I would be more for allowing them thus allowing anything that comes up in a gatherer search to be approved. It is rather confusing when using a card filter for commons to exclude cards from Master's Editions.
The reason they are commons in masters edition sets anyways is that is where wizards considers their rarity today. In my mind it makes more sense to accept that than it does to allow cards that used to be commons that got bumped up in rarity. You realize those commons were considered to powerful in general to remain at common rarity. Thus wizards bumps their rarity up but we still accept them as playable. Why would we say that a card that was bumped down in rarity to be not acceptable due to being not in print technically?
Should we also ban all portal cards because they are hard to find??? It just makes sense to me to allow Master's Edition cards to be played if printed in common rarity.
This simply is NOT an online format, as online Pauper is NOT an offline format, and cannot be treated as such. You could use your same logic and say any cards that haven't been reprinted/have been printed with a higher rarity couldn't be used.
Hey all, as I am really eager to get more games tested, this is my idea to test both rules and commanders (this will be posted in the rules thread as well). We will need a combined effort on this however. We can pick the top 8 or so best commanders in theory, use cockatrice preferably, and test in both 4 player and 1v1 environments. This will obviously take time, but it is at least going to be productive. In my opinion, the main points to consider while testing would be starting life totals, commander damage, poison damage (one of the 8 should be a poison commander), and which commanders are 'unbeatable'. The more games we are able to play, the more reliable our information will be. I will need at least 3 other people to sign up to help with this if I can't find anyone IRL to do this with. Backups and people to substitute for others is not a bad idea.
Once we can get some kind of commitment we can set up testing schedules. There are also plenty of other commanders to chose from (Lorescale Coatl etc.); just put your suggestions down on either thread and we can go from there.
Hey all, as I am really eager to get more games tested, this is my idea to test both rules and commanders (this will be posted in the rules thread as well). We will need a combined effort on this however. We can pick the top 8 or so best commanders in theory, use cockatrice preferably, and test in both 4 player and 1v1 environments. This will obviously take time, but it is at least going to be productive. In my opinion, the main points to consider while testing would be starting life totals, commander damage, poison damage (one of the 8 should be a poison commander), and which commanders are 'unbeatable'. The more games we are able to play, the more reliable our information will be. I will need at least 3 other people to sign up to help with this if I can't find anyone IRL to do this with. Backups and people to substitute for others is not a bad idea.
Once we can get some kind of commitment we can set up testing schedules. There are also plenty of other commanders to chose from (Lorescale Coatl etc.); just put your suggestions down on either thread and we can go from there.
Pauper Commander is an offline Magic format in which all cards used must have been printed at the common rarity in a Magic set or product, excluding a player's commander, which must have been printed at the uncommon rarity in a Magic set or product. A common or uncommon promotional card is only legal if the card has been printed at the common or uncommon rarity in a Magic set or product, respectively.
Cards that have been printed at the common rarity in a Magic Online set or product are legal, as long as the follow the above rule as well. Basically the difference is using the term Magic Online set or product, as the official Pauper rules state, or Magic set or product, as my rules state. I am going to reword this ruling to make it a bit more clear.
Keep in mind, this is technically a variant of a variant of EDH. In the very earliest days of forum posts about a Pauper variant of EDH, it was intended as a very strict 1v1 format. Obviously that doesn't have to hold true at this point, but I do believe that cards need to be evaluated at both a multiplayer level and a 1v1 level.
As for Fusion Elemental; like I have said before, he is very hard to cast without help from other spells. When you get him out, he hits hard, but that is assuming your opponent hasn't built up enough of a board presence to simply block him, or had time to find a counterpell or removal spell to deal with him. From that point on, he only gets harder to recast. While you are building up the mana to cast him, Rampant Growth etc., your opponent will be doing other productive things. I can pretty safely assume he will never be cast on turn 5 without help from mana fixing spells, and when he does get cast, it takes a lot to do so. I think his cost makes him fair.
I'm in the "common in any set digital or otherwise" camp. I can't think of a single card online as common that is so degenerate it would make the format unplayable. I also believe that allowing them will be healthy for the format, especially when they're basically strictly worse versions of a common we have access too. My green deck REALLY wants Aeopile and Moonglove extract.
