[Official] State of Pioneer Thread (B&R 12/16/2019)

[metalmusic_4]

They just decapitated all the best decks in the format but some of those decks will be able to keep working. Mono red is the best deck that wasn't using any of the newly banned cards I think, so I see this as a big big plus for chainwhirler and that whole deck.

[Wraithpk]

Mono-red isn't going to break out until Oko is gone. If slower fair decks really do find their place now with Field and OUaT gone, the best fair thing to be doing will be Oko. So Oko decks will probably shoot up in metashare, making the format even more hostile to Mono-red.

[metalmusic_4]

You may be right, life gain from food tokens are rough on red deck wins. It is undeniable that oko is real good and will continue to be widely played. They shook the format up dramaticly and anything could happen now, but I do think red will get a bigger share than it had before.

[iTaLenTZ]

The problem with Oko is that he invalidates too much your opponent can do and is generally a very unfun to play against. oko is an acknowledged design mistake and it would be better if he just got banned because the card should never been printed in the first place.

[The Fluff]

[mention]Arkmer[/mention]

I was surprised they got rid of the copter. Fortunate that I did not hoard the thing,

Agreed that Oko must be got rid of too. It's hard to deal with in modern, so it would obviously be hard to deal with here.
___________

And on other things. I'm enjoying the deck building challenge of this format. With no decent fetch, have to be careful selecting which duals to add in my wbg deck. Mana confluence helps as a single, but more than one and the lifeloss get's dangerous. Testing continue..

[drmarkb]

I must admit I was disappointed by the copter going. I am not an aggro player by any stretch, I like prison or combo-prison in Legacy, so it is odd of me to defend it. The main argument against it is that it is ubiquitous- and there is a lot of validity in that- it is in a lot of decks. It is pretty easy to remove in maindecakble white banishing effects, and K command plus abrade, decay etc. provide a lot of ways to interact, but without going into the dies to doomblade arguments, the card is not front loaded and easy to interact with. On powerlevel even in the mono B deck it is not too OP but it is universal, which is why they have chopped it- every aggro/tempo deck runs it. Having said that if they start to hurt - and I mean HURT- activated abilities or excess card draw we do not get the issue with the card. It comes down and the Chains of Meph or Suppression Field type hate make the card worse than a basic critter. That is the real worry- they are not planning on making proper hate cards. It avoiding or invalidating wrath is not an issue for me- we need cards to do exactly that or the format ends up with boring control mirrors and control being control will involve everyone gravitating towards the same deck in UW or UWX. Long may UW players not get away with just wrathing and not worrying about what hides under the wrath or what hasty or flash stuff is in hand, and I like to Wrath myself.

I also think Field is perhaps the wrong call- or at least too early- maybe Hour should have gone and we could have had a look at what happens. But then that may have still needed action. To say control gets invalidated by it is not really fair, it gets invalidated by needing to control lands archetypes and aggro archetypes at the same time, an issue in Modern where there are so many broken strategies you can hit some and suck to the others. This ban is a symptom of a format which lacks good land destruction and search hate better than Aven Mindcensor- something we desparately need to act as a ballast against future broken decks. I do wonder if Blood Sun would have risen in promenance and again, with proper mandeckable mini-hate- think a blood sun ability on a 2/1 hasty first striker in red (without the draw, obviously) or a nevermore for a nonbasic land in white stapled to a dude- maybe the card would not have needed a ban. What a miserable era the cards have been scraped from, an era when Sam Stoddard would write about how much fun Emrakul was. At least RTR block had some good answers.

OUAT is just busted.

Oko- oh how we need hate for all pushed walkers. Bans are not ideal, but WOTC refuse to punish people for playing with walkers the way everybody else gets punished.

I think the format will end up with a bunch of boring combat based decks vs UW whilst modern ends up a bunch of broken non interactive decks, and neither had to happen this way if only WOTC had made hate cards to match the threats these past few years.

[Arkmer]

I think the format will end up with a bunch of boring combat based decks vs UW {snip some modern commentary}

I think this is interesting. Generally, I feel that combat starts as aggro, gets pushed out by midrange (slightly slower but bigger), then gets big enough that the removal of the format becomes incredibly good and pushes out midrange in the form of control, then aggro slides under again. I'm pretty happy with that cycle, tbh. There are other things that can fit in that but once we start disrupting it entirely I start to take issue.

