Hello, Pauper fans! This is Gavin here, on behalf of the entire Pauper Format Panel, with a check-in on Pauper.

I'll start with the big news up at the top: We are making no changes to the format today.

But given how much discussion there has been around the balance of the format and the card Sneaky Snacker, we wanted to give a longer update and discuss that card in particular.

So, let's get right into the Snacker.

0205_MTGMH3_Main: Sneaky Snacker

This card has been very much on our (and the community's) radar. It has shown up in a variety of decks, ranging from Mono-Red Madness to Terror variants to a brand-new Naya Gates deck and more. It's become a staple of the format. You absolutely must be ready to face a deck that will bring back this 2/1 time and time again. From a format perspective, it's certainly a red flag that one of the first things the Naya Gates deck did was add … four copies of a blue and black card. It just goes everywhere.

With that said, we're not taking action on this card today. Why? Let's talk about a few different reasons.

First, the results.

One of the things we wanted to do was look at results of some of the major tournaments over the past month and see the results put up by the Snacker. I was braced for a ton of Sneaky Snackers. But the reality was … quite different.

I attended Paupergeddon, a tournament of around 1,100 players in Italy, to see how it played out in person and was joined by both Mirco and Emma from the Pauper Format Panel. There, the Snacker was the most played card in the entire tournament other than basic lands … and ended up getting completely cut out of the Top 8, with not a single copy among the Top Finisher's decks. I do think it's worth looking at more than just the Top 8, so going down to the Top 64, there were only eleven decks with the Snacker. This is still notable, as 17% of the Top 64 featuring a card certainly isn't nothing but is far from a dominating bannable presence.

Let's hop across the pond to another event: Paupergenesis in the US, a 237-person event. Paige of the Pauper Format Panel was in attendance (and made Top 8—congrats to her!) to watch how it played out as well. The Snacker was the third most played card in the entire event. There was one deck featuring Snacker in the Top 8, and there were only seven additional Sneaky Snacker decks if you look at the Top 64. With eight decks in the Top 64, or 12.5% of the Top 64 decks, that's once again far from a problematic rate.

Let's go down to Brazil and look at Circuito LigaMagic with 243 players, which Pauper Format Panel member Alexandre Weber had his eyes on. While I don't have decklists from the whole event, there were three Sneaky Snacker decks in the Top 8, with two Naya Gates decks and one Madness deck. That is a much better performance for the Snacker, but still within a reasonable range.

Now let's look at Japan. Hareruya had their God of Pauper tournament, a 127-player event in the heart of Tokyo, which our member Saito made sure to follow. There were two Snacker decks in the Top 8. While we only have the Top 16 decklists, only a single other Sneaky Snacker deck appeared in the Top 16, or 18.75%. Again, that is acceptable.

Let's look at Magic Online Challenges as well. I'll go into these less deeply because of the smaller fields, but looking just at Top 8s of the last three challenges as of writing this article, each of which ranged from 44 to 67 players, Snacker took five of the 24 possible Top 8 spots. That is very far from dominating.

Under no reasonable view of recent tournament results has Sneaky Snacker been too strong. That seems pretty clear.

Okay, now let's take a step back from looking at tournament results. There are a lot of reasons we could ban a card that aren't tied to results, and we as the Pauper Format Panel have done so in the past. Let's walk through some of them.

One of them is the overall impact a card makes on the format. Even if Snacker isn't winning, has it warped Pauper around it?

Sneaky Snacker has definitely caused people to make deck-building and card-selection decisions around it. Exiling removal, like Journey to Nowhere, is more commonplace now, and graveyard-removal cards like Nihil Spellbomb is showing up more than it did previously—although decks like Terror and Spy are also good reasons to have cards like Spellbomb at the ready. Additionally, decks that match up well against incremental Snacker strategies like Tron have risen in popularity. But that's a healthy and even good amount of metagame evolution. It tends to be a good thing when a metagame ebbs and flows to fight decks. But in terms of warping the format around it, like with Fall from Favor and the initiative, or increasing the speed so games become more polar, like with Monastery Swiftspear, that doesn't seem to be the case.

How about its play pattern? Is Sneaky Snacker causing Pauper to be less fun?

This is much harder to quantify, as it's about feelings. I believe Snacker is fun to play with as it empowers a bunch of draw-two cards and frustrating to play against because you have to fight through a Faerie horde over and over. Overall, I would say it is a little more unfun than it is fun, but it is certainly within the tolerable bands of Pauper play patterns. This is amplified by how much it is played, but there are answers on the card level and the deck level.

Has it homogenized the format? Are all the decks we're seeing it appear in similar?

This is a pretty strong no. The format looks quite diverse with a wide variety of strategies being playable and doing well. This is the kind of robust, wide metagame you dream of seeing in a format. Paupergeddon had a whopping 30 different archetypes in the Top 64, and Paupergenesis had 29 in its Top 64. Even when you start compressing similar archetypes together, like the different kinds of Terror and Tron decks, it still looks incredibly varied. Aggro, midrange, control, and combo decks are all represented in different ways.

Finally, I want to talk about the other side of the coin—something often not discussed enough. The upside of banning Sneaky Snacker is that it would be out of the format, but what are the downsides of banning Sneaky Snacker?

The format, as I mentioned, looks incredibly diverse right now. When you remove a card from the house of cards that is so engrained in so many decks like Snacker is, there's no telling what will happen. If Sneaky Snacker was banned, there's no guarantee Pauper would remain this diverse and fun to play. A recursive threat that can eventually end the game does a lot to prey on slow control decks and gives aggressive decks the tools they need to play into the long game. If we banned Sneaky Snacker, there's a very real risk that the ecosystem would end up less healthy than we found it. That doesn't sound like the correct move right now.

Given all of this, nothing at this time indicates that we should ban Sneaky Snacker. It's a card we will certainly continue to watch for many reasons. But there isn't evidence or an obvious need for a ban at this time.

With all of that said, I want to move onto another card that has a much shorter tale to tell: Bonder's Ornament. We said we'd check in today with a final verdict on the trial unban of Ornament.

The card has seen a lot more play than I think a lot of people predicted, it has really helped bring back slower builds of Tron and Gruul Monsters, and it has also seen a tiny bit of play in decks like Golgari Gardens. But overall, it has settled into an extremely fine space in the format, and it looks like this was a very successful trial unban. The unbanned card is seeing a little play and helping boost some archetypes, but it is far from problematic and simply a role-player.

Bonder's Ornament will remain unbanned. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on it! The trial unban system has been great, and I can imagine us continuing to try it on other cards in the future.

And thanks to all of you for reading and playing the format. It has been really fun to play, and many of us have been out to events in the past month enjoying it. If you haven't tried Pauper yet, give it a whirl! As always, we're happy to hear your feedback. We'll be watching and reading what all of you have to say.

On behalf of the entire Pauper Format Panel,

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