WotC Reverses Course on Magic: The Gathering Pauper Rules

Magic: The Gathering's The Zeta Set has officially forced Wizards of the Coast to address a serious rules problem. On September 4, Magic: The Gathering principal game designer Gavin Verhey released a statement via the official Magic: The Gathering website addressing the latest issue to arise from the admittedly botched release of the latest Secret Lair Drop — The Zeta Set.

Specifically, Verhey addressed the fact that, while each of the cards in The Zeta Set fall within one of the game's existing rarities, those weren't meant to have any impact on their in-game legality, although they absolutely will moving forward.

The Zeta Set Is Changing Pauper in Magic: The Gathering

Verhey explained, "While these cards are all reprints and generally don't add anything to competitive formats, there is an interesting wrinkle in that twelve of them were printed at common for the first time. There's been a lot of discussion about this, with players wondering what the story is here, and people being hopeful they can play with these cards."

Verhey went on to state, "Today, we are making these cards legal in Pauper (with a few notes)," which stands in stark contrast to previous statements from Wizards of the Coast. Previously, it was noted that the rarities of the cards within The Zeta Set would not make them eligible for formats such as Pauper, which is a Magic: The Gathering format played with 60-card decks constructed only of cards that have been printed at the Common rarity.

The Zeta Set downshifted a full dozen cards to Common for the very first time, with the likes of Baleful Strix, Soul-Guide Lantern, Price of Progress, and Narcomoeba paving the way for already powerful archetypes to make their way into the Pauper format. Verhey said of these cards, "When these were revealed, Wizards, the Pauper Format Panel, and I talked through their ramifications and how we wanted to handle these. A few different pieces led us to the conclusion to not make them legal in Pauper."

After hearing from the community and player base, as well as the Pauper Format Panel, Wizards of the Coast has decided to allow the rarity shifts in The Zeta Set to stand as-is, albeit with a few caveats. Among these are the preemptive bans of Narcomoeba and Price of Progress from the Pauper format, while Baleful Strix, Vandalblast, Dispatch, and Cut Down are reportedly being watched closely to determine if they need to be emergency banned in the weeks to come.

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Magic: The Gathering's The Zeta Set Fiasco — Explained

The Zeta Set was the second Secret Lair Drop release from Wizards of the Coast and the art collective known as MSCHF. Online orders for The Zeta Set opened on September 2, only for the queue to be abruptly paused due to "technical issues." After several hours, thousands of would-be collectors were met with a message noting that The Zeta Set was already sold out in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand, with any packs they would have purchased having been removed from their online shopping carts.

Wizards of the Coast released a statement just hours later reading, "For everyone that showed up for today's Chaos Vault sale of The Zeta Set—it was a disaster," the statement reads. "There's no other way to say it. We're incredibly sorry for the experience, and we're trying to get to the bottom of it."

The statement continues, "We are in the process of investigating exactly what went so very wrong and will share more as soon as we're able to untangle the mess and understand the root cause—be it an internal systems issue or external tampering... We're continuing to investigate what happened today and it may take a little while to fully get our heads around it."

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