Combo, for example, is certainly allowed to exist, but it needs to fall prey to control because it's role in a meta is to force interaction out of the faster decks. In that sense its role is to check for interaction. On the other side of the scale, I think we have big mana who is supposed to prey on control and fall prey to aggro lists. Unfortunately, big mana lists (like Field of the Dead's recent example) have the effect of pushing out both control and midrange resulting in the recent ban because it disrupted the "aggro < midrange < control < aggro" cycle. I don't feel like they all need to have a T1 list at all times, but T1.5 or close should at least be something to strive for and I feel like this is the format to do it in right now.

Is that all law? God no. Just my opinion. I feel like much of it is the reason people left Modern; there is no meta based on a cycle or at least it doesn't feel like it. It just doesn't feel like many of the things people want to do are remotely viable.

I'm curious what everyone else feels the Pioneer meta should be built on from a theory standpoint. Would you alter the rock/paper/scissors cycle I propose? Can a 4 piece cycle exist? Would you swap out one of the archetypes?

[drmarkb]

I play Legacy, everything is viable and some decks are combo/control, some are tempo/control and most aggro decks pack some control, especially hatebears in d n t, and that works well for me. Not distinct archetypes but decks that act modally.

[Legend]

Banning one card a week would be more than enough. Copter shouldn't be banned at this point. It's the embodiment of powerful, fair play. Banning Copter instead of Oko was the result of pride and greed.

[metalmusic_4]

I don't agree on your point about copter. That card was everywhere, too many decks were running it. Mono black was also abusing the grave yard using the discard ability. I wish it hadn't needed to go, but clearly people weren't able to compensate against it because it was in so many winning decks. It needed to go.

[The Fluff]

I'm curious what everyone else feels the Pioneer meta should be built on from a theory standpoint. Would you alter the rock/paper/scissors cycle I propose? Can a 4 piece cycle exist? Would you swap out one of the archetypes?

It's headache inducing thinking about all the possibilities. hehe

Whatever happens, as long as I can play my eldrazi and other aggro-control decks.. then I will be enjoying this format.

[ktkenshinx]

Banning one card a week would be more than enough. Copter shouldn't be banned at this point. It's the embodiment of powerful, fair play. Banning Copter instead of Oko was the result of pride and greed.

Although I agree Oko is egregious and emblematic of awful 2019 MTG design, I'm not sure why you think Oko's legality is in any way related to Copter's legality. Copter was independently powerful in a range of aggressive decks, with a huge percentage of MTGO PTQ fields running the vehicle. Oko was comparatively scarce. Copter basically got banned in Pioneer for the same reasons it got banned in 2017 Standard. Oko might join that blacklist, but again, that has nothing to do with Copter being independently too prevalent.

[Arkmer]

It's headache inducing thinking about all the possibilities. hehe

Whatever happens, as long as I can play my eldrazi and other aggro-control decks.. then I will be enjoying this format.

I might just be too interested in figuring out all the knobs and levers that can push and pull a format in directions. I've never liked watching magic shows for this reason; I just always wanted to know how they did the thing, showmanship be damned.

[The Fluff]

[mention]Arkmer[/mention]

hmm, wotc controls all the knobs and levers here. Well, so far I like how they cut off several expensive modern staples like lily veil, snap, the fetchlands, and some other cards from being here. To a certain extent, it allows more people to join in without being dogpiled by people with powerful expensive cards.. cards that can be difficult for new players to acquire. Funny though.. by banning the fetchlands - fabled passage which is a trash card in modern has some value here, because the better alternatives are banned!

[iTaLenTZ]

Oko was comparatively scarce.

23% of the decks prior to announcement. I wouldn't call that scarce. Whith everything else banned Oko is now higher up on the ladder and will see play even more. Bant is on the rise and I don't think any deck can stop Oko right now. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am not and in that case I will give Oko 3 weeks.

[Arkmer]

hmm, wotc controls all the knobs and levers here. Well, so far I like how they cut off several expensive modern staples like lily veil, snap, the fetchlands, and some other cards from being here. To a certain extent, it allows more people to join in without being dogpiled by people with powerful expensive cards.. cards that can be difficult for new players to acquire. Funny though.. by banning the fetchlands - fabled passage which is a trash card in modern has some value here, because the better alternatives are banned!

Ya, I'm certainly enjoying the cheaper staples for now. I can't tell you how many playsets I've bought for $1 here and there while I build other things and happen to notice an effect I like. I threw 4 Encase in Ice in recently because I thought it might be useful- ENCASE IN ICE, lol.

I'm actually sort of miffed that I picked up Passages when I did. I really don't like them all that much. I've run them as a 2 of at most so far and have been lamenting the desire to have more untapped lands on turns 1-3, even in the janky control lists I've tried.

