C'mon! Katowice 2026 Metagame

A day full of emotions, over 150 players, the biggest C’mon! ever (and the biggest Pauper event in Poland so far), and at the end: a single champion! 2026-09-19 was a special day for Pauper format enthusiasts. Let’s dive together in some numbers to see what metagame looked like during that tournament.

This time we’ve had an opportunity to sail into uncharted territory, as the PFP’s decision from early September - to make commons from the „Zeta Set” format legal - brought several potentially impactful cards to the mix. We can see its presence even in our current champion’s sideboard, but were they really that impactful? Find out in the C’mon! Katowice 2026 report!

The Metagame

Before we get into the metagame itself, a word on deck categories:

Deck categories

We’ve made an attempt to group various archetypes played in the format by the similar role they play in the metagame. And while these categories may overlap (for example, most “Skyfisher decks” will also make use of Lightning Bolt, even though a separate “Bolt decks” category exists) we find this classification helpful as an initial way of surveying and understanding the overall field.

This is very much work-in-progress, so if you’d like to learn what these categories mean to us, or you have other ideas how these categories could look like - we’re open for discussion on Polish Pauper Discord.

With that in mind, here’s the bird’s eye view on what decks have been registered for the tournament:

A brief examination of that chart reveals that:

Little did change in popularity of Red (“Bolt”) strategies: with Mono-Red Madness being the most played single archetype at nearly 10% of all decks, and other decks of the same category making over 21% of the meta. Blue blasts and appropriate suite of creature removal are likely to stay in their sideboard slots in the new metagame,
Artifact (“Bridges”) strategies maintain their strong presence - with Esper Affinity being the second mostly played deck, and the whole category being second only to “Bolt” decks. The decks within this category, have however experience as a swift and decisive shift towards white mana, almost surely driven by the power of Dispatch,
The third pillar of this metagame were various “Aggro” decks (mostly: Green and/or White), and if we combine more traditional “low to the ground” aggro with “big mana” strategies, they match the popularity of “Bolt” decks. This category of decks is, however, much more fragmented, with no single archetype exceeding 5% of metagame,
The “Terror” decks might have lost a bit of the popularity (likely caused by the unknown impact of Dispatch and Baleful Strix to the decks), yet Mono-Blue Terror was the third most popular single archetype that day,
Various “Combo” decks were also present, with Spy being the most represented decks of that category.

If you’re interested in the details, you can find all the decklists here

Most played cards

With that heavy Mono Red oriented meta, one could expect some red staples to be present in such a summary. You wouldn’t be wrong! On top of that, usually, we see here the most used sideboard cards, shared across different archetypes:

#	Card	Number of decks	Total copies across all decks
1	Lightning Bolt	49	186
2	Pyroblast	47	152
3	Sneaky Snacker	35	139
4	Relic of Progenitus	50	130
5	Hydroblast	39	122
6	Blue Elemental Blast	41	119
7	Counterspell	30	118
8	Red Elemental Blast	43	114
9	Voldaren Epicure	29	113
10	Galvanic Blast	27	108
11	Cast into the Fire	40	102
12	Lórien Revealed	26	102
13	Breath Weapon	38	96
14	Thraben Charm	37	95
15	Refurbished Familiar	23	92
16	Dispatch	23	91
17	Nihil Spellbomb	34	87
18	Dust to Dust	29	86
19	Kor Skyfisher	22	83
20	Great Furnace	27	82
21	Grab the Prize	20	80
22	Fiery Temper	20	80
23	Glint Hawk	20	78
24	Highway Robbery	20	78
25	Brainstorm	21	77
26	Generous Ent	23	71
27	Prismatic Strands	23	70
28	Giant’s Boulder	22	70
29	Faithless Looting	20	70
30	Writhing Chrysalis	18	70
31	Vault of Whispers	23	69
32	Lava Dart	18	69
33	Thoughtcast	18	68
34	Ancient Den	22	67
35	Baleful Strix	20	62
36	Faerie Macabre	27	61
37	Weather the Storm	18	61
38	Annul	20	60
39	Mistvault Bridge	17	60
40	Lead the Stampede	15	59
41	Winding Way	15	59
42	Nyxborn Hydra	22	58
43	Fireblast	20	58
44	Cryogen Relic	16	58
45	Avenging Hunter	17	56
46	Kessig Flamebreather	14	56
47	Vandalblast	32	55
48	Seat of the Synod	18	55
49	Sagu Wildling // Roost Seek	18	54
50	Guttersnipe	16	54

The most popular card turned out to be the all-time classic: Lightning Bolt.

Top 10 looks like a battle between blue and red colours, unsurprisingly in a metagame where nearly every 3rd deck is either mono-red or mono-blue. We have to actually look down to as low as 14th place, to see a card that could not be played in a mono-red or mono-blue deck. If we would look at the number of deck occurrences the crown would go to the Relic of Progenitus, which - despite the recent addition of Soul-Guide Lantern, is still the gravehate piece of choice in the format. We can also see Zeta newcomers on positions: 16, 35 and 47 (and more on that later).

Bonus - Zeta Impact

58 players have decided to use at least one of the cards just added to the format (this is around 38% of all decks), despite very little time for testing, and potential problems with acquiring the cards in paper. You could already see Dispatch on 16th place of the most popular cards (and some others a bit lower) and we’ve already seen its impact on the wider metagame (both in “Bridges” decks and “Skyfisher” decks) What else?

Baleful Strix found new home not only in Esper Affinity but also in Dimir Controls, Faeries and Terrors.

Soul-Guide Lantern was utilised by decks with Glint Hawk and Kor Skyfisher – bounce effect is a good synergy here, but also it was found in a single Mono Red Madness, Mono Blue Terror and Mono Blue Faries.

Vandalblast was crowds’ favourite and was used across the whole meta – in Trons, Gates, Affinities and Burn (Rakdos one, no Mono Red was brave enough to utilize that).