MTG Salvation

I considered mentioning it, but we just had Call the Cavalry in Dominaria, which didn't make an impact. The difference here is that creatures are much easier to recur or blink, but there are a myriad of other targets that give you a bit more bang for your buck.

Gremlins. Fixed.

Shameless plug: My intro to paper pauper is a good place to get a feel for the rules if you're not playing online.

Our deck database has quite a few entries for deck ideas (I have 40-50 decks there, lol).

mtgo-stats and mtgtop8 are both good for a general idea of the top tier decks. You'll obviously note that in the top, decks and cards are repeated like every other format - ie Delver is one of the most popular top decks that always appears - but you'll also note random decks and cards that seem to come out nowhere. The more level playing field means that even when you're looking at the top of the top tournament scene, an unexpected deck can easily come out of nowhere and place. Hell, I have a R/G Creature-Killing Control Deck that's dominated a field before. I've seen Heroic have it's hayday.

I'm slightly biased at this point because I love pauper as much as I do, but it's honestly the most fun I've had in magic.

After getting into tournaments and the competitive scene, it was very hard to go back to playing decks just for the fun of playing. There was always this unbreakable urge to tune and upgrade each deck until it was as as "good as it could be" (which meant being a competitive tournament-worthy deck).

Pauper is quite a bit different. With two thirds of the cards gone, the cardpool is obviously smaller... technically. In reality, you'll find more possibilities and depth than you would ever think possible. The power level of cards has been cropped, and this means so much more has become viable options. It means you can build what you want for the fun of it, while still holding your own.

I have almost 60 pauper decks built. A dozen or so have been built just for fun/casual experience, but at least 40 of them could easily be taken to a pauper tournament.

SCG has listed all of their foil prices, so I've gone ahead and figured foil value per booster box. Based upon SCG foil prices, and using the 1:2:4 foil sheet distribution estimation (which is at least very close if not accurate), the average box should have:
$28.90 in foil cards value per booster box.

Foil value variance is, of course, quite high though.

Median works well for looking at a singular pack, and especially if you're looking to see if you'd get actual card value of what you paid vs if you bought whatever it was as a single. Not so much for a box, though.

The median value of rares is right at $2, give or take a few cents depending on where you price. This means that if you pick up a single pack at random, you have the highest odds of getting a card that's worth about $2. However, once you start adding additional boosters, this number gets more and more unrealistic and at some point meaningless.

In example, lets say there are only three rares in the set. Two of those cards are worth $1, and the third is worth $10. The median is exactly $1, but the average is $4. If you open up a single pack, the median says you'll probably get a $1 card out of it - which is accurate as you have 2/3rds of a chance of that. The average of $4 doesn't make sense here - you literally can't get a $4 card.

Once we move to boxes, however, the roles reverse. In 25 packs, the median expects $25 while the average expects $100. The average is obviously close to the truth, while the median is ridiculously useless here. You'll average just over 8 of the $10 cards here, with a decent degree of variance, so looking at the median gives us no benefit. This example is a bit extreme, obviously, but it's a good illustration of the differences between median and average when you're talking about packs vs boxes.

More directly to Masters 25: There is a 1.78% chance (about 1 in 56) that if you crack a booster box you will not get one single mythic or rare that is over $15. It's the horriblest of horrible boxes. The thing that nightmares are made of. Yet, that box will still have a much higher average per pack than the median. That average here is one and a half times that of the median.

In fact, there's only a 1/1000 chance that a box is so horrible it's average is equal to the mean.

tl;dr - Median for singular pack, Average for boosters boxes

I agree with all of the above. I didn't delve much into the per-pack much because I don't think there's really a whole lot to be said. The rare-slot variance is fairly on topic for a per-pack basis, but after that there's only a delve into how much variance there is. If there's a good amount of variance level in a 25-pack box, there's about 25 times the variance in a singular pack.

We generally focus on an individual, small group, or LGS looking at the market. Someone who can buy anywhere from a box to a few, with the idea of selling individuals for a profit, or to get the cards they want and recoup their losses.