[The Fluff]

picking up some cheap "might be staples" too. I'm currently using pulse of murasa as sideboard card against the rdw / sligh style decks. Encase in ice could actually be useful against certain hyper aggro. Although sad.. because of their website layout change, scg lost their ability to ship for 5 dollars usps to my country. Right now, I can't order anything from them while they're still fixing their site.

[metalmusic_4]

Mtggoldfish updated the pioneer meta game lists today. They have a UG nexus of fate deck with wilderness reclamation on top, followed up by jeskai and UW control lists. Izzet pheonix and some aggro decks come in further down the list. After that you see the less common combo decks like sram and jeskia ascendancy. Looks like the format slowed down alot and flavors of blue are on top right now. I think something like this is what many people have been talking about wanting for a while so we will see how the community responds and how the meta continues to develop. The lists just got posted so it's certainly not had time to accurately figure out what the meta is, the sample size is just to small.

[metalmusic_4]

No Changes 9 December 2019.

Not a surprise after the big ban last week. I spent some time on Reddit today and the biggest ban targets for that community appeared to be #1 oko by a large margin, #2 nexus of fate, #3 nykthos. Less frequent mentions of dig through time were out there and any other card named I would call an outlier because they seemed to only be mentioned by individual people and not the community at large.

[Arkmer]

I do think it's only a matter of time before the format settles and Oko finds a way to undermine a healthy equilibrium. He's not putting up the numbers now but sometime down the road I won't be surprised.

Look at standard, Oko was the tier zero deck and after they banned him a whole host of creatures thrust into relevancy. Not to mention that you can actually play some of the cool artifacts they put in the set.

Nexus is just part of that "indeterminate combo" group that only a small sliver of people really seem to enjoy. And Nykthos has caused a few other things to be banned in it's stead, I guess I'm interested to see how long they let it hold on.

[The Fluff]

I just realized that Treasure Cruise is legal here. Now, the guy I heard who got 100+ of them can finally sell his copies. :p

Wondering how long this card would be legal in pioneer? Getting tempted to buy a playset too.

[iTaLenTZ]

UWx control is too strong right now. They have the best PW's (Oko, both Teferi's, Tamiyo), they have the best mass removal (Supreme Verdict, Cyclonic Rift), the best cardraw DDT and inevitable lategame with Nexus/Reclamation.

It is hard to single out a specific card that makes UWx too strong but I wouldn't be surprised if DDT got banned eventually.

[Arkmer]

If it's 100 foils, then it looks like he could make like $2 a piece! Getting buyers would be an issue though.

As far as legality, I'd like to think they're trying to preserve Cruise and Dig as legal cards in the format. Not having fetches is actually a pretty big deal for their speed. The other side of that is that I got hit with Approach of the Second Sun the other day and the guy immediately followed it next turn with Dig + Approach to win. Very strong combo, probably better in some regards than Nexus. I don't think banning Dig would make much difference here either as activating Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin twice is equally effective and very possible from what I have seen.

I'd still really like to see Oko and T3feri gone. My bit about Oko is above in another post, but eliminating T3feri would weaken the resiliency of the Approach + Dig + Approach 2 turn combo by allowing it to be countered. It's a very mana hungry line at 7 + 9 minimum.

[The Fluff]

I don't know if they're foils or not. Just overheard it in a facebook chat, it's unfortunate for him that time because he got 100+ of happy boat just as it got modern banned. hehe

It seems dtt is more powerful than tc in this format, looking at the top 7 cards then choose two of them is good for setting up combos. Although I'm weary of investing or building any deck that relies heavily tc or dtt... with their banned status in modern, feels like these cards are on borrowed time here as well.

[metalmusic_4]

DTT imo is certainly better than TC. TC can just draw air while DTT selects the best cards and that is why it is seeing more play. I really like that those two cards and DRS are legal, I've been brewing with them and haven't found the shell I'm happy with yet.

In some ways the ban lists are so different between modern and pioneer, as I they are all different cards, but on the other hand there are similarities with some of the cards. Twin is copycat combo which is Banned. I think field of the dead compares to eye of ugin and valukut for its inevitability and combo nature, remember valakut was banned for a period in modern. Once upon a time and oath of nissa are early card filtering in line with ponder and Preordain.

Some of the other cards like copter, fetch lands, leyline or veil of summer don't have direct comparisons imo and those are actually based on WOTC's new format goals and pioneer's actual meta development. There may be more we can infer by looking at moderns ban list and pioneer meta comparing card functions rather than actual card names.