Pauper

Can anyone point me to a list with the reason behind the bans for these cards in Pauper?

So, the new ban list for Pauper just came out, and it re-bans High Tide. That got me looking at the full ban list for Pauper, and it occurred to me that each of these cards is banned for a reason. But I don't know any of those stories. A few of these cards I can look at and see, yeah, that's obviously busted. But for many of them I'm not seeing the reason.

Ban list: https://magic.wizards.com/en/banned-restricted-list

Pauper update from November 2025: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/explanation-of-the-pauper-high-tide-ban-for-november-10-2025

Pauper update from March 2025: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/explanation-of-pauper-bans-for-march-31-2025

As far as I can tell, TCGplayer has a workers union, but management has never been happy about it. This week I've been seeing some alarming social media posts - made it sound like management had literally brought in the Pinktertons to rough up the employees during their breaks. That seems far fetched, does anyone have any credible sources for what's going on?

Best I could find was this article on MSN, which simply states they're closing the union facility entirely & relocating it to another state: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/union-accuses-ebay-of-closing-tcgplayer-office-in-syracuse-to-keep-the-company-union-free/ar-AA1FlJ06

Here's a more sensationalized article: https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-tcgplayer-union-layoff/

TL;DR: Mana Drain & Esper Sentinel

Hey all! So, I was thinking, I'm warming up to the idea of the 'game changers' list, as I realized I have my own mental list of cards. Cards that as soon as I see the first or second one, I immediately re-evaluate the deck I'm playing against, as I realize it's a stronger deck.

But of course, my list doesn't align perfectly with what's on the published one. So I thought I'd push this out here today & see - hey what cards do you see that make you pause & go 'Hey, that's a strong deck'.

For me, the top of my list is probably any free counterspell (which they have), followed very closely by Mana Drain (which oddly, they don't). That's followed very closely by seeing any of the 'tax cards' (Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Esper Sentinel, & Mystic Rhemoraz).

And I'll put a special mention out there for Staff of Domination. Which is covered by the 'no 2 card infinite combos' rule. Fine in isolation, but it's rarely in a deck without being exploitable. I just have a lot of friends who run it for that exact reason, so I see it a lot.

And of course, there's plenty of commanders that hit this as well. Atraxa, Ur-Dragon, & Edgar Markov come to mind. Fortunately they don't come up too often (for me), they seem to already have this unofficial label of being C-EDH only.