Due to various commitments I’m publishing now this article, despite starting the initial draft at the end of december 2024.
To be honest I feel the delay actually helped me understanding a bit more the nowadays format and let me gather more thoughts, insigths and informations.

Premise:

Due to the current state of the metagame and the overall feeling of the players, it is crucial to point out whatever it’s critical, being the lack of certain strategies (e.g. Blue Counterspell decks), the relevant amount of Black grindy archetypes featuring Deadly Dispute and similar cards, or the presence of Writhing Chrysalis as top tier threat. Sadistic Glee is also somenthing often complained to be bad for the format.
In this article I will first wrote down, point by point, a material argumentation for the final conclusion: it’s better to change somenthing (what are the solutions?).
Whatever I’m writing is based (on my point of view); I’m an italian tabletop player and an MTGO content creator.
I’m not caring too much about grammar errors or script form because; being overly zealous over it it’s not worth the effort since the article is not meant for any commercial purpose or any big audience.

Index

Magic the Gathering design in the recent Years
Online, tabletop and big events metagames
Lack of colors/strategies?
Design/ban strategy
Metagame hosers
Format state
Bans & Unbans
Conclusions (tl;dr:)

1.Magic design

Since some 4 to 6 years ago MtG design is following up specific guidelines called F.I.R.E.. This design philosophy aims to improve the limited and constructed experience, especially for the less competitive and more casual oriented players.
F.I.R.E. is the achronim for Fun, Inviting, Replayble and Exciting.

R Is for Replayable – The key aspects of replayablility are balance and diversity. We try to get a wide variety of decks and strategies to about the right power level.

The new paradigm seeks more power and complexity for every rarity cards. We see less vanilla creatures and less efficient threats and answers, we call it power creep.

It is very unlikely to see a turnaround on this selling strategy.
WotC target are, likely, the big whales (players who are likely to spend relevant amounts of money on the game) and occasional players.
Occasionals can be described as people that don’t seek a major involvment in the competitive game, they may perhaps not even play constructed formats and they may favor more, rather than constructed events, limited formats and commander.
If so, the corp will is understandable but, at least from the viewpoint of this article writer, the organized game (so competitive tournaments) is still relevant.
If we assume that the game exists for the playerbase and not viceversa, being able to accomodate the need of events (beside FNM and MTGO Leagues) is one fundamental priority. Consequently there is the need of an healthy metagame.
We will talk later about bans & unbans, for now I just say that Pauper is cheap, the risk of losing money due to bans or the meta rotation is way less impactful than other formats. Thanks to the format being cheap, shopping a new deck is easier and probably not too much of a burden.

To end this premise: Magic formats are not the same as they used to be.
Even Pauper, which still is labelled as the most “old Magic” vibe among the competitive formats, is more FIRE-like Magic than before.

2.Online, tabletop and big events metagames

After the last Paupergeddon edition (Rome, 22nd to 24th november) the metagame and the need of bans started being the center of discussion.
The metagame in Rome was centered around two cards (Whriting Chrysalis and Deadly Dispute) and was lacking blue counterspell-based strategies, beside Mono Blue Faeries and Mono Blue Terror which are more aggro oriented than “blue control” shells like Jeskai Ephemerate or Dimir Faeries.

16th december came with an update to the ban&rescricted list.
The Pauper Format Panel is not limited to the usual b&r schedule, it can operate whenever there is the need, but it isn’t unusual to see a State of the Format video or a Pauper ban/unban coming along other formats update.

To summarize the video: Pauper isn’t unhealthy; Affinity, Kuldotha and Glee Combo (all the Glee variants) don’t have worrisome win rates on MTGO leagues.

That was… predictable.
Anyway, it’s relevant to point out how the metagame change based on the location, or on the geographic area.
By logic MTGO can be considered a country by itself: it has a specific playerbase and it isn’t located in any other place.
The reason why certain archetypes are more represented in a country/region/city can be tracked on how the metagame itself work. A format metagame is a sort of self-referring function: the presence of meta-decks lead and allow anti-meta decks and push out weak-to-meta decks.
And that may be the reason of why an archetype can win more here and being utterly unplayable there.

On Magic Online the metagame is faster: the amount of events and games played is higher on MTGO thanks to to the presence of 3 or more format Challenges per week and thanks to the MTGO League structrure, which allows you to play 5 or more matches in just a couple hours.
By the way fast metagame means decks rotation happens more frequently, while metagaming is harder because the deck-to-beat (hypotetically) is not the same week by week or month by month.
On the other hand, you may be able to head to only 2 or 3 medium sized paper tournaments (6 or more swiss rounds + top8) per month

For that reason when it comes to the deck choice there are differences based on the platform.
To be honest I am skeptical about the idea of certain archetypes being unplayable online due to the amount of clicks necessary to win, at most it’s related only to a small fraction of the format.
Just to say, it is true that Altar Tron is way worse on Magic Online, but the deck is bad aswell in paper, but due to it not being good in the current meta.
Another example is Gardens, an archetype very prone to draws: even thought the deck is extremely slow, on MTGO you can easily play 3 games but it is more played in paper than online.

