Welcome to the exciting conclusion of the premier of the store’s very first Pioneer Monthly League! We hope this becomes a regular event that grows over time and is able to showcase the diverse group of players we have in our community. With the addition of Pioneer to the MTG RCQ Scene, we knew the players would want a place to practice their brews and hone their sideboards for competition.
The first few weeks of play before the RQC we scheduled a regular Thursday event. It was like the wild west. People showed up with preconstructed event decks, standard decks, and home brews. Over 50% of the field was the lotus field combo deck.
I took this information to a local RCQ and piloted a Mono Red Prowess deck to a top 16 finish, narrowly missing top 8 with a loss in the last round of swiss. I knew if people were going to be durdling around with combo decks, the best strat would be to have a focused aggressive strategy.
That seemed to align with our local metagame pretty well, as many people started showing up with R/x aggressive strategies. People were really starting to explore the format again since the pandemic, and branch out with their deck choices.
The few weeks prior to Hosting an RCQ of our own, the meta seemed to stabilize around midrange decks. Rakdos midrange, and izzet phoenix were the decks to beat! Only one thing was missing: a control deck. Every few weeks we’d have somebody show up playing some kind of control. Standard UWx, Yorion, and even prison decks couldn’t seem to find a foothold in the format.
The aggressive decks have much better card advantage/selection than previous contenders. Combo decks have multiple 1 mana cantrips, and overly powerful blue delve spells to help find their combo pieces.
One thing remained obvious: Thoughsieze is an important part of keeping this meta healthy. That brings us to the beginning of our league:
No big surprise but Raja Sulaiman plays his R/G beats deck to a 3-0 victory, and David Morczyk begins his ascent to the top of the Goblin King’s throne. A 14-player event was a decent size to kick things off but still small enough to be able to attend each game and make sure people were having fun. Strangely enough around half the players were on Rakdos midrange but the top 4 finishers had 0 Rakdos decks.
We find Raja atop the leaderboards once again going undefeated along with David’s goblins once again. This week, we had the mono green players come out in force. Derrick Boroski finished the highest out of them, just outside of top 4. A 19 player event shows how fast things can grow, and give people a chance to try out some new decks! It seems people are getting comfy having mana dorks on the battlefield. I can’t stress enough how much we need a control deck XD
Izzet phoenix is making its presence known, local grinder Daniel Brooks makes sure to extend his camera time as much as possible by using extra turns cards to play to his outs. Anger of the gods seems to be an all star against all these llanowar elves running around. Mono Green devotion is still making up a majority of the field but not closing out games.
The conclusion we’ve all been waiting for. A 19 player field with a variety of decks. You might have caught the coverage over at , it was a real slugfest. https://twitch.tv/riwhobbies
We saw the premier of a whole new deck thanks to Bryant Cook over on Twitch. It appears the the lack of a control deck has really allowed the combo decks to dig deep. You can check out the coverage to see the deck tech, but basically you cheat a hasty dragon into play and take the rest of the turns.
Sounds nutty I know! What’s even nuttier is that Raja was able to play the same r/g aggressive midrange/token deck to a championship finish. David was unfortunately unable to draw a Goblin Chain Whirler when he needed to and Raja was able to capitalize. Running these leagues is always a blast from a TO perspective, the participants really build a sense of community when you play the same players week in and week out.
My favorite thing about Pioneer is also one of the things I like most about Pauper: the depth of the format is still unexplored to the fullest. Every week I show up knowing some people will be on their favorite deck regardless of what’s popular, but there are also those people that I have NO idea what they’ll have. The great Coolio once said “Keep spending most our lives, living in a brewers’ paradise..” or something close.. I really think he was talking about Pioneer
