How’s it going everyone! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been able to talk to you all about the past week in Pioneer and the overall Pioneer metagame. With the release of Modern Horizons 3, it’s been a busy start to the Summer, but now, we can focus back in on the current RCQ season and qualifying for the upcoming Regional Championship.

Once again, we have over a thousand entries of data this week as the additional mid-week challenges continue to give us tons of data to examine. With that being said, let’s dive right in and look at the overall Pioneer metagame:

Looking at the Data

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the top three decks this past week are Vampires, Phoenix, and Amalia. Previously, Niv, Discard, and Gruul Aggro were pushing to fight for these top slots, but now, it looks like the top decks have solidified as they are the only decks above ten percent overall metagame each. Vampires once again tops the list with fourteen percent with Phoenix just behind with the same fourteen percent, but four less finishes. Rounding out the top three is Amalia with eleven percent overall.

The next group of decks all sit between five and ten percent and remain solid contenders in the format. This group includes the newly risen Green Devotion with eight percent, Discard continuing to fall with six percent, Niv nose-diving down to five percent, and Gruul Aggro holding with five percent. With the meteoric rise of Devotion, it isn’t surprising that Niv has started struggling as Devotion always kept Niv in check since the one-for-one nature of the deck gets blasted by Green’s ability to explode onto the board and quickly outpace the midrange killer of the format.

Next up we have Red aggro at four percent, Azorius Control, Azorius Spirits, Humans, and Ensoul all at three percent. These decks continue to persist, with some managing some strong top 8 finishes this past week, but they are not getting the play rate needed to continue rising up in the metagame. Especially in the case of aggro decks like Red, Humans, and Ensoul, we are seeing the various aggro decks starting to struggle again now that the top decks consist of several heavy interaction decks and two creature combo decks that can easily outpace aggro.

Let’s shift our focus from overall to the premier metagame:

We see here that there is a bit more consolidation within the premier metagame. Vampires picks up a few percent with sixteen percent while Phoenix holds strong at fourteen percent. Amalia loses a single percent and devotion gains one percent. Both are rather minor differences, but I am interested to see if this continues into the winner’s metagame.

The other decks hold their positions for the most part with Discard at six percent, Gruul aggro and red aggro at five percent, and Niv and Spirits to four percent. It continues to worry me that Niv dropped a little from overall to premier as it went from challenging for a top 2 slot to now falling down to middle of the pack at best.

In addition, if we look at the top 10 decks, the aggro decks make up about nine percent, thirteen percent if you include Spirits. Compared to the seventy-five total percent of the top ten decks, it is clear that aggro has started to really struggle.

Let’s see if that continues through to the winner’s metagame:

Here we see Vampires pull even further ahead with seventeen percent, Amalia jumps Pheonix with fourteen percent – a huge jump from overall and premier percentages, where as Phoenix mostly holds on with thirteen percent. The top three holds strong, even if there is a shift in what looks like the top two decks this week.

The next grouping consists of devotion and red aggro, and discard with six percent, Spirits with five percent, and Gruul aggro with four percent. I speculated previously that with the return of Devotion, the aggro deck may need to drop green to better streamline their early turns and care less about protection and instead index towards raw speed and lethal threat. We see red aggro once again pulling ahead of Gruul aggro and I think with Amalia and Devotion towards the top, that makes perfect sense to me.

Another shoutout I’d like to make is Golgari Vampires, which had one percent overall metagame, two percent premier metagame, and now three percent in the winner’s metagame. This variant of vampires started picking up steam this week and had a really strong showing given how few copies were in the field. With Rakdos vampires pulling away as the strongest deck in the winner’s metagame, adding in an additional three percent would collectively put the vampires archetype at twenty percent of the winner’s metagame this week and that is certainly worth noting.

Finally, let’s peak at the challenge top 8s to see what decks converted their winning ways into top 8s:

We see vampires and Amalia absolutely pull away in terms of top 8s, even when looking at Phoenix. Vampires had twenty-two top 8s for twenty-eight percent of all challenge top 8s this week. Amalia, with eighteen top 8s, puts it at twenty-three percent. These decks continue to demonstrate that even with targets on their backs, they are a dominating force that players don’t have concrete answers against.

