Strixhaven Pioneer League Review
Strixhaven brought new tools to Magic’s non-rotating formats, such as Expressive Iteration which has taken multiple formats by storm. In Pioneer, it provides a large quantity of card advantage for only two mana and extra spells for Arclight Phoenix. Elite Spellbinder sees some play as a delay tactic in White based decks. Magma Opus briefly saw play in Torrential Gearhulk decks to cast for free from the graveyard. In spite of this, Strixhaven largely had a minor impact on Pioneer beyond helping enable UR Phoenix.
What was UOL Pioneer Metagame like with Strixhaven involved?
1st Place: Bant Spirits by Niv (Check out his winner’s interview)
2nd Place: Mono-Green Stompy by Trinket9
3rd-4th Place: Dimir Control by JB_Alters
3rd-4th Place: Niv to Light by Xeddrezz
5th-8th: 4-Colored Ramp by Boulderelf
5th-8th: Dredgeless Dredge by ssch21
5th-8th: Enigmatic Fires by Dank_confidant
5th-8th: UW Spirits by CheeseyPuffey (His UW Spirits primer is available here)
All STX Season Pioneer League decklists can be viewed here.
Having no deck (except debatably Spirits) showing up twice in the top 8 is great to see. The four players that made top 8 last season that are again participating for the AFR season are playing their same decks. These are Niv on Bant Spirits, Trinket on Stompy, JB_Alters on Dimir Control, and CheeseyPuffey on UW Spirits.
Last season was won by Bant Spirits, but we’ll have to see if it will gain a second League win with AFR.
Viewing the Pioneer Metagame with AFR
Special thank you to the Tournament Organizer, Csquared08; he created a quick metagame overview, listing out the deck archetypes and their frequencies. His contribution helped me finish this article.
Here’s a bar graph of the AFR Pioneer League:
Given there isn’t an abysmally dominant archetype (based on their numbers), this AFR Pioneer League is looking healthy.
Decks to Watch Out For
Dimir Control
A recurring nightmare to all Magic players: a blue-based control deck.
Dimir Control’s plans are to efficiently control their opponent’s gameplan through their interaction, which is in the form of counterspells, removal, and board wipes. Although most lists prefer Extinction Event as their board wipe of choice, Shadows’ Verdict also shows up from time to time, due to being so brutal against Lurrus of the Dream Den decks.
Eventually, the Dimir Control deck wins in the late game by amassing huge amounts of card advantage using the DigHulk engine, using Torrential Gearhulk to recast Dig Through Time for free. They can also use Shark Typhoon, either cycled or hardcast, to produce massive sharks.
Bant Spirits
Speaking of beating down with creatures and interaction…
Bant Spirits aims to win through their tribe of Spirit creatures, which boasts amazing cards like Spell Queller and Supreme Phantom. Typically, Spirits can aggressively attack the opponent with the help of lords, while disrupting their opponent with more creatures like Mausoleum Wanderer, Spell Queller, and Rattlechains.
The green splash serves the deck through Collected Company, which can help refill the board, threaten lethal, or find a tool to disrupt their opponent. CheeseyPuffey is known to prefer the UW version of the deck, which trades the raw power of Collected Company for a more stable, painless manabase and Lofty Denial for additional disruption.
Rakdos Arcanist
Rakdos Arcanist is a midrange deck that utilizes Stitcher’s Supplier to fill-out the graveyard with cards. This helps enable cards like Dreadhorde Arcanist, Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, and Lurrus of the Dream Den to take over games.
The deck runs the basic suite of black interaction, most notably Thoughtseize and Fatal Push. Village Rites makes an appearance as well, synergizing with Young Pyromancer or sacrificing a creature that would have died to a removal spell to provide additional card advantage.
Dredgeless Dredge
Dredgeless Dredge is another graveyard based strategy in Pioneer, using self mill tools to enable cards that benefit from self mill; an example of that relationship would be Grisly Salvage and Creeping Chill.
Coupled with Haunted Dead, Prized Amalgam, and Scrapheap Scrounger, Dredgeless Dredge can quickly present sticky and threatening creatures. This list in particular eschews Narcomoeba for a slower but more powerful deck. Witherbloom Command also makes an appearance here as a new card from Strixhaven.
Niv to Light
Niv to Light uses its namesake Niv-Mizzet Reborn to gain card advantage while being a strong proactive play as a 6/6 Dragon with Flying. Alongside Niv-Mizzet, Bring to Light serves as an extra four copies of Niv-Mizzet Reborn, or tutors an answer for nearly any situation. Since Bring to Light can be found with Niv-Mizzet Reborn, the deck can chain copies of the two repeatedly to almost endlessly refill its hand.
The deck also runs a toolbox of answers the pilot can utilize, like Tolsimir, Friends to Wolves to fight against the opponent’s board while developing their own board, or Slaughter Games to entirely remove a piece of the opponent’s deck.
Gruul Bard Class
Gruul Bard Class is a Storm-like Combo deck that uses Level 3 from Bard Class to chain cast tons of Legendary spells, taking advantage of Level 2’s discounts by running Gruul legends such as Targ Nar, Demon-Fang Gnoll. Because of its large mass of Legendary spells, Mox Amber shines here, accelerating its mana at no cost.
Xahhfink8 also takes a unique spin of this deck by leaning more into aggro, running Reckless Bushwacker and Embercleave, complementing Gallia of the Endless Dance, Targ Nar, the Demon-Fang Knoll, and Zurgo Bellstriker. Many other lists prefer to run Birgi, God of Storytelling to produce extra mana to combo harder, instead of killing the opponent.
If you would like to see more decklists from the AFR Pioneer League, check out the full list of decks here. They should also be embedded onto the Pioneer League page some time over the next several days.
What cards were used from AFR?
Portable Hole made an appearance in the most decks of any AFR card in this season, showing up in three decklists. It has replaced Isolate in the sideboard for UW and Bant Spirits and helps shore up the aggressive matchups for those decks, particularly against Mono Black Aggro.
Book made an appearance in its newly designed Mutavault + Book combo decks to give a Platinum Angel effect to a land. Book is likely the most impactful card on Pioneer of Adventures from the Forgotten Realms, and showed up as a four of in two decklists this season.
Bard Class as a deck is the spiritual successor to the banned Kethis, the Hidden Hand combo deck. Although it appears Bard Class is not on the level of Kethis Combo, it is still a deck to watch out for and can kill incredibly quickly. With Book of Exalted Deeds, it is one of the two cards to spawn entire archetypes around the card in Pioneer.
If you’d like to participate in a future UOL Pioneer League, join our Discord and check out the #pioneer-league channel, or see our Pioneer page. It’s completely free and takes place on Untap.in, a website similar to Cockatrice where you can play any deck for free. You can read more about the League format here.
