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Overanalyzing Secret Lair Zeta, Magic's weirdest "set" yet, for Pauper

A very strange Secret Lair was announced this week: Zeta, inspired by early prototype and playtest cards, but with cards from all of Magic. As with any experiment that Wizards of the Coast conducts, the cards themselves as well as many of the details surrounding it were met with a spectrum of opinions. A randomized Secret Lair product! Seven-card booster packs for almost $20 each! Weird art!

One of the first things people noticed was the assigned rarity of individual cards. There's a spread of rarities from common to mythic as in normal Magic sets, but some of the first cards spoiled were commons... that had never been legal in the Pauper format before, where only cards that have at least one common printing are allowed. Gavin Verhey of WOTC quickly clarified that cards in SLZ would not change Pauper legality and later added that they were going to update the rules for Pauper to exclude Secret Lairs. Crisis averted, albeit in an awkward way—see below for some more thoughts here.

With the legality problem resolved for now, it's easy to dismiss this Secret Lair as a weird item with little value unless you want to buy a few packs for fun, or pick up singles on the secondary market later. (Honestly, that should probably be your default response to any Magic product.) As someone who enjoys Pauper and a little value analysis, though, I'd like to dive a little deeper on what could have been, and also share some thoughts on what WOTC should do about Pauper and Secret Lairs in general.

Cards that would have been new to Pauper

• An Offer You Can't Refuse
  • U, instant: Counter target noncreature spell. Its controller creates two Treasure tokens.
  • This card is fairly strong in a vacuum. Compared to Spell Pierce and Negate, two cards that see some play in blue decks like Terror, Offer is the best at actually stopping a spell, but I think there are a lot of decks that would be able to use the two treasures profitably. Offer seems great against black decks running cards like Fanatical Offering, but less so against red decks who just want to cast draw-twos and damage spells. I don't think it would break the format per se, but it would be a strong option for decks that already have a lot of strong countermagic options.
• Baleful Strix
  • UB, 1/1 artifact creature: Flying, deathtouch; When it enters, draw a card.
  • This was one of the first cards revealed from SLZ and the card that started the Pauper legality discussion. Before the confirmation that Strix would not be legal, I guessed that it could see play in Dimir and Grixis affinity decks as a cantripping artifact creature. It's not identical to either Refurbished Familiar or Utrom Monitor—hey, a card that became legal in Pauper despite not being printed in a "regular" set, hmm—but it fits the card-advantage and flying-blocker roles well enough. I saw some additional discussion online that Strix would be great in Dimir Faeries, which tracks: those decks often play four copies of Augur of Bolas. Augur is not strictly worse (three toughness, digs deeper) but Strix always draws a card and flies, which helps enable their ninja gameplan.
• Cut Down
  • B, instant: Destroy target creature with total power and toughness 5 or less.
  • The best unconditional creature removal in the format is Cast Down, played as a four-of in a lot of black decks. Cut Down is conditional, obviously: it can't kill Tolarian Terror, Writhing Chrysalis, or a number of large creatures in Monster Tron or green ramp decks like Elves and Ponza. Crucially though, it's only one mana, and still kills a huge variety of aggressive and tempo creatures. In that way, it feels like a black Lightning Bolt for decks that interact at all, and Bolt is already a mega-staple in Pauper. Tough to say what the full impact of this being at common would be, but I think it would be a huge boost to black decks across the format, and a significant hit to creature decks, especially in red and white.
• Dispatch
  • W, instant: Tap target creature. If you control three or more artifacts, exile that creature.
  • Artifact-based strategies are a pillar of Pauper. That said, most artifact decks focus on the other colors: blue has Thoughtcast, red has Galvanic Blast, black has Refurbished Familiar, et cetera. Near and dear to my heart, though, are Glintblade decks, which are black and white (and sometimes a third color) and revolve around cards like Glint Hawk and Kor Skyfisher to play, pick up, and replay artifacts like Tithing Blade. While Dispatch requires a little more setup to act as removal than, say, Cut Down, it looks like an incredible option for any white affinity deck. My Glintblade deck is playing four Cast Down and three Thraben Charm as instant-speed removal, but it's so easy to get three artifacts on the board that I'd happily make room for the cheaper Dispatch. If Dispatch was legal, I feel comfortable saying it would significantly increase the number of affinity decks playing white in the entire format.
• Gigantosaurus
  • GGGGG, 10/10 creature
  • Yep, that's all it does: B I G. I don't think that's good enough, though. For reference, Elves decks often go wide but can also ramp into Avenging Hunter or Nyxborn Hydra. Walls decks have better ways to end the game with direct damage or other infinite combos. Tron decks frequently have green mana available for Crop Rotation and Ancient Stirrings but can't really make five of it in one turn. No one is playing vaguely similar creatures either, so I think this would be a funny but irrelevant addition to Pauper.
• Narcomoeba
  • 1U, 1/1 creature: Flying; When this is put into your graveyard from your library, you may put it onto the battlefield.
  • I will tell you straight-up that I don't know enough about this card to have a strong opinion on it. I know it's a part of combo decks across Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, as its ability is unique or nearly-so in all of Magic. In particular, its ability to be a free creature to sacrifice to Dread Return is highly valued. Dread Return is already legal in Pauper and used quite a bit in Spy combo decks (cast Balustrade Spy, put your whole deck into your graveyard, flashback Dread Return targeting Lotleth Giant) as well as more-incremental Dredge strategies. It seems like Narcomoeba would improve those decks enough to see play, but I'm not an expert.
• Price of Progress
  • 1R, instant: Deal damage to each player equal to twice the number of nonbasic lands that player controls.
  • This one is kind of funny. Pauper is a format where there are real costs to playing multiple colors, which is one of the reasons I love it so much. Mono-blue Terror, mono-red Madness (and Rally), and mono-green Elves are among the top 10 most popular Pauper decks, and others are not far behind. Against those decks, Price of Progress does absolutely nothing. However, there are plenty of decks playing mostly nonbasics, and Price would be a great sideboard option against them... too good, if I had to guess. Mono-red aggro decks are already very popular and well-positioned in the meta despite not being favored against Grixis Affinity, Monster Tron, Gates, or even Gardens (according to this winrate chart), so giving them a powerful game-ender in the sideboard seems like it would cause red decks to dominate.
• Return to Dust
  • 2WW, instant: Exile target artifact or enchantment. If you cast this during your main phase, you may exile up to one other target artifact or enchantment.
  • Dust to Dust is legal in Pauper and is a very popular sideboard card for white decks of all kinds. Return to Dust does two things better: it can hit enchantments, and it can be cast at instant speed with only one target. It does one major thing worse though, which is that it costs four mana. Yes, Return to Dust is more flexible, but there are not a lot of enchantments in Pauper to target unless you happen to run into a Bogles deck. The widely played Thraben Charm can already destroy an enchantment, but this is by far the least-used mode. I don't think the instant speed matters nearly as much as the mana cost, so I don't think this would make it to any Pauper sideboards.
• Sengir Vampire
  • 3BB, 4/4 creature: Flying; When a creature dealt damage by this creature this turn dies, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.
  • This is a five-mana creature with no immediate value in a format dominated by cards that cost 2 mana or less. There is no way this card would see play.
• Serra Angel
  • 3WW, 4/4 creature: Flying, vigilance
  • This is a five-mana creature with no immediate value in a format dominated by cards that cost 2 mana or less. There is no way this card would see play.
• Soul-Guide Lantern
  • 1, artifact: When this enters, exile target card from a graveyard; Tap and sacrifice: Exile each opponent's graveyard; 1, tap, sacrifice: Draw a card.
  • While there are a variety of ways to remove cards from graveyards, Relic of Progenitus is the most popular colorless effect by far. In fact, it's the fourth-most popular card in all of Pauper. Compared to Relic, Lantern is generally more flexible: it targets a card when it enters, it can exile a graveyard on a later turn without holding up any mana, and it can still be sacrificed to draw a card if needed. It also doesn't hit your own graveyard, which is a reason to play an alternative to Relic like Nihil Spellbomb or Faerie Macabre. The ability to continually whittle away an opponent's graveyard turn-over-turn with Relic is not for nothing, though, and exiling graveyards and drawing a card simultaneously can be better, too. I suspect Lantern would take some sideboard slots from Relic, primarily for the ability to exile without holding up mana, but I'm not convinced it would replace it entirely or be problematic for the format at large.
• Vandalblast
  • R, sorcery: Destroy target artifact you don't control; Overload 4R (destroy each artifact you don't control)
  • Red has a variety of artifact destruction effects, mostly at two mana with some other upside: Cast into the Fire costs two but exiles; Smash to Smithereens also deals three damage; Suplex can also take care of creatures. One-mana artifact destruction spells exist but see little to no play. Is the overload ability relevant? I don't think so. Five mana is a lot, and not being able to exile bridges matters. It's possible a slower multicolor deck with red (but not white!) would have 1-2 in the sideboard to try to catch affinity off guard, but I just don't see it.

