Pauper Coming to Paper

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Hey, no one has commented on this one yet? I held back because I thought someone might have something actually pertinent to contribute, but it's been like a week now...

So a couple of months ago at my LGS I overheard some Pauper discussion and said aloud, "Pauper is a garbage format and should be thrown in the garbage, along with the people who play it."

I mean, obviously I was being facetious, but I really do hate this format. And my only real thought on the matter is that only a small number of different formats is going to get much in the way of official tournament support, so it's kinda too bad that support couldn't go to an actually fun format. But I must temper that response somewhat because it wouldn't do to be too vocally and caustically dismissive of something that other people like and enjoy and are probably happy about, even if those people should rightfully be tossed into a garbage can anyway. :p

Now, I can see how someone might read what I've just written and think, "But Oversoul, that's pretty disproportionate of you! If you don't like it, you don't need to play it and could probably just shut the hell up or something." And yeah, maybe. Who am I to argue with however many Pauper enthusiasts there are out there somewhere? But I think it's a bad format and that only bad stuff will come of this.
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
I only played in a few Pauper events or something like that back before Urza's and it wasn't the fun, "we are playing with marginal cards", type events. Too many decks just featured broken common cards.
Although, this format does invite many more players to participate in a constructed event, so stores that run them could see an uptick in attendance. Could WoTC be thinking about the store for a change?
Even I might try my hand at a Pauper event...…… well maybe not, but you never know.
Is there just a bunch of the same decks at these type events?
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Are you thinking of Peasant? Despite being simpler than Peasant, it seems like it's a younger format than Peasant. All remarks I've seen on the origins and early history of Pauper made it seem like a format that was first played on MTGO, gaining some popularity with the establishment of the now-defunct "Pauper Deck Challenge" website. This would have been very early on in MTGO, but well after Urza's Block, which predates MTGO by a few years. Anyway, if you did play Pauper back then, I guess it's older than most people think (a frequent occurrence for casual formats).

I can't really speak to the level of homogenization in the format as a whole, because events in your area might be different from events in mine. Also, with how many cards have been banned, the format has shifted a lot. It used to be like 20% combo decks I think, maybe more. But it seems that every commons-only combo deck that can be fast has been banned out of the format. So it's like 70% aggro and 30% control, give or take. Most of the control decks are Urzatron big mana builds. People try just about every flavor of aggro, but the best ones are Affinity and various red-based lists.
 
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