MTGO Leagues

On Magic Online there is one single deck all over the place: Mono Red Kuldotha (at least in the leagues).
With the 20% circa of the metagame (by looking at MTG Goldfish) the deck seems the true and only deck-to-beat of Pauper, but you can argue it’s strenght is debated by pointing out how the deck is over-represented because fast and used by grinders who only seek the most effective way to win Treasure Chests on MTGO.
I believe this not completely the case; it is not so simple to understand why, unless you figure out what are the reason why people specifically 1)play in the event, 2)how they get rewarded and 3)what decks they expect to play against.
Format leagues on Magic Online aren’t the same kind of tournament you are able to play on your local game store, they aren’t a real tournament in fact. Because you are not going to play 5 rounds in a row, but just 5 matches with randomly selected players like you, who are queued and are trying to find a match.
This means your score doesn’t matter and you can get paired with a person that just started their league or have a completely opposite score, compared to yours.
While it is true that a small portion of the playerbase tries to maximize (amount of game played in the less time possible) their results from the leagues,it is also true that, due to the structure of the event, a larger part of people prefer to play casually most times or sometimes (be it while on a Discord call with friends or after the end of a workday to chill out).
To summarize Mono Red Kuldotha (or whatever deck was played before it) is good as a deck by itself and it accomplish certain specifics (being relatively easy and fast) for the large crowd, which are for fun players, or people who aren’t much accostumed with the online game (and are more likely to loose to time-out or by missclicking) and (maybe most relevantly) people that don’t want to spend too much mental energy playing on pc.

Medium sized / Big events

MTGO prize structure makes it easier to go on pair on the entry fee; giving you at least the same amount of play points if you reach top32 provides larger flexibility on the deck choice, letting you pick less powerful but more straightforward decks.

At the start of 2025 the usual size for the Pauper Challenge goes from 50 to 60 players; for this article purposes we should differentiate in an understandable way the tabletop events which features a swiss phase followed up by a top8 phase:

small events: 5 to 6 rounds
medium events: 7 to 8 rounds
big events: 9 or more rounds
major events: events with swiss rounds getting played over 2 days

You can see the recommended number of rounds, compared to the players amount, on the Magic: the Gathering rules (Appendix E—Recommended Number of Rounds in Swiss Tournaments), or by clicking this link.

In Italy we have all the aforementioned kind of events. Starting from small locals and FNM, to medium or big sized locals and major events.
Of course it is worth to take a minute to explain even further my bold statement since Pauper is considered and viewed just a small casual format by most (which if fine, not knowing somenthing doesn’t make you evil!).

In Italy and in some other european countries a crowd of aficionados have being building the structure of Lega Pauper Italia (eng: Italian Pauper League) since 2014 to organize and provide Pauper events to local communities. These, refered as “Pauper Leagues”, are spread all over various provinces, cities and regions in the italian peninsula (and in other countries: I rememeber England, Spain, Poland and Croatia but there are in other nations aswell).
Even thought I’m not taking on account Pauper communities from other continents, but in Brazil and in Japan aswell the format thrives (but they aren’t related to the european scene structure due to obvious logistical difficulties).
The bigger events of the “League” are the so-called “Paupergeddon”, which are a sort of national or regional. No kind of invite is required to partecipate, but the size of the event and the location are steadily growing due to the wide interest and huge success the format is still having.
Part of the reason d’etré of LPI is the Paupergeddon and the seasonal championship held by the local Pauper leagues provide 1 bye for the first placing players for the following Paupergeddon edition.
There are 3 seasons and so 3 Paupergeddons:

winter edition in Lecco (a city near Milan)
spring edition in Pisa
autumn edition in Rome

The national event Paupergeddon started as a small event, with only 48 players in the first edition back in 2015, but step by step is now what I called a major event, showcasing in the last edition in Rome 13 swiss rounds and more than 700 players, from all over the continent. The next edition will be held in Lecco in March 22nd-23rd and it’s already sold-out, capping at 750 players.

Pauper Challenges

Regarding the tournament prize, on MTGO a 3-3 in a 50 players event is enough if you just want back part of the 250 play points (or 25 tix) entry fee, while on tabletop most times you cash-out only by placing in the top 8, or maybe not (due to travel expenses and the nature of what you win).

By taking a look at tabletop events (here on Pauperwave) and MTGO Pauper Challenge meta recaps (thank you Kirblinxy for you work on collecting the Challenges data!) we can compare these two enviroments.
Beside the difference in percentage over the metagame of single archetypes (just to say Blue Terror variants are often good on Magic Online but they perform poorly in italian tabletop events) both paper and online meta has the same top 3 decks, making it kind of harder to separete them.

At a first glance the paper meta has more BGx Deadly Dispute decks (especially BG Glee and BGR Glee) and the online meta has more Ux Tempo decks, like Terror or Fae, and Kuldotha.
In an unexpected turn of events,in the tabletop metagame the blue Tempo decks are replaced with Jund Wildfire.

This difference, both in the perceived metagame and in the effective metagame, is probably what is making the playerbase think somenthing should be banned.
It may be safe to assume that, due to MTGO having mostly small events (6 rounds challenges) and a smaller playerbase where the top competitors are a small amount of grinders (which also shape the meta, being consistently on the top8), it’s much easier to build around the metagame and to play archetypes meant to counter the most prevalent strategies.

3.Lack of colors/strategies?

Having a balance between a fair amount of archetypes is the key for a good format and it is hard to attain.
Hypotetically the most competitive enviroment is the strictier one, but a format with just a couple available decks or strategies is bad for the players (which are persons investing time and money to get entertainment and fulfillment) and it’s not enjoyable.

The current Pauper format lacks the presence of two colors, White and Blue. Also doesn’t have strategies that used to be relevant and powerful, which were playing those colors:

Blue Counterspell grindy decks (Jeskai Ephemerate, Dimir Faeries, ecc.)
White Midrange aggressive decks (Boros Synth, Boros Bully, ecc.)

On top of that the green color is somewhat alive only thanks to Writhing Chrysalis and Basking Broodscale.

