Twitch Builds Simic Reclamation For Pioneer

The Pioneer bannings this week really shifted the format into a sweet spot. Oko, Thief of Crowns led to some of the easiest wins I’ve ever seen, and Nexus of Fate was just a design disaster, so I’m very happy with how things have been turning out. I’ve already started brewing, both alone and with Twitch chat, and we’ve come up with some really neat ideas.

I think we can all agree that Oko was too strong for the format. Hell, he’s too strong for most formats, as he’s been dominating basically everywhere from Vintage to Cube drafts. He’s a menace! A menace I say! And now maybe the format can breathe.

Nexus of Fate was not banned because it was too good. Some people have said that Wilderness Reclamation is the problem, and that Nexus of Fate did nothing wrong. To that I’d like to respond: who cares? Nexus of Fate only comes in foil, is regularly warped and needs to be proxied by a judge, and leads to some of the least fun Magic one can play. Nexus of Fate is one of those cards that encourages solitaire. You’re a time thief. You often win the game by having your opponent concede before they’re actually dead.

I have multiple clips from Twitch of me doing nothing for ten-plus minutes while my opponent spins their wheels. Being helpless and not deterministically dead is one of the worst things about Magic. I’ve lost multiple matches in the last month with my chess clock over fifteen minutes while my opponent had less than one minute on their clock.

So to Nexus of Fate I say: good riddance. Let’s see what the format looks like without you. But Wilderness Reclamation? Perhaps we can find something cool to do with you.

So that was the challenge I posed to my community: let’s build a Wilderness Reclamation deck together. I wanted to start with Temur, but the only cards I actually started with were four copies of both Growth Spiral and Wilderness Reclamation. The rest was up to them! The caveat was that, as the deck became more and more clear, you could change your cards to help make the deck playable. After about thirty minutes of building, we came up with this beauty.

First and foremost, I want to say that this is one of the most fair Wilderness Reclamation decks I’ve ever seen: no removal, taking turns as normal, and quite a bit of interaction. Our goal was to build a deck that used Wilderness Reclamation as a mana battery, in a fun way, that allowed us to basically feel like we were playing Commander. Not only did we have a blast playing this hot mess to 5-0 in a League, but we also learned a lot about the format and how to build the deck for the future. But before we get into any “updated” builds, let’s talk about what worked and what didn’t.

I want to take a moment to talk about one card in particular:

Brazen Borrower is a ridiculous Magic card. Not only does it act as a great two-mana interaction spell, it also gives us a way to pressure an opposing planeswalker. When paired with Frilled Mystic, Brazen Borrower becomes a real threat. That combination of pressure is often too much for midrange or control decks to handle, but the real trick is how good they are together. Bounce spells are often negative card economy because your opponent isn’t actually losing a card, but when you pair bounce spells with counterspells, and especially those attached to a 3/2 body, you get something a bit harder to evaluate.

Brazen Borrower as a complete package is almost a perfect tempo card. It took me a really long time to understand just how good it was, but the trick is turning the body into a relevant threat. Having it be your only creature or one of very few creatures/threats in your deck means it is likely to die to your opponent’s removal. But if you combine it with creatures that act like spells, you get a bunch of threats to overload your opponent’s removal while also having creatures to pressure their life total or planeswalkers.

I fully expect Brazen Borrower to be one of the best cards in Pioneer, if only because it singlehandedly revives an entire archetype. It has functionality in a number of different decks, and even gives some much-needed flexibility to certain combo or control decks that must answer Teferi, Time Raveler.

Moving on, let’s talk about some of the weirder cards in the deck and their place in the future of the archetype.

A Shot in the Dark

A few years ago, Gerry Thompson showed me an Izzet deck he was working on using this cool new card: Thing in the Ice. It played Magmatic Insight to discard Drownyard Temple, a bunch of removal, and some card draw. I had the bright idea of trying out Pyromancer’s Goggles since most of our card draw and removal was red, which led us to playing Avacyn’s Judgment as a Fireball effect we could Fork. But we didn’t actually have Avacyn’s Judgment available without a proxy because it wasn’t actually out yet, so we used Fall of the Titans as a proxy. But every time I drew Avacyn’s Judgment aka Fall of the Titans, I wished it was just Fall of the Titans. And that’s how Izzet Goggles was born!

Fast forward a few years later and here we are, still figuring out that some cards are good even if no one else seems to notice. With an engine, some cards end up being a little better than anyone initially thought. Just like Fall of the Titans got sent into hyperdrive with Pyromancer’s Goggles, a ton of different cards are just waiting to be paired with Wilderness Reclamation. Now we just have to figure out which cards work best.

