If you follow any of the chatter on today's Banned and Restricted announcement, there wasn't much expected to be banned—with one exception.

There was some chatter that Peregrine Drake, newly made common by Eternal Masters, would get the axe due to its rising popularity and power in Pauper. However, the rise of the Drake is relatively recent, so it survived this time. Whether it survives the next one will be a function of what happens in Pauper in the meantime.

If you're not exactly sure what I'm talking about, the deck list below will give you some clue. With Peregrine Drake, Ghostly Flicker, and either Archaeomancer or Mnemonic Wall, the deck can repeatedly flicker the pair, untapping their lands and getting the flicker effect back. They end up with unlimited mana and, if you throw a Mulldrifter or Sea Gate Oracle in there, unlimited draws. Once they draw their whole deck, they can dump all of the mana into a Rolling Thunder and simply win.

The rest of the deck is a blue-red control shell, packing cheap removal, card draw, and counterspells, in that way reminding many people of the old Splinter Twin deck in Modern. That kind of power in Pauper certainly gives some people pause.

But for now, Drake survives to untap another land.