same cost. At that point, why not just play the cards that turn instead of holding them for later? The idea is for formats like Standard, you can hold stuff for later to play around interaction, and in some cases synergize with other things like Prowess. For older formats, you can do things like get additional Storm counts. All of these are technically possible in Pauper as well, but in practice, not so much.

Most of the cards with Plot on them at common are higher cost creatures that can't just can't hack it in Pauper whether you cast them off of Plot or otherwise. There's some merit to a card like Irascible Wolverine and Loan Shark letting you get value off of them for Plotting and then playing the next turn, but then there's the trade-off of losing the value you get from holding up a blocker or an opportunity to get in an attack. Also, again, three and four mana, respectively, just isn't worth it for the sake of Pauper.

There are a few cards that at least look potentially interesting, though.

Two of the creatures are a little bit more reasonable. Blacksnag Buzzard isn't a great creature at three mana, but Plotting it on turn two and then removing creatures on turn three to get a 3/2 is a decent rate. Freestrider Commando also offers you some flexibility in what creature you get. A 3/3 for three mana isn't the greatest, but a four mana 5/5 is solid enough, and the versatility of choosing which side works best in a came isn't nothing. Still, it's likely too slow, but has decent play. Then we get the latest Tormenting Voice variant in Highway Robbery, which here allows you to Plot it if you don't have anything to pitch away but also have extra mana. Other versions of these effects are likely better, but the opportunity to Plot on an early turn and have access to it in the late game is pretty decent.

Mounts

Vehicles have become pretty solid mainstays in the greater Magic sphere, seeing play in all kinds of decks across multiple formats since their introduction in Kaladesh. Every format except Pauper, that is. Only an extremely small number of vehicles have shown up in Pauper period, and almost all of them only showed up for a very brief stint in the format itself.

Mounts are in a similar boat, though they at least offer a creature outright compared to vehicles requiring you to use a creature to turn them on. The issue most of the mounts in this set have is that much like Plot's creatures, they cost too much for what the format demands of its playable creatures. What's more is that the abilities granted by each of these creatures in exchange for the act of saddling is pretty mediocre. It makes for great Limited fodder, but less so in a Constructed format like Pauper. There might be something for the lower cost creatures of Drover Grizzly and Trained Arynx, but I'm not holding my breath that either makes the cut.

I'm cautiously optimistic we'll get a decent mount in the future, but Outlaws of Thunder Junction isn't the place here. That said, it's been eight years since Kaladesh now and we only have fifteen common vehicles with virtually none of them being playable in Pauper nowadays. I wouldn't expect to see too much on the mount front anytime soon.

Outlaws

Outlaws joins the ranks of grouping card types together that currently also includes Historic and Party. Both of these type groupings have had very minimal impacts in the world of Pauper, with only Artificer's Assistant being a real player from time to time. This trend continues here with Outlaws with only four cards referencing the grouping at common in this set. Here's all four of them:

Of all of these, Take the Fall is probably the most playable and that's not saying a lot. It's not terribly difficult for Blue decks to have access to Pirates and Rogues and their usual pairings have access to Assassins and Warlocks. That said, there's way better instances of interaction in Pauper and if you really want to play the -N/-0 effects, Zulaport Duelist and the like at least leave behind a creature even if their impact is much lower.

The creatures here are both too expensive to make work reasonably. Mine Raider is close, but three mana is a tall ask for a lot of the aggressive decks that would want it. If it were two mana for a 2/2, then we'd be talking. As for Outlaws' Fury, Trumpet Blast (now Burn Bright) variants just aren't generally powerful enough. Even if you can get the pseudo-draw out of it, you have to build your deck in very specific ways to make it work, and most creature-based decks that would even consider an effect like this don't have the density of outlaws to make it worthwhile.

Spree

Now we get another Kicker variant, or modal spell variant, or whatever you want to call it. Spree is all of those and then some. For the sake of Pauper, we're only getting four cards in at common. All of them are at least interesting, though their playability is perhaps a bit questionable. For example, Jailbreak Scheme's options are both great, but in practice they're probably far too costly for Pauper. Still, the other three at least have some potential behind them.

In the case of Explosive Derailment, neither option is necessarily the best rate you want to be paying for a removal spell. What gives it its utility, though, is the modality of it, as well as the fact that if you end up with five mana to burn you can hit two targets and not just one. That makes it way more interesting. The same goes for Dance of the Tumbleweeds, which I'd normally turn away from in an instant because expensive Rampant Growths aren't great, but the potential to ramp early or get a big creature later is solid. It gets especially better if you can get it back to make more creatures later on.

