More than 1,800 players turned out for this weekend’s Pioneer Regional Championship at SCG CON Washington DC. Check out the numbers for what the Pioneer metagame breakdown looks like now that all of the players and lists have been confirmed.
Azorius Control, Rakdos Aggro, and Izzet Phoenix sit atop the heap of decks with significant metagame shares. Azorius Control, fittingly, is equipped to handle both of the other top decks with main deck copies of High Noon — a card that has shot up in popularity due to the powerful burst turns Rakdos Aggro and Izzet Phoenix can produce.
Five-Color Enigmatic Incarnation and Rakdos Transmogrify round out the Top 5 as explosive combo decks that can also keep up in value-based games. Enigmatic Incarnation benefited from the plethora of new enchantments from Duskmourn: House of Horror and Outlaws of Thunder Junction — mainly the new impending Overlords and High Noon. Rakdos Transmogrify had a breakout performance last weekend, leading to many players looking to play a midrange game with a combo-flourish of getting an Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Valgavoth, Terror Eater on the battlefield for only four mana.
The next three decks are all classic Pioneer decks with Sacrifice (Jund, Rakdos, and Golgari), Greasefang (Abzan, Mardu, and Esper), and Rakdos Midrange still sticking around in the format.
The rest of the Top 10 archetypes include Mono-Black Midrange and Boros Control. The Mono-Black Midrange deck is an interactive deck with a small Demon sub-theme utilizing Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber alongside Bloodletter of Aclazotz and Archfiend of the Dross. Boros Control employs a ton of removal spells and High Noon to control opponents while grinding out wins with tokens and Caretaker’s Talent.
The remainder of the field is filled with Pioneer staples along with a couple standouts like Rakdos Cauldron and the Landfall decks that range from three colors all the way up to five. The Landfall archetype can do some crazy things with Lotus Cobra, Nissa, Resurgent Animist, Omnath, Locus of Creation, Aftermath Analyst, and Lumra, Bellow of the Woods. The Rakdos Cauldron deck is another flavor of red and black midrange decks, but this one gets creative with tricky creatures and Agatha’s Soul Cauldron.
Catch all the action live on the Star City Games Twitch channel along with the SCG Tournament Coverage YouTube page starting at 10 AM ET.
