Pioneer is all anyone is talking about right now and who can blame them? With Throne of Eldraine Standard going through a banning, and not one a lot of people agree with, I think it’s safe to say that many players are looking for another route to actually play Magic. So what better time to announce a new format than when you give us some bad news?
Announcing the Pioneer format! A new non-rotating format featuring cards from Return to Ravnica forward is coming to tabletop events and Magic Online very soon. Lean more about its creation and our philosophy for the format in the latest on Daily MTG: https://t.co/Sg99SHX8x7 pic.twitter.com/pamXlUQJqx
— Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) October 21, 2019
In case you haven’t heard, Pioneer is a new non-rotating format featuring Return to Ravnica and Core Set 2014 forward, and the only cards currently on the Banned List are fetchlands. That means no Wooded Foothills, and no grabbing shocklands with them. Manabases are going to be rough, but what else does that mean in the format full of busted cards?
For starters, the cards that were good in older formats or particularly good with fetchlands are now going to be much worse. Who could have guessed the lands that filled your graveyard and gave you perfect mana were too good? But what cards are worse now that the fetchlands are not around?
I doubt Deathrite Shaman will see much play at all outside of extremely dedicated graveyard decks. The real strength of the card came with it acting like a mana creature in the early turns, and then eventually turning around and dealing damage or gaining life as the mana ability became less relevant. It was also great at stalling out opposing graveyard interaction, but the real draw was always the mana generation.
Without the fetchlands, it just isn’t nearly as good, and my first point of advice is to spend your time trying to make other busted cards good. I believe Sam Black already said it best:
Related—how to build a Pioneer deck:
1: Find a card you think should be banned.
2: Prove it.
— Sam Black (@SamuelHBlack) October 22, 2019
With so many cards that could be banned in Pioneer, and none of them being currently banned, I think it should be our job to figure out what’s the most degenerate stuff we can do and run it into the ground. If your deck isn’t getting banned in the first few weeks, it probably isn’t good enough to be in the format right now. As things slow down and cards stop getting banned left and right, your deck might end up making the cut, but let’s have a little fun and press the issue.
Ancestral Recall or Ancestral Vision?
The first time it was in Standard, and while it was in Modern and Legacy, Treasure Cruise felt a lot like Ancestral Recall. It was a sweet payoff for just interacting with your opponent, and you immediately were able to refuel in the face of disruption or removal. Treasure Cruise was also ridiculous in conjunction with Brainstorm, as it allowed you to turn those extra lands into actual resources.
In Modern, Treasure Cruise was just a way for you to draw three cards for one mana, and the one mana was a significant factor into choosing it over Dig Through Time. In aggressive decks like Izzet Delver, Treasure Cruise was ideal because it was cheaper than Dig Through Time, though both were absurd in their own right.
In Standard, the choice was almost always Dig Through Time, but I definitely found some decks where Treasure Cruise was slightly better, and that was mostly due to blue being a splash color or you being fine with hitting land drops five through eight. In a lot of spots, like in Jeskai Black, I would regularly choose to play Painful Truths and Dig Through Time together, as you wanted to hit land drops but you also couldn’t afford to play more than five or so delve spells.
But in every single instance, Treasure Cruise was paired with fetchlands, and it was made significantly cheaper as a result. On average, fetchlands would reduce the cost of Treasure Cruise by two pips, which is pretty darn efficient. And if you ever drew a third fetchland before casting that important delve spell, it would often end up unlocking its full potential. Pioneer is a format without fetchlands, which might end up meaning that these powerful delve draw spells are actually just fine. Good, but possibly not ban-worthy.
Speaking of bans, here’s what Aaron Forsythe had to say on the Pioneer format, and their philosophy for interacting with the format in the coming weeks:
The only cards banned in Pioneer at its inception are the fetchlands, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t true for long. We’ll be managing the format aggressively and off-cycle based on MTGO results in advance of the first tabletop premier events next year. Pass it on.
— Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) October 21, 2019
This philosophy is honestly refreshing, as they’re going to make sure the format is fun to play instead of worrying about who invests in which cards. I mean, maybe don’t buy a thousand Smuggler’s Copters, ya know? It’s probably too good. But again, our focus should be on trying to get these cards banned, because if you aren’t doing something ridiculous, you’re probably not doing it right.
My experience so far, and my experience with Treasure Cruise in general, is that it’s actually just fine. Of course, that’s just my initial impression and it could certainly change as we figure out what decks are good and which best utilize these Delve draw spells. My guess is that Treasure Cruise will end up feeling a lot more like Ancestral Vision than Ancestral Recall, but both are great cards in their own right. It’s when you start getting closer to Ancestral Recall that you have a problem and it’ll eventually get banned.
Building With Busted Cards
Dig Through Time was also exceptional during its tenure in Standard, and still saw a good bit of play in both Modern and Legacy in the short time it was legal. It did a lot of the same stuff as Treasure Cruise but was effectively twice as much mana. And with both having a base cost of eight with delve, it only stands to reason that most people would choose to play the one that was half the cost. Eventually, certain decks figured out that they wanted one and not the other, but both were completely disgusting.
Building in Pioneer with these two cards will be tricky, as you don’t have those lands to fix your colors or fuel delve, but that just means we have to work a little bit harder in turning them on. But where do we begin? With Dig Through Time, I think we want to play a control shell. With Treasure Cruise, I’m thinking more a tempo strategy with either Monastery Swiftspear or even Monastery Mentor. Both are worth building around, but I still think it’s true that certain archetypes want one or the other.
Let’s start with Treasure Cruise.