Counterspell piles

Right now the blue color is still played but the most successful decks are Mono Blue Faeries and Mono Blue Terror, which in Pauper are competitive mostly when the format is warped towards unbalanced decks.
Explaining this phenomenon doesn’t take much mind: blue decks started splashing another color to have more effective ways to interact with fair creature based strategies, but when the format speeds up too much or the card advantage required to play the control role is not enough in the Ux Control shell, then the Blue Aggro-Control shells revert back to the more aggressive decklists.
In the end the fault for the lack of power in the Control-ish blue decks is certainly related to Ephemerate and the monarch not being anymore good as they used to be.
Deadly Dispute and its clones are now the staple card advantage spells, as Preordain used to be the premier blue card manipulation alongside iconic cards like Counterspell and Gush, somewhat (I understand the weirdness of this comparison).
Pauper started speeding up since the print of Commander Legends in 2020, with Boarding Party and Annoyed Altisaur.Due to this trend we got (both in Standard related and not-related sets) a lot of fast payoffs in the last 4 years.
So it isn’t surprising to not see anymore (or not much as before) the mentioned archetypes, which didn’t get any new key prints and by now they play alike the old and weaker Pauper.

White decks

White used to be good alongisde red or black in midrange/aggro decks focused on Kor Skyfisher, Palace Sentinels, Guardian of the Guildpact or Battle Screech.
It never did much good in Pauper in other strategies (besides specific cards like Ephemerate, Sunscape Familiar or Stonehorn Dignitary) and doesn’t color me surprised: the last three impactful prints in white are Thraben Charm, All that Glitters (which is now banned) and Novice Inspector.

The white color is bad, keeping in mind what we said in this article, it doesn’t provides good threats nor enablers.
White was good in previous metagames, in example in 2015 in form of Boros Monarch and Boros Bully or in 2023 in form of Glitters.deks, but nowadays the small creatures (Glint Hawk, Thraben Inspector and Kor Skyfisher) or the finishers (Palace Sentinels and the Monarch or Guardian of the Guildpact and Pestilence) aren’t impactful enough.

Green decks

For most of the life of Pauper green has always been a background color, even thought occasionaly archetypes featuring Lead the Stampede and Winding Way (Elves, Walls Combo, Walls Cascade) became a relevant part of the metagame.
To be fair, from 2017 to 2020 thanks to Burning-Tree Emissary Mono Green Stompy held its own place among the tier 1s as one of the most consistent Aggro decks, being able to end the game by turn 4.
The demise of Stompy came by the hand of various factors but it started with Prismatic Strands and ended with Krark-Clan Shaman. No going back, it’s just an old deck.
Similarly the Lead the Stampede Combo decks had their relevant amount of metashare, but are now sistematically bad due to Krark-Clan Shaman, which is a one mana Wrath of God, and the Glee Combo deck, which is faster and plays Snuff Out, the most efficient 1×1 removal spell.
Right now Gruul Ramp is a valid strategy, thanks to Whriting Chrysalis. Ramp is well placed in the current meta thanks both to the chrysalis providing a great card to fight more aggressive archetypes, but also because has a dedicated sideboard to fight the two worst cards for it: Sadistic Glee (Gruul can’t resolve an X/X creature that generates a swarm of blockers) and Toxin Analysis (played alongside Krark-Clan Shaman ofc).

4.Format design and ban strategy

When it comes to ban&unban in Pauper I’m rather radical.
I’d love to see drastic changes like removing all the artifacts lands from the format, while bringing back cards such as Sojourner’s Companion and Atog.
To be fair the Pauper Format Panel already explained to the community their will to keep the format at an higher power level by not banning the artifact lands.
For that reason I think it’s pointless to pivot toward such an irrealistic scenario.
Instead, we should focus on what are the PFP’s targets.
What I am assuming as their objectives are:

keeping the format at high stakes (low amount of tier 1 decks and really strong format defining staples and strategies);
archetypes winrates should be lower than 60-55%
providing a cool format, for both competitive and less competitive players.

Or at least this is what I understood by reading and listening to Gavin Verhey’s articles and videos on his Good Morning Magic YouTube channel and on the Wizards of the Coast website. Am I wrong? Tell me on the comments.

Talking about bans, the last tree format updates were centered around these themes:

In this article I want to provide a valid counter-argument to the no-change. I believe the format could be better thanks to a nerf, but I aswell think not banning somenthing on 16th december was the right call (besides unbanning one or more cards).

In the final paragraphs of this article I will finally explain what I think must be axed, or revived. Before that we should talk about the artifacts lands, which are the elephant in the room.

Keeping in mind the PFP will of having an high powered format, the artifact lands (and every kind of related interaction) are going to be one of the main staple macro-strategy in Pauper.
It is resonable but, from my mere point of view, I don’t agree with having decks like Affinity being able to be so good for so long and also being able to play the role of format fun police (or I’d say warp the format around itself) for so many metas and years.
When it comes to banning or unbanning I have a more radical view of cutting the issue at the roots, but doesn’t mean I am in the right of course.
It is obvious how the artifact lands will inevitably force WotC to ban somenthing from the format every 1 or 2 years, due to nature of the format and due to the nature of the Magic: the Gathering F.I.R.E. design.

Keep also in mind that bans and unban are meant to open the metagame, to open the decks availability at higher stakes and competitive events. This meaning a card could be cut off from the format regardless of whatever is power level (real or perceived) is.

5.Hosers

A hoser can be something that destroys, prohibits, or prevents something specific. “Color hosers” are cards that punish players for playing a particular color.

In a nutshell: playing or not playing cards/decks based on the presence of other cards and/or decks in the metagame.

The aim of the B&R List updates is providing more variety to any MtG format afflicated by them. This due to the presence of cards or strategies that are too much played or don’t allow certain cards, strategies or archetypes to be played.

