Just barely a week and a half ago, Jumpstart 2022 released to strong fanfare. There's a ton of awesome new cards with great new tools for people to play with in formats like Commander. Unfortunately, while there are a handful of new commons in the mix, it didn't feel like there was enough to write a whole Pauper review on them. Not enough meat on the bone, as it were. Surprisingly, though, last week brought about another full - and brief - preview season in the form of Dominaria Remastered!

Unlike Time Spiral Remastered which was released last year, Dominaria Remastered is more of a true remix of a format. Time Spiral Remastered was essentially utilizing the same cards in the same Limited format they originally existed in with a different bonus sheet, so it made sense to keep rarities roughly the same. The only real changes were a handful of upshifts to account for the newer mythic rarity. With a set like Dominaria Remastered including sets that range from Alpha to the more modern Dominaria, there was a much wider pool to choose from. As such it makes sense for rarity shifts to occur to help balance the Limited experience for modern day power standards.

Thanks to these rarity shifts, we also ended up getting several downshifts in Dominaria Remastered too! Because of this being near the release of Jumpstart 2022, I figure that if I was ever going to discuss these cards, it would have to be now. Before we get going, I won't lie when I say that there's still not a lot here. As such, I'm going to cover every card, if only for completion's sake. So, if you want a nice and light Pauper review, well, here you go!

Let's dive right in, starting off with the cards from Jumpstart 2022 first!

Chains of Custody

Chains of Custody is a really cool design that seems like it has potential on first read, but then you realize it's rather mediocre. Getting to remove something is pretty cool, but you can achieve that just the same with an Oblivion Ring - a card that hasn't seen Pauper play in a long while. What's more, this gets removed in the exact same ways that Oblivion Ring does and has an extra weakness in that it can be taken out via creature removal as well. The creature gets a little extra protection, sure, but removal is so cheap in Pauper that the impact of ward is minimal at best. If you really want this ability, just play Oblivion Ring, or better yet play something that's better at removing stuff more cheaply and more permanently.

Merfolk Pupil

The obvious comparison here is Merfolk Looter, which is better than this in a general sense given that it's repeatable looting versus a one-time effect. You can bounce and/or flicker the Pupil to get some additional value, sure, but think about a lot of the other card draw options out there. Mulldrifter, Augur of Bolas, Fallaji Archaeologist, and more will all draw cards more effectively to benefit your general strategies in Pauper. As a result, this seems like a bit of a niche card that might have homes in some more fringe decks (Reanimator strategies, perhaps) but generally won't be a big player in most metas.

Soul Read

I saw a lot of hate for this one right out of the gate, and while I think it's not particularly great, it may be better than some people give it credit for. What makes the card interesting is the flexibility of it all. It reminds me of something like Behold the Multiverse but with a counter option in place of scrying. That modal aspect makes the card interesting when both sides can be utilized by control decks. That said, at the end of the day this is basically four mana for Inspiration or a conditional counterspell, which is pretty pricey for Pauper. I think in general, it's ultimately unlikely it sees too much play outside of the occasional one-of, fun-of in control lists, but I wouldn't count it all the way out either.

Creeping Bloodsucker

Back in my Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set review, I talked about the card Vampire Spawn. There, I basically said I could see it showing up as a flicker target to drain away opponents' life totals, but that was not only a longshot but would be totally useless anywhere else. This is merely a smaller one of that, but in the amount it drains as well as power. The stats are bad and the ability is downright anemic. Skip this one, and if you really want to utilize that life drain ability, splurge a little on the bigger option in this case.

Ghoul's Feast

This card can pack a serious wallop in a deck built for it. The problem is there aren't many decks focused on filling their owners' graveyards with creatures and I think, in many cases, you'll find there're better ways to get a decent pump effect going. I do think it's possible to turn this into something in the right deck, especially if you utilize something like Temur Battle Rage, but the uses are incredibly narrow and I doubt it'll be something that leaves a long lasting impact on Pauper.

Ossuary Rats

I love a good removal spell on a creature as much as the next person, but this is far too expensive to warrant use. Graveyard heavy decks aren't likely to get enough mana out to use this and the decks that might play this - like Tron - just have better options. I mean, Dinrova Horror is right there! Play that.

Suspicious Shambler

Two zombies in a trenchcoat is cute and all, but realistically this is a bad vanilla-looking card with an also vanilla effect and at way too high of a cost. Save this one for the bulk bin.

