Tomorrow marks the beginning of the third round of Regional Championships, and the format is Pioneer. For many players who qualified for their RCs by different means than Pioneer, there wasn’t really a decent reason to pick up the format or even follow it ever since Reid Duke hoisted the trophy in Philadelphia almost four months ago at this point, but that’s about to change. Personally, I was one of these players – after PT Phyrexia I dove into Standard in preparation for the last RC, then went back to my comfort zone of Modern before LMS Prague, and then I’ve spent a better part of April playing fairly little Magic and getting ready to pick up Pioneer once again for Athens.

My plan was rather clear from the start – I’ve had a reasonable showing in Sofia with Phoenix, so unless something impressed me greatly, I was going to recycle pigeons once again in Greece. I can tell you right now that this is what I’ll almost certainly end up doing – none of the decks I’ll write up below succeeded in convincing me to pick them over Phoenix, but I learn something while piloting every single one of them (mostly how good I have it with Phoenix, but that’ll be the focus of my next write-up that’ll go live on Monday before I head out for the RC), and I intend to share those experiences with you today.

The case of UW Control

I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me, but for the life of me I can’t get the appeal of UW in Pioneer. Every time there’s a tournament for me to prepare, I’ll try out UW since a small group of people has been doing well with it, and every time I’m done with the deck after two, three leagues tops. I just don’t understand how playing a deck that’s so fundamentally exploitable by competent players can be a good idea, not to mention that you’re unfavoured against the most popular deck in the format in a way that can’t really be fixed. Maybe I’m wrong, and RB won’t be as popular at the RC as it is on MTGO, but for now I’d refrain from touching UW with a 10-feet pole unless you can mindgame your opponents into jamming their only threat into your Absorb for no reason.

UB Control

Last time I was playing a good deal of Pioneer was before the PT Phyrexia – we’ve had a yearly Invitational-style tournament in Poland, and my weapon of choice for it was UB Narset. I ended up just outside of the top eight, and the deck felt fine, so it’s only logical that it was my starting point in testing. After playing it for a bit, I’ve decided that not having a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria level of top end makes it a bit too weak against RB, which coupled with how often Fatal Push sucks in the deck with few ways to enable revolt lead me into trying to find a different archetype.

Torrential Gearhulk/Magma Opus Creativity

I was just getting off of UB Control when the Torrential Gearhulk builds of Creativity started picking up some steam. As a long-time Gearhulk lover from its time in Standard, I’ve decided to try the deck out. I was impressed at first, but after a while I started noticing a bunch of problems with the deck. My biggest gripe with it is how clunky it feels – you have a lot of three drops that aren’t very impressive in multiples (Stern Lesson/Prismari Command/Divide by Zero gum up your draws quite fast when you run over ten or so of them combined), if you want to play Sublime Epiphany there aren’t many discard outlets for you to ditch it (basically only those three drops), and if you want to hardcast it, you can’t do so with Powerstones, which makes Stern Lesson significantly worse. On top of that, every type of hate is pretty okay against you, and while none of them is lights out for you, most decks will be able to attack you from at least two or three different angles, which will make your life difficult.

Rogues

After dismissing Creativity, I’ve decided to try out Rogues deck that started popping up here and there at the time. I used to love Faeries in Modern back in the OG GDS era, and Rogues had a very similar vibe to them. On top of that, it had this extremely alluring promise of making Drown in the Loch into a true Counterspell/Terminate split card in the format where you can’t even play with Mana Leak, so I knew I had to at least give it a shot. I enjoyed playing the deck a good deal, and I would recommend it if you’re looking for something fun to play at your local tournament, but I can’t in good faith vouch for it when it comes to a high-stakes event like the RC – it’s just too unfavoured against RB. Sure, if you have a decent sideboarding plan that includes boarding out every Stompable creature and transforming into this sort of UB midrange deck with Bankbusters and Scarab Gods then you’ll probably get the matchup close to 50/50, but the price to pay is too high and Rogues have enough other problems (mostly mulliganing poorly due to being somewhat of a synergy deck) that I’ve decided to keep looking for a different deck.

UR Control

This was the last deck I tried out, and it was also one that was by far the closest to convince me to ditch Phoenix. I think that UR is the best colour combination for an interactive blue deck in the format for a multitude of reasons:

• Fiery Impulse is the best one mana removal spell;
• Abrade is instrumental in dealing with Reckoner Bankbuster;
• Brotherhood’s End/Anger of the Gods are much better against RB than four mana sweepers;
• Rending Volley is a premium sideboard card;
• Chandra, Hope’s Beacon is the best control finisher in Pioneer aside from Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.

The first list I’ve seen came from a large RCQ in Spain, and ran multiple copies of Alrund’s Epiphany. I immediately dismissed the card, since it sounded to me like the most winmore card in existence – it’s basically only impressive with Chandra on the board, and if you manage to untap with your six-drop planeswalker, you’ll be in a good shape vast majority of times without putting a clunky extra turn effect in your deck. I’m not gonna deny that copying Time Walks is really busted, but if I wanted to try out this type of effect, I’d much rather play Temporal Trespass that can be reasonably cast on the same turn as Chandra.

