What does Scars offer us?

Proliferate — ONE card has it. Not going to be a build-around theme.

Infect — Plenty of support on little creatures. Is there a strategy to give them evasion and push them through?

Metalcraft — White/blue fliers seems the best fit here given the additional support from the Esper shard. Red-white could possibly work too, springboarding from Boros Landfall, with a more equip-heavy focus. Sadly, Scars has very little in the equipment category for Paupers.

It will take some serious innovation to put the Scars cards to good use in the Pauper Extended metagame. The format may continue to be defined by the heavy hitters of the past…

Hello Paupers! 

Due to Wizards’ recent massive change of the Extended format and the impending format rotation which knocks Time Spiral block and 10th Edition out of Extended, there has never been a better time for newcomers to jump into Extended. 

Starting with XPDC 9.01 on Wednesday, October 20 at 8:30pm ET, the following sets will be legal in Pauper Extended: 

Magic 2010 
Magic 2011 
Lorwyn 
Morningtide 
Shadowmoor 
Eventide 
Shards of Alara 
Conflux 
Alara Reborn 
Zendikar 
Worldwake 
Rise of the Eldrazi 
Scars of Mirrodin 

XPDC on Wednesday nights and daytimes on Sundays at 7PDC are your weekly opportunities to enjoy this bigger, badder card-pool. 

XPDC runs 4 rounds of Swiss every week, and even if you don’t make the playoffs you have a chance at a playset of Extended-legal commons as a door prize (plus anything donated by players). Top 8 players are guaranteed a playset of commons, and T4, 2nd place, and 1st place players get 2, 4, or 7 credits at any of the MarlonMTGO.com bots. 

You’ve got more than a week to read up on the metagame, get some playtesting in, and prepare for Wednesday, October 20 at XPDC 9.01. 

Hope to see you there!

The impulse struck me to think and write a little bit about the exciting new cards from M11 that might make a splash in Pauper. As the spoilers continue I’ll review the new stuff in subsequent posts. Let’s start after the jump!

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