Pioneer Tier List

A Consistent Tempo Aggro Spells Deck: Draw cards, discard cards, and kill creatures with low cost spells while filling the graveyard. Izzet Phoenix is packed full of cantrips and cheap interaction, delve spells to keep cards flowing, and recursive threats that count the number of spells played per turn. Phoenix can always dig up what it needs while applying pressure.

A Flexible Kindred Midrange Deck: Interact with strong removal and flexible creatures, utilizing Sorin, Imperius Bloodlord to generate value from vampires or cheat Vein Ripper into play. Rakdos Vampires puts out strong creatures to apply pressure while answering key threats. Flexibility is the strength of midrange, and every card in Vampires generates value or switches.

A Recursive Toolbox Creature Combo Deck: Amalia sets up a three card combo of Amalia, Wildgrowth Walker, and any lifegain trigger gain 60+ life, create a 21/21 attacker, kill all other creatures, and explore 19+ times to find a spell that ends the game or repeats the process. The entire deck of one and two-mana creatures is fetchable with CoCo, Chord, or Return to the Ranks.

A Consistent Pure Combo Deck: Search up, copy, and untap the namesake Lotus Field to generate absurd amounts of mana. As a true dedicated combo deck, Lotus Field requires a lot of moving pieces to tap Lotus Field many times in one turn and cast a massive threat or Emergent Ultimatum to win the game all at once, as early as turn three.

A Controlling Kindred Tempo Deck: Flash Spirits plays the game on the opposing turn, granting all of its creatures flash and utilizing timely cheap counterspells. Spirits is all about timing, winning with virtual card advantage and ignoring as many cards as possible. Every creature flies and spells generate value over time, with limited removal once a permanent is in play.

A Midrange Cardflow Combo Deck: Use Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to give Tree of Perdition’s Activated ability to a creature with much less than 13 health, and ping them once or twice for the kill. The rest of the Rakdos Vampire shell produces blood to discard the tree, activated abilities for the cauldron, or simply wins with a giant vampire cheated in via Sorin, Imperius Bloodlord.

A Disruptive Synergistic Control Deck-  Waste Not is a mono-black control deck built around attacking the opponent’s hand, generating value with every discard through its namesake. Waste Not is a control deck featuring the best black discard spells, most efficient removal, and maindeck interaction to deal with pesky protective and graveyard meta threats.

A Consistent Aggressive Burn Deck: Your opponent starts with 20 life; That’s too many life; Make it 0 life, quickly! Attack with creatures and burn out the opponent, with a few ways to refresh the hand with just Light Up the stage. Being mono-colored allows for more creature-lands compared to other aggro decks to provide late game reach.

A 5-Color Pure Midrange Guild Toolbox Deck- Niv-To-Light may look like a mess, but Bring to Light and an 80 card library means an answer for every deck and situation on this Pioneer Tier list. Niv Mizzet Reborn means as many of those cards as possible are exactly two colors, Omnath ends up being a free source of value in a 5-color deck, and Yorion adds consistency to an 80 card deck

A Flexible Controlling Combo Deck: Win the game with a single planeswalker ability! Quintorius Kand’s second loyalty ability Discovers 4, which will always either copy or reset Quint to Discover 4 again until the opponent dies to Quint’s passive. The rest of the deck is interaction that can be cast for three or less mana, despite costing at least five mana to avoid discovery.

An Aggressive Explosive Spell Creature Deck: Boros Heroic is the apparently simple combination of 16 creatures that care about being targeted by spells and 20-24 spells that target them. Every creature can quickly end the game as soon as turn three with the right combination of targeted cantrips, removal, protection, flashback, and sudden damage