https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/chaos-vault-the-zeta-set-puts-the-playtest-in-your-hands

As expected. Would have been nice for the confused for it not to be hidden in a promotional article, but it’s clearly stated here that cards not already legal are not made legal via this set

“Please note that common cards from Secret Lair x MSCHF: The Zeta Set do not affect Pauper legality. If a common card from this release wasn't legal in Pauper, it still won't be legal in Pauper.”

I've been asked to post the LPI communication also here, link to the original: https://legapauperitalia.it/statements/zeta-20260901

Hi everyone,

quick update on The Zeta Set and Pauper legality ahead of its release.

Right now we are in an unusual situation: the Pauper rules currently published by Wizards and the position already anticipated regarding Zeta do not fully match. Until Wizards of the Coast / the PFP publish an official ruling or update the rules, we don't want individual leagues or TOs making their own interpretation of the situation.

So, for the time being, our guidance for official LPI events is simple: The Pauper card pool will remain frozen at its pre-Zeta state until an official clarification is published.

This is purely an administrative decision to keep rulings consistent across all LPI events. It does not represent any change in LPI's position on Zeta. We still believe Zeta should be evaluated under the existing eligibility rules, with individual cards then assessed case by case and banned or pre-banned where necessary. At the same time, our responsibility is to give players a stable and unambiguous tournament environment, especially while the official rules are still unclear.

We also want to be very clear on one point: Wizards of the Coast and the PFP need to resolve this situation as soon as possible. The product is about to release in less than 24 hours, players are already discussing deckbuilding and legality, and Tournament Organizers need a clear rule to apply.

Leaving the community in a grey area this close to release is not productive and inevitably creates confusion, inconsistent rulings and unnecessary tension. Whatever the final decision is, a decision needs to be communicated clearly, in time, in an official way and updating the official rulebook. We strogly believe than social media posts and individual comments can provide context, but they are not a substitute for an official ruling or a published rules update. Official rules require official communication.

A competitive community should never be left guessing which rules apply, especially when the uncertainty comes from a gap between the published rules and the announced intent behind them.  

We therefore strongly urge Wizards of the Coast and the Pauper Format Panel to provide an official clarification without further delay.

Until then, please use the pre-Zeta card pool for all official LPI events and send any questions our way rather than making local rulings.

Thanks everyone.

LPI

Wanted to get some opinions about the viability of [[Greater Tanuki]] in pauper. I was running it as a recurring cultivate that can be played as a finisher once you've ramped a bit.

Turn 1 [[Llanowar Elves]] means you can channel Tanuki on Turn 2, so you have potential of 5 mana on Turn 3. Pair with [[Blood Fountain]] and [[Gravetender]] to madness/recur the 1-2 Tanukis or use [[Call Damage Control]] to recur both the fountain and Tanuki. While this is happening, you'll have enough artifacts to play a few [[Refurbished Familiars]].

Curious what you think!

Blue mages commenting will be bolted on sight, i'm serious, if you got a counterspell it's On Sight

We've obviously seen a lot of discussion lately around Zeta legality. Posts, comments, points, and counterpoints often keep throwing out "but what about XYZ card?!" and then there's additional discussion around those products that are already in the format. (Also a recent post about this with a poll: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pauper/s/L5jeN7ZhU9 )

I'm going to try and keep my personal thoughts out of the post portion and just present facts. Mostly I was just curious because I would see Utrom Monitor brought up multiple times in every comments section, and if there needed to be a second example it would invariably be Go for the Throat. I hadn't seen a third example people wanted to argue about which got me wondering... exactly what card pool are we even arguing about?

Methodology: I went to https://mtgtop8.com/ and pulled the stats for every Pauper card for all 2026 deck lists in both main deck and sideboard across all tournaments. I also pulled the card list from Scryfall and ran a script to identify cards that were actually played in a Pauper deck (not just legal) against sets they appeared as a common in. I excluded cards from every retail set that was printed into Standard or Modern and their historical equivalents. I then categorized the remaining cards by the type of set that makes them legal. [It is completely possible I did a set wrong or missed a card, if something seems off please kindly let me know instead of berating me.]

*Cards released since the start of the year will be undercounted compared to the current meta

SUPPLEMENTAL PRODUCTS

No other cards legal only because of supplemental products saw play in at least 0.1% (1 in 1,000) decks.

ONLINE

No other cards legal only because of MTGO saw play in at least 0.1% of decks.

COMMANDER FOCUSED AND OTHER PACKS - Sets that are for Commander or other but still come in boosters (CLB, CMM, UNF, etc)

These were way more impactful with 55 cards seeing play in at least 0.1% of decks. The top 5 are:

Almost all of the 55 are from Commander products with a couple of EMA and one Unfinity (Embiggen).

Again, not trying to push any agenda with the post, just adding context. The two main wedges I see people argue for are basically excluding this entire list (which has a huge impact because of the Commander products) and just the Supplemental products (which is basically just Utrom Monitor, Go for the Throat, and Cauldron Familiar).

Featuring the second match from the first stage of our Autumn League here at Bristol Pauper League! Lewis on the new hotness that is Pinger Tron up against Juno on the format's scariest combo deck - Golgari Spy Combo!

https://youtu.be/JQ-kWyGUa4o?si=NjvtyuOal_KlP11o

Enjoy!

I’ve been watching a lot of pauper YouTube content and the glint hawk/kor skyfisher engine have caught my attention. Looking for recommendations on which variant is currently working well as I don’t see a lot of representation on the meta game reports!

The main versions I’m looking at are Boros Synth, Mardu Synth, Esper Affinity, and Glint Blade. For people who play any of these, how would you rank them in terms of overall competitive strength, matchup spread, and consistency? I’d also be interested in what you think each version specifically gains and gives up compared to the others.