Just to be clear, there’s no metric that precisely states how many copies of a certain card, or how much meta% of certain decks, should be played. It is aswell true for the winrate%.
Anyway we there is the customary law of Magic:the Gathering, a set of non-spoken (or half-spoken) rules that states what usually the game should be:

the metashare of a single is better to be lower than 15-20%
the winrate% of an archetype (so the average of every player in a single tournament or in a highly watched environment, like the MTGO leagues/challenges) should not go over 55-60%.

Generally speaking:

if one deck wins too much even when played poorly -> bad
if one deck is played a lot and the wr% is low -> good

Anyway it is a common occurance for any MtG format to have cards, like Krark-Clan Shaman for example, not allowing certain strategies to have a decent spot in the metagame. Even when the format, being Pauper or Legacy or whatever, is balaced enough.
Going on with the same example, Krark-Clan Shaman in artifact based strategies is the truest kind of hoser, limiting (or not allowing) go-wide strategies in the competitive enviroment.
Be wary: I’m not saying that KCS should be banned. KCS is fine when the KCS decks are not much prevalent or when the trategies weak to KCS are still somewhat playable thanks to an hard counter to the card (e.g. Hydroblast).

The same pattern can be seen for other archetypes and this is undeniably good if you like competitive play because having the right mixture of bad decks, good decks and a third category between those two its what we call metagame.
This can be seen on the correlation between the presence of Mono Red Kuldotha in the metagame, alongside the presence of sweepers in the meta-decks (e.g. End the Festivities in the Kuldotha maindeck).

The line is drawn, generally speaking, when the hate cards are all-around played but the hated decks are still overperforming, in what should be a poor place to compete.

Relevant to note, there are at least four hosers in today Pauper:

Mono Red Kuldotha: prevents decks from not having answers to swarm strats and lifegain to answer the burn spells.
Krark-Clan Shaman: a very low amount of archetypes relying on developing the board (either with critters or durdling) can effectively fight against it, in example Walls Combo is bad when Krark-Clan Shaman is good.
Whriting Chrysalis: both the best blocker and excellent threat.
Black card advantage: drawing cards in black it’s just better than doing the same thing in blue (basic survival of the fittest).

An hoser is not necessarily bad for the format.

6.Format state

Removing or bringing back powerful stuff is a risky move. The reason why Wizards of the Coast takes a lot of time is to be sure this heavy decision doesn’t backfire.
The direct damage of a wrong pick is not only the lack of improvement to the format, but the worsening of it aswell.

From my point of view, as content creator and competitive player, there’s not much room for improvement and playability for the tier 2 decks.
The top3 or 4 decks are just way much better compared to others, giving the feeling of staleness of the metagame which is then labelled as solved.
I suppose the point of view of the average Pauper player is pretty much the same, with a sense of unsufferableness about the toptiers and the lack of variety if you want to play to win.

As I wrote in the second paragraph “2.Online, tabletop and big events metagames”, we now have a very peculiar situation where the metagame, especially the tabletop one, is focused on black based strategies relying on Ichor Wellspring, Deadly Dispute and a various amount of Deadly Dispute clones.
Decks featuring Basking Broodscale and Sadistic Glee are the predominant Dispute.dek both in paper (18-20% of the metagame in the last relevant sized events since Paupergeddon Rome 2024) and online (16-17% if you sum BG Glee and Jund Glee metashares on MTG Goldfish at december 2024) thanks to how this kind of archetype works.
Both the combo and the engine behind it are good.
Having an X/X creature is good by itself and allows an extra combo in Makeshift Munitions or Nadier’s Nightblade that let you win on the spot.
I have read a lot of complains about the combo being too fast, but to be honest what I’ve found more obnoxious is the deck resilience, thanks to card advantage and protection spells.
So it does not surprise me the rise of aggressive strategies and the related lack of blue control decks (e.g. Familiars, Jeskai Ephemerate).
Blue Control decks are usually weak to a)Combo, b)hyper-aggro and c)tempo.dek; Blue Control decks also didn’t really get anything relevant from the last Modern Horizon set (fetchlands, Thraben Charm), which in return re-shaped the format by adding a competitive tier 1 combo strategy (somenthing unusual in Pauper) but creature based (somenthing very usual in Pauper), alongside exhuming Gruul Ramp.

It’s understandable if you are worried about Glee Combo or Whriting Chrysalis and about Deadly Dispute.
The main concern (both mine and yours I suppose) is the format not having more than 3 colors (at least if you want to approach it competitively).
In Pauper it’s very unlikely to have a way to punish value engines besides having a gameplan that try to win before the card advantage really matters. Historically this is done by playing hyper-aggro decks or cheap interaction.
While hyper-aggro exists in form of Mono Red Kuldotha and Gruul Ramp (once a Midrange Ponza deck now Aggro or Ramp, if you like to categorize), the “Spell Pierce decks” are available mostly as Mono Blue Terror and Mono Blue Faeries.
In normal enviroments Blue decks performs better when they splash another color for better removals, or threats.
In the last years the Aggro-Control macro-archetype evolved into a midrange-ish shell that relies on the Monarch (Thorn of the Black Rose, Crimson Fleet Commodore) to grind out the opponent. Consequently Mono Blue Faeries moved toward the opposite direction, becoming the more aggresive Aggro-Control deck, more leaning to Aggro than to Control.
The print of Tolarian Terror allowed the rebrand of Dimir Delve(r) in Dimir Terror, with a more straightforward aggressive gameplan, and finally Cryptic Serpent let the archetype drop the second color, preserving and enhancing the beatdown gameplan. 5/5 creatures are better than Spellstutter Sprite to aggro.

