Hey everyone, it’s been a while since the last edition of this, and that is for a few reasons. On top of some personal stuff I had going, I wanted to wait a bit for the Foundations meta to settle in. Initially I thought this was going to be a pretty light week of decks again, for a reason I’ll talk about in a minute, but I was actually able to find four decks to talk about and I am excited to share them again. 

Pioneer 

I do have one deck for Pioneer to talk about, and it is a pretty cool one. CuteChandra comes at us with a Boros Goblins list, which is effectively Mono Red with a white splash for a cool new card called Raise the Past, along with a good number of sideboard cards. 

Raise the Past lets you revive every single creature in this deck all at once, and for a deck that runs cards like Skirk Prospector, that is a pretty powerful tool. Rundveldt Hordemaster is an incredibly powerful lord creature for this deck that likes to churn out tokens, and while it is held together by Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, the rest of the deck is cool enough for me to overlook that. 

Goblins haven’t really been around in Pioneer for a while, so seeing a 5-0 with them is pretty cool. It also has another new card in Searslicer Goblin, which definitely works well in a deck where triggering Raid is effectively trivial. Brass’s Tunnel Grinder is also not exactly a common card, so seeing that show up at all on a 5-0 dump is pretty fun.

The state of Modern/Pioneer

Both of these formats are simply not in good states. When I started this series, I was hoping Modern would be the format that would carry me, as it is the format I most associate with cool brews. And while I have occasionally featured Modern decks, the League dumps pretty much all look the same. You find a ton of Boros Energy, Belcher, the Mono Green Scales Combo, and a smattering of other things like Dimir Murktide and the like. It’s not a fun format to look at deck lists for right now and I sincerely hope they can change that with the upcoming Banned and Restricted list in December. Modern used to be my favorite format and the format I’d pay the most attention to but it is the least interesting right now that it has ever been.

Pioneer is having an opposite problem in that the player base for the format online has dwindled significantly ever since the announcement that there wouldn’t be a Pioneer Regional Championship for the entirety of 2025. Pioneer was the format that was carrying this series for the entire time and now there are just barely any decks in the daily 5-0s at all. We’re lucky if we even hit double digits right now, when it was consistently 20-30 lists before that. 

The format needs help, and if WotC doesn’t seem to want to help, it’s up to the community to keep the format alive and well. Play wise, it appears that it’s the best the format has been for a while and it’s really unfortunate that as soon as that happens, people are almost forced to stop playing it. 

Standard

With all that being said, Standard results have picked up pretty heavily on MTGO. Struggling to find a consistent stream of standard decks was something I had expressed several times here but it looks like that is changing, which is encouraging. I’m excited to show these three decks off. 

User Saude is up first with a really interesting Jeskai Cauldron list, with a focus on being able to get a Arcanis the Omnipotent into your bin so you can exile it with Cauldron and turn all of your creatures into repeatable Ancestral Recalls. It’s something I had seen speculated during spoiler season and it’s cool to see it play out. 

But it is not a deck that can only win with Cauldron. Profit’s Eidetic Memory is also in the list as pretty much every card in the deck draws cards, so your random little idiots like Spyglass Siren will get really big, really fast. Combine that all with a good removal suite and you’re off to the races. 

Next up is Oppa’s Selesnya Lands list, which is crazy to look at. The goal of this is to get a bunch of lands into the bin, then bring them back with Aftermath Analyst on board or by casting Lumra. Things escalate immensely if you have a Felidar Retreat on board, and while I’m there, I want to welcome Felidar Retreat back to Standard. It was a card I always thought was pretty good and it didn’t really see play during its first run in Standard, but I’m happy to see it there now. 

This list is pretty crazy and plays a lot of random one-ofs, which is a Neat-Decking calling card at this point. Elvish Regrower and Springbloom Druid are pretty cool newcomers to this list, and Tolsimir is a cool inclusion as well. I’m also incredibly happy to see Vivien Reid back in Standard and I am happy that she still holds up in 2024 as well.  

Our last list is Neat-Decking regular Tulio_Jaudy, who 5-0d with a Dimir Midrange list. The first thing that stands out is that there are 80 cards in the deck, but that is the norm for Pioneer Yorion lists… Sorry, what? This is what? Standard? So there’s no Yorion then? Well that doesn’t make any sense.

But not making sense is Tulio’s signature move, and I mean that in the most endearing way possible. I love Tulio’s lists, they are exactly the kind of person and brewer that I started this series for. 

I think the idea here is that you end up self milling a lot and want the surplus of cards so that you don’t take as long to deck out, but other than that, it is wild to see 80 cards in a list without Yorion in it. 

I love that Revenge of the Rats is included in here as a payoff for milling a bunch of your whopping 30 creatures, and Wail of the Forgotten is a fun inclusion here as well. Kiora looks to be one of the most powerful cards from Foundations and she certainly fits well in this archetype.

I’m excited to see where Tulio takes this and all their other lists because they are always a delight and inspire me to really keep this series going. Cheers, Tulio. 

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While I mentioned my current concerns for Pioneer and Modern, it is very cool to see Standard taking off, especially with Foundations, which I think might be my favorite set of all time. I was hoping it would be that way and it hasn’t disappointed me. Everything about it is sweet, and that includes the impact it’s having on Standard and all the other formats. 

As a note, because of the scarcity of lists, it is possible that this series becomes slightly less frequent, as I don’t want to keep writing them when I only have a deck or two. I will try to continue doing it every week but some weeks it just may not be possible. 

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