The Pioneer Regional Championship occurred in Washington DC last week and I think it was really good for the format to have that moment on the biggest stage. Pioneer has had a reputation for a while of being a pretty boring, solved format, but, in part thanks to bans, it has gotten noticeably better over the last few months. The top eight of the RC was diverse and pretty interesting and the deck submissions featured a lot of interesting stuff.

Once again, this week will be very heavily Pioneer based, which I’m expecting to be the case going forward and is something I’m fine with. Perhaps as the next RC season, which will be Standard, starts, I’ll start to be able to add more standard decks. 

Standard

I do have one Standard deck to talk about this week, and it’s this cool Mono Black Midrange deck that Asmussen piloted to a 5-0. This deck almost has a Skeleton sub-theme thanks to Tinybones, Case of the Stashed Skeleton, and Corpses of the Lost, and they also opt to play Unstoppable Slasher just as a generic sticky threat, without Bloodletter of Aclazotz to provide the combo finish. Asmussen has some cool card inclusions here and while Black Midrange has been a powerhouse in Standard for what feels like 15 years, this take on it is pretty unique. 

Modern

I’m going to do Modern before Pioneer this week because, like Standard, I have one deck to talk about and since the Pioneer RC just happened, I think it’s fitting to end with it. This one Modern deck is a fun one.

I feel like I haven’t seen Broodscale Combo in a little while but MTGO user Batuhang brought it back for a nice league 5-0. If you’ve never seen this deck before, it is interested in loading up Basking Broodscale with infinite counters to make infinite 0/1s to ping your opponent for infinite damage, with the assistance of either a Walking Ballista that is cast, or one that is exiled with Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. Sword of the Bloodchief also puts a free counter on Broodscale when you sacrifice the token it makes, allowing you to repeat the process. It’s a really funky combo deck that can be hard to explain without seeing it in action. I’m also a big fan of the one-of Basilisk Collar, which is possible thanks to Urza’s Saga. One of my favorite things about Modern is the deck complexity the format is capable of producing, and this is definitely up there in terms of complexity. 

Pioneer

Alright now we’re getting to the very good stuff. Zompatanfo’s UW list here is one of the most ludicrous things I’ve seen in a while. The goal here is to dump Omniscience into the bin to then bring it back with Abuelo’s Awakening. The deck then wins by, as best as I can tell, casting a Shark Typhoon (or also reanimating one with Abuelo’s Awakening) then chaining spells together to make a bunch of Shark tokens. This is an utterly ridiculous deck in the best way possible. I am not sure about it’s long term impact but I appreciate the innovation on display here. 

Who doesn’t love a good blink deck? StrangleDangle here certainly seems to like it at least. I really enjoy how all of the creatures in the deck work incredibly well with being blinked, with the Overlords erasing all their counters to just make them bodies and the Prototype creatures getting to realize their full form when blinked. Yorion is an obvious companion choice and Flicker of Fate, Scrollshift, and Parting Gust are solid blink cards, with Gust also serving as a removal spell. Rite of the Moth giving the deck a reanimate option is pretty cool too. This looks like a really fun deck to play and it basically translates cleanly over into Explorer as well, for the Arena players looking for something cool to play on ladder. 

Hello, Rottenmouth Viper, it’s good to see you again. DrAntiderivative piloted this brewer’s delight card to a 5-0 with his RB list, which likes to put game objects in play to then sacrifice to Viper. Case of the Stashed Skeleton and Hopeless Nightmare work very well in a list like this and Viper is a pretty powerful card if you can get it out without much hassle, which this deck very much can. While Rottenmouth Viper isn’t my personal favorite card, I do think it makes for some sweet brews so decks that are built around it have a good chance of ending up here. 

Lastly, I am ending with the deck everybody was talking about from the Pioneer RC that took place last weekend, which is of course Gabriel Brownfield’s UB Ninjas deck. Brownfield got off to a really hot start at the RC and found himself featured on the broadcast coverage a couple times, which helped put the deck in the spotlight. This certainly became a hot talking point. 

Including Ornithopter in your deck is pretty much always a power move, and I understand why it’s in here. It’s a free attacker to go unblocked for Ninjutsu purposes, and there is a lot of Ninjutsu-ing to be done here. Thanks to Brownfield, similar lists have popped up in the league results this week and I’m very much in for another Ux Typal deck making some waves. I think there is a lot of room for innovation with this list and I’m really happy Brownfield decided to take it to the biggest stage. 

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And that’ll do it for another week of Neat-Decking. It was cool to see Pioneer on the biggest stage last week because it is consistently the format providing me the most neat decks for this. I had gone into this series with the idea that I’d have an even spread of Modern and Pioneer but that isn’t the case early on and I don’t anticipate much for Modern until hopefully December. But either way, Pioneer seems really good right now and I’m happy there is still a lot of room to brew. 

If anyone has any suggestions on that or wants to offer up decks I missed, please find me in thegathering.gg’s discord @adolce95. Other than that, I’m looking forward to sharing more lists next week!