While I do love fresh formats, the one major downside is that the data doesn’t come quick enough to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions regarding win rates, so for now and for the next few weeks, Pioneer is being run on straight V I B E S. 

This chart does give us a pretty good rundown of what people are playing with in the current Pioneer format, even if there is no matchup win rate that has a confidence interval of less than 10%. For this week, let’s instead take some time to talk about the winners of this brand-new Pioneer metagame.

Aggro Decks

With Amalia gone, it seems like these Red-based aggressive strategies can finally thrive again. That matchup was pretty horrible for the aggro player, Amalia single-handedly pushed Convoke out of the metagame, as well as any other creature-based aggro decks. While the spell-based Burn decks (such as Slickshot Wizard strategies) were able to somewhat compete, we should begin to see these decks flourish, like with what we are seeing above.

Heartfire Hero is a superb addition to these “Atarka Red” style of decks, even if Atarka’s Command itself is getting a bit weaker now that these decks are running a few less creatures. While on the surface this looks just like another Satyr Hoplite variant, the fact that it triggers on your abilities targeting itself means that the plot package of Aloe Alchemist and Cunning Coyote play extremely well with this card. The Coyote granting the Hero haste is extremely significant, that seems to be the main downside of this red 1 drop creature. In both the Rakdos Aggro variant shown above, and as an extension, in the Gruul Mouse deck that we are seeing in Standard, the Heartfire Hero being a card that is only good on turn 1 is a pretty common theme. The Coyote does a great job at allowing the Hero to swing in for 3 damage the turn you play it, making it always a relevant threat.

The Rakdos Aggro deck is a new archetype that seems to be entirely revolving around Heartfire Hero and Slickshot Showoff, and this is made extremely evident by the inclusion of Claim // Fame. Most aggressive decks don’t usually want this type of graveyard recursion, they can just instead play more threats in those slots, because the card is essentially dead until your opponent points removal at a creature. However, when you have 1 or 2 cards that are leagues above the rest of your deck in powerlevel, playing Unearth effects makes sense. In the context of this deck, these two cards play much better with these 1-shot pump style cards like Monstrous Rage and Titan’s Strength than any of the other threats in the deck.

These styles of aggressive decks usually pop up from time to time, and once players adapt, tend to simply go away, similar to what happened with Atarka Red in late 2022. Its generally very easy to adapt to this deck is sideboarding, cards like Path of Peril are usually lights out, while also being applicable into other parts of the metagame. I do not expect this general archetype to continue to be a large player in the Pioneer metagame like it is at this exact moment, but for the next month, and possibly into the Regional Championship season, these aggressive decks could continue to thrive.

Phoenix

I won’t speak on Phoenix too much because I am definitely not an expert in this archetype, but Pheonix both lost nothing and gained nothing. Vampires and Amalia were both relatively neutral matchups for Izzet Phoenix, so the initial effect of the bans didn’t really change too much for Phoenix’s overall win percentage, the main effect we will be seeing over the next few months is that all of the top players who decided that Vampires or Amalia were the best deck to play, will most likely move over to Phoenix as the “default” best deck. Note: I am not saying anything about Phoenix’s win % not changing as a result of these bans. That will obviously happen. Just that the initial effect of the bans won’t change too much about this deck’s win %.

It’s currently unclear what the best deck in Pioneer is. You could make the argument that Jund Sacrifice with Ygra is the best choice, a midrange deck sporting a solid Phoenix matchup, but Phoenix has existed in its current form for close to the entirety of Pioneer’s now 5 year lifespan, and a lot of great players have a lot experience in this archetype. Without a good reason to play anything else, we are seeing a lot of players gravitate back towards this old friend as the Pioneer metagame finds its footing once again.

What you are all here for anyway

This week’s tier list is, again, going to be a bit more of a speculative tier list as the format is still pretty fresh. Please don’t crucify me if your pet deck doesn’t make it back onto the tier list now that its worst matchup has been banned out of the format.