Thanks for posting this. I've had this, uh, 'discussion' with a number of shops that had proposed to launch Pauper nights and I try to ask them "MTGO rules or actual-paper printed rarity", they go "Whatever, if it was ever a common it's good unless it's on the banlist, if it was bad it'd be on the banned list", I explain "Hymn and Sinkhole aren't on the MTGO banned list because they're not MTGO commons..." "Whatever, man. We'll see how it plays out." Yeah, I already know how this plays out.
I don't want to bring a deck with Hymns and get in arguments with the faction that thinks they're illegal in paper pauper (not on the MTGO pauper valids list). I don't want to bring a deck with Chainer's Edicts and get in arguments with the faction that thinks they're illegal in paper pauper (never printed as paper commons). I don't want to bring a deck that resists using either flavor of corner case and then face decks all evening that didn't hold themselves to the same deckbuilding restrictions. I want a show-runner who gives a damn enough to make it clear to all players what the cardpool is; ideally, I want the organization that handles all the other formats (including the online version of Pauper) to actually give a damn enough to codify a ruleset for paper pauper. But for some reason they never do.
Would a land animated by Nissa even have Vigilance and Haste, or would Blood Sun strip those? Not sure about sequence of application of effects here.
If you made your new Lotus Field a creature but it can't hold haste, you won't even be able to tap it for mana again T3.
Fetches... mind you, at 2 cost they likely slip their first fetch under the bar, unlike Stifle.
Really? You're framing it that Repudiate//Replicate is the niche corner case card that won't have any other versatility (when it's a discounted Clone or counters a PW ult as its fail-case)? While propping up this card, which is most likely to be at-best a Death Ward if your Lotus plan doesn't come together?
Oh, look, now Tale's End does it for 1U, too.
We aren't that far removed from Kaya's Ghostform. Sure, you can maybe engineer some utility about the second permanent you can bring back. But my point is, "Ult a planeswalker and get it right back supercheap" isn't new ground anymore. It's very-recently-trodden ground.
It's not in limited. It's in intro/planeswalker decks. And those have had randomly bad jank in them forever, in large part to allow new players to learn why bad cards are bad and what cards should be candidates for early replacement.
Precision Bolt was the same logic. Clearly worse than common alternatives, to show new players how to identify and upgrade bad cards.
I would guess they want people doing the Legion Conquistador thing in draft again, without all the vampire fun. But being able to do that with evasion... might make it too good for this draft environment.
Would have made for an interesting alternate design, make mom bigger but dependent on the continued survival of the pup to remain loyal to (controlled by) you.