I assume you mean Aeolipile and Moonglove Extract. For one, you can play Moonglove Extract as it was printed in three offline Magic sets, and no online-exclusive Magic sets.
Also, the fact that under these rules offline only cards are legal is not due to how good cards online are, it is due to the fact that I am keeping a regularity between the two formats; online Pauper and offline Pauper.
More responses, including a large change to the discussion.
The reasoning behind only allowing offline Magic cards to be used in the current rule set is that it is under the same formatting regular Pauper is - only cards that are common online are legal. It simply made sense to do it the same way offline. This is not an online format, and as such, we do not have online-only cards such as Gleemax offline; this logic is incorporated into the current rule set.
All ban list discussion is now moved to a separate thread:
This includes both the regular ban list, and the commander ban list. This thread is now to be used for the sole purpose of discussing rules changes. This link will be able to be referenced in the first post of this thread.
This thread is strictly for the discussion of what cards, and commanders, should be banned in Pauper Commander. This post is based off of this unofficial set of rules found in the following link, as it was suggested.
that was me. the huge difference is that it was for a tournament (and a select number of uncommons were allowed in addition to the general). being that it for a tourney, we didnt want to see tog-on-tog (best deck in the format by far) or bbe's (gets unfair very fast) and invisible stalkers (so hard to deal with at common) all day. we wanted variation, and those 3 seemed like they would be huge offenders being that they were the first 3 picks all of us wanted to use as generals/thought should be banned as generals.
regardless of tax effects evoke, shriekmaw and nevermaker are borderline degenerate in a 1v1 scenario. nevermaker + bounce is pretty brutal. and shriekmaw spamming on non black decks can get out of hand. they are defiantly less offensive once you rule out any additional uncommons allowed in the deck though.
To be fair, when you play Psychatog as a control commander, he himself really isn't the best part of the deck - it is simply the fact that you are playing an excellent control deck. I do understand why he would be banned though.
How would you guys rule on something that has a printing in common on a MTGO master's edition? I came across this with Telekinesis where it was printed as common in the MTGO master's and so normally I would go ahead an use it but.... that is a digital only non distribution sort of deal.... ehhh it got sketchy for me at the least lol.
Telekinesis, and cards like it, are not legal in Pauper Commander, under this set of rules that is. We sacrifice cards such as those, and gain cards such as Sinkhole and the like in order to make this an offline format.
I would like to see the general follow the legendary rule, if only to keep that EDH uniqueness feel. My hunch is that much like normal EDH, an equilibrium of sorts will emerge with each color combination having a preferred uncommon general.
As I honestly don't have much time at the moment to respond to everyone, I found this really interesting, as I had not really thought about it. This would only matter for clone effects and when two people have the same commander however. What do others think? Should this be a rule?
Transguild Courier does not actually have a five-color color identity; rather, it is colorless in that regard. None of the mana symbols appear anywhere on the card, and those mana symbols are what determine color identity according to mtgcommander.net. Sadly, this probably makes Courier unusable as a commander.
Thankfully, no, that is not all there is to it. I do apologize, as I should have been more thorough in my rules - I will change it after this.
903.4. The Commander variant uses color identity to determine what cards can be in a deck with a certain commander. The color identity of a card is the color or colors of any mana symbols in that card's mana cost or rules text, plus any colors defined by its characteristic-defining abilities (see rule 604.3) or color indicator (see rule 204).
The reason this is not evident on gatherer.wizards.com is that there is no indication of color identity on the site.
Can we talk a little more about the 16 general damage rule? The original 21 general damage thing did was not created by a "(starting life total) / 2 + 1" rule, but rather a "3 swings from an Elder Dragon Legend" rule. Why did you choose this formula?
Regarding the poison count: is it really necessary to up the count to 15? 10 poison in regular EDH has been fine, and as we move to the pauper format, many of the best poison cards aren't even legal (Skithirix, the Blight Dragon, Grafted Exoskeleton, Triumph of the Hordes, Blightsteel Colossus). 60-card Pauper infect is a deck, but that is due to a critical mass of cheap infect dudes and pump spells like Invigorate. Is it worth considering 10 poison instead of 15?
