Our most recent update included eight downshifted cards from the Arena-only Pioneer Masters set, as at the time we considered those commons to be just as eligible as any other printing. We’ve since found out that the community finds them to be a bit too removed from Pauper, so they are being replaced.
Black
Dauthi Horror
is a good aggressive black card that slipped through the cracks in the recent update, and will now join its sibling Dauthi Slayer
to help with early hard to handle pressure.
Green
Blastoderm
is a fan favorite and we’ve heard that loud and clear. We still consider it to be a likely cut in the future, so make your voice heard on the Discord and polling site if you object.
Multicolor
Armadillo Cloak
is another fan favorite, and gets to stay until the next time we get a strong green-white card that clears the bar.
Lands
The modal double-faced cards from Pioneer Masters are all out, and we’re replacing them with mono-colored utility lands.
Eagles of the North
is technically not a land, but Plainscycling 1 makes a fine facsimile of an MDFC. To be completely transparent, white does not have many good candidates for this slot, and while this does break nice symmetrical distributions of things in one way, it does give us a complete cycle in the form of the LTR cyclers.
Mystic Sanctuary
is a very, very strong land. While we don’t expect it to be quite as degenerate in our cube as it can be in other formats, we do expect it to be fun to play with and have been looking for an excuse to include it for a while now.
Witch's Cottage
makes a fine addition to any graveyard-focused deck, making sure that your next draw is that pesky creature your opponent just spent removal on… or something new and exciting that you just milled. While requiring 3 swamps is a steep cost, it gives decks a reason to keep a bit more color focused.
Teetering Peaks
is a “free” sorcery-speed Bull Rush
, and sometimes that’s all you need to count backwards from 20.
Hickory Woodlot
may go away after two turns, but it also guarantees a turn 2 three-drop in a way that can’t be killed with a Lightning Bolt
. That it also has niche synergy with our four Proliferate cards is just the icing on the cake.
Polling and the future of “weird” downshifts.
We also conducted a poll over on the discord to find out what folks felt about various sorts of commons and the details of said poll are as follows:
- Playtest cards – No (79%)
- Silverborders that work in black border rules – yes (56.3%)
- Conspiracies – No (67.2%)
- UB products – Yes (85.7%)
- MTGO only downshifts – Yes (71.4%)
- C1 Commons – No (65.5%)
- Arena Only – No (62.2%)
- Silver borders that don’t work within normal rules – No (83.2%)
- Multiplayer Sets – Yes (95.8%)
- Cards that introduce game states like the initiative, et al – Yes (74.8%)
If you disagree with these, please join the discord, share your opinions, we literally cannot account for yours if you do not join the discord!