Phoenix has another strong week with eleven top 8s and fourteen percent, carrying over the same percentage it had overall. Once we’ve looked at the top three decks, we see a steep fall-off where devotion has six top 8s and then Golgari Vampires with three top 8s. Once again, this would combine to put vampires as a whole at over thirty percent of total top 8s for the week.

Lotus, Niv, Ensoul, Gruul Aggro, Spirits, Quint Combo, and Azorius Control all manage two top 8s and solidify themselves as reasonable consistent performers in the format, but these decks continue struggling to differentiate themselves from the pack and are starting to form a well-defined middle-level of the metagame.

The metagame overall remains quite healthy, but when we dive deeper and deeper into the top decks, we are starting to see top decks pulling away, a defined second tier of decks, and a clump of third-tier decks that make up a large percentage of the overall metagame. Still, we see plenty of innovation to develop with decks like Roots, Merfolk, and Metalwork Colossus each putting up some sparing, but successful, runs these past few weeks.

Deck Highlights

Surprise Challenge Winners

Perennial Merfolk enthusiast and master Nikachu has been playing Merfolk through a few Pioneer challenges lately and this week, the fish finally swam to victory. The deck has put up subtle results over the past few weeks, but I have been noticing it more and more in Preliminary events and 5-0’ing leagues. With a big challenge win this week, I expect some players who may be struggling to find their footing with other aggro decks in the format may dip a toe into the waters of Merfolk and see if this is a case of a strong player winning with a bad deck or a good deck hiding just below the water’s surface.

An unexpected challenge winner to be sure, we have seen Golgari Vampires a little bit previously in the 5-0 decklists as well as a few challenge results. This week however, the deck had three top 8s including this win and several more top 16s. It really emerged as a real alternative gameplan to Rakdos and whenever we see a strong shell switch colors, it tends to do so to change its matchup spread.

Given the continued prevalence and success of Rakdos Vampires, seeing Golgari Vampires find success shouldn’t be overly surprising, but the level of success in just one week is worth noting for sure. Plus, I think Pillage the Bog does an outstanding job of helping find both your combo and whatever card works best in the given situation. I really do like this construction of the deck and I’m curious if we will see it start to eat away at Rakdos’ metagame percent in the weeks to come.

Interesting top 16s

Rogues continues to show up just enough that I can’t really ever write it off, even if it usually only puts up a top sixteen here or there. This week it managed a few top sixteens and a top 32. While I can’t guide players to choose this tempo aggro deck over Spirits for the time being, I do really enjoy when there are a variety of strategies within each macro archetype and Rogues is doing a great job of expanding what tempo decks are viable in the format. Hopefully, the deck continues to pick up small upgrades, such as with Tinybones, the Pickpocket from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and it can continue to gain some traction within the metagame.

I won’t lie, Metalwork Colossus is just one of my favorite archetypes. With the printing of Simulacrum Synthesizer, I was ready for it to make a splash in the metagame once again. Unfortunately, the deck hasn’t quite found its legs in the current metagame, but seeing it get quite a few reasonable finishes the past few weeks along with this top sixteen gives me a little hope that maybe we will see it find a little more footing overall in the weeks to come. If not, I am happy to continue breaking it out every once in a while, as a 10/10 enjoyer, especially with Karn no longer around to really hamper your ability to play the game.

Diabolic Intent

While Roots has come onto the scene and is no longer a truly rogue deck, it is still in the period of innovation that I love to see. This version of Roots plays Diabolic Intent, which is an incredibly powerful effect in a deck with plenty of things around to sacrifice. My biggest enjoyment of this card is for post-board games where the deck may need to find one of its specific matchup answers or threats and now you get to play extra copies. In the same way that I love Bring to Light for helping find niche answers, adding in extra copies of your Haywire Might, Damping Sphere, Torpor Orb, or Scavenging Ooze can make or break some otherwise challenging post-board matchups.

Wrapping Up

There you have it, the last week in Pioneer. With a diverse overall metagame, we continue to see lots of decks proving their viability, such as Merfolk and Golgari Vampires. Still, I am becoming a little concerned at the concentration of Vampires, Phoenix, and Amalia at the top of the metagame. However, it’s hard to complain when there are a multitude of options at the top or near it, all of which can take down tournaments. Hopefully, we continue to see innovations and more decks rising to challenge these top decks, otherwise, it will be a long summer of the same three decks dominating as we head deeper into RCQ season and towards the next RC.