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Main » Articles » The Impact of Commander Masters on Pauper

The Impact of Commander Masters on Pauper

Paige Smith
Posted on August 23, 2023
 Reddit

Commander Masters released nearly three weeks ago now and, as is tradition with Masters sets, it came with tons of sweet new downshifts for the Pauper format. This means numerous rares and uncommons were brought down to the common rarity for the first time, thereby adding them to the format. A whopping forty-one were added in total this time around - far more than usually gets added in - which means the set was almost certainly going to leave a substantial impact on the format.

Over the last few weeks since the set was released, we've had a number of events and Magic Online league results to pour over and look through to see what decks are making the best use out of these new cards. Today, I want to share and examine a small sampling of those lists. This won't encompass everything being played and not every list is what everyone will agree is the optimal build. However, it's good to show where the cards are being played and how they're being utilized. So, if you're looking for some fresh new hotness to play at your next Pauper event, maybe one or two of these decks will pique your curiosity!

Let's jump in!

All That Glitters

Arguably the card that had the most people talking was All That Glitters. It fit into several existing archetypes neatly and others expected it had the potential to stir up some new brews as well. I'm going to look at three today, starting with the most obvious home: Bogles.

Bogles | Pauper | KingHairy, 6th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

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Bogles is the enchantment and aura-focused deck of Pauper. If you look at other formats where All That Glitters shows up, you will often find it most in Bogles or Bogles-like builds, so it's hardly a surprise that it would show up here. The big question was what it would end up replacing, as Bogles lists felt pretty tight as it was and the handful of flex slots didn't seem like what you'd want to swap for an additional aura. There was additional discussion about shaving the top end slot to go down on Ancestral Masks and Armadillo Cloaks to help lower the curve while holding onto its potency.

Thus far, most of the lists seem to have gone down one Ancestral Mask and some number of the general flex slots. This means making moves like going down to a single Cartouche of Solidarity and cutting the likes of Spirited Companion. I personally find this shift interesting, as these cards tend to help you fight against Chainer's Edict-style effects which will no doubt be more on the rise in the coming weeks. This makes me wonder if we'll see a shift back to these and cutting more from the top end, but for now this list looks exactly like what I'd expect from a Bogles list. Suit up your creatures and go to town!

Azorius Affinity | Pauper | pepeteam, 1st Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

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On the other hand, we haven't seen much by way of artifact pump decks up until now. Affinity builds have either been about spitting out big creatures fast, playing a midrange/control game, or even going for a combo finish. The format has never really had Cranial Plating, having been banned when it became an official format on Magic Online, so this feels like new territory. For some, it drew concern that it might be a new Atog leading to combo finishes.

Instead, it's generating a variety of new brews leaning heavily on playing lots of creatures fast and drawing tons of cards to replace them. In doing this, you can fill up your board fast and also find copies of All That Glitters to suit up your creatures with. So far we've been seeing Esper, Jeskai, and Azorius builds, but I'm only focusing on the one here since I'm covering so many decks as is. This one won the Pauper Challenge this past Sunday and also made use of another Commander Masters downshift in Reverse Engineer. It's a new powerful way to use an already strong deck that's no doubt going to continue showing up in events over the coming months.

Mono-White Heroic | Pauper | JogandoPelado, 5th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

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The one that surprised me was this newer build of Mono-White Heroic. Interestingly, it didn't even register initially as Heroic when I was skimming through lists. This may be because it lacks some of the usual cards those decks run such as Akroan Skyguard and Emerge Unscathed. In fact, it's almost weird calling this Heroic when there's only a single playset of cards using the mechanic here. Instead, it feels almost more like a Mono-White Auras deck, focusing on getting creatures suited up and pushing through damage while ignoring the more traditional Heroic element. I expected more Bogles and Affinity lists, but this 1 managed to sneak into a Pauper Challenge top 8, so it may have some more legs to stand on than it initially seemed!

Murmuring Mystic

One that I predicted might make a splash in Pauper was Murmuring Mystic. This is the first true Young Pyromancer variant to enter the format and it also happens to be fairly decent at the same time. The tokens it makes are fliers and its 5 toughness allows it to evade single copies of Lightning Bolt and Galvanic Blast. It has shown up in multiple archetypes so far on the back of small numbers, though that's all that's needed given the shells.

Azorius Familiars | Pauper | TheWatchWander, MTGO Pauper League 5-0

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The first of these lists is Azorius Familiars. I covered it a good while back now and while this list is distinctly different, it largely feels very similar. Many of the cards are either the same or comparable enough to see the analogues. Preordains became Brainstorms, cards like Deep Analysis turned into Meeting of Minds and Lorien Revealed, and so on. With Murmuring Mystic you're able to protect it with your flicker effects and counter magic and get continual value from the spells you're casting over and over again, especially when it comes to looping flicker spells. This enables you to close out your games much faster while also providing additional blockers where needed.

Jeskai Ephemerate | Pauper | BrunoGuerra, 13th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

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Jeskai Ephemerate plays fairly comparably. The main difference is you're not using Sunscape Familiar or other cost reducers nor are you running Snaps or Ghostly Flickers. Instead, you utilize the Red to cast Cleansing Wildfires to ramp up fast as well as a variety of additional removal spells. With Ephemerate, you can loop these using Archaeomancer or get extra value from the other creatures. You can see how Murmuring Mystic plays a similar role here to Familiars above as a result.

