Welcome to the Untap Open League’s Pioneer Metagame breakdown for the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt (MID) and Crimson Vow (VOW) season! Returning to the plane of Innistrad has given us a plethora of new and powerful cards. From MID, Pioneer has indeed gotten an update with cards like Consider for decks that care about dumping cards into the graveyard like UR Phoenix and other control variants, Play with Fire for the more aggressive decks of the format, and the werewolves giving Winota, Joiner of Forces decks a bit more bite.
Additionally, with the release of VOW, our players can now brew new decks or update their previous builds of their decks and have them face off over the next five weeks. But before we dive into our MID/VOW metagame, let’s review our league results from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms (AFR).
AFR Pioneer League Review
Congratulations to Trinket9 for winning the entire league! He was able to make it into our Top 8 with Mono-Green Stompy and stomped his way to victory. You can read Arsteel’s interview with him. In addition to this, you can view the other decklists from the AFR League, and the metagame breakdown for AFR can be found here.
The rest of the Top 8 goes as follows:
2nd Place:
Xahhfink on Gruul Bard Class
3rd-4th Place:
CheesyPuffey on Azorius Spirits
Galvinator05 on Dimir Control
5th-8th Place:
Jongbag on Mono-Black Vampires
Niv on Bant Spirits
Razz on White Weenie
Viperfang4 on Green-White Book Combo
With Spirits being the only deck to be represented by multiple players, it’s great to see all different types of decks put up results.
Overview of the Pioneer Metagame for MID/VOW
With 19 unique decks submitted for this league across various archetypes, it’s safe to say that Pioneer gives us a place where we can pilot decks that we have poured our efforts into and still have a great chance of performing well. While the decks below give us an idea of what people brought (and we’ll talk about some of these later), it’s essential to mention what people didn’t select this season. Arguably, some of the best decks in Pioneer at this time are Izzet Phoenix and Naya Winota. However, of the 24 players this season only Trinket9, last season’s winner, brought Naya Winota, with no one selecting Izzet Phoenix.
In addition to this, we can condense these decks above into a more simplified version of the Pioneer metagame. We can see that most people selected to play either aggressive or midrange decks, with only a few decks trying to go over the top of these decks. Thus, we can expect a lot of games to either be over quickly and, if not, players could get into “grind you out” games where whoever still has resources in hand wins. Below is a simplified version of the metagame breakdown from above.
Decks to Watch
Enigmatic Fires
Let’s talk about the “Chimera” in the room of Enigmatic Fires. Partly popularized due to the recent success of Claudioh, it is the most popular deck in the league. As the most popular deck, Enigmatic Fires looks to take advantage of Enigmatic Incarnation by sacrificing enchantments to put a creature of one higher Mana Value onto the battlefield and using the powerful abilities attached to those creatures to overwhelm their opponents in value.
In addition to this, Enigmatic Fires also runs a very effective backup plan that works exceptionally well with Enigmatic Incarnation in Fires of Invention and Yorion, Sky Nomad. For example, being able to cast multiple spells for free in addition to having all of their mana available to activate powerful abilities allows Enigmatic Fires to go over the top of almost every deck in Pioneer.
Bant Spirits
On the more spooky side of the spectrum, we have Bant Spirits. Bant Spirits is an aggressive deck that wants to utilize its creatures to create tempo and its lords to buff their creatures to knock out its opponent before they have a chance to stabilize. Bant Spirits is primarily a UW deck with a green splash for the extremely powerful Collected Company to put two creatures directly onto the battlefield to give them an insurmountable advantage to win. With the addition of some new spirits with Disturb attached to them such as Dorothea, Vengeful Victim, it’ll be interesting to watch if any of these new spirits can have a lasting impact on Pioneer.
Selesnya Humans
Another popular beatdown deck this season is Humans! Like Spirits, Selesnya Humans is another Collected Company deck that looks to put several humans onto the battlefield, tax their opponents effect with cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Elite Spellbinder, and then grow those creatures very quickly with lord effects. As of the release of VOW, we now have multiformat all-star Thalia in Pioneer. This card should allow aggressive white decks a much better two-drop that slows down their opponent.
Mono-Red Devotion
While humans may be devoted to their faith on Innistrad, TheJapanHobbyist from the First Pioneers Podcast is devoted to Mono-Red. This deck looks to utilize all of the various red cards in the format with intense mana requirements to gain an advantage by either beating its opponent aggressively with its slate of creatures, or by using its wishboard to tutor powerful effects that work with various cards in the deck with Wish. Additionally, it can deal 20 all at once to its opponent through a Star of Extinction with Boros Reckoner, or win over time Chandra, Awakened Inferno emblems. This deck can find a multitude of ways to win.
Rakdos Arcanist
Rakdos Arcanist is a midrange archetype looking to fully take advantage of the power of Dreadhorde Arcanist by casting and filling their graveyard with cheap interaction. In addition to this, Rakdos Arcanist also looks to deploy other threats that are inexpensive that can single-handedly take over the game, such as Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, and Young Pyromancer. Finally, this deck looks to close out the game by quickly striping its opponent of resources and then generating card advantage through the likes of Stitcher’s Supplier, Village Rites, and Dreadhorde Arcanist. While this deck may not have gotten cards from MID or VOW, it still packs a mighty punch in Pioneer.
