We're back at it once again talking about Pauper cards that are in desperate need of a reprint! It's been several weeks of taking a look at a whole host of awesome cards that can use reprints, be it due to cost or simple accessibility issues.

If you'd like to take a look at the previous articles written in this series, you can check them out here:

• Ten Old Pauper Cards That Need Reprints
• Ten More Old Pauper Cards That Need Reprints
• Ten Old Pauper Roleplayers That Need Accessibility Reprints
• Ten Modern Era Pauper Cards That Need Reprints
• Ten Pauper Cards That Need More Reprints

This time around, though, I'm taking a bit of a different approach. Up until now, the focus has solely been on paper cards and paper releases. Instead, I'd now like to turn my eye toward Magic Online.

This classic digital client for Magic: The Gathering has become one of the biggest spaces to play the Pauper format. While many players love playing it in paper and revel in its affordability, it still remains fairly niche in most regions. Online, however, you can play against people from all over the world, meaning that you don't need to worry about the niche playerbases trying to come together to sling some commons.

Despite this ease of access to one of the coolest formats around, there are still a decent chunk of cards that can be difficult to acquire. In some cases, it even makes some decks out of reach for someone looking to try the format out for the first time. As such, I'm going to spend these final two reprint discussion articles taking a look at some of the most needed reprints for Magic Online.

There's a lot of ground to cover so let's get right to it!

Honorable Mention: Equinox

Equinox is one of the rare common cards that isn't on Magic Online. Back when the Masters Edition sets came to the client, several early cards were left out and didn't make it to the client, as they would be considered weak or lack any real use cases. Thanks to the continual rise in land destruction effects, many players have asked for it to come to the client, but it's difficult to do so at the moment thanks to royalty issues with the artwork. Reprinting a unique effect like this can be tough, but it would go a long way to making some Pauper players quite happy.

10. Spinning Darkness

I mentioned this in a previous article, but there was a long time where Spinning Darkness was extremely bugged on Magic Online. As a result, it saw little to no play, and most of its play was by people unaware of just how game breaking its bugs were. Now, though, it's been a little while since the bugs were fixed and the card has become a modest player in the format. However, it only saw printing in one set: Weatherlight. Much like many pre-Invasion sets, that had a very low availability, leading to not many copies of the card entering the game's ecosystem. Just another reason this bizarre common could use a real reprint.

9. Boarding Party

Finally, we hit something that's very recent: a card released beyond Return to Ravnica on the timeline. I didn't include these in my previous articles because most of them saw enough of a print in paper that availability isn't an issue, even for the most staple cards. That doesn't always translate to Magic Online, however.

Commander Legends released in the thick of the COVID pandemic, and while it was a hit in paper thanks to the great Commander cards, the same could not be said on MTGO. The digital client wasn't a great spot for many players to jam games of Commander - especially once Spelltable launched. Couple this with the set's plodding Limited environment with weird prizing and most players simply weren't interested in the set. That meant less singles made it to the market and the more playable ones - even commons - have become quite sought after and need a solid reprint, such as Boarding Party - a staple of Gruul Ramp/Ponza decks.

8. Dust to Dust

If you missed it, this topped the first of my Pauper reprint articles due to extremely low availability in paper. Strangely, it's quite a bit easier to acquire on MTGO instead, as it's not a card that's more heavily limited by geographical distribution like it is in paper. Despite this, Dust to Dust remains a pricey card online as well, and something that deserves a proper reprint to get more copies into players' hands.

7. Prismatic Strands

Prismatic Strands suffers from being a card that only saw one major printing in its original release in Judgment. While that was available on the client for some time, it was also one of the very first ever released, which means that the supply hasn't been as strong as time has gone on. It only had one reprint in Commander 2019 and that didn't come to MTGO making it even less accessible despite its utility in the format.

6. Land Grant

Famously, Mercadian Masques and its respective block was a disastrously low print release on MTGO. All pre-Invasion releases came to the client one set at a time, allowing the earlier sets in blocks to receive additional print availability here and there. Due to the poor reputation of the Masques Block, Wizards did something a little different: simply shove all three sets into one big booster pack that allowed players to do a complete block draft.

This caused a pretty big problem, though: the entire block had an extremely small window of availability on the client. If I recall correctly (I couldn't find exact details upon research) it was only available for play and purchase for like 3-4 weeks, with a later run of flashback drafts one additional time. That made cards like Land Grant - a core card of the powerful Spy Combo decks - rare and fairly pricey, particularly if they're good.

5. Breath Weapon

Breath Weapon is the first of three(ish) cards on this list from Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate. All of them are rare, expensive, and only got released via treasure chests on MTGO. The set came out during the transition period where Daybreak Games took over and, as a result, the set never made it to Magic Online in a draftable manner. Thus, the only way many could acquire these cards was via chests. Breath Weapon is a tremendously powerful board wipe, and while cheaper cards like Fiery Cannonade can do a similar thing, there's no comparison for how universal this board wipe can be.

4. Mental Note

Mental Note is another early MTGO card that was released with Judgment. While Prismatic Strands might be a pretty popular card across a variety of decks using White creatures, Mental Note goes in different flavors of one particular deck: Tolarian Terror. Terror decks are some of the best things you can be doing in the format, making this card an absolute must-have, and in turn hindering its accessibility. A big reprint could go a long way for this one.

3. Campfire

Campfire may read as a silly card to be so difficult to acquire, but it is. This was another example of a Battle for Baldur's Gate card that didn't make it to MTGO with boosters. In fact, unlike the others on this list, it didn't even come via treasure chests (at first anyways). Its only digital printing was in the Commander Masters precons, which were not opened in high quantities on the client and lead to the card becoming astoundingly difficult to acquire. It's not a major player in most decks, but for the decks that do want it, it's in dire need of some improved accessibility.

2. Avenging Hunter (and Goliath Paladin)

Perhaps the most egregious example of the Battle for Baldur's Gate cards, all of the initiative cards proved to be a little too powerful. Most were banned in Pauper, but a handful remained. Avenging Hunter - and to a lesser extent Goliath Paladin - has been fairly heavily played in a way that isn't quite so backbreaking as the Turbo Initiative days. This has made it one of the most expensive commons on the client and a card that is in dire need of a proper reprint on the client beyond mere inclusions in treasure chests.

1. The Blasts (Blue Elemental Blast, Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Hydroblast)

In my last article, I noted how the Blasts saw quite a bit of reprints over the years in a number of places. However, the majority of those reprints didn't quite translate to Magic Online. While players need less copies on a digital client like this, there's also far less copies of each card to go around which has made them extremely rare and among the priciest Pauper cards on the client. Given that many decks need playsets of both for a color - not just one - there's a serious need to get more copies onto the client via a major set release and not just further inclusions in treasure chests.

Paige Smith

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