Back on June 24th, players spent their mornings slamming F5 waiting to see what bans would happen in Modern, Legacy, and Pioneer. With the release of Modern Horizons 3, players expected shakeups given how dominant Nadu looked in Modern alongside Grief in Legacy and potentially Amalia or Vampires in Pioneer. On that day, Wizards released the ‘No changes’ heard around the web and players began counting down the days until this upcoming Monday, August 26th, when we are highly likely to see bans across Modern, Legacy, and Pioneer.

When looking at the top decks in Pioneer, there was hope that Bloomburrow would lead to a shakeup that could prevent the need for bannings, but unfortunately, that hasn’t played out. When looking at the Magic Online data since the last ban announcement, there are some clear outlier decks:

Here, you can see that Rakdos Vampires (Which includes Rakdos Midrange, but with some small tweaks) represents over thirty percent of the overall metagame. While the win rate isn’t radically impressive, for any deck to hold a positive win rate with a third of the overall metagame should set off major alarms. We’ve seen this deck dominate the MOCS Showcase, many challenges, and it never really found enough predators to stop it from consistently putting up two plus top eights per weekend for months.

In addition, Amalia continued to dominate with a strong 51.4%-win rate and over fifteen percent meta share. Izzet Phoenix also joined the discussion with a little over 11% metagame share and similar 51.3%-win rate. These three decks started heavily differentiating themselves and became a de facto trio of decks that the format could not naturally correct against. However, as mentioned earlier, it’s important to see if this held true looking at the release of Bloomburrow and how the metagame did shift with a full new set:

Well. Unfortunately, it seems like Rakdos picked up a monstrous amount of metagame share over the three weeks of Bloomburrow while keeping a slightly positive win rate. If we combine Vampires and Midrange, which again is largely just slightly tweaked vampires lists, we see a 38% metagame share. Closing in on 40% for any deck over a few week period is more than enough to justify ban talks.

Amalia took a slight step back down to only 10.8% play rate and 50.2%-win rate, due to the rise in play rate of Azorius Control keeping the deck more in check. Izzet Phoenix, however, lost some play rate but moved up to 52.3%-win rate. Only Niv to Light looks like a truly challenging matchup among top decks.

So, given these pieces of data along with consideration to other factors that have played a role in bans in the past, what should be done on Monday?

The Bans

First, in my opinion something from Vampires needs to go. Rakdos Midrange has long been a strong deck and the addition of those two combo elements within vampires not only gives the deck a means to close the game exceptionally quickly, but it can also mitigate any means of fighting the deck thanks to Thoughtseize. The best ban here is one that doesn’t touch the core of Rakdos Midrange and instead hampers their ability to cheat out Vein Ripper. Thus, the first ban should be Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord.

Next, we look at Amalia Combo and Izzet Phoenix. These decks are much tricker to determine whether or not they need a ban. Amalia has spent a lot of time looking like the best deck in Pioneer, and having a turn three combo deck be one of the best decks is always something to watch out for. Since Bloomburrow, the deck has started to find challenges against Azorius Control and even Azorius Spirits. Having a pair of tiered decks that can regularly beat you is something worth considering since it shows that players can adjust to the deck.

However, the deck has shown that it can push out decks from the metagame, such as Mono Green Devotion, which has all but disappeared from the metagame – despite having a strong Vampires matchup – simply due to how rough the Amalia matchup can be. In addition, there is the element of how the Amalia combo functions. A creature combo deck that gains huge swaths of life can make aggro unplayable, and the draw aspect of Amalia has already been called out by Wizards as an element they want to watch moving forward. With the Regional Championship in D.C. being Pioneer, having repeated draws on camera that can lead to rounds running over time is a real consideration for a ban.

For me personally, I think that if you absolutely must remove Sorin from Vampires, then Amalia may be alright to leave from a purely power level perspective. It can be attacked by multiple decks, including Phoenix, and it is not as dominant as it used to be. However, the draw factor and the deck’s ability to push out aggro decks and decks with low interaction counts makes it worth considering for the health of the format moving forward.

Step two, you need to ban Wild-Growth Walker or Amalia herself to break up the combo deck. This will lead Abzan combo players back to Greasefang, which eliminates the draw issues and still allows a similar style deck to exist, without destroying aggro quite as hard.

Phoenix is in a similar boat to Amalia wherein I don’t believe the deck needs a ban based on play rate or win rate. A ten percent metagame share and a 52% win-rate are both strong and certainly indicate that the deck is one of the best in the format, but neither feels outright oppressive in the overall metagame. The deck has a few challenging matchups in Gruul Aggro, Niv to Light, and Azorius Control that can each look to exploit the deck should Amalia and Vampires see bans. Phoenix has long been a staple of Pioneer, but we have seen it ebb and flow in terms of how successful it has been or can be.

While you could make a reasonable argument for Treasure Cruise being a potential ban based on its power level as a card relative to the rest of the format, that ship has long set sail given how long it has been legal and banning it now would feel disingenuous given its place in the overall metagame. Step three, no bans from Phoenix.

I think taking these three steps would help the format open up a lot while not destroying the macro archetypes that players have come to know and enjoy in Pioneer. While some elements of these decks will certainly change, players won’t need to toss their decks out with the bans, but rather make some power level changes.

One last thing I’d like to touch on is the idea of “Nuking the format from orbit” and banning six or seven cards to restart the top decks and allow a more open field to develop. That is just rotation. Calling for sweeping bans like that is just saying you want the format to fully rotate similar to Standard or Modern and Legacy with each Modern Horizon set. Pioneer is the last paper eternal format that does not have sweeping rotations since there are no direct printings, only cards from Standard. While I understand the appeal of trying to preempt the meta shifts post bans with considerations towards Nykthos, Lotus Field, and other cards that have been problematic before, if you preempt tons of bans with no actual basis, you’re simply alienating large swaths of players for the hope that the metagame will settle in a way you like.

Non-rotating formats naturally congeal into top decks, and it takes a lot to boot a top deck from the metagame or to build a new top deck. The format doesn’t move very quickly and while you certainly can and should make metagame adjustments each week, part of the appeal is that your deck will stay similarly viable for a long period of time. In that sense, taking out six or seven cards in this ban announcement would radically change Pioneer in a way that would leave it unrecognizable from before the ban and to me, that sounds a lot like rotation and defeats the purpose of the format.

After Monday, there will be plenty of changes. Let’s find out together what decks will rise after the bans and how to best fight them with the addition of Bloomburrow and then Duskmourn!