The numbers I chose where chosen to be able to scale down with the life totals. None of the numbers are correct per say, and are open to change.
First of all, thanks to all who responded after my response post - it is great to see people actually discussing things, and asking questions! I attempted to answer everything you asked as thoroughly as I can. Rather than answer each as a quote, and individually, I will instead try and answer the most commonly asked questions as a general statement.
My reasoning for choosing all three of the required numbers for a player to lose a game (life total, commander damage, poison) where based on these three things:
- In general, cards in Pauper are worse than cards in regular Commander. This causes games in Pauper Commander to go on longer than games in regular Commander; through testing this has proven to be true. I simply chose a lower life total to go by so that games go on longer than regular constructed formats, as they do in regular Commander, but do not go on excessively long.
- Commander damage was chosen to be ((a player's starting life total / 2) + 1), as it is in Commander.
- Even though the amount of poison required for a player to lose the game has not been addressed in Commander, I feel as though if you are going to make all non-poison decks take longer to kill a player, the same should apply to poison decks. As it is in most constructed formats, the amount of poison required for a player to lose the game is (a player's starting life total / 2).
My goal is/was to get a separate sub-forum for Pauper Commander so that people would know that it really is a thing. If it is never made, I am content as long as people are active in the forum pages anyways. I just want it to be a lively format.
One of the first problems I saw when looking at people's Pauper Commander decklists where that they were not consistent. Some people played cards that were commons online only; others did not. Some people chose to use any legendary creature as their commander, or other rules about what commanders were legal; others did not. Some people had regular starting life totals, commander damage etc.; others did not. It just felt really strange to me that we were all attempting to talk about the same format, but in essence we were not. By having a set of rules, it makes it much easier to discuss decks and strategies.
This is the big topic.
The reason I chose the three commanders in specific was mainly off of theorycrafting, as my play group simply is not competitive enough to test every commander. I just have problems with commanders that are so much better than any other card in the format, that you can just build a deck with strictly support of that card. It takes a lot away from it being a Pauper format.
However, for now, until we can agree on commanders after more discussion, I will leave the commander ban list empty.
There wouldn't be anything wrong with changing the format to be based of of EDH instead of Commander, and just adding Pauper rules. It wouldn't really change much, as most of the rules are slightly edited copy/paste segments. The way I have it allows it to mesh really well together however. I feel like all of the rules posted are necessary, and reduce confusion. If one were to say 'Pauper EDH is a variant of EDH, which incorporates Pauper rules', there is way too much room for interpretation.
For all card's rarities, Oracle text, or gatherer.wizards.com information will be the final say. It is my hope that I, or another, can compile a list of all cards that are legal offline that are not legal online in Pauper.
Contrary to popular belief, outside of Fusion Elemental and Transguild Courier, there are other cards that are legal in Pauper Commander at the 5 color level; there are a total of 6 cards at the 5 color level:
In regards to commander discussion, I do not believe that Fusion Elemental is a ban worthy commander on any level. He can hit really hard, but he is also extremely aggressively costed. In regards to Bloodbraid Elf, I believe the logic in the comment that you must stay below 4 converted mana cost is a little flawed. For mono color commanders, having to stay in one color is not always a drawback.
A massive overhaul of the rules was done on 8/21/2012. PLEASE read through all of the rules, so that we can get serious about Pauper Commander being a format. It is my intention to get Pauper Commander separated from the rest of the Variant Commander Decklists forum page, and to do so, we need to nail down a solid set of rules.
My notes on generals, as of now there are only 3 banned commanders on my rule set. Here are my two underlying thoughts about why a commander should be banned in Pauper Commander:
1.) If a commander is on a completely different level of power compared to literally every other card in the format, it should be banned.
2.) If a commander is incredibly hard to deal with, or impossible to deal with in the format, whether it be the card or the deck doing so, it should be banned.
Also, please feel free from this point on to ask me about any part of my reasoning, or about any rule I made, as I want it to be known; however there is a lot, so I can't simply explain everything at once. If there is something you want to know, ask.
