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Historic Pauper is back to MTG Arena for the next week as part of the Historic season! As usual, we are able to use all the available commons from the full Historic card pool. This event is a fantastic way to win some Historic Individual Card Rewards (ICRs) and catch up on your Historic card collection, while at the same time having fun playing a new format. Read on to find out all you need to know about Historic Pauper and our decklists, updated for the new cards from Theros Beyond Death and Historic Anthology 2.
Event Details
- Duration: March 28 2020 at 8:00 AM PT – April 4 2020 at 8:00 AM PT
- Format: Historic Pauper
- Entry Fee: 500 Gold or 100 Gems
- Ends After: 4 wins or 2 losses (whichever comes first)
- Match Structure: Best-of-one matches (BO1)
Event Rewards
The event rewards three Historic Individual Card Rewards (ICRs) as a base. Upgrade Rate refers to the chance for the ICR to become a rare or a mythic rare.
| # of Wins | Gold | ICR #1 Upgrade Rate | ICR #2 Upgrade Rate | ICR #3 Upgrade Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 5% | 5% | 5% |
| 1 | 150 | 15% | 5% | 5% |
| 2 | 300 | 25% | 5% | 5% |
| 3 | 450 | 35% | 5% | 5% |
| 4 | 600 | 100% | 5% | 5% |
Historic Individual Card Rewards (ICRs)
Historic ICRs consist of cards from sets that have rotated out of Standard – cards from Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria and Core Set 2019.
- They can include older versions of cards that may be legal in Standard because they also appear in a Standard legal set (e.g. Opt from Dominaria).
- They currently do NOT include cards from Historic Anthology 1 or Historic Anthology 2.
- They can be uncommon (with an upgrade rate to rare/mythic rare) or rare/mythic rare.
- If rare/mythic rare, each rare appears twice as frequently as each mythic. If uncommon, each uncommon is equally likely to be awarded.
What is Historic Pauper?
Historic Pauper is a format that allows you to only use cards of the common rarity in your deck, from any of the sets available in MTG Arena. As an example, Murder was released as as a common in Core Set 2020 which means we can now use it for Pauper, although it was an uncommon in Core Set 2019. Persistent Petitioners is also banned from this event.
What’s New?
Since the last time this event was around, commons from Theros Beyond Death and Historic Anthology 2 have been added to the card pool. We will have a look at some of the more noteworthy cards to upgrade our existing decks, or enables new ones. The previous Historic Pauper event kicked off with Mono Black, Mono Red and Hexproof decks being the strongest decks, but we can expect some of the other decks to catch up as more cards are added.
Historic Anthology 2
- Cycling Lands: You will want to include these in slower decks in place of Basic Lands, where lands coming into play tapped is not a big downside.
- Ancestral Mask: The only nonland common in Historic Anthology 2, but a very important one. Theros Beyond Death adds some playable Auras to the card pool, and if slapped on a creature with hexproof can make your creature very big.
Theros Beyond Death
Theros Beyond Death is a heavily enchantment focused expansion that adds quite a few exciting prospects for Pauper. Here just some examples:
- Daybreak Chimera: A potentially 2 mana for a 3/3 flying creature is too good to pass up.
- Heliod’s Pilgrim: Auras is a strong Pauper deck, and white pairs great with blue, green and even black to provide card advantage and the exact one you want.
- Brine Giant: Similar to Daybreak Chimera, a big creature that can come down for cheap. It doesn’t lose many fights, unless you are facing something like Dreadmaw Colossus.
- Blight-Breath Catoblepas: Pseudo-removal on a body.
- Mindwrack Harpy: This is a card you may have to craft as it is from a Planeswalker deck. It can work well with Escape cards from red or green, or a milling strategy with blue.
- Escape Cards: Mogis’s Favor, Underworld Rage-Hound, Loathsome Chimera, Voracious Typhon
- Aura Cards: Transcendent Envoy, Starlit Mantle, Setessan Training, Mire’s Grasp, Warbriar Blessing
Our Top Historic Pauper Decklists – March 2020
Here are all the decklists updated for this event. Remember you can skip right to our Pauper deck section for future use as we add more decks. Please note if you get a deck validation error, it may be a bug for Murder from Core Set 2019. Swap it out for the Core Set 2020 version.
Wrapping Up
We are getting very close to an exciting Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths spoiler season starting April 2, as we look forward to a new Standard metagame and say goodbye to the ranked Historic queues. There are still a few events wrapping up if you are looking for some content to fill in the time:
- We will be seeing the conclusion of Standard via MagicFest Online. Lots of decks to cover as players adapt to the abundance of Uro and Kroxa!
- Another round of Historic Challenge starts April 11, 2020 and we will see some more high quality decklists here.
Also remember, you can always engage in our growing MTG Arena Zone community:
