This week on Magic Online, there was a Pioneer Super Qualifier that had almost 300 players battling it out for four Regional Championship slots. With the addition of the Super Qualifier to our data, this is the first week we have over a thousand data points with 1159 total points of data for the Pioneer Metagame. So, what decks rose to meet the challenge of an extra-large event schedule and what decks started to fade into obscurity?

Let’s find out!

Looking at the Data

We start with the overall metagame. With over eleven hundred results this past week, we still see the same few top decks pacing the overall Pioneer Metagame. Rakdos Vampires and Izzet Phoenix sit atop the mountain with thirteen and twelve percent respectively. This is actually an increase from last week, with both decks getting an extra percentage, likely from the presence of a higher-level event, pushing players towards the top decks.

Next up, we have Niv to Light and Gruul Aggro. Niv holds its position in third and gains a percent from last week, moving up to ten percent overall. Gruul aggro shot up from six percent last week up to nine percent, taking over the red aggro place from the previous week. Discard also joins these top decks with nine percent, moving up from seven percent previously.

These five decks are well ahead of the rest of the field with a combined metagame share of fifty-three percent of the overall metagame. In other words, this past week on MTGO, you were more likely to face one of these five decks than the rest of the Pioneer field combined.

Next up we see Red Aggro dropping from eight percent down to six percent, swapping places more or less with Gruul Aggro, showing this past week, players decided to favor the benefits of Blossoming Defense, Audacity, and other green spells. Amalia rounds out our last deck above five percent metagame share, holding even with the previous period. Given the deck’s position in the various aggro decks of the format, it seems to be finding its place in the metagame but can’t quite break into that top echelon of decks.

Let’s cut out the leagues and just look at the premier events, including the MTGO preliminary events, challenges, and the Super Qualifier:

Here, we see Vampires pick up an additional percentage along with Niv to Light while discard and red aggro each lose a point. When we look at the overall data points between the overall metagame and the Premier metagame, we drop nearly five-hundred results and lose quite a few one-off decks. Each consolidation of data has a similar level of filtering to give us a clearer picture.

In moving to this level of filtering, we see that the overall metagame and the premier metagame are mostly similar at the topline and that it’s at the bottom of our data where the biggest changes happen. Let’s see if that continues as we move up to the winner’s metagame, looking at the preliminary 4-0’s, 3-1’s, challenge top 32s, and the Super Qualifier top 32s:

Here, we continue to see the same top seven decks, but we see Niv to Light jump Phoenix in the second-place slot. Vampires holds onto its top spot with thirteen percent of the winner’s metagame, but Niv maintains its percentage from the premier metagame with a strong eleven percent. Phoenix keeps eleven percent, but that’s a decline from both the overall and the premier metagames. These three decks feel like they have become eternal staples at the top of the metagame and while Discard and Gruul are neck and neck with these three, they have started to differentiate themselves enough to feel like a cut above the rest of the metagame.

Gruul Aggro, Discard, Amalia, Red Aggro, Lotus, and Ensoul all keep their positions within the winner’s metagame. Gruul Aggro sits just below the other top decks at ten percent, Discard sits with nine percent, Amalia with eight percent, Red with six percent, and Lotus and Ensoul with four percent each of the winner’s metagame. While Gruul Aggro and Discard sit closer to the top three decks, there appears to be a solidifying of the next groupings of decks with a few more just behind those.

We continue to see a level of parity below the top decks that shows that nearly any deck can place into the winner’s metagame, but will we see this much parity at the top of the challenges and the super qualifier?

Now here’s a shock, while Niv to Light had continually sat around the top of the metagame, Phoenix and Vampires traditionally beat it out when it came to top 8s. This week, Niv really pulled way ahead along with Amalia and Gruul Aggro, who both jumped vampires and Phoenix. With eleven total top 8s and winning several events, it looks like while Niv hasn’t caught the other two decks in the other areas of the Pioneer Metagame, in terms of locking up the best placings, this week Niv Mizzet was Supreme.

Amalia and Gruul Aggro topping the charts ahead of Vampires and Phoenix is a bit more interesting. We haven’t seen these decks converting at the same level as the top three decks and even Discard was sitting above them last week. With more Niv to Light at the top, I have to wonder if Amalia and Gruul are gaining some equity on attacking this midrange deck over Vampires and Phoenix.

Discard shouldn’t be forgotten too quickly though, with five top 8s, it was just behind Vampires and Phoenix and even though it had a weaker showing than previous weeks, it still earned its right to sit in the top grouping well above the rest of the field who could only muster up to two top 8s each.

The continued parity among top decks in Pioneer illustrates that you can take most decks to a top 8, but there is a clear cut above in Niv to Light, Vampires, Phoenix, Gruul Aggro, Amalia, and Discard that gives you the best chances to succeed in any given event. That said, having six viable decks that constitutes midrange, combo, and aggro is a healthier metagame than we have seen in quite some time.

Deck Highlights

Spicy 5-0’s

Looking through the data for this week, I started to see this deck pop up in leagues, prelims, and even in the challenges. It leverages the power of High Noon to restrict spell quantity, which is very strong into the various red decks and combo decks of the format, along with Spell Queller, Stoic Sphinx, and a variety of counterspells to keep the opponent off balance.

With lots of removal as well, this deck has a solid ability to fight opposing creature decks and has built in tools to tackle combo. I would worry a bit about midrange decks that may only need one spell per turn to overwhelm your card quality or who can destroy High Noon before firing off a torrent of spells.

Also, don’t underestimate the ability for this deck to play a tempo burn gameplan with Lightning Helix, High Noon’s activated ability, and one or two threats, it can quickly turn the corner with pressure. While I don’t know if it has the legs to reach the top of the metagame, it has been picking up traction and looks quite interesting to me.

Here we have Simic Elementals from prolific odd deck creator Laa11, who often creates blue based Nykthos decks that attack a very specific portion of the metagame. Some of these creations have been Frankenstein’s Monsters, but others have proven effective tools to attack the winner’s metagame. This deck looks like something that can easily overwhelm the midrange decks of the format that don’t play many wraths and you can leverage several value engines to take over the game.

While I worry about a deck like this against the various red decks, having four Arboreal Grazer, Fading Hopes, and other early tempo plans allow you to hopefully survive until you can land a Cavalier of Thorns or other over-the-top play to stabilize the board.

Like with all of Laa11’s decks, I’m excited to fire it up in a league and see exactly where it falls on the scale of playability for people other than them.

Surprise Top Finishers

There have been endless rumblings about Insidious Roots since it was printed and DaibloXSC has been at the forefront of developing this strategy and putting up strong results on MTGO. This week, they put up a top four finish in a challenge with the deck. It’s always nice to see newer archetypes putting up top 8s and I would like to see if it can start to pick up play percentage or if it is just a specialty deck that only a few players are able to find sustained success with.

Especially given the focus on the graveyard in a metagame where Phoenix is a top contender, I worry that the splash damage might weaken this archetype in a similar vein to Dredge in Modern past getting hit by Phoenix being strong.

We saw mono white humans start to put up some strong results before the Slickshot Show-Off decks started to really ramp up. However, every once in a while, I’ve been seeing WB humans put up some sneaky results in leagues or prelims. This week, we see the deck put up a top four finish in the Super Qualifier. While adding in a second color can cause some issues for this aggro deck, the addition of some powerful creatures and removal along with sideboard considerations for Amalia do a lot to help shore up some of the deck’s otherwise challenging matchups when just mono white.

Here we have the winner of one of the Pioneer Challenges and while we have seen plenty of Izzet Creativity, I wanted to specifically highlight the win condition in this version. While we have seen Torrential Gearhulk, Hullbreaker Horror, Atraxa, and the Wurm combo, this is one of the first times Vaultborn Tyrant has been successful as the primary top-end target.

With the addition of a non-legendary win condition, using Three Steps Ahead to make additional copies along with Reflection of Kiki-Jiki gives you great mid to late game ways to go even further over the top. You also get much better value from playing Creativity for two or greater than in many of the other shells, which can help against decks that interact with your creativity targets.

Wrapping Up

There you have it, another week in Pioneer in the books and plenty of interesting results. With Niv to Light reigning Supreme this week, it might be a good time to start breaking out the Lotus Fields and trying to attack this powerful dragon with some unfair combo. Otherwise, there are a whole host of good options to play if you are looking to take down your local events this week!