The Ultimate Pioneer Format Overview and Guide

Last updated on July 31, 2022

Jegantha, the Wellspring | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Hello again wizards of the world! Looking for new ways to play constructed Magic outside Standard or Historic? Well, look no further.

Today we’ll cover Pioneer, one of the many ways that WotC offers players to engage in the competitive environment. And I’m not alone this time, as we have a very special guest today to help us on unravel the secrets of this exciting format: the Brazilian pro player and MTG grinder, Hamuda! I’ll be leaning a lot on his expertise to give you a good overview of the format.

All About the Pioneer Format

Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter | Illustration by Grzegorz Rutkowski

In talking with Hamuda, he characterized Pioneer as “a format filled with nostalgia from getting to play recent previous Standard sets that rotated.”

And by that definition, this is a non-rotating format that encourages players to remember how Standard was a couple of sets earlier to revive those feelings and strategies that they use to be familiar with. And possibly to reuse some card that would otherwise be worthless. It’s also great for players that are relatively new as it allows them to get good, competitive decks without having to spend too much.

Pioneer is a rather slow format compared to the other non-rotating ones. The big difference being that there are no fetch lands, and this is huge. Strategies take more turns to set their mana properly and there aren’t too many aggressive builds that can take advantage of good removal spells like Fatal Push, Dreadbore, and Abrupt Decay to deal with early threats.

The Legal Sets

We can contrast Pioneer to Modern in the sense that the oldest set is the Eighth Edition from July 2003, roughly 18 years ago. That’s a huge card pool that not all players have access to, however, Pioneer’s oldest set was Return to Ravnica, which was released in October 2012.

Does this mean that in five more years we could get a new format from more recent sets? Only time will tell. But, for now, here’s the list of the legal sets for Pioneer:

• Streets of New Capenna
• Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
• Innistrad: Crimson Vow
• Innistrad: Midnight Hunt
• D&D: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
• Strixhaven: School of Mages
• Kaldheim
• Zendikar Rising
• Core 2021
• Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths
• Theros Beyond Death
• Throne of Eldraine
• Core Set 2020
• War of the Spark
• Ravnica Allegiance
• Guilds of Ravnica
• Core Set 2019
• Dominaria
• Rivals of Ixalan
• Ixalan
• Hour of Devastation
• Amonkhet
• Aether Revolt
• Kaladesh
• Eldritch Moon
• Shadows over Innistrad
• Oath of the Gatewatch
• Battle for Zendikar
• Magic Origins
• Dragons of Tarkir
• Fate Reforged
• Khans of Tarkir
• Magic 2015
• Journey into Nyx
• Born of the Gods
• Theros
• Magic 2014
• Dragon’s Maze
• Gatecrash
• Return to Ravnica

The Rules

Abrupt Decay | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

The following rules apply for this constructed format:

• Minimum of sixty cards.
• No maximum deck size as long as you can shuffle your deck unassisted.
• Up to fifteen cards in your sideboard, if used.
• Your combined deck and sideboard can’t contain more than four of any individual card other than basic lands, based on the English card title.

The Ban List

The latest bans for this format were on March 7, 2022 and aimed to encourage diversity, fun, and a fair game. Here’s the full list of banned cards in Pioneer:

• Balustrade Spy
• Bloodstained Mire
• Felidar Guardian
• Field of the Dead
• Flooded Strand
• Inverter of Truth
• Kethis, the Hidden Hand
• Leyline of Abundance
• Lurrus of the Dream-Den
• Nexus of Fate
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Once Upon a Time
• Polluted Delta
• Smuggler’s Copter
• Teferi, Time Raveler
• Undercity Informer
• Underworld Breach
• Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
• Veil of Summer
• Walking Ballista
• Wilderness Reclamation
• Windswept Heath
• Wooded Foothill

Let’s talk a little about what these bans mean for the format in Hamuda’s opinion. First of all, I wanna mention again that there are no fetch lands in Pioneer. Powerful spells are great, but only if you can cast them. That’s why mana bases are so important. The reason all fetch lands were banned was to ensure that they weren’t paired with shock lands as they are in Modern. It gives the format more of a unique identity.

If you want to learn the fundamentals of Modern’s identity, I recommend checking out Reid Duke’s course here.

