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By: R Koster, Rob Koster
Nov 11 2019 1:00pm
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The first Pioneer bans are a thing. And I personally am pleased with them!

For those of you who don't know. Felidar Guardian, Leyline of Abundance and Oath of Nissa were banned on the fourth of November. This is the start of a very aggressive management style for the format in which at first, Wizards will have a banlist update every Monday. After lunch, apparently, because you can't make hard decisions on an empty stomach.

While playing the format, one of the first things I (and many others) figured out was that the green card selection was easily the best in the format. The first time I realized it was when someone first played a Teferi, Time Raveler against me. Then followed it up with a Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God in their Oath of Nissa Green-based deck full of Llanowar Elves and such. I have to admit, I did not see it coming. So yeah, I'm not going to lie about it. I'm happy it's gone. It should make the color balance in the format a lot better. Card selection with this kind of power has been kept out of Modern, I fully agree with Wizards that it should not be in Pioneer. It made green very, obviously the best color. If you check the results from the last 2 weeks of tournaments, you'll find that the green decks were just dominating everything. And I don't mean only the green-based decks doing all sorts of stuff with that. I'm very specifically thinking of another deck. This little puppy that took the Pioneer world by storm for a few days, dominating everything:


For those of you who haven't seen this list yet, this deck is insanely fast. Its goal is to abuse Leyline of Abundance to get Devotion for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Then using both of them in combination with the mana dorks to generate completely ridiculous amounts of mana that makes the rest of the format look like a laughably cute tortoise. Did you hate Tron in Modern? This deck is potentially even worse. But the best part about it is. It's gone! Wizards agrees and has banned 2 of the cards in the deck. Although I suspect that Leyline of Abundance was the targeted ban and Oath of Nissa was more of a consistency ban for the format. I'm still happy they're both gone.

The other card they banned is something that was just egregiously obvious from the first minute the format got announced. Either Felidar Guardian or Saheeli Rai just had to go. We all saw it coming a mile away. I don't know if I agree with them banning Felidar Guardian, though. The card is a ton of fun to play while Saheeli Rai is a pretty dull Planeswalker that probably just doesn't see play anymore now. But I do get what they are saying in the announcement about Felidar Guardian being more likely to break again. Luckily they will never ever print a creature that combos with Saheeli Rai ever again. So yeah, I feel like they should have banned Saheeli Rai because it's a more boring card, and it's just the other half of the crime-duo. But, oh well, I'm just glad they did something about it. The times I played a fun game of Magic and then got Combo'd out in 1 turn got boring quick. I finally understand how people get bored with me Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Pestermite them straight out of the game in Modern. Oh well, I can live with that, I guess.

But on a more serious note, the Combo felt very powerful, and I'm glad it's gone. It had a vast Stranglehold on the entire format, and I'll love seeing where it goes now. I personally feel like, at the start, it'll just be a bunch of Mono-Red decks paving the way through their opponents. But after that, I suspect it's going to slow down a bit because there is no need to beat a turn 3 or 4 infinite combo. It's basically the same as in Modern, except in Modern, there are billions of offenders and the police officers that are supposed to slow them down just get laughed at while they try. So the only option is to speed up yourself to keep up with the arms race. Here in Pioneer, I actually expect them to succeed at their job. Which seems to me like it will be a great format to play.

There could be two scenarios that play out now in Pioneer. The first is that we now get a pretty fair format that plays absolutely beautiful and should be fun for years. The other scenario that I could see happening right now is that this was just the first layer of the onion and that we now get a sweet, beautiful look at a new format that is quite painful to the eyes. Luckily, Wizards will keep a very aggressive take with the banlist of the format, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.

A few of the cards in the format I could see getting us to the second scenario, but I'm really hopeful that it won't break again quite yet. My mind wonders to cards like Mox Amber and especially Once Upon a Time. It's still early in the format, but fast mana and free cards have always been a problem, and I'm expecting it to go no different this time around. Once Upon a Time was in every green deck that did green things so far. If there is any card I expect to be a problem in the future, it's Once Upon a Time.

I could Mox Amber doing some stuff as well. I mean Kethis, the Hidden Hand is legal in the format. They were great friends in Standard. I fully expect them to enjoy each others company in Pioneer as well. That format does have a lot more checks on it, though. Rest in Peace And Leyline of the Void are legal. That should help if it ever gets out of hand.

The decks I truely see taking off after the initial blitz of mono-red pwning everyone's new brews are the midrange decks that just got outvalued by the Felidar and Saheeli decks. For instance decks like this little gem that came up in the Pioneer challenge last week:

 


This deck is a midrange deck that sneakily cheats on mana every once in a while. Sorin, Impervious Bloodlord Putting a Champion of Dusk into play wasn't only good in Standard. Drawing cards and getting big stuff into play is still good everywhere. This deck kind of reminds me of the Through the Breach decks we see in Modern, just the fair and fun version of them. Not the I play a game of Midrange/Control until I pay 5 mana to make someone lose the game variations. Don't get me wrong, those are a blast. But it's still nice to see similar things but watered down a little bit in Pioneer. This deck is interactive, aggressive, and looks like it can grind. I haven't played it yet. But it's high on my list of things to try for this week.

So I'll be dipping right back into the format with the new bans, and I hope you will too. May we all hope that it's great and not just broken again in a few minutes.