Right now there’s a resurgence in Mono Blue Faeries and Dimir Faeries. The deck is supposedly good into Glee.dek, but while the combo gameplan is weak to countermagic, Spellstutter Sprite and Ninja of the Deep Hours, Glee sideboard has more than enough mass removals and Snuff Outs to play the control role in the match-up post-side, reverting the roles in the match-up. And also Whriting Chrysalis is staple in a large enough part of the meta.

Whriting Chrysalis is another all-rounder card that provides a whole set of different advantages, while being extremely efficient.
Probably its worth to note the interaction between the eldrazi spawns and the dispute effects, even thought most times is just the chrysalis good at chumpblocking at first and at attacking later.
The voices of complaint around the eggplant-like monster are related to it having reach and devoid, so an annoyingly big and though threat.

Make blue great again?

The black color is now better than blue to draw cards, so the most resonable thing to do is wait for a new payoff or finisher, similarly to All that Glitters which made the white color tier 1.
I’m referring to somenthing akin to Tolarian Terror, but only for late-game-focused blue interactive archetypes. Well talk about it later in the unban section of this article (Unban and relative scenarios)

7.Ban & Unban

Banning somenthing from the current Pauper is hard, the topdecks feature not just one single card but the whole draw spells package.
Be either the black card advantage or the MH3 gruul eldrazi creature, the format is in one weird shape. And there’s also Glee Combo, maybe the strongest archetype right now.
The Jund dominance showcase the best kind of shell you can play right now. By slotting the same 12 to 24 non-land cards you have, probably, the most competitive decklist you may able to run in the current metagame.

Those cards are the Black Card Advantage Package and some Modern Horizons non-sense:

Deadly Dispute and other draw spells (Eviscerator’s Insight, Reckoner’s Bargain and Fanatical Offering, alongside Ichor Wellspring
Cleansing Wildfire (mana ramp engine fueled by MH2 artifact lands)
Refurbished Familiar
Whriting Chrysalis

The core of the “most broken cards” list can be round down to Ichor Wellspring and the 6 to 8 instant speed draw spells, cards that homogenise the format a little too much.

Glee.dek

The deck is just great, it features top nocht interaction and the best card advantage.

The combo need only two cards. The finisher often (Makeshift Munitions, Nadier’s Nightblade) is not even necessary because an infinite-infinite Basking Broodscale let you win through the combat step.

The most troublesome part of the combo is the resilience of the shell. Explosive decks that can potentially kill by turn 3 are usually incostintent, but not in this case. The plethora of card advantge provides enough resources to grind out the blue based decks and the black control decks that usually are the predator of the creature based combo decks in Pauper.
Basking Broodscale is the card that should be banned. The lizard as itself is bad as the enchantment, but it has a much more convoluted design; the broodscale is unlikely to get a functional reprint than Sadistic Glee (e.g. Blade of the Bloodchief in Zendikar).

In my opinion removing Glee Combo from the format doesn’t provide a relevant enough improvement to the format; right now Golgari Glee and Jund Glee are “just” the best Black Draw decks.
If you tink somenthing should be done with this deck, the ideal best scenario is the one without either the combo or the resilience which come from the Black Card Advantage.
The Pauper format without Glee Combo would be a better place for Midrange decks like Grixis Affinity and Jund Wildfire, giving room to more sideboard slots for Kuldotha and Gruul Ramp or Terror.

Whriting Chrysalis

I believe the main reason archetypes naturally weak to Whriting Chrysalis aren’t played much right now is just them being weak to meta-decks.
Chrysalis is “one hell of a card” but all the cards played along with it are on par with chrysalis and don’t give much room to the nowadays bad cards.

Unless RGx decks start rampaging all over the place is very unlikely to see the eggplant getting axed.
Even thought the card is powerful it’s “just a creature”, the easiest kind of permanent you can answer to. Since every color and/or strategy can kill or play around a creature and since the chrysalis isn’t spread as much as “other problematic cards”, it’s hard to find any reason to remove it from the format.

I want to say, again, that Whriting Chrysalis is very strong and it’s not bold to say it could be banned if and when the time will require such action by WotC. But I’m saying aswell that’s too early and there are cards, interactions and strategies more relevant for now.

Banning just Whriting Chrysalis is likely going to kill Gruul Ramp and Jund Wildfire, thus allowing Grixis Affinity to reign over the format again. On the positive note flying critters (Mono Blue Faeries, White Weenie and similar decks) will have more freedom, but while contending the skies with Refurbished Familiar.

Deadly Dispute, Ichor Wellspring

It may be the right moment to tone down the Black Card Advantage Package by removing the best card advantage spell in the recent years.
Dispute provides both two new cards and one treasure token. That token is greatly valuable, the extra mana matters, you can chain dispute into dispute forever (so no drawback from Deadly Dispute).
Even if getting value from the sacrificed permanent is just a cool interaction, providing mana and also fixing it can be adressed as an issue. Creating one Lotus Petal fixes the mana issues of greedy strategies (e.g. 3c decks).

Examples of Deadly Dispute resolving mana issues are clearly shown in

Affinity: bi-color deck splashing blue, the treasure token matter to cast 1 or 2 mana interaction (especially after getting hit by a land denial spell). This is clearly the archetype where the mana ramp is less relevant due to the namesake keyword (Affinity for artifacts) alongside artifact lands.
Jund Glee, Jund Wildfire, Jund Gardens: especially Gardens, which has the worst manabase among these decks, D.D. let you cast “off-color” threats like Whriting Chrysalis.
The Jund Glee variant not playing Cleansing Wildfire has often a straight golgari manabase with just one single basic mountain; most you are force to rely on Shambling Ghast and/or Deadly Dispute to generate red mana to cast the red spells.
Golgari Glee, Altar Tron: these decks are mostly mono black splashing green for few key spells, such as Basking Broodscale or Weather the Storm. Nonetheless these strategies are less color greedy (compared to the previous ones) they get the major benefit from the mana ramp, letting them have more room for manoeuvre. This means casting one or more protection or combo piece or hate card at the most relevant time and even killing your opponent 1 or 2 turns earlier.
Regarding Glee is not so unlickely to Deadly Dispute in the opponent end step, untap, set the combo and pass the turn with just the treasure tokens as a way to cast Tamiyo’s Safekeeping. Or, when you don’t have enough mana to activate the Broodscale ability and cast Nadier’s Nightblade, to Deadly Dispute a Khalni Garden token to trigger Sadistic Glee and cast the Nightblade with the treasure token mana.

Ichor Wellspring is the main dispute sacrifice fooder thanks to it being card neutral (it recycle itself) and due to it costing only colorless mana. So basically the card is just the perfect fit for its role.

The PFP some time ago told us they discussed on it, removing it is reasonable to temper with the BCA Package, but the card is likely not good as much as Deadly Disput. Ichor + dispute may be resonable in that regard.

In Pauper casting first an Ichor Wellspring on turn 2, or landing a Khalni Garden at the very first turn of the game, followed up by Deadly Dispute speed ups you whole gameplan.
While hyper-aggressive strategies (Kuldotha Red, Terror and Gruul Ramp) try to kill you as fast as possible, ramping to your critical turn while digging in your deck generate a win-win situation.

Krark-Clan Shaman

I see Krark-Clan Shaman as the epitome of the MH2 lands issue.
In my opinion the artifact lands, especially the tapped lands are so strong that the format is centered all around them. The tapped lands are more troublesome, compared to the untapped ones due to two reasons:

the nature of the artifact hate in Pauper;
Pauper doesn’t have untapped dual lands.

Generally speaking artifact lands are very powerful due to them being free artifacts: no mana cost and no deckbuilding cost (other stuff, like Ichor Wellspring or Blood Fountain, forces you to “play less cards” for the benefit of having these objets in your list).

Hating the artifacts in Pauper

Playing Vault of Whispers or Seat of the Synod expose you to Ancient Grudge or Gorilla Shaman, at most to Dust to Dust.

Cards like Stony Silence or Meltdown don’t exist in Pauper.

Silverbluff Bridge has indestructible which is, beside being very very weird, strong enough to worsen the cards that used to be premium removals for the Affinity engine.
Welp, the static ability of the bridges provides you a powerful interaction with Cleansing Wildfire, giving you an even better Growth Spiral but at the same time fix two long going issues with metalcraft decks: mana fix and artifact hate.

Pauper Lands

Affinity has been the premium artifact deck in Pauper for a very long time. For the first part of its story, not having dual lands forced Affinity to play off-color lands and, aswell, to play cards like Springleaf Drum, Chromatic Star, Prophetic Prism or Navigator’s Compass to fix the mana.

After MH2 all those cards started being dropped from the various artifact based shells. They are simply weak. Weaker to other artifacts you can play (Blood Fountain, Nihil Spellbomb) or uneccesary.
In example, until All that Glitters was legal the Azorius Glitters deck played only Springlead Drum as artifact spell (the artifact count was provided for the most part by creatures and lands).

Kuldotha Rebirth, Goblin Bushwhacker

Mono Red Kuldotha is the most successful Aggro deck in the current meta despite Monastery Swiftspear being banned in Pauper since the print of Goblin Tomb Raider (or more correctly 1 or 2 months later).

The deck often gets named in the Gavin Verhey’s Format Health updtate videos and has fearsome starts thanks to Goblin Tomb Raider, Kuldotha Rebirth and Goblin Bushwhacker.

It is resonable to assume that Kuldotha as a deck could be an issue to Pauper, but its winrate is still stable (both in MTGO Leagues and Challenges) and doesn’t convert well in tabletop events.

While the combo fast aggressive threats and the burn spells are indeed strong, forcing you slott a relevant amount of answers to both the swarm gameplan (Sandstorm, Breath Weapon, etc.) and the reach (es. Weather the Storm), the deck and its tools are still fair on their own.
Compared to answering other broken strategies and mechanics in the format, killing a bunch of creatures and gaining life is kind of easy.
So we are talking on Kuldotha pushing the format velocity, more ore less killing you by turn 3 or 4.

If you want to look on it to find somenthing grave is the other decks need to have both mass removals and lifegain (or any other way to prevent lifeloss, like Hydroblast or a fast kill).

Thought, the major issue are the fast starts with Goblin Tomb Raider or Goblin Bushwhacker and Kuldotha Rebirth.
It’s very difficult for most or all decks to overcome Mono Red Kuldotha when they start the game with Kuldotha-Bushwhacker (two cards 8 damage combo) before turn 4, especially alongside other threats or a lot of Lightning Bolts or Galvanic Blasts.
Sometimes they have it and you can’t do nothing. Mostly happens on pre-side games or when you hard mull to find the mass removal.

So let’s be frank: if you play fair Mono Red Kuldotha is another archetype that, alongside Dispute.deks and Glee.deks, has elements you can not interact well.
Kuldotha Rebirth requires very specific hate in form of mass removals, pushing out slower Wrath of God effects (e.g. Crypt Rats) and making room to faster versions, like Sandstorm.
This is true aswell for Goblin Bushwhacker, a card that works on the same spectrum by promoting the go-wide Aggro gameplan of Mono Red Kuldotha.

