Common Ground MtG Pauper Podcast
A Magic The Gathering podcast focused on the best (and our favorite) format: Pauper! Tune in every Thursday for metagame updates, tournament reports, lots of laughter, and interviews with members of the Pauper community!Hosted by Cameron Schindler, Thomas Gunn, and James "Hippo" Hieronimus.
Common Ground 119: Paupergeddon and Win-A-Dual Tournament Reviews
Welcome back Pauper fam! Paupergeddon Spring edition has come and gone and we have some really sweet decklists to look through! We also recap our experience at Game Knight's (#sponsored) Win-A-Dual tournament this past weekend, featuring a sweet brew and great hangs. Thank you as always for listening!
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Sponsored by: Game Knight (Columbia TN) The premier LGS in the Middle Tennessee area! Check out their upcoming events and order cards...
Common Ground 118: Shoebox Stories & Picking the Right Pauper Deck
Welcome back Pauper fam! Cameron and Hippo just got back from Shoebox and have some shenanigans and Cube stories to share with us!* There have also been some shenanigans afoot with these new Turtles cards and some combos have started to emerge. Finally, Thomas needs some help getting over the decision paralysis of what Pauper deck to play for the upcoming Win-A-Dual at Game Knight (#sponsored) Thank you as always for listening!
*(If you'd like to skip directly to Pauper content, fast forward to 51:34)
Pizza Druid Combo Decklists:
Nikolas Frost's RIW T...
Common Ground 117: Lessons from Limited with Sam Snodgrass
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we invite our friend and Limited crusher Sam Snodgrass onto the show. Known as snodz on MTGO, Sam has consistently been at the top of the draft trophy leaderboard for the better part of a year and had a deep run at the 3rd Common Ground Cup finishing in the Top 4 at his first Pauper event! We dive into some lessons to be learned from Limited fundamentals, some stories from his run in the Cup, and meander into an insightful discussion on mindset. Thank you as always for listening!
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Common Ground 116: Returning to the Gardens - Control in Pauper 2.0
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we return to the control archetype to go over some updates to the more long-form decks of the format and how they line up against the metagame that exists today. Gardens has seen a resurgence online as Rally overtakes Madness as the red deck of choice and the UB Terror decks have also been seeing more play. Plus a chat about some intriguing innovations to the Hexproof deck in the latest MTGO challenge list dump. Thank you as always for listening!
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<...Common Ground 115: Teenage Mutant Pauper Turtles
Welcome back Pauper fam! It's TMNT spoiler time and even though we're not the biggest fans of this set, there are still plenty of cool Pauper cards to discuss. Will pizzas take over the meta? Is Cast Down stock at an all-time low? We chat about all this and more, including some very cool innovations of the Gates archetype! Thank you as always for listening!
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2026 Listener Survey: https://forms.gle...
Common Ground 114: A Menu of Metagames - Pauper Data Analysis with Ryan Adams
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we're joined by our friend Ryan Adams to discuss how to assess different metagames in Pauper using data analysis in new and creative ways. It's not just about winrate and matchups; how granular can we get when we take sideboards and variance into account? You can follow along at home with Ryan's slides linked below (as long as you're not driving!) Thank you as always for listening!
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<...Common Ground 113: Organizing Your Local Pauper League with Ethan from Pauper PNW
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Cameron and Thomas sit down with Ethan from Pauper Pacific Northwest (Pauper PNW) to chat about how we've each worked to build up our local Pauper scenes and how Pauper PNW has built out the Cascadia Pauper Circuit to best suit the needs of their community. It's a great chat with lots of insight for other aspiring community organizers and if you're in the Pacific Northwest area we highly recommend you check out this exciting new tournament series! Thank you as always for listening!
