Hello, Pauper fans. This is Gavin Verhey from Wizards of the Coast on behalf of the entire Pauper Format Panel.

There's one topic that has been quite the conversation piece over the past couple weeks, and that is a combo enabled by the card Hawkeye's Bow. Today, we've decided to take action on part of that combo by banning Seeker of Skybreak.

I want to give a bit of reasoning for why we're hitting it now and why we're banning this piece of the combo. Let's get into it!

The Shape of the Combo

First, let's talk about what the combo is. The way this combo works is that you equip Hawkeye's Bow to Seeker of Skybreak. Then, you tap the Seeker to untap itself, repeating the process to deal an endless amount of damage to your opponent.

When we make cards like Seeker of Skybreak today, they normally have a clause on them like "Untap another target permanent" or "You can't target cards named [Card Name]" to avoid these kinds of situations where a Seeker can untap itself over and over. Seeker of Skybreak does not have such a limitation. This has come up with other cards in the past in Pauper. For example, the card Hangar Scrounger from March of the Machine allows you to draw your entire library and kill with something else. But never in a way that is this easy to put together. You could do this on turn three pretty easily, or even faster if you're all in on the combo with cards like Simian Spirit Guide and Lotus Petal. That's wild!

We knew pretty much immediately there was a good chance we would need to take action on this combo. However, unlike Cranial Ram, which received a pre-ban because it had a clear and direct comparison to a previously banned card, Cranial Plating, this was something fresh and new. We wanted to watch what would happen initially to see if it validated our concerns and take action in the normal banned and restricted announcement window.

And that brings us to today.

Why Take Action Now?

In just a few days, this combo has already made a huge impact on the format. The Naya Gates deck has won all three Magic Online challenges at the time of writing this article, and sideboards are full of cards to help fight against this deck. While it's far from unstoppable, as Lava Dart, a commonly played card, is extremely powerful against this combination (though the deck does run Prismatic Strands to fight that), and it's worth acknowledging that the play rate may be inflated right now and the metagame is far from settled, this combo does exert pressure on the format in a way we aren't the most happy with.

We have spent a lot of time talking about this on the Pauper Format Panel. There are three questions that led us to this decision today:

  1. Is this a play pattern we want in Pauper?
  2. What are the odds we ban a card in August if we don't ban one now?
  3. Is it better to ban slower or faster?

Let's talk about each of them.

Let's start with the first question. In the past few years, we've talked a lot about polarity and compressing games. Several of the bans we've made have explicitly been to fight that.

The closest comparison to this deck is the Basking Broodscale and Sadistic Glee combo. You can argue about whether the Hawkeye's Bow and Seeker of Skybreak combo is stronger or weaker, but there are a lot of similarities. With the Broodscale deck, we saw frustration from players about how easy it was to slot into decks, making for a simple combo kill in an otherwise strong shell, how early in the game it could happen due to low-cost spells that exerted pressure on the format and resulted in a number of non-games, and how resilient it was. It's not fun to play against. Even when it's not dominating, the Broodscale combo asks people to sideboard a number of cards for it and begins to warp the format around it.

A lot of those same heuristics are things you could say of the Seeker of Skybreak and Hawkeye's Bow combo. The combo pieces cost one and two mana. And while, unlike Broodscale, you have to untap with Seeker, Hawkeye's Bow is much safer to cast and remains on the battlefield. Similarly, this is a combo that easily slots into decks and threatens to win the game on the spot, both on turn three and turn eight, providing a huge source of inevitability.

After a lot of discussion over the past two weeks, we have decided that cheap and easy-to-run two-card combinations are not something we think are healthy for Pauper. If they're more expensive to cast or require more pieces, that can be fine—I want to stress that combos themselves are not something we are against—but letting players run eight cards that can be easily slotted into a deck a la Broodscale (or Splinter Twin) and that can combo this quickly is a play pattern that we want to keep out of the format.

Now, let's look at question two: What are the odds we ban a card on August 10 if we don't ban one now?

Well, given our discussion around the first question, we would say the odds are extremely high. It's difficult to know the exact power level the deck is going to end up at, and we respect both the best builds of the deck and recognize the metagame is still evolving around it, but because this is the kind of play pattern we don't think is right for Pauper, it's hard to imagine a world where we don't end up banning a piece of the combo eventually. A two-card combo, which is easy to slot into decks based on the heuristics above, would pretty much always be strong in Pauper. So given that, I would say a card is almost assuredly going to eat a ban in one of the next two updates.

That brings us to the third and final question: Is it better to ban now or later? Normally, we would not ban a card this soon after a release, and I would expect us to wait until August 10.

There are a few advantages to waiting. One is complete validation. There is always some chance that the format evolves and this deck falls off and becomes a minor piece of the metagame. However, in this case, I think that is unlikely, and this combo violates our heuristics for what we want in the format. So, this is less of a discussion point.

Another, far more valid point is the novelty factor. A new card came out and people want to try playing with it and the combo. It can be fun to try out these new decks for a short period of time! There's a reason why eras like Eldrazi Winter in Modern, even when the decks are too strong, are memorable. It creates a change of pace, some natural churn, and a moment in history. I think this is extremely valid. In a format like Pauper, which can stay consistent for long stretches of time, having something new show up, even if temporarily, can be nice.

So, what are the advantages of banning a card now?