This leads to a slower format where midrange archetypes are more abundant but, more importantly, other bans help serve as a breath of fresh air for deck builders. You can experiment with a lot of things since the format isn’t dominant or polarized by oppressive builds, so you have a chance to build more decks and have fun.

As an example, let’s look at Hamuda’s most recent performance on a challenge.

This deck is very aggressive for the meta and takes advantage of all its principles. Even with the most recent ban this deck is still standing strong since it now has access to Feather, the Redeemed, which synergizes very well with it.

Where to Play Pioneer

Stitcher’s Supplier | Illustration by Chris Seaman

Pioneer is a format that you can play mostly on MTG Online thanks to the pandemic, but it’s also a format you can play in paper at your local store or at sanctioned tournaments near you. For paper Magic players, you can schedule regular Pioneer tournaments across the world using a webcam setup.

There are multiple options, particularly if you’re open to playing online, but let’s cover some basics first.

There are two different economy pieces when it comes to MTG Online: play points and tickets. You can earn play points as rewards from events, and they’re used as entry options to events as well. Tickets have a similar role in events but aren’t directly given to you as prizes. Instead, you earn treasure chests that you can sell to bots for tickets. You can also get your hands on new cards and products using tickets.

There is a third way to enter some special events if you have a high win rate and earn a profit from events: qualifier points. Qualifier points give you access to exclusive events and a chance to qualify for the Magic Online Championship Series.

With all that out of the way, let’s cover each event on MTG Online!

Pioneer Challenge

Entry cost: 30 tickets or 300 play points

These events happen during the weekend over Saturday and Sunday. It’s the most competitive scenario you can get, with queues can going as high as 300 players. These are scheduled matches, meaning that you’ll need to get paired for the next round after a match is finished. Rewards start at 64th place and you earn a profit from 16th place forward.

There are two variants of the event: a 64-player minimum and a 32-player minimum.

64-Player Event

32-Player Event

Pioneer Preliminary

Entry cost: 30 tickets or 300 play points

The schedule for these events are based on WotC’s calendar. They happen two to three times a month, and the goal is to earn qualifier points for other events that get you access to the MOCS event. These are four rounds during which you’ll earn rewards at two wins and get a profit once you hit three wins.

Pioneer League

Entry cost: 10 tickets or 100 play points

Bring your Pioneer deck and play five matches on your schedule. You get prizes above two wins and profit above three.

Pioneer 2-Player Queue

Entry cost: 2 tickets or 20 play points

These events are single matches won by the first player to reach two game wins in the allotted time. If you win the match you earn a profit, but you also get some of your entry fee back if you lose.

Super Qualifiers

Entry cost: 40 tickets or 400 play points or 40 qualifier points

Similar to the Preliminaries, these events happen a couple of times a season for the format and based on demand, between 129 to 672 players. Prizes start at 128th place and you start to earn a profit once you hit 32nd place.

Pioneer Showcase

Entry cost: 40 qualifier points

You can only access these events by accumulating profit from either Leagues or Preliminary events. These are exclusive events that follow a particular schedule, and you start earning profit once you get to 64th place.

Showcase Last Chance Events

Entry cost: 40 qualifier points and 30 tickets or 40 qualifier points and 300 play points

These events are for players who were unable to earn an entry into the Showcase Qualifiers but still have at least 40 qualifier points in their accounts.

Showcase Qualifiers

Entry cost: Pioneer format token

Players who earn an entry into the Showcase Qualifier will be squaring off for an invitation to the Champions Showcase. These are spread over the first few weeks of the following season.

Each Showcase Qualifier is a scheduled Swiss-style event with a top 8 playoff. The winner of each event earns a spot in the final Showcase and a chance to earn their share of $70,000 and a Split Championship invitation.

Other Options

You can use a third-party program to start and schedule your very own events. You get to decide there if it’s by webcam or using MTG Online, which is currently the only digital way to play Pioneer, and you also get full control over rounds and pairings.

Notable Cards and Interactions in Pioneer

As Hamuda described, there are a lot of decks currently in Pioneer and a lot of room for brewing thanks to recent bans. There are some cards that are well-established in the format, though, so let’s take a look at them.

Companions

Since their introduction, companions have been a staple in every Magic format and Pioneer is no exception. The most popular among them are Jegantha the Wellspring and Yorion, Sky Nomad.