The most playable of the bunch, however, is easily Phantom Interference and it's not particularly close. Quench isn't that great of a spell. It's serviceable for Limited or Standard, but we have actual Mana Leak in Pauper or better yet actual Counterspell. Quench which the option to make a creature instead, or tack the creature on via a Kicker cost? That's way better, and again provides you with an excellent recursion target off of something like Archaeomancer for the amount of value it can bring to the table at basically any point in the game.

Deserts and Desert Synergy

Deserts are nothing new in Magic. We had our first one in Arabian Nights, the game's very first expansion, and they later came back a little in the Amonkhet block. Even then, there wasn't a whole ton of desert synergy at common due to both a lack of actually useful deserts and cards that cared about them. No one was out here playing Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs or Sidewinder Naga. Now, though, we've got some relevant cards, and I'd like to first focus on the lands.

There's a whole bunch of deserts coming into Pauper, which adds not only to current potential synergies, but also to other ones that may show up later down the line. We can write off Mirage Mesa, the latest in a long line of these unplayable kinds of lands, but the others are extremely notable. Conduit Pylons completely outshines Crystal Grotto by allowing you to surveil a card into your graveyard as opposed to just scrying it to the bottom.

The dual lands are the real get from this set. Even without the desert land type attached to them, getting the inverse of the Khans of Tarkir gain lands is a big deal. Not only can you use these lands to chip away at opponents' life totals while fixing your mana, the right kind of deck can use them alongside Ghostly Flicker to generate a kill condition. The general utility levels are going to vary tremendously, but the lands are sure to make a splash all the same.

As far as the cards that care about deserts, there aren't too many great ones in this set either, but there are a few all the same. Failed Fording isn't just a fun Oregon Trail reference, but it is basically just a glorified Disperse with minor upside. Probably not enough for Pauper. Desert's Due really scales up well, though, and Cactarantula is still pricey but is huge when it actually sticks the landing. It's probably too costly for Pauper, but as far as big top end cards for Green go, this is a pretty beefy one in a world of commons.

This creature sticks around for a while, blocks opposing creatures, and then can turn into a house later if you can activate its ability. The real problem, though, is that the ability in question costs a whopping four mana to activate. That's not particularly great, and it makes it really hard to justify this as a result, even though it can be a decent blocker against aggro decks early on.

In an age of tapped creature kills being instant speed, it's hard to get too excited about this. What makes it worth examining, though, is the fact that you get two life out of the equation. In this case, you can take a hit from a 2/2 haste creature and then kill it on the following turn and gain that life right back. Most decks with Black and Red mana won't want this since they'll usually just respond to the attack itself, but for other color sets, this is a potential option to help stabilize in the early game.

Holy cow, indeed! That's certainly the reaction I have when I see this. Inspiring Overseer already has seen a reasonable amount of play in the format in the past, and this is fairly comparable. It's not exactly a one-to-one, as Overseer draws you a card while this just scrys, but the extra toughness and flash really make this one feel a lot better. Even if you don't actually get to draw the card, flashing it in on an opponent's end step to set up your next draw step is the next best thing. All that having been said, Overseer's usefulness has gone down drastically and sees next to no play these days, so it's hard to say if this will make the cut, but the flash element of it is really enticing.

These come up decently enough, but it bears repeating: Oblivion Ring is usually better than this and doesn't see play. Stick to Journey to Nowhere (reprinted in this set) if you want this kind of exile effect.

Now here's a house for control decks looking for a strong finisher! Most of the time big flash creatures come in the form of a 3/3 flier for five mana, which feels rather unexciting. A 4/4 you can sneak in on an opponent's end step when you no longer need to hold up mana is a great deal. You can't use it to block, but you don't necessarily need to either. It's not the kind of card you want too many copies of, but it's a great way to close things out in the right kind of deck.

I still remember when Naiad of Hidden Coves was first previewed and it immediately got everyone's attention, salivating at the prospect of getting cost reduced spells. As it happens, the card didn't make all that big of a splash in the Pauper format. Given the history and similar statline, I'd expect this to similarly not be all that playable. It is a little less fragile by not being an enchantment, but there're so many modal spells that also happen to take out fliers that it could be easier to take this down than it looks. I'm not holding my breath for this to make the cut, but there's a lot going on that's pretty sweet.

Network Disruptor saw a miniscule amount of play, but it largely did so in Affinity builds that could take advantage of the artifact side of the card once its tap effect was spent. This lacks that extra synergy, but it does gain the ability to pay mana to loot. It's nice to have, but it faces stiff competition from the various cheap faeries and Delver of Secrets that Blue has access to. This probably doesn't make the cut most of the time, but I'd expect it to show up here and there for its general usefulness.

