Pauper: Ban Announcement and How it will effect the Format

In today’s article we are going to look at the Ban and Restricted announcement for Pauper.

Gavin Verhey tweeted that there will be a Pauper update with the normal Ban Announcement. This lead me to believe there would massive changes.

You can find my predictions and thought process here:

So how close were my predictions?

On December 4th, 2023, the Pauper Format Panel announced that Monastery Swiftspear is banned in Pauper effective immediately.

You can see the PFPs thoughts on this ban and other options they considered in the video below:

To clarify, they chose to ban Monastery Swiftspear and only that as the Red Decks aren’t overall broken, they are polarizing. The deck has an overall Match Winrate of less than 50% as shown in the PFP video, but is forcing decks to have 8 to 10 Sideboard slots for the deck. This gives a disproportionate view on how well the decks are actually doing.

Finally, in the video Gavin mentioned the decks that were doing well: Golgari Gardens, Caw gate and White Weenie with around 54% Win Rate. However, I would like to add the success of these decks is due to how well they are positioned against both the Red Decks and the Terror decks.

In the video, they did mention they will be looking at the way they tackle bans in the format and will be looking at banning more aggressively if the removal of Monastery Swiftspear doesn’t prevent the polarizing metagame.

So the Panel only chose to ban one card, Monastery Swiftspear. Why only one card out of the red deck, and why not target any other archetype?

The main reason I believe this is the case is monitoring and control. If they ban and unban one card at a time, the Panel can look at how the format is directly impacted by the changes.

You can see this by the choice to not unban Prophetic Prism. Prism has been mentioned multiple times in Panel update videos that it shouldn’t be included on the list, especially since the release of Energy Refractor being on the ban list is redundant.

Why Swiftspear

Why not ban the draw two effects that red has access to?

Firstly, if I was my personal choice, this is where I would have ultimately ended up because ultimately these effects are irreplaceable. These effects allow the deck to solely compete with the Midrange and Control decks, keeping on the pressure and refueling the hand. However, the reason I think this was not the route they chose was I think the negativity of going through a banning and not choosing Monastery Swiftspear would have been immense.

Finally, due to what seems to be the PFPs process of banning one card and monitoring, this gives them the best control over the format to monitor the polarizing metagame.

Personally, I expect the average draws for the Red Decks to be reduced; however, the deck will still have the ability to keep the pressure on and carry itself into the late game with 8 Reckless Impulse effects.

Decks like Caw Gate and Golgari Gardens which have a favorable match up against Mono Red will continue to thrive. Sideboard slots will continue to be as taken up and won’t be freed up to fight Glitters/Affinity as expected.

However, this ban is not a negative. In fact, it is very much a step in the right direction, slowing down the red deck means single spell one for one removal get better. Disfigure, Drown in Sorrow and other -2/-2 effects become more appealing.

This is how I think the deck will look moving forward:

As you can see, this is my version of “stock” Kuldotha but with the inclusion Goblin Blast-Runner. Which is how I think this banning will impact the red decks and look forward to seeing if Blast Runner can hold their own.

Does this stop the Red Menace?

So Red Aggro decks like Pinger Burn and Kuldotha are going nowhere; they will still be a tier 1 deck. This effectively just gives other decks an extra turn or two with the current threats Pauper has available. Meaning that hopefully some sideboard slots and other Matchups get a look in and better utilized elsewhere.

I hope this goes how the PFP foresees it and puts the metagame in a less polarizing state.

Overall, I really like this banning of Monastery Swiftspear, and it is a great start to repairing the format from being very polarizing and an incredible amount of sideboard slots of every deck being eaten up for one archetype.

I'm really excited to see how this impacts the format and opens it up for brewing space too, not having to build every deck to answer Monastery Swiftspear on turn 1.

What a great day to play Pauper!

Until next time!