Goblin Researcher

These days, we have Reckless Impulse. We have Experimental Synthesizer. Red card advantage has gotten quite the substantial leg up lately and this, frankly, is not it. You can't even cast the card the turn you exile it, but rather you have to attack with this exact Goblin Researcher?! That's right - the way this is worded, even if you play another Researcher later, you won't be able to cast the card you exiled from the first one. There's far better creatures and way better ways to get card advantage than this Hill Giant with the smallest of upsides could ever hope to be.

Plundering Predator

Decent dragons at common are a rarity, but one that comes with a rummage effect isn't too bad! For five mana, though, it's not really all that exciting. I do like the idea of having a dragon control kind of deck with this and Rapacious Dragon, but the likelihood of that feels really low and really janky. This has a little more promise than most of the other cards in this set, but that's honestly a pretty low bar.

Giant Ladybug

Don't let that high power and ability fool you - this card is not great. The low toughness basically means this is going to attack or block once and then just go down. Not only that, but the land going to the top of your deck as opposed to your hand or the battlefield just feels miserable. Even though this can potentially pack a wallop and block decently, I'd much rather run a more stable, lower-powered creature that actually draws me the land I'm looking for. Something like Borderland Ranger or Wood Elves. I like the effort on this card, but it's just not enough.

Spectral Hunt-Caller

Believe it or not, I think this has the most potential. Can you guess what deck it's for? Would you be shocked if I told you it was of the Elvish variety? Yeah, turns out with Priest of Titania on the board, this effect is trivial, and giving your entire board trample and a pump effect is pretty sweet. It's comparable to Wildheart Invoker, which is meant as a way to push damage through and also be able to protect your creatures from removal. While this will have a harder time dealing with something like Skred, it can help a tremendous amount against Electrickery, Fiery Cannonade, and so on. Given that this both isn't an elf and is pretty niche, I'd only run it as a one-of, if at all, but it's definitely got some potential for a list like that.

Dutiful Replicator

Can you think of very many decks that get a lot of tokens onto the board that you'd actually want to make copies of with Dutiful Replicator? The only ones I can really think that get a lot of use are 1/1 creatures in various forms and little else, so while the stats on this as a vanilla creature aren't too shabby, I don't think you're going to get a ton of value here. I do think there's some brewing potential to be had here, though, so it might be worth trying to mess around with at least a little bit if you're up for a challenge.

Infernal Idol

Mana rocks that cost three don't usually go far, especially when they only generate one color of mana. This has some pretty decent benefit in being able to get sacrificed for a Sign in Blood effect in a pinch. The big flaw here is that there aren't exactly a lot of Black ramp decks and control decks probably don't want this either. So, in the end, while this is a decent little card, it's ultimately left without a home. This is definitely a big win for Pauper Commander players who love running Black decks, though, I'm sure.

Like I said, there's not really a whole ton going on in Jumpstart 2022, but there are a small handful of standouts from the mix. I'd have hoped to get a couple more hitters, but alas. I'm interested to see what makes the cut, but I don't have the highest of hopes. My expectations are at a pretty similar level - if not lower - when it comes to Dominaria Remastered's downshifts so let's check them out now.

Kjeldoran Gargoyle

This is far too expensive to be realistically playable in any capacity, even if all the other stuff going on here is pretty decent. The power and toughness are too weak to even care about cheating it out with a reanimator style deck, even. Solid pass on this one.

Nomad Decoy

In Limited, this card is going to be an absolute beating, so if you like Pauper Cubes, you should probably check this card out. In actual Constructed Pauper, though? This is way too slow and there're way better card tappers that are of greater use in the format. Even those see virtually no play, though, so there's no way this one ends up making the cut.

Phantom Flock

Five-mana 3/3 fliers are a dime a dozen now, but this one taking damage and slowly getting weaker? Not bad. It still dies instantly to something like a Cast Down or Snuff Out, though, and the cost is frankly far too prohibitive when fliers are much easier to get down at a reasonable rate. This is a nice downshift and the sort of thing I like to see, but it's just not good enough these days.

Spirit Link

I won't lie: for some reason I totally thought this was common already. That's probably because comparable cards Lifelink and Vampiric Link were already common and basically do the same thing. Vampiric Link saw play for a long while until Unexpected Fangs came around, but a big part of that was because there weren't really any comparable options in Black for a long time. With White, we had Lifelink - a card that basically does the same thing as this but better. There are some minor differences, however. Putting Spirit Link on an opponent's creature means that you can just gain the life right back, making any direct damage the creature deals (unless it's lethal) null and void. Because of the timing differences in that this ability goes on the stack where Lifelink doesn't, I think I'd rather play the one with more immediate life gain to avoid lethal attacks. There are obscure situations where it's relevant, so keep it in mind all the same, but largely this is just outclassed nowadays.