Yorion and its love for blinking enchantments and ETB effects is well know by now, but Pioneer in particular has access to some pretty cool combos with planeswalkers like Narset, Parter of Veils or Nahiri, the Harbinger.

Jegantha on its own isn’t as powerful as the other companions I’ve covered, but it’s a 5/5 body that’s always there to help when you need it. Decks that can afford to pay the toll really appreciate this the extra card.

Some Cool Interactions

Some other strategies that Hamuda pointed out rely on non-companion cards that are very powerful on their own.

Dreadhorde Arcanist

This card can outvalue your opponent in very nasty ways. A turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 2 Arcanist, and then turn 3 Thoughtseize is a very tough spot to be in. You can even afford to Thoughtseize twice on the same turn. You could also abuse powerful removal spells like Fatal Push or Reckless Rage.

Soul-Scar Mage

This card is a threatening one, as it can shrink big creatures down with removal and grow itself in combat, while also pairing very well with cards like Wizard’s Lightning and pretty much any other spell. It’s a card that you can build whole decks around. And not necessarily just Burn decks, but also tempo decks like Izzet or cheap decks with lots of cantrips like Crash Through.

Winota, Joiner of Forces

Like Soul-Scar Mage, this is a card to build around. And surprisingly (or not), this card isn’t banned in Pioneer. It enables powerful interactions with cards like Thopter Engineer or Angrath’s Marauders.

Niv-Mizzet Reborn

Weirdly enough, 5-color mana bases are a thing in Pioneer, and since it’s slow you can rely on cards like Sylvan Caryatid to enable a pretty cool combo with Bring to Light and Niv-Mizzet Reborn. Depending on how you play these two cards, you can either search Niv-Mizzet with Bring to Light[ or put Bring to Light into your hand with Niv-Mizzet.

Pioneer Metagame and Decks

The Pioneer meta has a lot of room for brewing, but there are some decks and strategies that never change. It’s time to go over some decks that are Hamuda’s picks for the strongest in the current meta, as well as his personal favorites.

Niv to Light

Yasharn, Implacable Earth | Illustration by G-host Lee

This is probably one the most powerful decks right now, and it doesn’t just rely on the synergy between Niv-Mizzet Reborn and Bring to Light. It can also cheat Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor into play or The Prismatic Bridge to start bringing creatures into play for free.

The deck also runs some hate cards like Yasharn, Implacable Earth and Klothys, God of Destiny, which can be tutored against the right decks to shut them down.

This deck’s only weakness is making sure all its mana is available and surviving the early turns, but this is mostly covered with powerful removal spells like Abrupt Decay or Dreadbore.

Azorius Control

March of Otherworldly Light | Illustration by Nils Hamm

Azorius Control has been rising in popularity over the past few months. Neon Dynasty provided powerful tools to push this archetype to one of the top contenders of the format since The Wandering Emperor and March of Otherworldly Light are both game changers.

The plan here is to survive the initial onslaught for aggro decks, control the mid-game, and win the game ten turns later mostly thanks to Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.

Probably not the most enjoyable deck to play, but this is undoubtedly the most powerful control archetype.

Izzet Phoenix

Treasure Cruise | Illustration by Cynthia Sheppard

Izzet Phoenix is the other top dog from the metagame and is very similar to its Historic counterpart with one significant upgrade: it has access to both Treasure Cruise and Temporal Trespass. And although it misses Dragon’s Rage Channeler this deck still has access to other powerful creatures like Thing in the Ice.

Naya Midrange

Winota, Joiner of Forces | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Next is Naya Midrange. It’s bizarre that Winota, Joiner of Forces is banned in Historic but not on Pioneer, so look no further if you’re looking for formats to play it in!

Cheating Tovolar’s Huntmaster into play on turn 4 is no joke, and it has the potential to hit the battlefield on turn 3 in some scenarios. That’s more likely a dream than not, but you still get the idea.

The deck is very resilient since it has access to Voice of Resurgence in the main deck and a lot of other utility creatures like Blade Historian or Elite Spellbinder from the sideboard. Oh, and don’t forget about an un-nerfed Esika’s Chariot!