It doesn’t quite work with Wilderness Reclamation, but tapping down all your opponent’s stuff is clutch. Plus, if you’re casting Gadwick, the Wizened to draw a bunch of cards, you can use Wilderness Reclamation to untap all your lands and cast them on your opponent’s turn. I’ve been trying to find spaces for Gadwick for a while now in Pioneer, but the next major project will feature Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx in Mono-Blue Devotion.

Since we’re not really a combo deck and not really an aggro deck, it’s important to have flexibility. Cards like Gadwick are exceptional at this, since they’re good at virtually every casting cost. Gadwick is also a great way to recoup some lost battlefield control, as you’re not really great at interacting with creatures. Outside of Petty Theft and some counterspells, we’re actually quite bad at killing creatures, so a shift in heavy aggressive strategies is probably bad news for us. And while I did beat two aggro decks on my way to 5-0 with the initial list, you can always tell when a certain strategy could give you some serious trouble in the future.

This was added to the deck as a combination with Gadwick to get a burst of cards from Wilderness Reclamation. Being able to add Wilderness Reclamation’s mana to X is a huge deal, as we’ve seen when combined with other cards like Sphinx’s Revelation or Expansion/Explosion. After playing with both cards together, I can tell you with full confidence that Gadwick is excellent, but Prophet of Kruphix doesn’t really do what you want it to do in the deck. It may seem like Wilderness Reclamation #5 and #6, but most of your creatures already have flash and you would much rather have that burst of mana on your end step.

I didn’t know if Aetherling would be a good card in this deck or not, but it was phenomenal every time I drew it. That leads me to believe that it might just be a great finisher for decks that want to play a sweet one-of. All aspects of the card came into play, as my opponents just couldn’t kill it, block it, or attack through it. It singlehandedly won me three games, acting as the X-factor that the opponent just couldn’t interact with or beat once it hit the battlefield.

Will this one continue to be a part of the deck? I don’t know yet, but I really want it to be.

This was a pure meme during deckbuilding and even during the matches themselves. I did get to make a 9/9 creature multiple times and give it virtual vigilance with Wilderness Reclamation, but I was very scared of ever casting it against decks featuring Fatal Push! I wouldn’t recommend this card in the archetype moving forward, but it was certainly a ton of fun.

I got some mileage out of this one, copying Dig Through Time and Petty Theft, but I also know it wasn’t very good the majority of the time. Pumping my Wizards actually came up a time or two, but it was far too much mana to get the desired effect.

The Golden Oldies

Some of the cards you see in the above list have been in various Wilderness Reclamation decks before. Most of them have proven their worth, but what if I told you that some of them just don’t really work in this archetype?

This card was completely bonkers with Wilderness Reclamation…when you had Nexus of Fate. If you get to activate constantly and reset your Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin by taking extra turns, of course it’s going to be absurd, but if you’re having to spend most of your extra mana to dig through the top four cards, that might not leave you enough mana to interact with your opponent. Plus, with Dig Through Time, it’s pretty awkward to continually exile your graveyard.

In the future, I won’t be including Search for Azcanta in this style of Wilderness Reclamation deck, but I could still see it when your major win conditions are things like Expansion // Explosion as opposed to Torrential Gearhulk and/or Frilled Mystic. When you play too many creatures, you can miss on Azcanta activations regularly.

I don’t know if this one is even necessary anymore. We’re a bit lower to the ground with Frilled Mystic and Brazen Borrower, but the truth of the matter is that I chose it because it could cycle against opponents in the early turns while giving you something cool to do when you get Wilderness Reclamation online. What actually ends up happening is you always cycle it, even when you have a bunch of mana, because this deck rarely floods.

Still excellent. One of the best cards in the deck, if not the actual best card.

The engine of the deck, but certainly not necessary for every single matchup. While it gives you a huge boost of mana, I do side it out regularly against opponents who can invalidate it via pressure or massive targeted disruption. At our heart, we’re mostly a Simic Flash deck, but Wilderness Reclamation puts us into hyper drive. I just feel like we aren’t using it to its full potential.

A Near-Perfect Sideboard

I used almost every card in my sideboard during the 5-0 run with the deck, and they all felt great. It’s rare that you have a first dry run with an archetype and your sideboard is hugely effective. So what would I change?

Another meme addition to the archetype, Pearl Lake Ancient is one of those cards that my community just loves for various reasons. I vowed to bring it in against an opponent playing a bunch of counterspells, but it never came up. To put it politely, I don’t think Pearl Lake Ancient is getting banned anytime soon.