Ovinize

When it was first printed in Planar Chaos, Ovinize was a cute throwback to the old classic Humble from Urza's Saga and was a neat look at what colorshifting the mechanic might look like. Turns out, though, that's exactly where this sort of ability headed. These days, you've got comparable cards in the form of Frogify, Kasmina's Transmutation, Witness Protection, and Ichthyomorphosis. Ovinize may be neat as a combat trick and leaves the creature with no power, but I'd rather take one of the newer pieces of hotness that sticks around longer than one turn.

Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore

Listen, that first ability is one hell of a drawback on this card. It may be an iconic classic from years past that's a great throw-in for a set like this, but there's a reason it got lowered down to a common. It's overcosted and definitely isn't something you want in a deck featuring multiple creatures. There's a possibility this could be used in some kind of control build where it's the only creature, but honestly: why?

Ridgetop Raptor

Legions, the set Ridgetop Raptor came from, was actually the very first set to feature double strike as a mechanic. As you can imagine, back then it was pretty hard to evaluate just how good the mechanic was. As a result, they played it cautiously and only included it on this card and Rockshard Elemental. Neither card is particularly great, and double strike cards slowly trickled in to get us to where we're at now. In the nearly 20 years since Legions released, we've seen a number of Red commons with double strike. Most are cheaper, but only have one point of power, so you could say there's an argument this is serviceable if expensive. However, then you get cards like Spelleater Wolverine and Spinehorn Minotaur with easy to achieve conditional double strike and it's just no contest. Ridgetop Raptor is a relic of a bygone era and it's fitting that it's finally getting the downgrade it deserves.

Primal Boost

Pump spells have come a long way in the time since Primal Boost was printed and this is far too little of a power up for three mana in Pauper. What's more, the cycling cost is also way too expensive for what amounts to a minor temporary boost and a cantrip. With little-to-no cycling payoffs in Pauper outside of Drannith Stinger that's only utilized in a combo deck, the likelihood of this making the cut is little to none.

Symbiotic Beast

For six mana, I'd rather cast a Boarding Party these days. It does, however, have the ol' Alex Ullman special written all over it as a large creature for sacrifice decks if you want it. Realistically, it's way too expensive to be worth your time, though, so just leave it on the sidelines unless you care about something like Pauper Commander or Pauper Cube.

Juggernaut

There was once a time when Juggernaut was a bannable card. Those days have long passed us by, however, and now Juggernaut is a pretty mediocre creature. It's a pretty hefty beater at four mana, but realistically most decks aren't playing big, four-mana creatures, and if they are, they're playing ones much more meaningful than this. For a quick example, we've gotten several four mana 4/4s with upside in the last couple years if you're a Green deck. Other colors might not get such big beaters, but the rate is so comparable it makes my head spin. There's maybe a world where some sort of strategy wants this as a way to help break through against a Wonderwalls matchup, but even then I think that's still pretty weak.

Terminal Moraine

We've really come a long way here, huh? This is just Warped Landscape so it makes sense at common, but these days it's strange that this wasn't just Terramorphic Expanse - a card that was first printed in a set featuring Dominaria. Warped Landscape has shown up sometimes in the past, but honestly, we're so far removed from it being relevant that you should just play the aforementioned Terramorphic or else play Evolving Wilds or Ash Barrens. There're much better options, so use those instead.

Yeah, so as you can probably tell, this wasn't the greatest round for fresh additions to Pauper. Very little is actually playable here and fewer cards still will actually make it in the format's meta decks. That's fine, though. After all, not every set can have a bunch of winners, and given that Time Spiral Remastered didn't have any rarity shifts at all outside of mythic, I wasn't expecting anything at all. We got a couple neat toys, and that's it.

If nothing else, I think it's worth noting I love seeing so many of these cards from my childhood coming back here with a fresh coat of paint. These are actually decent choices for downshifting, but they're just not anything that will have a real impact on Pauper. You can tell they're willing to bring cards down, though. Looking at the uncommon slot reveals cards that were once chase rares once upon a time, cards like Call of the Herd, Spiritmonger, Phyrexian Scuta, and Terravore. It might've been cool to see something like that hit common, but that would probably be too good for Limited.

Thankfully, though, we won't have to wait too long for some more impactful cards. By the time this article is published, we'll have already seen our first glimpse into Phyrexia: All Will Be One. We likely won't see many - if any - commons, but we'll only be about a month away from seeing the actual preview season start. In one month, we'll get a whole slew of new commons to chat it up about, and given how Phyrexia has shown up here and there over the last decade, I'm expecting some serious hotness. I look forward to seeing you then!

Paige Smith

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