The Return of The Pro Tour

The Pro Tour is back! With an announcement in early 2022, Wizards of the Coast has brought the tournament and competitive scene to a new level. Part of that comes with regional championships, store championships, and the Pro Tour. While the championships can be a variety of formats, the first announced Pro Tour will be officially Pionneer and Limited!

This brought new life to the Pioneer format, which quickly got put on the back burner at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pioneer vs. Historic and Explorer

Pioneer is very similar to Historic and Explorer as both are based on the premise of non-rotating formats fed from Standard sets. The big difference is that Historic has a more narrow card pool since it’s exclusive to MTG Arena, which is missing a lot of sets that are available in Pioneer. WotC is trying to close this gap by introducing the Explorer format, which is essentially the skeleton of Pioneer that will one day encompass “all the Pioneer cards that matter.”

When it comes to deckbuilding, Historic’s smaller card pool leads to more straightforward strategies and less room to brew since as pretty much all the decks are well defined at this point. When it comes to Pioneer, there are decks that are fairly new to the metagame and there’s a lot of ways to go with it with a wider card pool. It can be a combo or an aggro deck depending on your taste.

If you’re looking to grind out games and spend your time rather than your money building your collection, you’d be better positioned on MTGA playing Historic. You might also be better off in Historic if you’re an excellent limited player as you probably have hundreds of wildcards that can be spent to craft powerful Historic decks.

If you’re a grinder like Hamuda, though, you can start with a cheap deck on MTG Online and grind your way to powerful cards for your Pioneer decks. If one strategy isn’t working for you, just sell your cards back to the bots and build a new deck. You could also subscribe to rental card programs if you’re committed to getting good results while investing little to no money.

I would say that Historic and Pioneer are totally different formats. Grinders that make a living out of game results prefer Pioneer since there are well-established events and they can jump into tournaments whenever they want. Historic, on the other hand is often a casual format, but Wizards has been trying to increase its stature by featuring it in its set championship events recently.

Pioneer on MTG Arena

Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger | Illustration by Vincent Proce

WotC has recently taken up the daunting task of portering Pioneer over to MTGA. They’re doing this through the new “Explorer” format, which seeks to have all the cards on MTGA in addition to all relevant cards from Pionneer eventually included.

The format releases alongside Streets of New Capenna, with the new Pioneer cards coming on a later, unspecified date.

Pioneer Products

The only products even potentially for Pioneer on Arena are the recent remastered sets. We got a lot of cool cards to brew decks around and I’d say it was a total hit. Later this year, we can expect to get new Explorer packs, which will include the most relevant cards in the Pioneer format

In paper, we recently had the release of the Pioneer 2021 Challenger Decks. This is a great sign for the format, so be sure to check out our review article.

–

The Most Competitive

–

The Most Fun

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 – Mono Red Burn (Red)

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Decks 2021 – Orzhov Auras (White-Black)

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 – Azorius Spirits (White-Blue)

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 – Lotus Field Combo (Black-Green-Blue)

$34.60

$29.98

$38.34

$47.27

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

–

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 – Mono Red Burn (Red)

$34.60

Buy on Amazon

The Most Competitive

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Decks 2021 – Orzhov Auras (White-Black)

$29.98

Buy on Amazon

–

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 – Azorius Spirits (White-Blue)

$38.34

Buy on Amazon

The Most Fun

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 – Lotus Field Combo (Black-Green-Blue)

$47.27

Buy on Amazon

There’s not much outside of that, unfortunately. It’ll be good to get some actual paper reprints with the launch of Pioneer Masters, and looking at the recent success that Time Spiral Remastered had with the old frames, it would be a golden opportunity to launch some Pioneer product with old borders, don’t you think? This would give Pioneer players in both the paper and digital scene more reason to try the format if they see cards they like. Just a thought.

Wrap Up

Soul-Scar Mage | Illustration by Steve Argyle

We’ve finally come to the end of this journey. I hope all of the info above has been of help to you.

I want to take a minute to thank Hamuda who helped me get a better understanding of the format and its current state, and offered the point of view from a professional grinder. If you want to support him and look at his content, you can follow him on Twitter, Twitch, and even YouTube! Most of his content is in Portuguese, but if you’re looking for good gameplay (and music), you’ll definitely want to check him out.

Thank you for your time. Stay safe and healthy, and I’ll see you in the next one!