For individual packs, it's almost always a scratch-off lottery ticket. Most packs are duds, some let you break even, and a smaller minority are winners. It's extremely rare to see any in-print set break this mold.

As a huge proponent of pauper, I feel your pain. In order to make sure everything was smooth, our first release was focused only on the main supported formats. More will come, and you can believe I'm making sure Pauper is high on the list.

I don't even know how... o_0
Fixed.

End of year update:

New Titans
Etali, Primal Storm is a strong titan on his own. Two things to note here: he lets you play the top card of your own library, which will almost always be a good play, and you don't have to play anything you don't like. Pulling a Wrath of your opponents library is anything but a dud. You might not want to cast it, but you've now prevented your opponent from casting it. He's a very strong advantage engine.

Zacama, Primal Calamity might lose his untap ability if you Mayael him into play, but he's still a very strong control card. A 9/9 body is always nice, but his ability to Naturalize over and over is what makes him a massive boon to our board. The life gain and bolt is just more icing on the cake.

Ghalta, Primal Hunger might just be a beat stick, but he can often be hardcast from the hand for very cheap. Having two titans out ensures that he costs just two green mana. Even if you only have a single titan, he's probably still 4 mana or less.

Crested Sunmare needs support to get going, but he can be a powerhouse when he gets going. Perhaps if you focus on some of the better life gain titans, with a small life gain theme. In example: if you Tooth and Nail a Celestial Force and Crested Sunmare, you'll have a titan armada by the next time you untap.

Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith with her Hammer can be a decent combo to play with, especially if you use more than a couple equipment cards.

Dinosaur Theme
The above titans list several Dinosaur creatures. That's because Ixalan has given us another tribe we can play with. Dinosaurs are not nearly as cohesive and strong as the other tribes mentioned, but they have a very strong flavor factor that you might love. If you go this route, I recommend only doing a subtheme of dinosaurs, as they simply don't pack the punch that the other tribes and generic titans do. Carnage Tyrant, Burning Sun's Avatar, Etali, Primal Storm, Gishath, Sun's Avatar, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, Thundering Spineback, and Zacama, Primal Calamity are the marquee Dinosaurs for this tribe. Forerunner of the Empire, Knight of the Stampede, Otepec Huntmaster, and Priest of the Wakening Sun are all good support cards for the tribe.

Other Cards
Curse of Bounty can cause some collateral help to your opponents, but it can basically give all of your creatures vigilance and let you double dip on anything that taps for mana. If you do have a good bit mana, it can also let you use Mayael twice a turn - if not more if your opponents activate it as well. Somewhat situational, but it can make for some strong plays.

Traverse the Outlands might cost 5 mana, but can often fetch 6+ lands. Even if it just fetches 3, it puts you into the Titan hardcast zone.

Huatli, Warrior Poet and Huatli, Radiant Champion are acceptable creature-focused planeswalkers. Warrior Poet can be decent life gain that builds up to a large flame wave that clears the path for your creatures. Radiant Champion is best used if you go with Titans that can pump out tokens. If you can reliably get tokens out, she can ultimate the turn after she hits - which then makes further tokens absurd.


There's definitely a good bit more I could cover, but I just wanted to touch on the big new cards that I would definitely have gone over had I written this today.

Quote from TheAnnihilator0798 »

Edit: Oh, and apparently my UW control deck has a lot of green in it, according to the color pie? Not sure where that's coming from haha.

It's the Gremlins I tell you! They're ruining all of our charts! Ahhhhh.

Something went awry with the card database update. This will hopefully be fixed soon enough.
And yes, a listing of your own decks is slated to be added

The gremlins have been angered it seems, and made all the cards green. Working out some other random bugs and such as well. Please Were-Bear with us.

Note im redoing the ban list at the moment so please excuse a couple banned cards not showing banned for the moment

It is infinite turns.

Use By Gnome Means to put an Eon counter on Magosi, the Waterveil. Tap, remove the counter, bounce: Get the extra turn. In that same turn, replay magosi, which enters tapped.

Take the extra turn, untapping Magosi.

Rinse, repeat.

Just keep the Gnomes well supplied with artifact fodder.