the one thing i dont enjoy about pioneer is that 90% of the blue decks cant find slots for counterspells. it makes me feel like im playing hearthstone with how inefficient and narrow the instant speed answers are compared to just playing value piles
Dimir controll plays 3-4 censor, ca 2 negate and 2-3 sinister Sabotage, Azorius controll roughly the same amount and spirits play spellqueller and some other counter. There are no other dedicated blue decks in pioneer (as far as i remember)
@@1991Larsa sure there arent that many blue primary decks but thats because wizards decided at some point that counterspells arent fun and so they stopped printing good ones into standard. white still gets moderate to decent efficient swords copies, black gets thoughtseizes, red gets bolts +stompy creatures, green gets elves, blue gets.... 5 mana draw 3 cards + x thematic effect. or like a ponder stapled onto an enchantment or something.
This format really shows off how Wizard's design philosophy has changed over time. It really feels like at some point they decided threats are fun and answers are not, and then kept printing more and more busted threats and less and less good interaction. IDK lol, I'd rather have force of will and wasteland kicking around to keep people honest than have this kind of degeneracy
putting powerful answers into pioneer is definitely easier said than done, since standard provides a complication (answers that answer pioneer threats efficiently enough to shift how the format plays are likely to be oppressively good in standard), but it’s a problem that can surely be solved. pioneer has a cool card pool but it does always feel more goldfish-y than I’d like because of the sheer power of its threats vs its answers. I’d imagine they’re not satisfied with it either, because standard set design has definitely been ‘corrected’ away from the hyper-FIRE design era of 2020 and into a more reasonable spot, but pioneer still retains some of that feel that is harder to get out in a non-rotating format. pioneer definitely feels unique, and that’s a good thing, but it’s not like balancing the threats vs answers scale a bit would remove that identity in any significant way. I’d love to see the format develop into something that feels more open and more engaging.
Don't you think that throughout magic's history that there's been enough interaction printed to make every single variant on control in every color combination? Hell, you can even play mono green control with deathtouchers and fight cards. I think Wizards made the right choice. When you can play control using every color combination, there's too much interaction in the game. And the older formats like Modern, Legacy, etc -- it feels like every deck you see is a control deck. Every deck is running buttloads of interaction for everything. This is why we now have to have such good threats now, like the evasive Ragavan which demands a counter or an instant removal to stop, and then it feels bad when you do because it's only a one-drop, or a two-drop if dashed. I know what I'm about to say is very controversial but I don't care. I like the "stupid monkey" because it keeps control under control. No one likes not being able to resolve their stuff and not being able to actually play the game. Which is what control does when you face it. Wizards is absolutely right. Threats are WAY more fun than interaction.
@@ryangainey94 First time I've heard storm and oops all spells called control decks :p But seriously. to each their own. It's ok if you prefer this kind of gameplay. I don't mind powerful cheap creatures. I just don't like it when formats are overrun with 3-5 color value piles. And I like feeling like I can interact and make decisions around what my opponent is doing, not just trying to play more and bigger threats than they do and hope it works out.
What ryan is describing is just coinflip the gathering. Control makes this game worth playing. So many games had to be scooped because the opponent had a t1 ragavan. How is "do I have the win in my opening hand or not' a fun and interactive game? Its not.
I'm not sure if you know this, but you can actually cast the Tibalt side of Valki if you cast Bring to Light with at least two colours. I'm not sure if it would have ever been correct in this league, but there are at least a few times in match 2 and 4 where it would've been worth considering.
Just so you know, RIP is definitely not worth it to bring in against UW control. The only thing it stops is the back half of the usually 2 memory deluges they play. They even play their own RIPs
35:00 the classic level system. Bosh missed a land drop, but Opp should have just cast the Discontinuity in upkeep. Bosh made a mistake because opponent made a mistake because they assumed Bosh would make a mistake (eg, casting something precombat)
1:38:07 I'm pretty sure Elesh Norn is there as a tutor bullet against the various Fires matchups. It makes their entire deck not work, to the degree that some builds literally can't ever remove it because their removal is exclusively ETB permanents like Leyline Binding and Agent of Treachery. That round 3 Lotus Field opponent was on kind of a wacky build, or at least one that's newer than what I'm familiar with. The versions I've seen normally build a pile that wins deterministically by fetching Approach of the Second Sun out of the sideboard.
@@BoshNRollI believe the addition of birds was after the fact because the art of volcanic island (now Birds of Paradise art) had the bid in the front but was too beautiful to not use, so they created a card to use the art.
I got to disagree with that first ultimatum choice. Sending pore over the pages back, would leave them with chandra and a tutor, but without mana. Next turn you could slaughter games the payoffs
Again, this league shows that NO ONE is putting any amount of respect on Damping Sphere. I really think it's the biggest mistake in Pioneer deck building that no one is trying to find a spot to slot in the Spheres. With as many of the decks are Mono Green and we have so many Lotus Field decks, as well as Prowess, the card is indispensable. It hits multi-spell decks and it shuts down the multi-mana lands. That alongside the activated ability of Shadowspear being important also, as it gets rid of the Hexproof, but that's more corner case.
It's so damn dumb that Yorion is banned in modern but not pioneer......meanwhile, RB midrange gets to be nearly a full quarter of the format, and it's also not been banned. Whoever makes decisions at WotC is just throwing darts.
The reasoning for Yorion's ban in Modern in regards to the dexterity/fetchland issues does not apply to Pioneer at all and it sees medium play there at best, there is no reaon to ban Yorion in pioneer, even less so if you agree with the (not entirely coherent) modern ban. Rakdos Midrange has a 15% metashare according to mtggoldfish and mtgtop8 but more importantly, it is noticeably underrepresented or even absent from the top 8 finishes of tournaments. That implies that Rakdos Mid is overrated by the average player, all of the other tier 1 and tier 1 contender decks (especially MonoG and Greasefang) are putting up way better tournament results. Another reason for the popularity of Rakdos Mid could simply be that it is fun to play. Midrange is an accessible archetype for newer players while providing a high skill ceiling for advanced players. While I agree that Pioneer is a bit stale, I would argue that it's nit the fault of Rakdos mid but rather 1. The lack of efficient interaction. The best interactive spells are probably fatal push, thoughtseize and maybe skyclave apparition. 2. As a result, there is a slew of noninteractive decks that just lead to boring repetitive gameplay (very play/draw dependant as well). Biggest offender is MonoG in my opinion, never had a fun game against that. Lifegain CoCo is also on the rise, a deck that plays 4x skyclave but really just intends to poop out everything in their hand as fast as possible. The same is true for that boros convoke deck and to a degree monowhite/monored aggro. All in all, I would say that Rakdos actually has a very positive effect on the metagame in providing interactive, differing gameplay. As the cardpool gets bigger there'll be less braindead "everything on the table as fast as I can" decks and maybe then more people would consider it a fun format
@@paulganzle859 "as the card pool gets larger there will be less brain dead decks" - in theory, using historical data, yes. but the shift to fire design means that not only might we never get efficient answers, but even if we do it may not even matter because every creature has an etb rider attached that gives some value which blunts the effectiveness of 1-for-1 removal
@@TheTurophileMagic has moved away from fire design and is printing more answers, it’s obviously going to be a gradual process but I suspect we’ll slowly see pioneer get less and less value oriented as time passes.
@@TheTurophile some of the most efficient interaction in recent times has come from sets released during prime fire-design era. Think the evoke elementals, force of negation, unholy heat, prismatic ending, maybe leyline binding... Even so, as the other guy said, magic is moving away from the hyper-fire-design a bit so maybe we'll see fewer value piles overall