JESUS CHRIST BUGS, a blog in Twenty Twenty Five?!

well, yes.

Look man, Idk what I'm doing either here. I'm just having Fun Online, and talking about Pauper, the premiere Magic: The Gathering format for broke bitches.

Anyway, Let's talk about The Wizard Stick. At the time of writing (circa mid June 2025) Magic: The Gathering: Universes Beyond - Final Fantasy; Sanity’s Requiem Part 1 (Sponsored by Costco) is just days away from dropping in shops. It’s pre-release hype, there’s a ton of sick looking cards, everyone is stoked to see how they’re going to impact the meta of their favorite formats, and I am absolutely hooked on The Wizard Stick. Ever since this card got spoiled, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I see little tiny black mages in my dreams, I’m jittery at the notion of tapping 1B to cast this funny little staff. If you follow me on Bluesky, you’ll know that I’ve been posting about it relentlessly. I’m even pestering my family about this piece of cardboard. All of this is to say, I think it might have the juice, and I’m determined to find a home for it in my favorite format, Cube Pauper. So, I’m doing the sensible thing and trying to brew up as many homes as I can think of to see where this bad boy can land.

Before getting into the deck lists and my experiences/thoughts playing them, I’d like to preface a few things:

• I am by no means an expert source on the pauper format. I’ve been following the scene for not quite two years (the first big banning I paid attention to was Monastery Swiftspear).
• All deck playtesting has been against my local meta in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and done in paper. I don’t understand how MTG Online works and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.
• I might leave some obvious cards out of lists because I’m funding these brews myself and am at the mercy of card availability and affordability; if anyone would like to finance an exploration of how Magic Sticks plays with Snuff Out, my Cashapp is $Bugsmaytrix.
• I have a terrible proclivity to fall into “interesting engines that will work once” gimmick brewing. I’m fighting against these impulses, but there will probably be some headass shit here.
• I, like most people, am not very good at Magic.