In general, I favor taking action sooner rather than letting people play with something we know is going to need to go and ask players to acquire cards and shape their decks around it. But perhaps most salient of all, a primary reason for me is that in the time between now and August 10, there's a lot going on with Pauper, including two large events: Paupergeddon in Italy and Paupergenesis in the US. Having these two events, which are great sources of information for the Pauper metagame and are tournaments that players are really looking forward to, impacted by a combination that is going to be removed from the format a few weeks later is a very unfortunate result. And while you might look at these two events and think they're only a couple thousand players at most, these are events that the greater Pauper community will enjoy looking at for decklists, results, and metagame updates. Those are all things that would be made far less accurate by a format that is about to change from a ban.

So today, we're banning Seeker of Skybreak to cut off this combo deck.

Hawkeye's Bow Versus Seeker of Skybreak

There are two cards to potentially ban here. We did consider the other half of the combo, which is the new card, Hawkeye's Bow. There are pluses and minuses to banning either card.

We looked at banning Hawkeye's Bow, which makes some sense here. For better or worse, it does combine with other existing combos involving Devoted Druid or Freed from the Real, or more expensive cards like Tidewater Minion, to create a lethal combination. There was some talk of trying it with Thermo-Alchemist in red decks. And while we're not too worried about any of those at the moment, it's worth noting that those still have a possibility of showing up.

However, after a lot of discussion, the biggest reason (to me) for banning Seeker of Skybreak won out: It's the kind of effect we don't do anymore. Not just at common, but anywhere! These days, creatures that can tap to untap something else are limited to untapping another target permanent (like Forensic Researcher) or a card with a different name (like Clever Conjurer). Seeker of Skybreak is the kind of card that enables combos, and we will likely print more cards in the future that combo with Seeker of Skybreak. Whether they will be as efficient as Hawkeye's Bow is hard to say, but there will be more cards that do things similar to this, and it's possible that at those times we may have to ban more cards. This one card potentially forcing other cards on the banned list is the wrong way to go. And while Seeker of Skybreak has seen some light play in places, most of the time if someone's playing it, it's because they're going to try and do some combo like this. That's why we ultimately chose to make the call to ban Seeker of Skybreak over Hawkeye's Bow.

I could imagine a world in the future where, if Hawkeye's Bow somehow still plays out problematically, we flip the two. But given these upcoming tournaments, we would rather let the new card live so players can try it out and see if there are still other cool decks to be made with it and get rid of the card that is seeing almost no play otherwise.

A Side Snack

I want to take a moment to address one other card in this update: Sneaky Snacker.

0205_MTGMH3_Main: Sneaky Snacker

This is a card that we on the Pauper Format Panel have had our eyes on for a while. It keeps slotting into more and more decks, including the very Naya Gates deck this combo was being played in, and it was once again a culprit of making a strong additional plan alongside the main combo. It's a card which is so strong that it gets played in a ton of decks that can easily draw two cards despite not even being able to cast the card normally. It is a resilient threat that can dominate games, especially with multiple copies.

While we've been looking at Sneaky Snacker for a while, having this deck showing up and be yet another Snacker deck was not lost on us. And while it was still right for us to ban the combo given our goal of avoiding cheap and resilient two-card combos, we want to take a very serious look at Snacker.

We're not taking any action at this time, but it is a card we want to carefully watch this summer. Earlier when we talked about wanting the data from events like Paupergeddon and Paupergenesis to not be tainted by something like the Seeker of Skybreak and Hawkeye's Bow combo, that was so that we can learn more about the win rates and results of cards like Snacker on the largest stages. You can expect us to talk more about this card in the August 10 banned and restricted announcement after watching those events.

Seeking the Future

I know that this a little atypical, and I appreciate you reading through our reasoning and for providing all your feedback. While you may or may not agree with our final decision, I hope you at least leave knowing why and how we arrived here and what to expect in the future.

With that said, Pauper has been looking really great recently and has been growing in popularity. I want to give a huge shoutout to all of the individuals in the community who have been contributing to growing Pauper, especially those who've organized tournaments, like Boose at the head of Paupergeddon and Jenn in New York, and who I know have done a lot of incredible work on growing the format there. I can't wait to see how these large events play out.

I also want to give a huge shoutout to two other groups. First, the Magic Online team at Daybreak Games who got additional Pauper challenges added for us to look at and sent us data from leagues daily so we could see how the deck was doing. And, finally, I want to thank the whole Pauper Format Panel. The past week has been full of a ton of discussion around the clock, and those folks have poured in hours and hours analyzing challenges, community sentiment, coming up with what we believe the best framework and heuristics are for the format, and more. Thank you for all the time you put in to have these discussions in a short window.

One final note: Some of you might be wondering, "What about Bonder's Ornament?" We said in the previous announcement that we'd be checking back in on August 10 with how we feel about that. I think after we see the results of these tournaments, that'll help us understand where Bonder's Ornament is. It's seen a lot more play than I think anyone maybe anticipated, but so far it looks like it's in an acceptable spot. But we don't want to say anything quite yet, and we'll let you know more in August.

As always, if you have any feedback, feel free to share it on social media, and we'll be sure to take it in.

Talk with you all soon! On behalf of the entire Pauper Format Panel,

Alex Ullman
Alexandre Weber
Emma Partlow
Gavin Verhey
Mirco Ciavatta
Paige Smith
Ryuji Saito