While Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate is a Commander focused set, it also gave us some very nifty tech for a format that I personally believe deserves more love than it gets, PAUPER! Pauper can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be.

As the name implies you can get away with spending the bare minimum, the average cost of a deck is around $40-$50, which is considerably cheaper than any other format.

The great thing about Pauper is that there is no rotation and it doesn’t require a specific buy in. You don’t need the most recent cards and you didn’t miss your chance by not buying a specific set. 

Pauper is an eternal format, meaning you can use whichever cards you like as long as somewhere in Magic’s history they were printed at Common rarity. Today we take a look at 5 Common Battle for Baldur’s Gate cards that got tons of love at Pre-release but have essentially dropped from use.

Do they have what it takes to make it in Pauper? Let’s find out…

Before we dive in, I feel that Deadly Dispute deserves and honourable mention.

This common from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms shot up in price so fast due to it being such a great card in just about every format from Standard to Pauper to Commander. A Village Rites with an upside has a place in every black deck.

I am personally incredibly excited for this reprint and downshift.  When the card was revealed in AFR I remember looking at its second option: Start a Brawl and being disappointed that it wasn’t printed at Common. Well, who says dreams don’t come true?

This offers a huge upgrade for Elf decks as it’s essentially a 4 mana Lead the Stampede and serves as a mini Overrun in its role as an extra win con. It’s first option Form a Party also offers some pretty cool card advantage. Overall, it’s a flexible card that could be utilized in any of the green decks in the current meta

People have been so hyped about this guy. The main objective is to play an Indestructible Artifact Land, play Kenku Artificer, then animate said land into a 3/3 Flying Indestructible land and beat opponent’s face.

This poses significant risks. I’m a bit nervous to animate my lands in a meta filled with Snaps and Edit effects where you could potentially go down a land permanently or have to play a tapped land again. Though I must admit Ephemerate-ing Kenku Artificer to animate several lands does seem very enticing.

Weird name – great card. This is  strictly a better Fiery Cannonade. How many Pauper Legal Dragons actually see play vs How many Pauper Legal Pirates see play?

The odds of this being a dead card are slim to none.

This card’s potential is so high. This is a fantastic sideboard card against elves and their 2 toughness butts. It could even rival Fiery Cannonade as a wrath option which is why I’m putting it above Breath Weapon on this list.

This is a bit of a Sea People trick. What I mean here is combining the Initiative Mechanic and the Undercity Dungeon. I love this mechanic for Pauper and I’m a very vocal advocate for it being “better than Monarch,” as there is no redundancy with Initiative as there is with Monarch i.e. You cannot gain Monarch twice while you can gain the Initiative twice.

Other great Initiative cards for Pauper include Vicious Battlerager and Avenging Hunter.

Some of the cards in this list give a great boost to already strong decks or give weaker decks the much-needed tech to rise to the top of the Pauper meta.

Do the cards in this list make it to any of your Pauper decks? Let us know!

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