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Common Ground 112: Spying Some Great Results at the 3rd Common Ground Cup Pauper $2k featuring Champion Michael Modena
Welcome back Pauper fam! The 3rd Common Ground Cup is in the books and y'all showed up in a BIG way to make it the best one yet! 80 Pauper players came to do battle and win their share of $2000. Between handling coverage, watching the action, and interacting with/meeting some of you, it was an incredible day and we're so grateful to be a part of this awesome community. Our champion, Michael Modena, took down the whole thing playing Spy Combo and he joined us for an interview part-way through the pod. Stay tuned for details on CGCup 4! Thank...
Common Ground 111: CGCup 3 Pre-Show Episode featuring Tristan Aita (SoIMBAGallade)
Welcome back Pauper fam! It's Common Ground Cup time once again and we're all very excited to bring you another great event! We invited our friend Tristan Aita (SoIMBAGallade on MTGO) to join us in the commentary booth this time around so he joins us this week to chat about his thoughts on the format, what decks he expects to do well, and even some bonus "bounty" prizes for folks interested in trying out some under-appreciated cards. It's an excellent pre-tournament romp through the expected format that left us even more stoked to make it all happen this weekend...
Common Ground 110: Diving Into Pauper as a New Player with Jonathan Collins AKA Brute
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we sat down with local friend and Discord regular Jonathan Collins (aka Brute) for a laidback discussion and storytime episode, mostly centered around Jonathan's first constructed Magic experience being competitive Pauper! From getting the round 3 bye at locals to finishing 9th on breakers at the 2nd Common Ground Cup in just a few weeks time, we dig into his journey learning Terror and the format at large. Lots of laughs to be had and plenty of insight for newer players, whether in paper or on MTGO. Thank you as always for listening!
<...Common Ground 109: there are plenty of playable pauper cards in lorwyn eclipsed
Welcome back Pauper fam! It's once again time for a new set and the bois have picked out a small selection of commons that they think might find some amount of shine in the Pauper format. Lorwyn Eclipsed looks to be a beautiful and flavorful set, but we'll see if that remains true for these select new cards and their roles in the format. Thank you as always for listening and enjoy prerelease at your local game store!
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Common Ground 108: New Year, New Pauper?
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we're solidly into 2026 which means it's time to take stock of the Pauper format to see where we're starting things off this time around. Menaces of the last year remain at the very top of the metagame but there are lots of decks just getting started on their rise. We're looking forward to keeping up with the format churn right alongside you! Thank you as always for listening, fam!
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Common Ground 107: Ringing in the New Year with a Pauper Mailbag
Welcome back Pauper fam! Happy New Year! To celebrate 2026 y'all showed up big time with plenty of questions for us to answer, so much so that we'll have to do another one in the near future! We hope your year is full of joy and we're incredibly grateful for your time and support as we enter our third year of Common Ground. Thank you as always for listening!
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12/20 Upstate NY Pauper Charity...
Common Ground 106: 2025 Pauper Review with Kalikaiz
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we invite Jake AKA Kalikaiz AKA saidenraiken on MTGO to join us once again for an end of the year review of the Pauper format, detailing the cards that stood out from each set release and how the format shifted throughout the year. From Pactdoll Terror to Cryogen Relic, the end of Broodscale and Kuldotha's reigns, plus an unbanning and reban of High Tide, there was a lot to reflect on. We're looking forward to another great year of Pauper in 2026, thank you for being along for the journey!
Join...
Common Ground 105: Mirror Matches in Pauper
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week the boys answer an email prompt (thank you Skye!) and dive into the dynamics of mirror matches, both in terms of general heuristics and for a number of specific Pauper archetypes. We hope you enjoy this in-depth discussion and thank you as always for listening!
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Upcoming Pauper Events:
12/13 - Win-A-Dual @ Through the Decades, Louisville KY: https://www.ttdcollectibles.com/louisville/magic
<...Common Ground 104: Eternally Grateful for Paupergeddon
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Cameron and Hippo dissect the results from last weekend's Paupergeddon at the European Eternal Weekend. It was a diverse metagame with some splashy results and overall we think a good place for the meta to be sitting post-Tide ban. Links to decklists and the tournament coverage VODs are below, thank you as always for listening!
