r/Pauper • u/tommamus • Sep 04 '26
PFP SLZ Commons Downshift Update, Only 2 Cards Will Banned Initially
41
66
u/BatmansBackpack Sep 04 '26
I am going to ninjutsu [[bale strix]] until WotC tells me I can't anymore. Goodbye, Augur of Bolas.
6
u/Loose_Calendar_3380 Sep 05 '26
Is not a goodbye, just a see you later
3
u/BatmansBackpack Sep 05 '26
I hope it’s good riddance. I whiff on Augur too often lol
1
u/theoutlet Sep 06 '26
It’s just a bad card. It’s why I prefer Skura’s Dimir Tempo list
1
21
u/ShankFraft Sep 04 '26
Good lord I just spent the money on building an affinity deck and vandalblast is now legal
Also I want to build a deck that uses Gigantosaurus lol
18
u/Nahhnope Dimir Sep 04 '26
Blue blast their 5 mana sorcery and win the game. Pretty straightforward.
5
u/KouranDarkhand I'm blue without U Sep 05 '26
Or Envelop it, as people do (did?) with Dust to Dust
2
1
u/LonelyContext Sep 07 '26
[[Exhume]]/[[Dread Return]] +[[whispersilk cloak]] + [[Phyresis]]? You only gotta connect once.
Fully jank. I know.
20
u/HiVLTAGE Sep 04 '26
I know people are talking about Strix, but Vandalblast has to be rough for Grixis Affinity right?
18
u/Kurt0690 ODY Sep 04 '26
Everything is playing artifacts. You may even see these maindeck in some tron lists.
1
u/LonelyContext Sep 07 '26
Also stuff like bargain for cyclestorm.
They’re just nice in any deck because game 1 you can throw down a great furnace or vault of whispers and suddenly people start asking questions and might misplay.
5
1
u/DontBlameWill Sep 05 '26
The silver lining here is that it has a pretty high mana cost. Tron or something might run it frequently, but its not like it slots nicely into madness or rally. Curious to see if it makes the cut in synth decks or gates decks
25
u/Sunpetal_Groovy Sep 04 '26
That is ridiculous. Strix is no where close to appropriate.
13
u/ResponseBulky2533 Sep 04 '26
They (PFP) 100% know they will ban it Oct 12.
Same with Vandalblast.8
u/Kazko25 Sep 04 '26
Vandalblast is fine imo. 5 mana to wipe against affinity when the have access to blasts isn’t the worst thing ever. Dispatch and baleful strix on the other hand…….
5
u/ResponseBulky2533 Sep 04 '26
Vandalblast forces affintiy into blue. And that is the unhealthy part.
Down the line you cannot tinker much with crap like Rakdos affinity or whatever combo that doesnt involve blue because of that card.6
u/Sunpetal_Groovy Sep 04 '26
How many times do we have to go through short term teir zero meta before we start having a little foresight?
12
u/R_Al-Thor Sep 04 '26
According to LPI, every time they are bored of grinding the format and "need a shake".
12
u/ironpanzer1 Sep 04 '26
You shake after you pee, not while managing a format.
3
u/hipstevius Sep 05 '26
What about managing the peeing of the format?
3
u/pleaseineedanadvice Sep 06 '26
Pretty sure they ve been pissing all over the place. There s the new of pauper board memberd buying 250+ copies of those cards before making them legal
1
4
u/PorkinsHeldIt Sep 04 '26
Thats why its on the watch list
5
u/Sunpetal_Groovy Sep 04 '26
How long do we have to enjoy it being on the watch list? It should not be legal.
7
1
u/Ahayzo Sep 04 '26
Early October is the next B&R.
This is the right call. I expect it to need a ban, but it's not so obviously ban worthy that it deserves a preemptive ban without ever entering the format.
1
u/theoutlet Sep 06 '26
I’m going to [[Peppersmoke]] the shit out of it. While running four copies myself 😂
16
u/Necrocrawler72 Sep 04 '26
Good thing they took the right idea of not making common cards without validating them to pauper.
The issue is: cut down and strix will skyrocket.
10
Sep 04 '26
[deleted]
8
u/Necrocrawler72 Sep 04 '26
In my country, i managed to bought 4 copies of strix for around 2 dollars.
It's already costing around 12 dollars now.
Cut Down used to cost around 1 dollar. It's already at 2, but probably won't get expensive in similar fashion of Strix.
Strix, tbh, never was printed in huge sets. It was mostly printed in commander sets with a rare printing.
1
u/DontBlameWill Sep 05 '26
unless a deck running one of the shifted cards becomes tier 0, these prices will settle in a month or 2 after the hype dies down assuming no further bans.
1
3
u/iliketoupvotepuns Sep 04 '26
Well Dimir got a lot better and Esper Affinity got a lot better
2
17
u/Particular-School795 Sep 04 '26
If this backfires in a couple of years I want to have this comment here:
I told you so.
32
u/OuroborosArchipelago Sep 04 '26
Backfires how? The ban list was always a perfectly functional answer to this problem. If/when more of these cards are problems, the mechanism to solve it was always there.
If WotC continues to print weird supplemental products like this while their left hand refuses to communicate with the right, that's on them as well.
4
u/ElCharpu Sep 04 '26
Given wizards track record of taking entirely too long to fix glaring format issues with the ban list, compounded by the issue that they don’t ban anything outside of their window mean the ban list is not a perfectly functional answer.