From what I understand, alternative costs for commanders (like evoke) don't get around the additional 2 tax for recasting the card from the command zone. This came up while playing a friend with Qasali Ambusher as his commander who thought he could just keep casting it for free every time I attacked. Turns out that was wrong, per many discussions like this:
The first two were banned because of power level, and the other two because I think they misunderstood how evoke doesn't get around the 2 tax. I saw some mentioning of banning Invisible Stalker too.
Edited the post to reflect more opinions on more overpowered Generals. Yes, Phantasm was the original 'this card is dumb' General in my thoughts. Sadly I feel as thought the ban list for Generals might have to be large, as many generals simply completely overpower any other card in Pauper by a longshot.
This simply is NOT an online format, as online Pauper is NOT an offline format, and cannot be treated as such. You could use your same logic and say any cards that haven't been reprinted/have been printed with a higher rarity couldn't be used.
My suggested commander testing list:
Bloodbraid Elf
Psychatog
Invisible Stalker
Jace's Phantasm
Mistmeadow Witch
Izzet Guildmage
Quillspike
Whispering Specter
Once we can get some kind of commitment we can set up testing schedules. There are also plenty of other commanders to chose from (Lorescale Coatl etc.); just put your suggestions down on either thread and we can go from there.
My suggested commander testing list:
Bloodbraid Elf
Psychatog
Invisible Stalker
Jace's Phantasm
Mistmeadow Witch
Izzet Guildmage
Quillspike
Whispering Specter
Once we can get some kind of commitment we can set up testing schedules. There are also plenty of other commanders to chose from (Lorescale Coatl etc.); just put your suggestions down on either thread and we can go from there.
Cards that have been printed at the common rarity in a Magic Online set or product are legal, as long as the follow the above rule as well. Basically the difference is using the term Magic Online set or product, as the official Pauper rules state, or Magic set or product, as my rules state. I am going to reword this ruling to make it a bit more clear.
As for Fusion Elemental; like I have said before, he is very hard to cast without help from other spells. When you get him out, he hits hard, but that is assuming your opponent hasn't built up enough of a board presence to simply block him, or had time to find a counterpell or removal spell to deal with him. From that point on, he only gets harder to recast. While you are building up the mana to cast him, Rampant Growth etc., your opponent will be doing other productive things. I can pretty safely assume he will never be cast on turn 5 without help from mana fixing spells, and when he does get cast, it takes a lot to do so. I think his cost makes him fair.
I assume you mean Aeolipile and Moonglove Extract. For one, you can play Moonglove Extract as it was printed in three offline Magic sets, and no online-exclusive Magic sets.
Also, the fact that under these rules offline only cards are legal is not due to how good cards online are, it is due to the fact that I am keeping a regularity between the two formats; online Pauper and offline Pauper.
The reasoning behind only allowing offline Magic cards to be used in the current rule set is that it is under the same formatting regular Pauper is - only cards that are common online are legal. It simply made sense to do it the same way offline. This is not an online format, and as such, we do not have online-only cards such as Gleemax offline; this logic is incorporated into the current rule set.
All ban list discussion is now moved to a separate thread:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=441729
This includes both the regular ban list, and the commander ban list. This thread is now to be used for the sole purpose of discussing rules changes. This link will be able to be referenced in the first post of this thread.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=439702
My recommendations for formatting discussion:
- Card(s) you believe have a reason to be banned
- Reasoning
I believe the same should go for responding to other people.
To be fair, when you play Psychatog as a control commander, he himself really isn't the best part of the deck - it is simply the fact that you are playing an excellent control deck. I do understand why he would be banned though.
Telekinesis, and cards like it, are not legal in Pauper Commander, under this set of rules that is. We sacrifice cards such as those, and gain cards such as Sinkhole and the like in order to make this an offline format.
As I honestly don't have much time at the moment to respond to everyone, I found this really interesting, as I had not really thought about it. This would only matter for clone effects and when two people have the same commander however. What do others think? Should this be a rule?
Thankfully, no, that is not all there is to it. I do apologize, as I should have been more thorough in my rules - I will change it after this.
The reason this is not evident on gatherer.wizards.com is that there is no indication of color identity on the site.