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (26)
This iteration of Esper features Monastery Mentor as the centerpiece, but the trick is not caring if it dies. With Treasure Cruise and Painful Truths at the ready, you should be able to refuel and replace with ease, giving you enough juice to go super-deep into the late-game. The rest of your spells are designed to disrupt your opponent while filling your graveyard. And once you’ve traded a lot of resources, your refuel spells replace what you’ve spent.
The trick is finding the right support spells while also not hurting yourself too much with Thoughtseize, lands, and Painful Truths. That’s why I’ve gone for a split of Duress and Thoughtseize, helping bridge the gap between efficiency and strength while not taxing your life total too much.
Azorius Charm is a nice one that helps give you some much-needed life points against some decks, but mostly it’s just versatile and cycles in some tight spots. Good, not great, and mostly an experiment.
Excellent removal/discard hybrid, pitching some of your extra lands from your draw spells, or helping fuel an early Treasure Cruise by filling your graveyard for cheap.
Without opposing fetchlands, I doubt this one will be nearly as good as it seems in Modern or Legacy, but I still think it’s versatile enough to justify a copy or two in most Dimir-based strategies.
Surprisingly mediocre in this deck, as we’re playing mostly at sorcery speed anyway, but still a decent tempo play that cycles and triggers Monastery Mentor.
One of the better ways to enable both Fatal Push and delve spells, Fabled Passage is only slightly better than Terramorphic Expanse, but there’s a decent chance that Terramorphic Expanse would see play in this format if Fabled Passage wasn’t around. I thought it would be terrible, but it’s been decent thus far.
One of the better sweeper effects for decks that want to play a lot of creatures, I implore you to try this one out over the likes of Languish or Supreme Verdict. Being able to cast Monastery Mentor and then follow it up with a sweeper style effect is excellent, though will obviously suffer in some spots by not being able to kill everything. The upside is you aren’t killing all your own stuff.
Overall, I think this deck has some legs, and definitely tries to push Treasure Cruise to its limit. I’m curious if this is the best shell for it, but the cheap discard that black gives you makes it desirable. Plus, with all the trading of resources, you really want a way to draw some extra cards after all that trading.
As far as Dig Through Time is concerned, you want it instead of Treasure Cruise in archetypes playing more instant-speed things. Dig Through Time as an instant is powerful in several archetypes that might not even want Treasure Cruise. This is especially true if you’re in the business of playing counterspells, or perhaps playing an archetype that only really wants to play instants.
Creatures (1)
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (22)
Spells (36)
This version of Temur Reclamation puts an emphasis on Dig Through Time to find pieces of the puzzle while we’re fending off our opponent’s creatures. Instead of stuff like Fog to gum up the ground until we find our combo, we’re just killing all our opponent’s stuff. This is mostly because I want to play a bit heavier on red to make sure we can utilize Explosion, as it’s one of my favorite cards to use alongside Wilderness Reclamation
This is a sick card for this archetype, as it cycles early to help fuel Dig Through Time but ends up being excellent when paired with a Wilderness Reclamation that’s active. It’s honestly one of the best draw spells in the format, as we don’t even have Thought Scour at our disposal. Wilderness Reclamation is the perfect card to pair with this.
Obviously absurd with Dig Through Time, casting it for a second time without eating your whole graveyard. It’s a great one-of to find with Dig Through Time as the game goes long too, as it can help refresh your resources after you’ve been drained a bit. It’s also a win condition in a pinch when paired with your removal. Instant-speed cards are best with Wilderness Reclamation, and what creature is better than Torrential Gearhulk?
These two act as your removal suite, with Harnessed Lightning providing you with a virtual Doom Blade in most scenarios. Alongside Attune with Aether, you also get “fixed” mana with Aether Hub. It is a bit awkward without Whirler Virtuoso or Rogue Refiner to fill the energy gap, but I do like the one-two punch with Harnessed Lightning as your main payoff. The sideboard Dynavolt Tower is also pretty cool for this mini package.
Galvanic Bombardment is possibly worse than Fiery Impulse or even Wild Slash, but all three are viable in the right archetypes. I think our deck goes deep, so finding more copies just means the third and fourth one will be absurd, but that might be worse than just having Fiery Impulse to kill more creatures in the early turns.
A one-of that combos off with two copies of Expansion and a one-mana spell, Ral is also fine at copying Dig Through Time or other draw spells. It’s a solid find with Dig Through Time and can help us kill an opponent who has randomly gained infinite life somehow (as long as we break up their infinite life chain first).
I could go hard on this one, and that might end up being the better build alongside Fog and Search for Azcanta. I just don’t want to be boring. I suspect the best version of this archetype will focus on Nexus of Fate, which just makes me mad.
Welcome, Pioneer!
Pioneer has felt wonderful to play so far. I’ve put together some makeshift matches with my Twitch subscribers using the “freeform” mode on Magic Online, and I’ve actually gotten to try quite a few cards out. I’ve had so much fun that I’m definitely going to be trying more stuff like this in Pioneer in the near future, so make sure to check out my Twitch channel. I’m live just about every day around 3pm ET, and Pioneer is at the top of the docket for the next few weeks.
Both Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise are busted cards, but were they like Deathrite Shaman and just a product of their environment? I’m convinced that Deathrite Shaman is unplayable, but just how good are Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise? Are these behemoths going to be a fraction of what they once were? Will they ultimately dominate the format? We’re so early into the format that there’s no real way to know. I’m still trying to process that Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage aren’t legal!
I’ll definitely be on the lookout for cards that might get banned in the next few weeks and try my hand at testing them out. My gut says Smuggler’s Copter is this format’s Umezawa’s Jitte, in that it just goes into every aggro deck, and that alone might be reason enough to ban it. There are many more cards in the format that need a closer look, like Felidar Guardian and Emrakul, the Promised End, which were banned in their respective Standard formats. I’m really excited to see how they fare.
My guess? They’re just as good as they ever were!