by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

Magic the Gathering’s Pauper format has caused some cards to see crazy price spikes over the years. One such card was an uncommon from Torment called Chainer’s Edict. On at least a couple of occasions, its price shot to $10 or higher from just few dollars. This happened when Edict became legal in Pauper due to a reprint in the Magic Online exclusive reprint set, Vintage Masters.

But there would be another Torment uncommon to share the same fate by the name of Circular Logic. It was also reprinted in Vintage Masters at common. But while Chainer’s Edict saw huge gains back around Christmas 2015, it would take until January 2018 for Circular Logic to finally see its own price spike.

Back its in Standard days, Circular Logic was a pretty good Constructed card. It's a really good card if you can cast it for its Madness cost. It reads: “Counter target spell unless its controller pays (1) for each card in your graveyard.” For three mana, that’s not a bad permission spell. But if you happen to discard it, you can play it for its Madness cost, which is only a single Blue mana. That’s pretty strong, and a card you’d play four copies of in a deck based around Madness.

Since its Standard days, though, Circular Logic became a bit of a forgotten card in competitive play. It doesn’t even see much play in Commander. Likewise, even when it first became legal in Pauper, it wasn’t a widely played card. It did, and still does, see play in a fairly popular Blue/Black control deck called U/B Teachings. This deck uses Mystical Teachings to search out any instant spell in the deck. The deck only plays one copy of Circular Logic so it's clearly not something you'll see all the time. There isn't really a solid interaction in the deck itself. But it's pretty good against the Mono-Black Control decks in the format.

Still, even with such little visible play, Circular Logic has long been a strong casual card. People really like building decks around the Madness mechanic. The mechanic was even reintroduced in Shadows Over Innistrad. Still, this card didn’t break $1 for a long time, although interest in it certainly picked up at that time.

Well, I wish I would’ve invested in a playset at the time. It turns out that in early 2018, Circular Logic would find a new home in Pauper in a deck called Inside Out Combo. Not only that, the deck plays four copies. In response to this new deck, the card would enjoy not one, but two price spikes. The first was from $1 to $4, and the second was to $7.50. It would settle back around $6. What is this awesome deck that caused such a momentous price spike?

The deck is based around a pair of cards. One is a creature called Tireless Tribe, which allows you to discard a card for it to gain +0/+4. Obviously, this is awesome synergy with a Madness card like Circular Logic, giving you a cheap and easy counterspell to set up the combo with the namesake card in the deck. Inside Out is a 2-mana instant spell that switches the power and toughness of a creature until end of turn. It also draws you a card.

The Inside Out Combo deck is extremely simple: draw a bunch of cards then dump a bunch of cards, get through unblocked with something like Shadow Rift, then drop a copy of Inside Out. While you’re at it, you can discard the card you drew. You’ll probably get through for lethal damage. It’s pretty basic, but the deck has enough countermagic to make it feasible. The deck is actually very successful on Magic Online and in the Pauper format in general.

by  ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

At the end of 2015, the Magic the Gathering card Chainer's Edict was selling quickly everywhere. The Torment uncommon was once a very good card back in its Standard heyday. But what was causing it to suddenly fly off the market?

It saw little to no Legacy play and only minimal play in Commander. The only format in which Chainer's Edict saw play is in Pauper on Magic Online. Pauper is the all-common format which gained new life with the printing of lots of older uncommons at common in sets in online-only sets such as Vintage Masters and Tempest Remastered. That's right. On Magic Online, Chainer's Edict became a common, thanks to the Magic Online-only reprint set of Vintage Masters.

Being common in Vintage Masters means that Chainer’s Edict is legal in the Pauper format, despite its paper printings only being at uncommon or higher. In addition to the original Torment printing, there’s the Friday Night Magic foil promo, and the "mythic rare" From the Vault: Twenty premium foil. So, Chainer’s Edict becoming legal in Pauper explains where so many From the Vault: Twenty Chainer's Edicts ran off to…

And not only did Chainer’s Edict see a price spike, it saw three separate spikes, along with other “mini” spikes. On Christmas 2015, Chainer’s Edict from Torment hit $4 after being just $1.50 the week before. It would hit $6.50, then blow up to $15.50 in March. You read that right. And while Chainer’s Edict did come back to Earth around $5, in early 2018, it would blow up again, all the way to $16! While it eventually stabilized around $10, you have to figure that’s pretty high for an uncommon that only sees play in Pauper. The From the Vault Twenty printing is about the same and the promo sells for a decent premium.

So why is Chainer’s Edict so expensive? All it does is force a target player to sacrifice a creature for 2 mana. That’s good, but is it $10 good? This is when you have to consider that it has a Flashback cost of 5BB or five colorless mana and 2 Black mana. While 7 mana sounds really high, you get to play it from the graveyard. Essentially, you get two uses out of the same card, and that’s always a good thing.

Really, it’s expensive because so many decks in Pauper can use it. After all, this is a card that saw a lot of Standard play at one time. Cards that force sacrifices are really good, and keep in mind that this was uncommon originally, not common. When uncommons suddenly become commons, you’re going to have a few that suddenly become extremely good cards in the format.

With Relentless Rats being printed at Common in Masters 25, the highly popular Rat swarm is now available in the all-common rarity Pauper format! Previously only printed at uncommon, it's no surprise to see that it's actually been the #1 best-selling card on TCGPlayer in the latter half of March 2018. What makes Relentless Rats so relentless that it's become such a hot Magic card? It's simple. You can play as many as you want in a deck, and for each one you control, each of your Relentless Rats gets +1/+1.




How can you play Relentless Rats in Pauper. Here's one potential Relentless Rats Pauper deck list from Mazzi di Huzen on DeckStats.

Lands (18)

14 Swamp
4 Barren Moor

Creatures (32)

28 Relentless Rats
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Non-Creature Spells (10)

2 Death Denied
4 Geth's Verdict
4 Victim of Night


The deck is very straightforward. The Barren Moors give you the ability to cycle away itself for a single Black mana for another card if you don't need to play any more land. The 4 copies of Geth's Verdict and 4 copies of Victim of Night give you some of the best removal in Pauper. This removal is good for slowing down faster decks because each copy of Rats costs 3 mana to cast. Two copies Death Denied gives you the ability to retrieve dead Relentless Rats from your graveyard in order to continue the Rat onslaught.

Then, of course, we have 28 copies of Relentless Rats, which ensures that we always have copies of Relentless Rats to play at all times. We finish off the deck with 4 copies of Gray Merchant of Asphodel. The lynchpin in Mono-Black Devotion decks, each copy of Rats gives you 2 devotion to Black. The Gray Merchant himself gives you an additional 2 devotion. His ability drains your opponent for an amount of life equal to your devotion to Black. With just a few Rats on the board, you can end the game very quickly

Because of how long this deck can take to get going, you are going to be using your removal early and often. However, once you start getting a lot of Rats on the board, it's very difficult for your opponent to even attack you anymore. If the board becomes stalled and your army of Relentless Rats can't get through for damage, you always have the Gray Merchants to finish off the game with the drain ability. It's a pretty cool Mono-Black Devotion/Control deck.

We also found another Pauper deck list on TappedOut that uses Dark Ritual for mana acceleration, Disfigure for removal and Dusk Legion Zealot for card draw. But we prefer the Mono-Black Devotion/Control deck list better ourselves.

What do you think of Relentless Rats in Pauper? Have you ever build a Rats deck using the Relentless Rats?