Considerations

The Pauper metagame is stable, but at the price of pushing out less powerful strategies.

In my opinion the right call, for now, is cutting out Deadly Dispute from the format because there’s less variety in Pauper with it.
I also assume the Glee.dek is likely to get banned
It would be resonable aswell to unban at least two cards, because their ban was effective and resonable for a metagame way slower to the current one: Prophetic Prism and Bonder’s Ornament.

I’m also going to discuss over another worth card: Peregrine Drake.

Unban and relative scenarios

To be fair, Flicker Tron and other blink strategies are bad right now.
At the time the Prophetic Prism ban occured, Flicker Tron was a sort of off-tier deck played just by a few people having awesome results in the MTGO Pauper (we are talking of 80% circa post sb winrates).

Banning the colored mana sources from Flicker Tron was a resonable choice to prevent the deck to become again an issue, since in slower formats Big Mana Control decks with Ghostly Flicker or Ephemerate are very strong.

My argument for giving back the mana enabler to Flicker Tron is the format speed:

Control strategies are, as we already said, weak right now. The format is fast and Flicker Tron is bad when it comes to dealing to turn 4 kill decks. Flicker Tron works fine against Midrange and Control archetypes but is bad against hyper-Aggro or Combo decks.
2025 Midrange decks are less clunky compared to the 2022 corrispectives. Most times they play Deadly Dispute, but regardless of that they have better and faster payoffs (e.g. Whriting Chrysalis).
Flicker Tron is specialized in dealing with linear strategies or, anyway, with decks that are too slow to put pressure in only one single way. The current meta has various decks not having just one gameplan or, rather, they are flexible enough to play interaction wile still being the aggro deck in the match-up (Kuldotha, Gruul Ramp, Terror, etc.).
Assuming an unban of both mana rocks, Flicker Tron is forced to cut up to 8 cards, but it’s pressured to play enough interaction to stop Glee from comboing off, Gruul to play the initiative, Kuldotha to burn you or any deck to destroy its lands.

Tronlands are also missing one crucial aspect. But let’s first dig down over the specifics of these two cards:

Prophetic Prism

The main concerning issue regarding Flicker Tron is the lack of good mana.
The deck focuses on casting spells from a large varieties of colors and manafixing is a tall cost since you are required to invest time, tempo and cards over it.
If Arcum’s Astrolabe is banned for fixing your mana for only 1 mana when you cast it, with the Urza lands you are doing the same since tapping a colorless lands nets you 2 mana.

All right, that was bad, back in 2020 or earlier. I think that’s not it anymore.

While talking about Prophetic Prism the only actual and factual argument is Flicker Tron, not Affinity.
The prism is bad to fix mana because it costs you whole mana just to cast it, while giving you back only one card.
By taking a look at 2021 (and early 2022) Affinity lists you can see the archetype progressively dropping the prism over more 1 mana cards like Nihil Spellbomb and Blood Fountain.
The presence of the MH2 lands, alongside Deadly Dispute requiring the sacrifice of an artifact and providing color, just made Prophetic Prism a relic of bygone times.

Bonder’s Ornament

Often people claims that ornament is stronger than prism. I say it’s the opposite.

While this was true when both cards were legal and played alongside, it is clear how, in the current metagame, that wouldn’t be true anymore.

Bonder’s Ornament was a great engine when the format was dominated by the monarch mechanic, providing an even slower and interactible form of card advantage, giving the control and midrange strategies both an engine to get to the late game and the finisher itself (since Pauper was more focused on card advantage).

Right now Bonder’s Ornament is bad as mana rock and even worse as card draw spell. Tapping 4 mana to draw one card is crap, you can get a better effect in Thorn of the Black Rose or Crimson Fleet Commodore if you aren’t playing Deadly Dispute and you want a card-draw engine.

I also question the playability of Bonder’s Ornament in

Flicker Tron: you don’t have enough room for the whole playset. Do you have time to first cast a 3 mana rock and then pay another 4 mana? That’s expensive.
Green Ramp: I can just play more threats? Gruul (and whatever green based ramp deck might appear) is better as an aggressive deck rather than a controllish one. But I concur the card can be an asset against grindy decks, at least post side.

Jayemdae Tome banned? No thanks, free the beast.

Finding a meaning in the Tron lands

The urzatron was one of the best engines when the format was slow, filled with midrange-ish decks and the whole point of the game was winning throught the combat step.

While the starting hand is now more relevant than it used to be in the Flicker Tron era, what is laking now Flicker Tron is a way to keep the hand filled without falling behind the opponent gameplan.

Deadly Dispute decks have more card advantage, Aggro decks are faster than you.
To be fair the unban of Prophetic Prism can provide enough card advantage to the deck, by letting the Tron pile to rely heavily on Ghostly Flicker (alongside Mulldrifter). Flicker is a versatile card that is merely lacking low mana cost targets.
When you, on Tron, have 8 eggs you make an omelette.

To compare Lorien Revealed to Ghostly Flicker targetting Prophetic Prism and Energy Refractor (netting you 2 cards at instant speed), the Lord of the Rings sorcery isn’t great. Every urzatron deck requires the urza lands right? So you are forced to play a bunch colorless and for that reason having UU to cast Lorien Revealed slow you down quite a lot; fetching an island is resonable only if you don’t have any better land drop or if you don’t have Energy Refractor in play.

Peregrine Drake, High Tide

For who doesn’t know how these cards work, they both enable infinite mana comboes.
Peregrine Drake does that with Ghostly Flicker and Archaeomancer. You blink the two creatures, then find another Archaeomancer to loop the finisher (e.g. Lightning Bolt),
High Tide similarly can be used in a Flicker shell, or just to generate a relevant amount of mana alongside untap spells like Psychic Puppetry or Twiddle.