I’m looking to bring one of these to a reasonably competitive weekly Pauper event, which one would you recommend and why?

Ran into a couple flicker/monster tron decklists on moxfield and YouTube. It seems really interesting with how they go for the middle ground between the two approaches to tron; especially from youtube gameplays (i believe sprat3k did a cool video showcasing it). I’m looking to potentially build this in paper if it’s a good one. Looking for some thoughts and opinions from more experienced tron players!

Example decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/DMKB2WHJoEK0CvO4kUatDQ

https://moxfield.com/decks/ncgUSrR_w0Kt3ZwAd0cgLQ
What are some cards that can make this better?
Also im a bit lost in what to add in the side board.

Declaring Secret Lair products not being intended to affect Pauper legality does not make sense when WOTC has Mystery Booster Commander Edition in the pipeline which whether you like it or not is also a Chaos Vault exclusive product not unlike the Zeta set. I understand that Zeta will be available in much lower volumes but the MBC set will also sell out instantly and not have wide availability in LGSs and online retail especially for people residing outside of the US.

What I'm asking the PFP to do is either work with the contacts who design and plan Chaos Vault releases and put a stop to introducing conflicting common reprints not "intended" for Pauper legality or simply make the commons rightfully legal. As a new player in the format half of the excitement for when new sets release is checking for downshifts and new printings that expand the card pool, and I think it's great that a new powerful set is downshifting some cards that otherwise would not have been legal. It is fun to experiment with new cards, and being an eternal format I think it's very important to not arbitrarily restrict card legality like the PFP is trying to do.

For the last two weeks i practiced walls spy, thinking it was a great meta pick into my local meta. On friday i decided to play a version of naya gates instead, which is much more my playstyle.

I went 7-0-1 and won a store championship promo ocelot pride

Hey, started playing MTG around 2 months ago, mainly Commander and some Arena.

Now I often play with a friend 1v1 where Commander is not always the best format to ensure fun games. So I got curious about Pauper and how it works and it seems like a fun and accessible way to start playing the 60-card format.

Yet I'm a bit overwhelmed and don't know how to get started. I don't really care about competitive decks, I just wanna have some fun playing 1v1 against my friend. So my goal is to look for 2-3 cheap beginner decks on a similar power level. Any recommendations?

Hey there ı am a bit new to pauper and ı have some questions on the naya gates decks. Firstly, why prismatic strands ? Like sneaky snacker a good qualty discard fodder card ? Secondly, which cards are we scared of that much we are running 4 strands ? Third , can the deck operate without strands ? İts a bit pricy and wondering the how crucial it is to the deck ? lets say I replaced it with a tamiyo’s safekeeping would it matter that much ? Or more interaction lets say.

Thank you in advance.

Edit:puntcuations

I’m building a Mardu Version of Orzhov Blade using red to facilitate sneaky snacker with the discard draw 2 artifacts. I’m struggling with the mana base. I’m not sure how many artifact lands I should be running. I don’t want to get entirely blown out by Dust to Dust but also I have Refurbished Familiar and Glint Hawk which encourage them how many should I be running?

I've never played pauper I was aware of it though a like 15+ years ago and remember looking up some of the top decks and they were all like less than $10 I thought that was the whole point of pauper. Now I'm looking up top decks and they're virtually all $50+ some even 100+?

I was wanting to make like 5-6 really cheap decks that are have roughly similar power levels to play with my wife and kids and was thinking just go look up pauper decks and I can get this done for $50. That's clearly not the case anymore. Is there some mega pauper format or something where decks are less than $10 each?

Looked at my modern horizon cards, saw Herigast and thought to myself how bad Emerge seems to be. After all you already spent that mana and use 2 cards to play 1 very expensive, often not even that good card. Then i had the idea of cheating in expensive creatures with Warp/Flicker Evoke/Madness/Unearth to Emerge from and ended up with some attempt at Dimir madness with emerge.

I guess the deck is "very suboptimal" but you can do some funny shenanigans and i have already sunk too much time into this, so here ya go.

Any ideas are welcome

The Zeta controversy has brought to light concerns for rising prices.

A lot of us aren't worried because "Pauper is cheap".

But we should remember that Pauper is internationally popular. There are parts of this world were wages are lower than in most of Europe or North America. For a lot of Pauper players around the world, the required investment is comparable to a US citizen buying into Modern!

If Pauper prices double or triple or worse, the game could start dying in a lot of regions. Communities that helped *build* Pauper.

A solution? What if WotC made special "Pauper Masters" sets that were released exclusively into, eg, South America and The Philippines?

They could make these cheaper; printing them in Portuguese and Filipino (in attempt to reduce international appeal and keep them in the target markets.

There is *sort of* a precedent for this with the Salvat sets released exclusively into the French, Spanish, and Italian markets.

* * * * * * * * * *

It was sad for me to watch Legacy die in my area (and most others) because of skyrocketing prices. At least I had Pauper to fall back on!

It would suck for this to happen to Pauper communities too.

New Jund Wildfire guide covering the deck, common lines, sideboarding, matchups, and some of the trickier interactions that come up when playing it.
Hopefully useful for anyone looking to pick up the deck or get more reps with it.

Temur Tron vs. Dimir Control

Round 2

Liga Pauper Pilipinas 2026 Stage 7 Minor Tournament

Strawpoll link because reddit apparently doesn't allow desktop users to make polls

In case you're unfamiliar, Gavin said that the rules of Pauper are being updated to exclude cards only labeled "common" in SLD drops. Since Utrom Monitor is similar to the SLD cards, only being a "common" in a product that's not an actual set, I want to see whether the community thinks it should go too.