Pioneer Tier List

A Traditional Hard Control Deck: Answer threats, generate value, lock down the game, and win at your leisure. Azorius Control runs the best removal and sweepers available in Pioneer, with counterspells tuned to the meta as needed and strict instant-speed card advantage. A few planeswalkers, tokens, and lands are the only threats. This is the deck for simply telling your opponent “No”.

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.

An Aggressive Explosive Prowess Deck: 16 Prowess/”Prowess” creatures all get a little extra size out of already efficient cheap spells. Monstrous Rage its ilk can’t burn a player directly, but translate to 5+ damage each for one of the fastest possible Pioneer kills. Burn Together(Callous Sell-Sword) with Heartfire Hero offers an explosive combo finish

A Synergistic Tempo Drain Deck: Jund Sac’s spells are rarely powerful on their own, but together they generate a myriad of different engines for dealing damage, drawing cards, and draining the opponent. RakSac runs creatures that sacrifice themselves, generate sacrificial permanents, and ultimately provide a lethal burst of damage or slowly bleed an opponent to death.

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 Midrange shell produces blood to discard the tree, activated abilities for the cauldron.

Deck Description Coming Soon

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.

Deck Description Coming Soon

Deck Description Coming Soon

A Resilient Stompy Ramp Deck: The word “ramp” doesn’t really describe how much mana this deck can quickly make. Put permanents with green mana symbols onto the battlefield, some of which start the game in play and many of which attack, in devotion to Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Untap it, generate huge amounts of mana, draw, and deploy huge creatures.

A Consistent Disruptive Midrange Deck: Rakdos Midrange runs cards with looser synergy, each strong on their own. It has returned with a more dedicated approach to disrupting the opposing hand and game plan with minimal bad topdecks compared to other midrange Pioneer decklists. Consistent attackers will kill an opponent before they can stabilize or reassemble.

A Proactive Goldfish Lifegain Deck: Play angels, gain life, and attack with angels- yes each of those angels gained you 36 life. Angels only struggle against infinite combos and board wipes, flying over and ignoring everything else. Kayla’s Reconstruction and Collected Company deploy fliers that enter at the same time, triggering each other’s effects.

A Midrange Graveyard Combo Deck: Use self-mill spells to dig for the namesake Greasefang and put a large vehicle into the graveyard, then reanimate it for a (semi) lethal attack. The combo itself is relatively weak, but the digging allows for a diverse set of threats and answers. The vehicles are fine threats even when cast and a suite of midrange discard spells round out the game plan.

Deck Description Coming Soon