The silly idea of unbanning Peregrine Drake came to me few months ago. I was recording one video for my YouTube channel, discussing over the metagame and the other stuff we talked above.

My point is: if the metagame is so fast and blue counterspell piles that tries to win in the lategame (e.g. Jeskai Ephemerate) aren’t playable, unbanning somenthing that helps only the slow blue control decks makes sense.

By that logic, Peregrine Drake is more safer than Cloud of Faeries because it costs more mana, while being very bad against combat oriented decks and while being a 2/3 creature (so an easy card to deal with).
Cloud of Faeries is also great in Mono Blue Faeries (I don’t like playing against Faeries).

To be fair I believe Peregrine Drake is a risky unban since the card can easily combo off by turn 5 with “just 3” other cards (Ghostly Flicker, Archaeomancer and Mulldrifter let you draw your deck) or even earlier thanks to creatures like Sunscape Familiar or Nightscape Familiar.
While playing the traditional role of a Control deck, Ux Drake can kill you in a snap if you don’t have an answer or if you don’t respect it. The Control deck can easily reverse the role of Beatdown and Control in the match, similarly to Glee post-sideboard gameplan against beatdown archetypes.

Even thought Izzet Drake was the best variant among the Drake decks, nowadays the best decklist will likely be Dimir or Azorius. Snuff Out wans’t a good card at the time and Ephemerate was printed a couple years later its ban.
But be wary that Peregrine Drake is good in Flicker Tron, especially with Energy Refractor. For that reason it is clear how bringing back both Prophetic Prism and Peregrine Drake could be dangerous (and dumb).

To end this discourse: Peregrine Drake might be a cool addition in a format warped around Deadly Dispute piles and Aggro decks, but in the eventuality of changes to the current meta (e.g. Deadly Dispute ban), then would be safer to keep the drake banned.

Regarding Hight Tide, I talked with Saidin.Raken about it and the argumentation on how the deck you can play around it is slow in the current Pauper and how Pyroblast or Blue Tempo decks are largely played is solid, but I still think that it may be too strong for the format.

We can summarize the problematics with both Peregrine Drake and High Tide as inability of non-blue decks or non-red decks to interact effectively with the Flicker Comboes. From my point of view Peregrine Drake has a lower power level compared to High Tide because you need creatures, alive creatures, while High Tide is just chaining spells until you kill your opponent with some big mana spell (Kaeverk’s Torch, Stream of Thought, etc.).

In my opinion wether to unban or not these cards, it would be better to think if having them in the format is right.
At least for the variety of Pauper.

You can try to bring back Flicker Control-Combo, but how many archetypes and strategies are now available? Are we forcing out decks by bringing back cards that already proved to be ban worthy?

Other cards from the banlist

Without changing ban and design philosophies, it’s safe to assume that it’s for the better of the format to not unban anything (beside the before mentioned cards).

Beside the Storm cards, the Affinity cards and the Initiative creatures, everything else is stuff that generate mana or don’t need mana to be cast.

Yeah, there’re also Hymn to Tourach and Synkhole.
Those cards are bad news because they kill you on turn 1, by cutting off your resources or by forthing you back too much on the game.

Cloudpost is the urzatron but better. Glimmerpost is strong with Ghostly Flicker but the strong point of these lands is needing just two posts to have more mana than what you are supposed to have.

Gush, Daze and Invigorate are an interesting pick. In my opinion that’s not the right time to have them back.

Invigorate leads too easily to turn 2 kills. Let’s wait for more 1 mana removals, maybe that would be enough.

Gush and Daze are clearly going to make Mono Blue Faeries and Ux Terror very oppressive.
These two archetypes are legitimately played in the Glee metagame and have the anti-meta niche where they pack a lot of answers for red (hydroblast), artifacts and enchantments(Annul, Steel Sabotage).
Their gameplan is not letting you and they die when they brick.

Gush provides a way to restart the game or to put pressure while holding back resource or answers.
Daze let you push more pressure in the early game, which already is the part of the game in which they perform better (since most removals are pricy and they play conditional answers such as Spell Pierce and trading 1×1 in the first turns is usually still a good deal for Faeries).

8.Conclusions (tl;dr:)

While I have a strong opinion on what should be done, I think the format could be improved even in a different way from what I envision as being the best for it.
The current situation in Pauper is relatively not new, but came after some years of relatively good metagames and improvements, thanks to nicely timed bans (e.g. Initiative creatures).

Like most of you I believe there is the need of a ban (and eventually an unban).

After talking over the problematic cards I still do not think it’s easy to understand how many cards should be removed from the format to make enough improvements. If we ban just a couple cards it is clear how the format will just move over the next broken card from the same design or macro-archetype.

The design of nowadays MtG is clearly giving lot of resources to Mono Red Aggro and to Black Artifacts, while blue and white are more or less tier 3 colors.

Green used to be bad and unplayable, mostly thanks to Krark-Clan Shaman, but thanks to the print of Basking Broodscale and Whriting Chrysalis is now part of the best 3-color decks.
Whriting Chrysalis led to Gruul Ramp coming back in Pauper.

I hope for a resonable update after the march edition of Paupergeddon, the one in Lecco, but I’ll probably keep playing the format mostly for content creator purposes even with just a single ban or a no change.

Not seeing any improvement in the format is, of course leading to people not caring for it and, for me, not wasting too much time and involment over making videos, streaming or for-fun play irl or on mtgo.

The less risky bet is