Pauper: The Commons-Only Format

Pauper is 60-card constructed with normal deckbuilding rules and exactly one restriction: every card must have been printed at common in some Magic set (as recorded on Gatherer). Ever. A card downshifted to common in one Masters set is legal forever, no matter how rare its other printings are.

That makes Pauper an eternal format — the card pool reaches back to 1993 and only grows — at bulk-box prices. Tier decks cost less than a single premium rare in other formats, and the gap between a starter list and the tuned version is measured in cents, not hundreds.

Pauper grew up on Magic Online as a community format — the Pauper Deck Challenge (PDC) community ran player-organized events for years before official support. Because it lived on MTGO, “printed at common” originally meant printed at common online, a digital-first definition with real consequences.

The Pauper Format Panel was announced on January 10, 2022 by WotC designer Gavin Verhey — Verhey plus six community members from around the world: Mirco Ciavatta, Emma Partlow, Ryuji Saito, Paige Smith, Alex Ullman, and Alexandre Weber. It exists because the old process was too slow: problem cards like Arcum’s Astrolabe, Fall From Favor, and Chatterstorm warped the format for months before action came.

Unlike the old Commander Rules Committee, the panel has no final authority — it recommends actions to WotC’s Play Design team. But the direct line works: since 2022, Pauper’s problem cards have been handled in weeks rather than months, including the format’s first genuinely preemptive ban.

Commons rarely include efficient board wipes, versatile removal, or hard counters to engines. So when a consistency engine or a free spell gets out of hand at common, the format often simply cannot answer it — and the ban list does the job instead. That is why it is full of cheap card-advantage engines, free spells, and affinity payoffs rather than big flashy threats.