Announcing the Independent Tournaments' Pauper Banlist!

Hello players!

For those who don't know me, my name is Romeu, I'm one of the organizers of the Pauper Masters, so I'll be the message carrier that the entire Pauper Tournament organization at Cards Realm have for the community today.

As the vast majority of the community is well aware, Pauper is at one of the worst moments in its history since the release of Modern Horizons II, which brought back the Storm archetype and significantly reinforced the Affinity archetype, which made the format polarized, with more than 50% of Pauper's competitive Metagame being made up of the two archetypes, leaving little room for other decks to compete due to their high consistency and speed.

I won't go too far on this point, but you can fully understand the current situation of the format here.

Last Wednesday, July 21, Wizards released a banned and restricted announcement which, to the general misfortune of the Pauper community, there was not even a mention of the current state of the format after the past seven weeks.

For many players, Pauper has gone from being fun, exciting and interesting to play, watch and comment on to become a monotonous format where you're commonly playing against the same two decks or finding another player brave enough to try something that isn't one of the two absolute best decks in the format.

And this banned and restricted announcement, for many of us, sounded like the nail in the format's coffin. Several players commented in groups, Twitter and other social media that they were simply abandoning Pauper until action was taken by Wizards.

Which, unfortunately, could still take a long time. After all, Pauper has a bad precedent of taking longer than necessary for obvious bans.

As event organizers, we have in mind a factor that is often overlooked by the rest of the community: The fun.

It's important to us that people can have fun playing our tournaments and watching our lives. It is important to us that players can feel that the time they spend playing our events is of benefit and fun to them, and as long as the format is in the state it is in today, we can in no way claim that a vast majority of players are enjoying themselves and having fun playing Pauper today.

Therefore, right after Tiago Fuguete announced his own banlist and Alexandre Weber announced that he would follow the same banlist, we decided to meet in a group with Pauper event organizers who use Cards Realm as a platform to discuss the possibility of adopting a universal banlist for the tournaments involved, eventually forming a committee for this emergency.

They are, and the respective events of which they organize:

- Humberto Romeu (Pauper Masters)

- Leonardo Luiz (Pauper Masters)

- Tiago Fuguete (Fuguete League, Pauper Royale, Tropical Pauper)

- Raphael Martinez (Pauper Royale)

- Alexandre Weber (Pauper Matinal, Copa da Humildade)

- Junior Lancester (League of Paradise)

- Adriano / Card Games Brasil (Sextou! Pauper)

After a night of debate on the subject, its pros and cons, and a democratic vote on which cards are the most problematic for Pauper these days, we announce that The above tournaments will be adopting this universal banlist for Pauper while Wizards doesn't take an action on the format.

The following cards are BANNED from the Cards Realm's Pauper tournaments:

The following cards are BANNED by us, independent organizers, of the mentioned Pauper tournaments:

I think it's pretty clear to the community now why Chatterstorm is being banned: Pauper just doesn't have the efficient means with Storm cards that win the game on their own. Our options are very limited, easily dealt with Duress and absolutely no fun when the opponent puts 10 2/2 Squirrel tokens with Haste in turn 2 or turn 3.

Affinity had the most diverse suggestions, but a consensus among the majority was that Sojourner's Companion should be banned because allowing the deck to have eight 4/4 creatures that can be played for free is too effective for the format today.

There was a debate and a technical tie between banning Myr Enforcer or Silverbluff Bridge as a second option to weaken Affinity. Ultimately, as it was previously announced by Fuguete and Weber that Silverbluff Bridge would be banned from their events, and as it is the card from the most recent set and adds significant consistency to Affinity, we have decided to ban the land.

This banlist will be used by all events below, and is at the organizer's discretion when to apply this banlist change.

Keep in mind that these events are at the Brazilian Time Zone! (GMT -3.0)

The Tropical Pauper is a free event that takes place every Saturday at 10:00 am!

Fuguete Champ is a free event that takes place every Monday at 20:00!

The Cup of Humility is a free tournament that takes place every Tuesday at 19:30!

Fuguete League is a free event which takes place every Wednesday at 20:00!

The Pauper Matinal is another free event and takes place every Thursday at 10:00!

Pauper Royale is free and takes place every Thursday at 19:30!

The Sextou! Pauper is another free event that takes place every Friday at 9:30 am!

The League of Paradise is also free, and takes place every Friday at 19:30!

The Pauper Masters Qualifier takes place every last Saturday of the month, at 13:00, with a 2 Tix entry fee or free entry for each week's sponsored events winners.

The application of this banlist will occur on a recurring basis and will be used until Wizards announces a banned and restricted update for Pauper.

We assume the commitment that, after the update occurs, we will return to using the format's official banlist.

We also assume the commitment that, in case something goes wrong with our banlist and we notice the predominance of some strategy during successive weeks in the events involved, we will be debating what happened and evaluate options that can be taken to settle the situation.

Don't expect, however, that we will make huge changes to the format. We don't intend to create an “Alternative Pauper”, our goal is just to fix a format that is broken to make it interesting and fun again for us, our players, and our viewers.

After all, we are fully aware that tinkering with the format's banlist is creating a dangerous and complicated precedent, where it makes room for banning cards merely because people don't like them, and again, we don't intend to mess up the format, just fix the which has clearly been broken for nearly two months.

That said, as the bearer of the message that the entire organization of these events has for you, I hope that you can accept with open arms our attempt to make Pauper a better place unofficially, while we do not have an answer from those actually responsible for managing the format.