It's not even close to difficult to card multiple spells each turn, making this extremely easy to turn on. It's obviously meant to be used alongside Plot, but thankfully doesn't require you to utilize that mechanic specifically. Instead, you can just cast this and then use a bunch of cantrips and removal spells to make it really big and hard to deal with. It's fighting for similar space to something like Kiln Fiend, being way less explosive yet more resilient in a similar shell. The big hurdle here is going to be how easy it is to pick off with removal, but if you can protect it with cards like Shore Up and Apostle's Blessing - which can also pump it as well - there might just be something there.

Since being added to Pauper last year, Mire Triton has seen some play and is reasonably comparable to this. The big difference, though, is that the Triton has deathtouch and gains you life up front as opposed to needing to deal damage. Desperate Bloodseeker can gain you more life in the long run, but given how easy it is to pick off, I'd rather get the life right out of the gate and at least have the threat of a removal blocker on the board. Mire Triton also hasn't seen that much play in the grand scheme of things, so even then, the utility is way less than it might be in, say, Standard, but it's still neat to have more solid self-mill options like this.

What if we took Dusk Legion Zealot but made it more aggressive? That's all well and good, but it's not as exciting as it sounds. Vault Plunderer gets easily picked off by 1/1 tokens and at that point you might as well have just had the cheaper Dusk Legion Zealot instead. Sure you can maybe kill an opponent by making them draw the card, but the likelihood of that happening here is low enough to be unrealistic. Just play other Black card draw options instead.

We've seen this card as a 2/1 on Fissure Wizard and Immersturm Raider. Neither one of those cards saw any serious play, so is the extra 1 toughness going to help much here? Well, it helps a little, certainly, as it means you don't get caught on the receiving end of an End the Festivities or similar, but it's probably not worthwhile enough to play either.

Wow, we have certainly come so far since the days of Raging Goblin. As far as commons go, this card is cracked on power level. It's hilariously aggressive and is harder to kill than it first appears in combat thanks to the first strike. When its usefulness ends later on, you can sacrifice it for extra value. Best of all is the total lack of downside here. The only issue is how it's competing with a bunch of other 1 mana Red creatures that can get in for two damage early on. If nothing else, you will certainly see people trying it out in the coming weeks. It's just a matter of whether or not it will stick around long term.

The decks that utilize "Name-Sticker" Goblin, as it's called on Magic Online, like making lots of mana to blitz out tons of spells quickly. Rodeo Pyromancers doesn't necessarily help with the early ramp, but allows you to keep the momentum going. It's not hard to play the Goblin and then spit out the Pyromancers only to keep your chain moving into the turn afterward, and getting a 3/4 for "free" off of the Goblin isn't too bad either. The utility here is rather specific, as you can probably tell, but it plays very nicely with that specific kind of role, so I wouldn't be shocked to see it make an appearance.

If only this could hit players, you'd see Storm aficionados lose their minds. As is, it's a mediocre creature removal spell that can become a good one with enough spells cast ahead of it. It's a neat option to have access to, but in practice the removal in the Pauper format is so strong, why would you want to play this over something like Skred that's cheaper and easier to set up?

I mostly bring this up to note for anyone who might think this is a good card that it already exists in the format. This card is basically just a functional reprint (sans creature types) of Drowsing Tyrannodon from a few years back. That card doesn't see play and copies 5-8 aren't about to make it anymore playable.

There's so many two-mana self mill creatures that find lands that it's hard to justify playing this at three mana. The added treasure off of a whiff is nice, but probably not enough when the decks that play these effects usually do so more for the milling aspect as opposed to getting the land. The land is nice, but they don't care as much if they miss it since it's what they want to be doing anyways, making the higher cost on this detrimental as a result.

More Rabid Bite effects are always welcome, but going back to being sorcery speed when the majority of recent versions of this effect have been instant is a bummer. It loses some appeal also in that most creatures won't be Mounts and therefore won't get the counter over a temporary buff. However, if we get some really good Mounts (and changelings) in the future, the stock on this one could go up.

I'm never going to say no to another creature that you can sacrifice to blow up an artifact or enchantment, and this is a fairly decent one. It's fighting for space against other cards like Caustic Caterpillar and Masked Vandal, but having vigilance allows it to attack and block reasonably while also being able to blow something up if it comes down to it. It's not quite aggressive enough to really make it in current Green lists, but it's definitely the right amount of solid flexibility that you'd want in a card like this.

That wraps things up for yet another Pauper set review! This set seems like it has some interesting things going on but more in the form of solid roleplayers as opposed to format defining cards. It'll be interesting to see how things shake out over the next couple of months! The next set is Modern Horizons 3 in June and given the track record of the previous Modern Horizons releases, that one is sure to be a doozy! I'll be back to go deep on that set, but for now, enjoy the wild frontier of Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

Paige Smith

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