Esper Control
Lastly, we have our lone true control deck in Esper Control. Given how the Pioneer metagame has shaken out, this deck appears to be in a prime position to take advantage of it At its core, this build of control is primarily a Blue-White Control deck that is splashing black for more answers for permanents such as Fatal Push and Vanishing Verse instead of attacking the hand with Thoughtseize.
Additionally, with the printing of Consider, casting delve spells such as Dig Through Time has become much easier to cast and thus giving a higher consistency to decks that want to cast these delve spells like this Esper Control deck. Finally, like all classic control decks, this deck looks to close out the game by using its insurmountable card advantage that its planeswalkers such as Teferi, Hero of Dominaria allows or by beating with either Shark tokens (from Shark Typhoon) or Kaheera, the Orphanguard.
Top Cards
Top Cards Overall
| Rank | Card Name | Total Count | # of Decks Played | Average Per Deck |
| 1 | Fatal Push | 27 | 8 | 3.38 |
| 2 | Thoughtseize | 26 | 8 | 2.25 |
| 3 | Skyclave Apparition | 25 | 10 | 2.5 |
| 4 | Mystical Dispute | 24 | 9 | 2.67 |
| 5 | Collected Company | 20 | 5 | 4 |
| 6 | Rest in Peace | 17 | 9 | 1.89 |
| 7 | Grafdigger’s Cage | 17 | 7 | 2.43 |
| 8 | Portable Hole | 17 | 6 | 2.83 |
| 9 | Spell Queller | 16 | 4 | 4 |
| 10 | Selfless Spirit | 15 | 6 | 2.5 |
This season, there are a couple of interesting trends. First of all, there was a lot of cheap and efficient interaction that was submitted in the likes of Fatal Push, Thoughtseize, Mystical Dispute, and Portable Hole. Clearly, many people were expecting a large number of aggressive leaning strategies, which should slow down a lot of the post-board games that are played this season. In addition to this, we have multiple Collected Company decks that are being showcased this season, with many of them playing the spirits of Skyclave Apparition, Spell Queller, and Selfless Spirit.
Lastly, we see that graveyard hate was widely popular across decks, with Rest in Peace and Grafdigger’s Cage being the most popular of the hate. It’s also worth mentioning that Grafdigger’s Cage also slows down Enigmatic Fires by disallowing the effect of putting the creatures directly onto the battlefield from their deck.
Top MID/VOW Cards
| Rank | Card Name | Total Count | # of Decks | Average Per Deck |
| 1 | Thalia, Gaurdian of Thraben | 15 | 5 | 3 |
| 2 | Katilda, Dawnhart Prime | 8 | 2 | 4 |
| 3 | Play with Fire | 8 | 2 | 4 |
| 4 | Kaya, Geist Hunter | 7 | 2 | 3.5 |
| 5 | Brutal Cathar | 6 | 2 | 3 |
Regarding the newest cards from MID and VOW, it isn’t much of a surprise that Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is the most popular card, with it being edged out in the top 10 simply due to it being in fewer decks. This aggressive creature is able to pressure its opponent’s life total while being able to hinder their gameplan by taxing their noncreature spells like many of the cards found in the top ten above.
While no other card from MID or VOW is seeing much play across archetypes, several cards are being played that are worth mentioning. Katilda, Dawnhart Prime is seeing play in the Selesnya Humans deck as a four-of as it allows the deck to play another powerful two-mana creature that ramps into a turn three Collected Company while providing protection from werewolves which can come up in certain matchups, such as Winota.
It is surprising that only two players are playing Play with Fire as it’s a better Shock, but as we can see with the top cards both overall and from the new sets, red was a color that was not valued as high compared to the other colors.
One of the new planeswalkers of these sets is Kaya, Geist Hunter. While this card is more of a payoff than advancing your side of the board, Kaya does offer a compelling payoff by giving your team deathtouch, but you do need her to be in the right deck, and we are seeing it be played in Abzan Superfriends as well as Orzhov Tokens.
Lastly, Brutal Cathar rounds out our top five most played cards from MID and VOW. Brutal Cathar is a removal spell on a creature with the potential to become more aggressive if their opponent doesn’t play any spells. This has given itself the ability to be showcased across various archetypes such as Selesnya Angels and Naya Winota.
My Pick to Win the Pioneer League
As an immediate reaction, it’s tough to bet against Trinket9 on Naya Winota. The fact that Winota has a solid backup plan in addition to the deck having the ability to win as early as turn four makes it hard to pick against it.
If I had to pick a sleeper, watch out for GW Angels piloted by MegaScientist. The ability to gain an absurd amount of life and having a way not to lose the game could spell trouble for a lot of the aggro decks this season.
Conclusion
If you would like to view all of the decklists for this season, you can follow this link to view them as well as a brief metagame report attached to it. To those playing in this season, I wish you the best of luck in all of your games. I would also like to thank the Untap Open League Discord server for allowing us to play these games and Csquared for running this season!
Although the VOW Season Pioneer League has already fired, if you’re interested in participating in a future tournament, check out our Get Started page. You can also follow our current season of Pioneer on our Pioneer format page. Legacy League signups close on 11-12-21 (today!), so get signed up quick if you want to play.