The numbers I chose where chosen to be able to scale down with the life totals. None of the numbers are correct per say, and are open to change.
My reasoning for choosing all three of the required numbers for a player to lose a game (life total, commander damage, poison) where based on these three things:
- In general, cards in Pauper are worse than cards in regular Commander. This causes games in Pauper Commander to go on longer than games in regular Commander; through testing this has proven to be true. I simply chose a lower life total to go by so that games go on longer than regular constructed formats, as they do in regular Commander, but do not go on excessively long.
- Commander damage was chosen to be ((a player's starting life total / 2) + 1), as it is in Commander.
- Even though the amount of poison required for a player to lose the game has not been addressed in Commander, I feel as though if you are going to make all non-poison decks take longer to kill a player, the same should apply to poison decks. As it is in most constructed formats, the amount of poison required for a player to lose the game is (a player's starting life total / 2).
My goal is/was to get a separate sub-forum for Pauper Commander so that people would know that it really is a thing. If it is never made, I am content as long as people are active in the forum pages anyways. I just want it to be a lively format.
One of the first problems I saw when looking at people's Pauper Commander decklists where that they were not consistent. Some people played cards that were commons online only; others did not. Some people chose to use any legendary creature as their commander, or other rules about what commanders were legal; others did not. Some people had regular starting life totals, commander damage etc.; others did not. It just felt really strange to me that we were all attempting to talk about the same format, but in essence we were not. By having a set of rules, it makes it much easier to discuss decks and strategies.
This is the big topic.
The reason I chose the three commanders in specific was mainly off of theorycrafting, as my play group simply is not competitive enough to test every commander. I just have problems with commanders that are so much better than any other card in the format, that you can just build a deck with strictly support of that card. It takes a lot away from it being a Pauper format.
However, for now, until we can agree on commanders after more discussion, I will leave the commander ban list empty.
There wouldn't be anything wrong with changing the format to be based of of EDH instead of Commander, and just adding Pauper rules. It wouldn't really change much, as most of the rules are slightly edited copy/paste segments. The way I have it allows it to mesh really well together however. I feel like all of the rules posted are necessary, and reduce confusion. If one were to say 'Pauper EDH is a variant of EDH, which incorporates Pauper rules', there is way too much room for interpretation.
For all card's rarities, Oracle text, or gatherer.wizards.com information will be the final say. It is my hope that I, or another, can compile a list of all cards that are legal offline that are not legal online in Pauper.
Contrary to popular belief, outside of Fusion Elemental and Transguild Courier, there are other cards that are legal in Pauper Commander at the 5 color level; there are a total of 6 cards at the 5 color level:
Fusion Elemental
Transguild Courier
Dragonsoul Knight
Fleshformer
Paragon of the Amesha
Composite Golem
In regards to commander discussion, I do not believe that Fusion Elemental is a ban worthy commander on any level. He can hit really hard, but he is also extremely aggressively costed. In regards to Bloodbraid Elf, I believe the logic in the comment that you must stay below 4 converted mana cost is a little flawed. For mono color commanders, having to stay in one color is not always a drawback.
A massive overhaul of the rules was done on 8/21/2012. PLEASE read through all of the rules, so that we can get serious about Pauper Commander being a format. It is my intention to get Pauper Commander separated from the rest of the Variant Commander Decklists forum page, and to do so, we need to nail down a solid set of rules.
My notes on generals, as of now there are only 3 banned commanders on my rule set. Here are my two underlying thoughts about why a commander should be banned in Pauper Commander:
1.) If a commander is on a completely different level of power compared to literally every other card in the format, it should be banned.
2.) If a commander is incredibly hard to deal with, or impossible to deal with in the format, whether it be the card or the deck doing so, it should be banned.
Also, please feel free from this point on to ask me about any part of my reasoning, or about any rule I made, as I want it to be known; however there is a lot, so I can't simply explain everything at once. If there is something you want to know, ask.
Edited the post to reflect more opinions on more overpowered Generals. Yes, Phantasm was the original 'this card is dumb' General in my thoughts. Sadly I feel as thought the ban list for Generals might have to be large, as many generals simply completely overpower any other card in Pauper by a longshot.