Written by CMA-Flippi on December 22, 2008
Next weekend, Magic-league hosts a Pauper-Magic Master.
The purpose of this article is to give you an official reference about this unusual format for the tournament (and all other Pauper tournaments on magic-league).
The basic rule of Pauper Magic says that only Commons are legal. This obviously exludes Uncommons, Rares and Timeshifted cards from the decks.
Unfortunately, not all cards like Sakura-Tribe Elder have only one rarity. There are plenty of cards which not only appeared in several sets, they also have different rarities!
To be legal in a specific Pauper format, a card has to exist as a Common in any of the legal sets in the format.
Let me give you a few examples: -
Tribal Flames exist as a Common (Invasion) and as a timeshifted card (Timespiral). This means it is only legal in formats where Invasion is a legal set. It would not be legal in Standard-Pauper.
-Ornithopter exists as a Common in Antiquities, but has been printed as Uncommon only since then. This means it is not leal in Standard-Pauper, Extended-Pauper but can be played in Legacy-Pauper
-Chromatic Sphere exists as an Uncommon (Invasion) and as a Common (Mirrodin). Since it appeared as a Common in an Extended legal set (Mirrodin), it is legal for Extended-Pauper.
-Chromatic Star exists as Common (Timespiral) and as an Uncommon (10E). Since it appeared as a Common in an Extended legal set (Timespiral), it is legal for Extended-Pauper
-Mogg Fanatic exists as a Common (Tempest) and as an Uncommon in 10E. It's not legal in Extended-Pauper, since it has not appeared as a common in an Extended legal set.
Extended Pauper is the format of the next Master. This means a card is only legal if it appeared as Common in any of the Extended legal sets (Onslaught, 8th until Shards of Alara).
Also, the normal Extended ban list applies:
-Aether Vial, Disciple of the Vault, Skullclamp and Sensei's Divining Top are banned.
Additionally to these bannings, Magic-league also applies Pauper-specific ban of
-Cranial Plating for balancing reasons.
I hope I could give you a good overview about this format, and that you can enjoy playing the upcoming Master. If there's any questions, ask in the comments of this article or in #judges4you, our irc channel for rules questions.
FlyingFreak on 2008-12-22 16:53 CET Pauper-Magic Master wow, nice :p
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TugaChampion on 2008-12-22 17:14 CET so the artifact lands aren't restricted?
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CMA-Flippi on 2008-12-22 17:19 CET artifact lands are legal 4x
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Socks3 on 2008-12-22 19:22 CET Ouch. Well, I guess affinity lost enough as is. I played one, I won 2-0 in what should have been a bad matchup for me.
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Poopsack2 on 2008-12-22 19:52 CET The master! Why not have it be a trial to see if people even like it?
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Socks3 on 2008-12-22 20:03 CET We've had quite a few minis today already. It seems we like it. I know I like a format where I don't have to worry about Bitterblossom.
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TripleSix on 2008-12-22 20:34 CET newb question... so we can't use any cards from timespiral?
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FlyingFreak on 2008-12-22 20:36 CET why not? We can use all the commons from Timespiral TripleSix ..
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Socks3 on 2008-12-22 20:42 CET Just not any with purple expansion symbols.
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trueeevil on 2008-12-22 23:09 CET Tribal flames is not legal in extended pauper as invasion rotated out.
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trueeevil on 2008-12-22 23:09 CET double post
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FlyingFreak on 2008-12-23 13:10 CET by trueeevil on 2008-12-22 23:09 CET
Tribal flames is not legal in extended pauper as invasion rotated out.
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Tribal Flames exist as a Common (Invasion) and as a timeshifted card (Timespiral). This means it is only legal in formats where Invasion is a legal set. It would not be legal in Standard-Pauper.
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He didn't said that it was legal in extended ...
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CMA-Flippi on 2008-12-23 19:45 CET trueevil is just stating the obvious once again :)
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Acid_Christ on 2008-12-28 03:05 CET You ban Cranial Plating but not Trinket Mage or Momentary Blink. Seems to me not much effort was put into this "balancing".
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CMA-Flippi on 2008-12-29 23:10 CET blink is easily beaten, cranial plating isnt