The question that I got asked a lot was why would I play this deck over Creativity, which was a similar enough shell. My answer is rather simple – I think that Chandra is more powerful than Torrential Gearhulk and more resilient than Wurm/Xenagos, at least as long as Red Black runs only one or two copies of Dreadbore. If they go back to multiple ways of removing a planeswalker, then this deck becomes significantly worse, as its entire premise is to untap with Chandra on the board, and it’s much harder to do if your opponent can remove it for two mana. Another big draw to this deck was Field of Ruin – there are just so many manlands in Pioneer that untapping with a planeswalker is much harder if you can’t interact with opposing lands. Field can also mess up opposing mana fairly often – Red Black runs no Mountains, and multiple decks have very few basics (Greasefang, Lotus and Neoform, just to name a few), so you’ll end up Stone Raining your opponent a good amount, especially in longer games.

Another, rather divisive (pun intended), issue among Pioneer players is Divide by Zero. While I expressed my discontent with the card earlier in the context of Creativity, this deck has more early interaction and significantly less three drops, which makes Divide into solidly better. It also works quite well with Chandra, unlike traditional countermagic for the most part – you can bounce two permanents or one spell and one permanent with it while learning twice, and copying Mascot Exhibition gives you an unbeatable board in most cases. While we’re on the topic of lessons, I’ll go ahead and say that Teachings of the Archaics kinda blows in my opinion – it’s useful when you mulligan, but for the most part I never want to grab it since I’ll usually be up on cards. It’s important to point out that it plays well with both Divide itself putting you down on cards naturally, and with the Foretell ability of Behold the Multiverse, but it’s not enough to make it terribly impressive overall. On the other hand, Environmental Sciences has been quite excellent and is the lesson I end up grabbing roughly nine out of ten times – this deck wants to hit land drops basically every turn till the end of time, since when you play Chandra you’ll have virtually limitless resources card-wise and you want to make sure that you can cast as many of those spells as possible, so guaranteeing a land drop with some extra life thrown in is exactly what you want to be doing in the midgame. 

Last card I wanted to touch on is Behold the Multiverse. I was very impressed with it, especially against RB. You need a lot of resources to resolve a six mana planeswalker, and if your opponent casts multiple discard spells and sometimes even Liliana of the Veil on top of that, the right density of Divinations is critical. Behold allows you to run a lot of them without clunking up the draw too much, as you can weave it rather seamlessly into your curve thanks to Foretell, and it grants you additional layer of protection against discard. It’s fairly common to Foretell it early, trade your remaining resources, and then fire it off in their end step once you have five or six lands to get a lot of looks for Chandra that can’t be discarded. If there was one lesson I wanted to take away from playing this deck, it’s that Behold is a pretty great card against Thoughtseize and I’m willing to try it out in a bunch of different decks as well.

Ultimately, the reason I’ve decided to put down UR Control was Convoke. I don’t think that the deck is overpowered by any means, or that it’ll be terribly popular at the RC, but that matchup was enough of an uphill battle that, coupled with the fact that UR Control wasn’t more impressive than Phoenix across the board, I’ve decided to put my faith in recurring birds rather than the redheaded pyromancer.

Recommended list and a mini sideboard guide for UR Control

Red Black

In: +1 Anger of the Gods, +1 Shark Typhoon

Out: -2 Light Up the Night

Mono Green

In: +2 Disdainful Stroke, +2 Aether Gust, +1 Negate

Out: -2 Shark Typhoon, -2 Abrade, -1 Fiery Impulse

Greasefang

In: +2 Rending Volley, +1 Negate

Out: -2 Light Up the Night, -1 Shark Typhoon

UW Control

In: +3 Goblin Rabblemaster, +2 Disdainful Stroke, +2 Rending Volley, +1 Negate, +1 Shark Typhoon

Out:  -4 Fiery Impulse, -2 Anger of the Gods, -2 Abrade, -1 Light Up the Night

Humans

In: +2 Rending Volley, +1 Anger of the Gods, +1 Shark Typhoon

Out: -2 Negate, -1 Field of Ruin, -1 Behold the Multiverse

Lotus Field

In: +3 Goblin Rabblemaster, +2 Aether Gust, +2 Disdainful Stroke, +1 Negate, +1 Shark Typhoon

Out: -2 Fiery Impulse, -2 Abrade, -2 Anger of the Gods, -2 Chandra, Hope’s Beacon, -1 Light up the Night

Convoke

In: +2 Rending Volley, +2 Disdainful Stroke, +1 Anger of the Gods

Out: -2 Negate, -1 Dig Through Time, -1 Behold the Multiverse, -1 Light Up the Night

That’s it for me today, I’m gonna be back on Monday with a write-up on my front runner for Athens, which is Phoenix. Until then take care and good luck to those of you battling this weekend!