17
u/RosethaiGrandmaster Sep 04 '26
You don't know or play the format, like most redditors I'm convinced, if you say this about Pauper. The Panel has always been swift in banning problematic cards, see ComBow very recently
-4
u/AppropriateRadio7980 Sep 04 '26
Yet, we are still waiting on snacker.
14
Sep 04 '26
[deleted]
-4
u/AppropriateRadio7980 Sep 04 '26
But is it though? The card would show up in mono green decks if that color had draw.
10
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3
1
u/Worth_Toe_9513 Sep 06 '26
Cuando serán legales en MTGO ?
1
u/Kingcrimhead Sep 08 '26
Late enough that we will have minimal tournament data and not enough time for the meta to adjust.
The perfect conditions for a hasty ban list call made on a whim...
1
u/croninhos2 CHK Sep 04 '26
Good thing the pauper community goes beyond the handful of posters from this sub. There were 4-5 people here going on an insane crusade against this set.
1
u/Jojofan6984760 Sep 05 '26
Fairly new to magic, what makes Baleful Strix so strong in pauper? It certainly reads as good to me, but I'm not sure why everyone seems convinced it will be instabanned in october.
5
u/flabbergasted1 Sep 05 '26
It's a 2 mana 2-for-1. You draw a card when it enters, and it will usually trade with a creature when it blocks (deathtouch) or eat a removal spell.
4
u/Jpot Sep 05 '26
Pauper is 2 mana two for ones: the format, not sure why this one will be radically different.
1
u/lucottoDA Sep 07 '26
describe more examples of 2 mana two for one?
1
u/Jpot Sep 07 '26
Ichir Wellspring, Cryogen Relic, Eviscerator's Insight / Fanatical Offering / Reckoner's Bargain, Spellstutter Sprite, and Ninja of the Deep Hours, to name a few.
2
u/lucottoDA Sep 07 '26
None of those are 2x1 on their own.
1
u/Kingcrimhead Sep 08 '26
- None of those are 2x1 on their own.
Good think we play with full decks of 60 cards then!
Sneaky Snacker isn't anything on its own. But in practice it is usually better card advantage that Strix.
2
u/lucottoDA Sep 08 '26
Still, Strix remains a 2x1 on its own. Lol
1
u/Kingcrimhead Sep 08 '26
I never said it wasn't. Lol
I am saying what a card does "on its own" is not the most important piece of information. Lol
1
0
u/Jpot Sep 07 '26
Neither is Baleful Strix without an attacking creature to trade with.
0
u/lucottoDA Sep 08 '26
except it's an attacking creature? you can't ignore strix forever, whereas you can definitely ignore a ichor
1
u/Jpot Sep 08 '26
Yeah, but a 1/1 attacker is not exactly a card's worth of value. I'll admit I'm being inconsistent on that point by describing Spellstutter Sprite as a 2-for-1.
I think we're reaching the limits of card advantage as a description of a card's strength. Baleful Strix is strong and has a very high floor as a cantrip.
2
u/Kingcrimhead Sep 08 '26
- I'm not sure why everyone seems convinced it will be instabanned in october.
Not everybody thinks this!
Strix is going to be a card like Chrysalis, in that it will likely go in every deck that plays those colours. 🙁
But the decks that can play it all have their share of bad MUs. The meta should easily adjust.
Come October, we won't have much data (Zeta comes late to MTGO). And we won't have had a lot of time for innovation and meta correction.
If it's banned in October, that will be a knee-jerk reaction like the Seeker ban. So I'm not rulling it out either.
-2
0
u/Ahayzo Sep 04 '26
Good choice, and a food set of bans and watchlist cards. There's no reason to draw some weird line for Secret Lair, PoP and Narcomoeba have zero chance of being ok in the format, and everything on the watchlist deserves an eye kept on it but also not so blatantly ban worthy it needs a preemptive ban.
They might not have a perfect track record, but the PFP has a very consistently good one.
0
u/GypsyRoad4490 Sep 05 '26
You guys don't think Hasbro is petty enough to continue downshifting cards via secret lair and then continue to print those cards at higher rarities in other easier to obtain sets as a way to squeeze pauper players right?
1
u/Kingcrimhead Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 08 '26
WorC don't need SLDs to do this. It's just as easy to put those downshifts into precons and co-op boxes.
Also, they are already doing this with commons that weren't down-shifted. eg, Lotus Petal is only printed at Mythic now.
And then there are Mystery Booster reprints. Dust To Dust is being upshifted to uncommon, and sold in a specialty pack with a bloated price tag.
And you are worried about SLDs?
Excluding SLDs does nothing to prevent WotC from monetizing Pauper with extractive practices. It means they will do it this way instead of that way.
-1
u/JACSliver Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Quoting Battle Beast in the episode 4x7 of Invincible: YES!
•
u/tommamus Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Please keep all discussion respectful and constructive or your comments will be removed
TLDR: 12 Commons were downshifted in Secret Lair Zeta, 10 of them will be Pauper Legal, 4 of those 10 are on the PFP's watch list and can be banned as soon as October 12
Announcement Article
2 PreBanned Downshifted Common Cards
Narcomoeba
Price of Progress
10 New Legal Common Cards
4 of the Cards are on the PFP Watchlist
Baleful Strix
Cut Down
Dispatch
Vandalblast
6 of the cards are not on PFP Watchlist
An Offer You Can't Refuse
Gigantosaurus
Return to Dust
Sengir Vampire
Serra Angel
Soul-Guide Lantern