It's only been about a week since Wizards of the Coast introduced Magic the Gathering's Pauper Format Panel, but it is already gearing up to announce a new wave of bans for the Pauper format.

Pauper is a format where only common-rarity cards are legal. Despite not having the flashy rares and mythic rares, it's still proven popular with players who enjoy the deckbuilding challenges it presents and its overall lower price to make a competitive deck.

RELATED: Wizards Forms Team To Focus On Magic The Gathering's Pauper Format With The Pauper Format Panel

Earlier this month, senior designer Gavin Verhey introduced the Pauper Format Panel, a team of seven people including himself and six well-known community members. Their job is to advise Wizards of the Coast on the health of the Pauper format and suggest bans. While they don't have a unilateral say in decisions, Wizards has said it will generally be following the Panel on decisions regarding Pauper.

We weren't expecting any bans to be announced until after the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty preview season, which begins at the end of this month. However, in a tweet on the official Magic the Gathering Twitter account, it was announced we'll be seeing the first bans from the Pauper Format Panel be announced as part of this week's WeeklyMTG stream.

It's difficult to say exactly what changes will be made, though it's likely they'll effect the longstanding metagame favourite, artifact-heavy Affinity decks. Many players are suggesting it will be the two-colour artifact lands from Modern Horizons 2 that get hit, while others are suggesting Affinity could be completely gutted with a surprise Atog ban. However, neither of these have been confirmed, and would be fairly drastic considering Affinity isn't overly warping the format at the moment.

Chatterstorm by Milivoj Ćeran
Chatterstorm by Milivoj Ćeran

The fact that this ban announcement is being streamed could mean even more sweeping changes to the format than we're anticipating. Usually these announcements are made through blog posts on the official Magic site, but with the introduction of the Pauper Panel it could be a good time to drastically shake up the format.

Regardless, it's nice to see the Pauper Format Panel take action so quickly. Pauper's been in a much better place since the banning of Sojourner's Companion and Chatterstorm last year, but there is still a lot more work that can be done to make the format as diverse as possible.

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