As a Pauper player, I think it's really important that you don't stray too far from common rules when making or downshifting cards. If you just started downshifting cards like Pyroclasm and Dismember it would just start to feel like Legacy. That said, Pauper has a lot of decks that press an early creature+card advantage (Delver of Secrets, white weenies), and comeback options are just "1 damage" or "5+ mana". It'd be awesome if there were more, common-appropriate ways to come back against that.

The problem is sweeper cards aren’t a common thing.

Hi Mark, recently you answered a very valid criticism about the power level of BFZ by comparing apples and oranges. The writer asked why we couldn't have spells that are on par with what we see in Modern, yet you talked about Alpha and the most broken spells in history. There's a way to strike a balance without breaking Standard. When I started playing, Lightning Bolt was legal and it was fun yet challenging. Same with Dismember, Mana Leak, etc. Why not keep it fun with powerful cards?

Hyper aggressive noncreature “answers” come at a high cost. They keep us from being able to make larger spells effective. When your answers mostly cost one or two mana, six mana spells have a very hard time being relevant in tournaments. The reason we’ve moved in the direction we have (over all of Magic’s life - I wasn’t just talking about Alpha) is fourfold: 1) We can make more things matter. Part of good design is opening up design space. 2) It increases the variety of cards that can be playable in Standard. When you have hyper aggressive spells, everyone just plays that over other options. 3) We can make things that many players want to be good actually be good. It’s a better game when players’ excitement actually matches what’s good in the game. 4) It’s allowed us to have both creatures and noncreature spells matter. Look at recent Standard. It’s ranged from decks that are mostly creature spells to decks that are mostly noncreature spells and everything in between.

Unrules question: If I tap City of Ass to pay for the phyrexian mana part on Dismember, do I only have to pay one life?

No, if you do not have all the mana, it costs 2 life.

Is phyrexian mana an acceptable way to stretch the colorpie e.g. a certain deathtouch flier being printed in black, even though green woul d still have access to it for a comparatively low cost? (seems to work for Dismember or Surgical Extraction)

I believe Phyrexian mana should work like artifacts. It lets colors have access to a few things they normally don’t but at an additional cost. We have to be careful though not to give color’s easy access to specific areas of weakness.

I'm a Black player by heart and reading everything I can find about color philosophy. When Black is the king of creature destruction: Could you please tell me what the best Black spell is with the same power level as Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares?

Swords to Plowshares is more powerful than any removal spell should be. Dismember is close in power level to Path of Exile (which in my mind is better removal than white should have).

Did Phyrexian Mana spells like Gutshot and Dismember break the color pie too much?

The idea behind Phyrexian mana is that it worked similar to artifacts in that it allowed any color access to certain things but at a higher cost. It mostly worked out but there were a few cards that either did something we don’t do in artifacts or the cost was too aggressively pushed.