How should we handle commons in Secret Lairs?

Gavin's posts clarified the immediate impact to Pauper: nothing to see here, move along. Clearly the Secret Lair people did not talk to the Pauper people beforehand, so rather than risk breaking what is currently a varied and interesting format, they just created (or maybe extended) an exception for the situation.

LPI, the organization that runs Paupergeddon (the largest yearly Pauper tournament) released a statement here. It's worth reading, and makes strong points for avoiding a Secret Lair exception. The argument boils down to this: it functions as a regular Magic card, printed at common, so why shouldn't it be legal by default?

This question gets at the intersection of many separate concerns. The Pauper rules, as written, include cards printed in regular sets, cards downshifted in reprint sets, cards that were not printed in randomized card packs, cards that were downshifted in nonrandomized products, and more. The spirit of the Pauper rules may be slightly different, especially from WOTC's perspective. They administer the format through bans and run leagues on MTGO, but like Commander, Pauper originated outside the walls of WOTC in the hands of creative players. Pauper events, including the largest ones, aren't always affiliated with WOTC.

Should the Pauper rules be as simple as possible: commons are commons, and we'll ban it if it's bad for the format? Or should the banlist be as simple as possible: only "normal" sets count, so don't worry about the weird sets? There are arguments for both, but for comparison, let's take a look at Unfinity. In 2024, WOTC banned every non-acorn Unfinity card that used stickers or attractions from Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper. Note that they didn't ban all cards from Unfinity, or change the rules so that Un-sets just weren't legal in the first place, they just banned the cards that mattered. This nearly doubled the Pauper banlist and had a big impact on other formats, too, but the outcome was clean: these cards are banned, no rules changes, thanks/sorry.

WOTC tries to maintain a good experience for Pauper, and I think they have been doing a pretty good job of it. Commons serve a lot of purposes though—draft slots, worldbuilding, set themes—and I don't think that Pauper is high on that list. It just happens to be the case that Pauper is pretty resilient and unlikely to be broken by cards that WOTC prints at common. Put another way, Zeta wasn't designed for Pauper, but neither was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtle Team-Up box, or the Commander precons, or Lord of the Rings, or Mirrodin, or Alpha... and Pauper is awesome and fun anyway.

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