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Paupergeddon Decklists: https://mtgdecks.net/Pauper/paupergeddon-lucca-eternal-edition-2025-tournament-224633
Paupergeddon...
Common Ground 103: How Hasbro's Direction Led to Pauper's Renaissance with Zach Geraets
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Cameron and Thomas sat down with returning guest (and Common Ground Cup 2 Champion) Zach Geraets to discuss how Hasbro and WotC's relationship with Magic and design has changed over the last few years and what that means for Pauper and the Magic community at large. It's a wide-ranging conversation that we hope you'll find insightful. We're thankful for our amazing community of listeners and the Pauper community at-large so thank you as always for listening!
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Common Ground 102: Is Pauper Still "Legacy Light"? with Carson Bispels
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we sit down with our good friend and local Legacy advocate Carson Bispels to chat about the age-old Pauper label of "Legacy Light". It's a great conversation about card and gameplay comparisons, plus insight on the community-centered nature of both formats. We also chat about some recent MTGO developments! Big thanks to Carson for joining us and thank you as always for listening!
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MTGO Special Challenge...
Common Ground 101: The Tide Goes Out, plus Avatar Spoilers
Welcome back Pauper fam! Well, the dust has settled and the PFP has decided that High Tide should return to the banlist. We spend the first half of this week's show discussing this decision and the reasoning explained in Gavin's article. The rest of our time this week is dedicated to the new Avatar cards that will be available shortly! Will any of these new UB cards break through? We'll have to wait and see. Thank you as always for listening!
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Common Ground 100: 100 Things We Love About Pauper
Welcome back Pauper fam! For the big 100th episode we wanted to celebrate Pauper with 100 of our favorite interactions and things we love about the format. There are so many cool things to do in Pauper and one of them also happens to be strolling down memory lane with your friends. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for hanging out with us for 100 episodes of Common Ground MtG. We wouldn't be here without y'all and we're very excited for the next 100. Thank you as always for listening!!!
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<...Common Ground 99: The Bant Terror Episode
Welcome back Pauper fam! It's finally time. You've all been wondering it and now we have the decklists to prove that Bant Terror can be more than just a meme! All three co-hosts brewed their own lists with some spicy includes. As much as this is a payoff for a long-running podcast lore joke, it's still another great brewing-focused episode and we hope you'll enjoy listening!
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Hippo's Bant Terror Decklist:...
Common Ground 98: CubeCon 2025
Welcome back Pauper fam! Or should we say, Cube fam? It's that time of year again: The CubeCon 2025 Recap Episode! This time around we had SEVEN people in the room to record and Thomas was the only one who wasn't in Madison last weekend! There were so so many stories to share and much laughter to be had. We hope you'll enjoy another laid-back, MtG gameplay story-driven, weekend recap, explicit tagged episode of the pod; full of shenanigans! Next week, we'll be back in the Pauper brewing streets building decks inspired by ancient CGMtG lore. Thank you all so...
Common Ground 97: What's Paupin'? Checking In with the Post-SpooderMan Pauper Metagame
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we take a look at the Pauper format in broad terms to discuss the current top decks, why new or returning decks are seeing success, and the impact that the SpiderMan cards have had on the format. It's a more laidback episode on an already pretty laidback show so we hope you'll enjoy our candid takes and analysis! Thank you as always for listening!
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Upcoming Pauper Events:
<...Common Ground 96: The Boomer Cube! CubeCon Primer with Ana Paterson
Welcome back Pauper fam! It's time for another Cube episode! This week, we invited our dear friend Ana Paterson onto the show to talk about her cube "The Vintage Cube Retirement Home" (aka The Boomer Cube) which has been selected for the main event at CubeCon next weekend! We're super psyched for her and we hope this discussion about the cube environment will be helpful to anyone looking forward to drafting the cube at CubeCon and maybe inspire some folks to design other unique and interesting cubes. Thank you so much for listening!
