Pauper: The 10 Best Cards of 2025

The year 2025 was… peculiar for Pauper.

In theory, the format underwent several changes during the year, and its Metagame is noticeably different today than it was at the beginning of 2025. However, many of these changes were caused more by bans and the creativity of players in innovating with new proposals and strategies than necessarily by the release of cards that drastically shook the scene.

Of course, the year had important pieces like Black Mage's Rod, Sagu Wildling, and Cryogen Relic, but despite the release of these cards, the status quo of the format was not completely altered by them, which raises an alert and an opportunity: on the one hand, Mark Rosewater announced that Master Sets have been discontinued, meaning fewer opportunities for downshifts in Pauper without direct reprints in Standard. On the other hand, this year also showed that there is creative potential to provoke changes in the Metagame, and a mix of the need to adapt with careful maintenance is enough to keep the format exciting enough.

But 2025 did bring important cards to Pauper. And in this article, we evaluate the ten biggest new additions the format received during the year.

10 - Perigee Beckoner

Perigee Beckoner entered a specific Sacrifice archetype that grew during the year and became a strategy worthy of being among some of the top tiers of the format, occasionally winning some Challenges.

The creature stood out for offering a pseudo-Supernatural Stamina for the alternative Warp cost, which, added to its own body, guaranteed two more sources for the archetype's sacrifice outlets, while being a decent threat on its own in longer games.

9 - Abandon Attachments

Despite seeming irrelevant, Abandon Attachments offers the "discard one, draw two" effect for blue in a way that no other card in the format offers, which earned it some copies in Dimir Terror or Izzet Terror lists.

8 - Heritage Reclamation

Flexibility defines the potential of Heritage Reclamation in almost all formats, and Pauper was no different. A Disenchant that also deals with specific cards in graveyards and replaces itself in its owner's hand didn't become an instant staple, as Pauper requires more efficient answers, but it still finds slots in some sideboards and was one of the biggest contributions of the year to the format's card pool.

7 - Illvoi Galeblade

Illvoi Galeblade became a near-instant staple of Faeries due to the versatility of a non-human creature with Flash (therefore, it helps in the interaction with Of One Mind) for one mana with an extra ability that guarantees another draw in response to removals, in addition to being an excellent enabler for Ninjutsu.

6 - Summon: Choco/Mog

Final Fantasy was the best set of the year, and Summon: Choco/Mog was one of its biggest contributions to Pauper, where it helped leverage the potential of White Weenie/Mono White Aggro as a competitive strategy through a creature that increases the power of others and can be reused with Kor Skyfisher and the new Spider-Man, Web-Slinger for another round—all at a relatively low cost for the format.

5 - Cryogen Relic

Cryogen Relic was responsible for a dozen Affinity or Bounce variants during the year, especially in the Esper or Dimir colors, which took advantage of the artifact as complementary or replacement copies of Ichor Wellspring. Of all the cards released, despite not being one of the most competitive, Cryogen Relic was one of the cards responsible for boosting more archetypes and creating more new decks during the year, and therefore deserves fifth place.

4 - Grim Bauble

Grim Bauble was the best removal spell of the year. After all, Pauper is already a format where artifacts have extra added value due to Affinity and the effects of Deadly Dispute, and the fact that it deals with smaller creatures in the ETB also made it a staple in Glint Hawk lists.

What wasn't expected at the beginning of the year was that the "Black Artifacts" base would gradually become better throughout the year, and Grim Bauble would soon be a staple for these archetypes alongside Refurbished Familiar.

3 - Pactdoll Terror

One of the reasons Black Artifacts was a viable archetype in 2025 came in the same expansion as Grim Bauble: Pactdoll Terror transformed decks with Fanatical Offering and the famous Ichor Wellspring core into a competitive archetype during the first quarter of 2025.

Over time, however, decks like Golgari Gardens have taken its place, but Terror is still a creature that appears with some frequency in the format, more common now in Tron Combo lists with Myr Retriever and Ashnod’s Altar.

2 - Black Mage’s Rod

The Black Artifacts shell was also benefited by Black Mage’s Rod and, to some extent, by Cornered by Black Mages, which gave more consistency to the archetype, but the Final Fantasy card also became a staple of one of the most historically famous Pauper decks — Affinity, where it is now present in about 80% of lists.

Black Mage's Rod does a little bit of everything and even saw play in decks like Madness Burn or Rakdos Burn for a few weeks, technically being a Kessig Flamebreather for that color, but its best homes end up being in lists that can benefit from all its parts: the triggers that extend the reach a Midrange deck can have in longer games, the token that can be sacrificed for a Draw 2 effect, and also the artifact that counts towards Affinity and transfers Ping's ability to any other creature.

1 - Sagu Wildling

To think that a "manafixing" deck would do so much in Pauper.

Sagu Wildling gave green decks in the format more consistency in finding the "land of the turn" and is present in lists ranging from Gruul Ramp to Elves, but its greatest contribution to the format was making the Spy Combo a real and competitive archetype to the point of demanding specific answers against it, such as Faerie Macabre.

The deck, which only needs four lands in the list to guarantee consistency with Balustrade Spy, now has twelve cards capable of finding them to complete the combo, and this increase in redundancy not only boosted the Spy Combo but also created new variants of it, such as the now famous Spy Walls, which uses the Pauper Walls deck combined with the cards that complete the Balustrade Spy line to have more consistency.

Today, there are debates about whether the existence of Balustrade Spy is healthy for Pauper when players need to add zero-mana interactions that can't be properly answered to deal with it, but no discussion about the archetype would be possible if Sagu Wildling hadn't done the job of bringing all the pieces together in one place—therefore, it's the most important card of 2025 for Pauper!

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thank you for reading!