Dimir Terror | Pauper | _Batutinha_, 9th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

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Lastly, there's Dimir Terror, which has found a home for Murmuring Mystic in some of its builds. This deck is a removal heavy control deck that locks down the game state with removal and counter magic until it can get down big cheap threats with enough mana to protect them. This enables some of these lists to use Mystic to once again produce lots of tokens while protecting it with counter magic. Interestingly, though, there's a number of different ways these Terror builds have been working, particularly thanks to another new downshift:

Cryptic Serpent

Cryptic Serpent is basically more or less copies 5-8 of Tolarian Terror, which has enabled it to make a splash in a bunch of different lists already running Terror. Here's a list as an example:

Dimir Serpents | Pauper | ValuePlay, MTGO Pauper League 5-0

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This list leaves the Murmuring Mystics behind and adds in copies of the aforementioned Cryptic Serpent to supplement the existing Tolarian Terrors. Interestingly, this list also still continues to run the two copies of Gurmag Angler, going all in on the big creatures as opposed to focusing on cards like Murmuring Mystic and Fallaji Archaeologist. There's a lot of variety in what creatures the different lists are using, though, so these are only two of the multitude of versions that are being used out there.

In a similar yet different vein, there's also a Mono-Blue Serpents version out there:

Mono-Blue Serpents | Pauper | discoverN, 1st Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

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You might see this list marked elsewhere as "Mono-Blue Delver" because that's just how decks with Delver typically get referenced as. However, this definitely feels less like the focus is on the Delvers and the Delvers just happen to work well with what the deck is trying to do: play a lot of cheap tempo/control spells to fill up the graveyard and get your serpents on the board. Delver helps deal some extra early damage fast, making it even easier to clear the win once you're able to stick the landing with the serpents. Mono-Blue Terror was already on the rise a bit and I'd definitely expect to see Cryptic Serpents here far more often than I would the Dimir lists for the time being, and it's not hard to see why. It's easier to cast and easier to benefit more off it when you're not trying to rely on Gurmag Anglers as well.

Dread Return

When players saw Dread Return getting downshifted into Pauper, it was a massive surprise that caught tons of players off guard. For years, players had been asking for a decent reanimation spell in Black, with many even willing to settle for a Zombify just to have something that didn't cost five mana. Turns out we managed to skip Zombify and go straight to Dread Return, which has a comparable mana cost but can be utilized in rather unfair ways thanks to its flashback cost. It's banned in Modern and sees play in Legacy and Vintage. I'd be shocked if it didn't end up being played in Pauper.

Turns out it is!

One Land Spy | Pauper | Bryant_Cook, MTGO Pauper League 5-0

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So far, it's pretty much just been showing up in builds of One Land Spy. This isn't too surprising, as it's a deck that basically already won by trying to cast a Balustrade Spy or Destroy the Evidence to self-mill into a win condition. This would include things like Haunting Misery (which is in the sideboard here) or prior to the banning of Disciple of the Vault it would get used in conjunction with something like Foundry Inspector to loop Conjurer's Bauble and Fortuitous Find to generate a kill. Here instead, it wins by flipping the deck, casting a Songs of the Damned to activate the Unearth ability on three Dregscape Zombies, and then casting Dread Return targeting Lotleth Giant. When Lotleth Giant comes into play, you should have more than enough creatures in your graveyard to one-shot your opponent.

This list comes from Bryant_Cook, a well known combo player across a variety of Eternal formats. He piloted this well to a solid 5-0 shortly after Commander Masters hit Magic Online and shared a video of his results online, feeling it might be bannable. However, in the time since then, the deck hasn't posted any further showings from other players, showing that despite the newfound hype and excitement, One Land Spy is as fragile as it ever was. It's long been a deck known to lose to itself while also being a deck that's easy to hate out with well-timed countermagic and graveyard hate. Did Bryant have a good one-off showing or will the deck rear its ugly head to deal more damage in the future? We'll just have to see!

Guttersnipe

This last deck features a card that some players were also concerned about due to the potential for a fresh wave of Storm nonsense: Guttersnipe. As it turns out, while it has been showing up, there's very few decks that seem to be utilizing it. Sifting through online, I could only find one or two lists running it buried amongst the various Burn builds floating around. In this case, it acts as another pinger for the Pinger Burn variant that utilizes creatures like Kessig Flamebreather to add additional damage to your suite of various Burn spells.

Pinger Burn | Pauper | robsonlm88, MTGO Pauper League 5-0

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As it turns out, this is a far cry from what you'll run into your average Burn build of Pauper. It's notable to mention that I had to pull this from MTGO Pauper leagues rather than Challenges, which tend to favor the Kuldotha-style or creature-oriented Burn variants. It's interesting to me that the thing most people seemed worried about - a Storm-style Guttersnipe list - hasn't really shown up yet. I'm unsure if this is due to a lack of brewing thus far or lists have been attempted to poor results, but so far this angle doesn't seem too problematic at all. Time will tell if this continues or if players find a way to break it wide open.

Drown in Sorrow
Windrider Wizard
Sulfurous Blast

These are far from the only cards seeing play in the Pauper format since the additions brought by Commander Masters. It's simply that these are the ones seeing arguably the most play, are the most impactful, or worth focusing on due to initial hype surrounding the cards. You're still also seeing cards like Drown in Sorrow, Sulfurous Blast, and Windrider Wizard being played and tested with, but they're far less prevalent thus far.

We've only had this set in the mix for a few weeks now and it'll be interesting to see how things continue shaping up. With Wilds of Eldraine right around the corner and the Magic Online team at Daybreak suggesting that some Unfinity cards will finally be hitting the client, I've no doubt we'll see even more shake ups in the coming days. Pauper is continuing to evolve and there's all kinds of fun ways to play it how you want. If you've yet to check it out yourself, I can't recommend it enough. You're bound to have a great time at an affordable price.

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal

TAGS articles, constructed, analysis, decklist, pauper, commons, state of the format, paige smith, commander masters, 08232023

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