Cube List:...
Common Ground 95: Wild Hippo Alert at MagicCon Atlanta
Welcome back Pauper fam! Hippo has returned from Atlanta to tell us all about his adventures at MagicCon! Several friends (and one alum!) of the pod did very well in the Pauper Cup, congratulations to all! Cameron also updates us on his first time playing Rally Red. Thank you as always for listening!
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Upcoming Pauper Events:
10/4 - Team Trios (Pauper/Standard/Legacy) @ Game Knight, Columbia TN: https://topdeck.gg/event/team-trios-copy
<...Common Ground 94: Pauper Brewing in Context featuring TeasdaleMTG
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we answer a listener question with some help from our friend and yours, TeasdaleMTG! Teasdale is a UK-based Pauper content creator and co-host of the Casting Commons podcast! Together we discuss brewing, the varying contexts of the format, and how to approach Pauper with these ideas in mind. Make sure y'all give Casting Commons a listen!
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2nd CG Cup 8/2 VOD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtqPfmOlfwI
...
Common Ground 93: What Your Pauper Opponent's First Land Can Teach You
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we discuss what your opponent's first land can tell you about what deck they're playing and what their gameplan might be. It might seem like a small thing but it has cascading effects on the game and is an important tool to help you gain crucial information. Thank you as always for listening!
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2nd CG Cup 8/2 VOD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtqPfmOlfwI
Upcoming Pauper Events:<...
Common Ground 92: Look out Pauper, it's Spiderman!
Welcome back Pauper fam! It's that time again, spoiler time! This week we discuss the truly infamous Marvel: Spiderman set and its potential impact on the Pauper format. Will enough cards rise to the top that we have to endure their awkward vibes? Or will these Universes Beyond newcomers meld seamlessly with our Squadron Hawks and Writhing Chryslers? Only time will tell. Thank you as always for listening!
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2nd CG Cup 8/2 VOD: https://www.youtube.com...
Common Ground 91: We Finally Answered Some More Pauper Questions
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we reached deep into the mailbag to answer more of your questions about Pauper and Magic. Plus a weekend recap of the MTGO challenges featuring a win with the newest version of the Sacrifice deck! Thank you as always for listening!
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2nd CG Cup 8/2 VOD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtqPfmOlfwI
Upcoming Pauper Events:
9/27 - Pauper Cup @ MagicCon Atlanta (badge required): https://mcatlanta...
Common Ground 90: Playing Your First Local Event
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week we answer a long overdue listener question about how to navigate your very first event at your local game store. With Pauper growing in popularity in the States, it's important to set reasonable expectations for newer players and to remind seasoned local communities how best to welcome new folks into the fold. Hippo then walks us through his recent showing with Gardens at the Murray KY event a couple of weeks ago!
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Common Ground 89: Burn Baby Burn 2.0
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Cameron and Thomas revisit Pauper's Red deck and how it has evolved since the Kuldotha Rebirth banning. Whether you like sacrificing Mountains with Guttersnipe in play or casting Burning-Tree Emissary into Rally at the Hornburg, there is a powerful red deck for everyone in this format! We'll also be recording another mailbag episode soon so send in your questions about Pauper, our co-hosts, or anything at all. Thank you as always for listening!
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Common Ground 88: Fog Deep Dive with CGCup2 Winner Zach Geraets
Welcome back Pauper fam! The day after the 2nd Common Ground Cup, Cameron sat down with good friend and fellow South Dakotan Zach Geraets who not only won the whole tournament but is also a BG Fog afficionado in his own right. It's a great chat about Zach's tournament experience and his insights on the deck. If you've been thinking about picking up Fog for your next event, then this is a must-listen ep!
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2nd CG C...