This card singlehandedly won me a tough game, but that might be because I purposefully navigated the game to get to that point. With that said, the overload ability is really powerful, and a singleton might be good to have in the maindeck, but there’s a chance it’s unnecessary.

This one-two punch is great against the control decks of the format, but both have plenty of uses outside of battling Azorious Control. I like having access to both, as they’re outrageous in some tough situations, but the combination of the two makes winning some counterspell wars trivial.

These two provide some beef against the slower opponents or punish those sitting on counterspells. Shifting Ceratops has been absurd for helping kill planeswalkers, as the five power and haste make it pretty easy to chop down Teferi, Time Raveler or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.

Tireless Tracker is actually a great mana sink for Wilderness Reclamation, and just so happens to punish opponents who take out most or all of their creature removal against you. This pivot into a more creature-heavy strategy is nothing new for decks like Simic Reclamation, but Tireless Tracker is one of those cards that’s great in the early- and late-game.

One of the better options for slowing down two of the tougher matchups: Mono-Green Ramp and Mono-Red Aggro. These two archetypes can pose problems for a variety of different reasons, but Aether Gust is the perfect tool for interacting with both. It randomly comes up clutch in matchups like Gruul Aggro too. It’s such a versatile card that catches so many different powerful spells in the format. It turns out that when green is the best color, having cards that hose green is a pretty big deal!

Burning the Midnight Oil

I want to keep working on this archetype, and try out some new tools in place of the ones that weren’t exactly…optimal. Here’s what I want to try next.

The changes are minor, but mostly we cleaned it up and made the deck make a little more sense. Let’s examine some of the newer additions.

One of my favorite cards in a tempo-style deck, Censor can be one of those counterspells that’s excellent early but turns into something useful as the game progresses. Playing maindeck Negate or similar is a bummer against aggressive strategies, so why not just play one that can catch anyone off-guard but also has the upside of being able to cycle?

Another counterspell that can turn into a cycler of sorts, Supreme Will is versatile. And if I’ve learned anything from playing Pioneer it’s that versatility and flexibility in your utility spells is key. While I don’t know if this one deserves a real spotlight, I’m never unhappy to have one in most of my blue decks.

Commit // Memory is excellent in this archetype, as it gives you a hard answer to almost any permanent or spell the opponent can throw at you. Like Aether Gust, it can also answer “uncounterable” spells while they’re still on the stack. I can’t tell you how good it feels to tag a Supreme Verdict when you have a Brazen Borrower and/or Frilled Mystic on the battlefield.

Commit is certainly powerful, but Memory is also pretty damn good. With Wilderness Reclamation and most of your spells having flash, Memory lets you draw seven cards then untap all your lands. In essence, you get to untap first! But you don’t just get to do it with Wilderness Reclamation, you also have Torrential Gearhulk to “wheel” on your opponent’s turn, which means you’ll be the first to have access to all those juicy cards.

A great tool for shutting down any opponent trying to draw a bunch of cards, Narset can also just give you a much-needed burst of card selection and advantage in matchups where your opponent isn’t attacking it aggressively. I’ve had Narset miss a few times already in testing, but the truth is that it doesn’t matter. If you hit once, then you’re paying for a three-mana enchantment that draws a card and keeps your opponent from drawing any extras.

The strength of this archetype is that your opponent doesn’t know how to play around everything. Keeping them on their toes with various one- and two-of spells just throws them off when they’re trying to implement their gameplan. I can’t tell you how often they just run into Censor or Mystical Dispute! Cards like Censor and Supreme Will get significantly better when you start applying pressure to your opponent. Frilled Mystic and Brazen Borrower force them to play into your counters, and give you initiative in any future altercations.

Is this the best Wilderness Reclamation deck? Probably not, but it does showcase exactly the type of things you can do with Wilderness Reclamation when Nexus of Fate isn’t around to steal the show. You also get to play actual Magic with your opponent instead of solitaire while your opponent is forced to watch. My guess is something like Sultai or Temur Reclamation will end up being the dominant version, if only because the cheap interaction of Fiery Impulse or Fatal Push to give you time to stick your more expensive stuff. This archetype is incredibly vulnerable to aggressive decks, and that cheap removal can really help give you the breathing room you need to stay in the game.

I’m incredibly excited to brew with Wilderness Reclamation. As powerful or ridiculous as it might be sometimes, I think cards like that can really make for some interesting games. Should Nexus of Fate have paid for the sins of Wilderness Reclamation? Who cares. Nexus of Fate and Oko are banned in Pioneer and I couldn’t be happier! At least my opponent has a lot more incentive to actually win the game instead of forcing me to sit there for ten minutes while they find a way to kill me with Lumbering Falls.