Wizards emergency bans Peregrine Drake in Pauper

During the regular banning announcement people expected Peregrine Drake to be banned in Pauper. The card reintroduced the broken Ghostly Flicker type combo decks and arguably even made them better. Gone were the old Familiars shells of tricky combinations. Now you could just take a good control deck and add Peregrine Drake and Ghostly Flicker and voila! you had one of the most broken decks in Pauper history.

Now no other midrange deck could keep up. The only way to combat drake was to go fast or play Drake yourself. Even the control decks had little chance.

With very little experience I picked up the deck and beat a UB Mystical Teachings deck.



Shockingly, Peregrine Drake was not banned during the regular banning announcement.

Then, this happened: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-online/pauper-banned-list-change-2016-11-03

I could be wrong but I don't think this has happened since Jace, the Mind Sculptor wrecked Standard.

Peregrine Drake is now gone starting November 16th. I am quite excited about this change. Better late than never. I am looking forwards to playing Pauper in a healthy metagame once again.

Pauper is officially broken again

Cloud of Faeries was banned on January 18, 2016. There were a few months of happiness in the Pauper community when degenerate combo decks such as Familiars were nowhere to be seen.

On June 16, 2016, Eternal Masters was released, bringing with it the abomination that was Peregrine Drake. Ghostly Flicker + land untapper combo was back.

Two months later, Izzet Drake is the dominant deck in the all-commons Pauper format. It looks something like this:

Creatures (15)
4	Sea Gate Oracle		0.52
3	Archaeomancer		0.12
4	Mulldrifter		0.56
4	Peregrine Drake		2.04
Spells (24)
2	Firebolt		0.18
4	Flame Slash		0.44
4	Lightning Bolt		1.76
4	Preordain		0.76
4	Counterspell		0.16
3	Compulsive Research		0.15
3	Ghostly Flicker		0.15
Lands (21)
8	Island		0.00
4	Izzet Boilerworks		0.20
5	Mountain		0.00
4	Swiftwater Cliffs		0.12
Sideboard (14)
2	Dispel		0.06
2	Electrickery		0.12
1	Firebolt		0.09
3	Hydroblast		12.21
3	Pyroblast		10.71
3	Smash to Smithereens		0.03
74 Cards Total

Izzet Drake has 17,35% of the meta at mtggoldfish.com at the time of this writing. Furthermore, Drake Tron has 7,3%. That means 25% of the winning meta is Drake combo. Given how players tend to not play these combo decks that is a very dominant deck. Familiars were never bigger than this. Temporal Fissure decks probably were.

I was just about to start playing some more Pauper again. I do love the format. Then I saw these stats. Hmm... I guess I will have to wait until a ban.