Common Ground 87: It shuffles in?? The 2nd Common Ground Cup Recap
Welcome back Pauper fam! The 2nd Common Ground Cup was a smashing success! We doubled our attendance from January and had an absolute blast bringing quality Pauper coverage to y'all. Listen in as Cameron, Thomas, and Hippo share stories from the weekend and outline the decks and players that crushed the whole thing. Tune in next week for an interview with our winner and an in-depth discussion on the Fog deck!
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2nd CG Cup VOD: https...
Common Ground 86: Who's The Beatdown? Is it Spider-Man??
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Cameron leads us into a Magic game-theory discussion centered around the classic article "Who's The Beatdown" by Mike Flores. For an article that's over 25 years old it's amazing how relevant these concepts are in modern Magic and especially in Pauper. Then he conversation gets derailed by the inevitable opinions about the Spider-Man spoilers that have begun to surface. Let's hope this doesn't take away the spotlight from how many sweet Edge of Eternities cards are going to see play in our format! Tune into our Common Ground Cup stream on Saturday to see...
Common Ground 85: Our Edge of Eternities Picks for Pauper
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Thomas and Hippo discuss a bevy of new cards from Edge of Eternity that might see some play in your favorite format. Plus, Hippo shares a quick recap from a win-a-box tournament he played last weekend. Thanks for listening fam!
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Upcoming Pauper Events:
8/2 The 2nd Common Ground Cup (Pauper $1k+) @ Game Knight, Columbia TN! https://topdeck.gg/event/the-2nd-common-ground-cup-a-pauper-event
8/9...
Common Ground 84: Pauper Lessons from Cube Weekend & Holy Terror Top 8s Batman
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Cameron, Thomas, and Hippo swap stories from their Cube Weekend vacation while discussing some takeaways from Cube that can be applied to Pauper or any game of Magic. Then the gang shifts focus to discuss the results of this past weekend's Pauper Showcase Challenge AND Super Qualifier tournaments! Lots of Pauper being played, including the Common Ground Cup coming up August 2nd!
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Decklists:
- MTGO Pauper...
Common Ground 83: The Pauper 'Gates' Are Open Wide at Paupergeddon!
Welcome back Pauper fam! It's time for the summer edition of Paupergeddon once again and this time they're celebrating 10 years of high-level Pauper in Italy!! We discuss the decks that performed well and chat about where this could leave us over the next couple months of the format. Decklists from a myriad of events are live in the description below! Thanks as always for listening!
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Decklists:
-Upstate NY Paup-ing Off For Charity...
Common Ground 82: POST-INDY CAR POD
Welcome back Pauper fam! We were so pumped from NRG Indy that we couldn't wait to get home before recording this week's episode! A couple of lav mics in a car travelling 70 mph isn't the most ideal recording studio but the vibes shine through and we wanted to capture the magic that was this past Sunday. Thank you to everyone who came out and to NRG for hosting such a fun tournament! Look out for a deeper decklist dive next week plus catching up with some other tournament results. Thank you as always for listening fam!
Join...
Common Ground 81: Hippo Takes A Stand
Welcome back Pauper fam! This is it. The narrative climax you've all been waiting for. Hippo shares his complete and utter disdain for High Tide and what its implications are for the play experience of our format. Cameron also shares some more experience with Naya Gates from our recent Team Trios event and Thomas wants to remind you all that the Commons At The Capitol $2k Pauper tournament with NRG is this Sunday at Noon in Indianapolis! Check out all the details in the links below. Thanks so much fam!
Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/kdvSavFkpz<...
Common Ground 80: Another Great Grassroots Pauper Event with Pauper-oncini Organizer Alex Nicewander
Welcome back Pauper fam! This week Cameron, Thomas, and Hippo sit down with Alex Nicewander to chat about Pauper-oncini, a mid-west Pauper tournament that he helped organize and lead to great success! It's awesome to see so many grassroots events popping off in the states! The gang also recaps their recent monthly event at the Game Cave. Thank you so much for listening fam!
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Upcoming Pauper Events:
6/21 Paup-ing off for Charity w/ U...
