Pioneer Meta Inspection 2023/10/07

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

Regional RCs are rolling out through October. Before we begin, here are the dates for each region:

~~Canada (F2F Tour): Sep 29 - Oct 1~~
~~European (Legacy): Sep 30 - Oct 1~~
Australia & New Zealand (Good Game): Oct 27 - 29
Southeast Asia (Oracle Events): Nov 4 - 5
Taiwan (GameSquare): Nov 4 - 5
Brazil (City Class Games): Nov 4 - 5
Mexico & Central America & Caribbean (Yellow Rabbit): Nov 4 - 5
South America (Magicsur): Nov 24 - 26
China (Kadou): TBA (or I’m terrible and couldn’t find it)
Japan & Korea(Big Magic): TBA (or I’m terrible and couldn’t find it)

So for now I plan to practice a Rakdos midrange (or Sacrifice) build on MA, and once Australia/New Zealand wraps up at the end of October, I’ll see whether the list needs changes.

Finally, here is the info for MIT.
Barring surprises, the morning of 11/4 has a Modern prize tournament, noon has a Pioneer prize tournament, and there are LCQs all day, though I’m not sure how many in total.
Go by GameSquare’s announcements for the details.

Legacy European Championship: Lille

Let’s look at the European event first (Melee link).
It was held in Lille, a city in northern France (although it’s called a city, its permanent population is only around 230,000).

690 players entered, with Pioneer as the format.
After 15 Swiss rounds, the top eight play single elimination, and the event is split over two days:
Day 1: nine rounds, and only players at 6-3 or better advance to Day 2.
Day 2: six more rounds, then a top-eight single-elimination bracket.

First, the deck stats. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place, so they may not sum to 100%, and only decks with more than 20 copies are listed.

Archetype	Deck Count	% of Field
Rakdos Midrange	84	12.5%
Mono-Green Devotion	69	10.2%
Rakdos Sacrifice	57	8.5%
Izzet Phoenix	48	7.1%
Mono-White Humans	44	6.5%
Azorius Spirits	43	6.4%
Azorius Control	33	4.9%
Lotus Field Combo	32	4.6 %
Omnath to Light	29	4.3%
Boros Convoke	25	3.7%
Azorius Lotus Field	23	3.4%
Boros Heroic	23	3.4%
Others	180	26.0%

Basically the meta is still dominated by black-red decks, Green Devotion, Phoenix, and Mono-White.

Next, the top ten most-played cards:

	Card	Cpoies	Decks
1	Thoughtseize	868	33%
2	Fable of the Mirror-Breaker	854	32%
3	Fatal Push	798	32%
4	Rending Volley	586	38%
5	Bloodtithe Harvester	557	21%
6	Duress	443	28%
7	Bonecrusher Giant	416	16%
8	Portable Hole	403	18%
9	Elvish Mystic	394	15%
10	Llanowar Elves	393	15%

Then the top-eight decks, ranked by final placement, with the record being the Swiss record.

Rank	Player	Decklist	Record
1	Adrián Iñigo Tastet	Lotus Field Combo	12-2-1
2	Lars Henrichvark	Abzan Greasefang	12-3
4	Christoffer Larsen	Rakdos Sacrifice	12-3
4	Sam Rolph	Lotus Field Combo	12-2-1
8	Samuele Estratti	Fire-Color Combo	12-1-2
8	Josep Sanfeliu	Gruul Vehicles	12-2-1
8	Marcin Klimuszko	Enigmatic Fires	12-3
8	alscec	Rakdos Midrange	12-3

You’ll notice that most of these are on the faster side. The slowest are probably Rakdos Midrange and Enigmatic Fires; nearly all the others are decks that settle the game around turn four or five.
Even the Rakdos Midrange list leans aggro: it only has 25 lands, but it runs four manlands (two red, two black) and no Castle to draw cards.

Let’s go through the decks one by one and look at their highlights:

Lotus Field Combo

Let’s start with the winning version. In its flex slots it has three extra copies of Discontinuity, used to cut the turn short in response to Lotus Field’s ETB trigger, or during the opponent’s upkeep.

The other top-eight player, Sam Rolph, put Growth Spiral and more card draw in his free slots.

Abzan Greasefang

The Greasefang build is similar to the one in my last Pioneer inspection, but this is a more midrange build. In the main deck, besides a full set of Thoughtseize, it also has two Duress and one Collective Brutality.
The sideboard also has two Reckoner Bankbuster, presumably expecting plenty of midrange matchups (and he did indeed run into quite a few midrange decks).

Rakdos Sacrifice

The Sacrifice build is quite standard, at least the main deck is.
The sideboard presumably also expects lots of midrange matchups, so it has one Reckoner Bankbuster, three Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, and two Archfiend of the Dross.
That said, if it were me, I’d cut one Thoughtseize or Fatal Push from the main deck for an extra land. Even though Kiki can make Treasure to accelerate, it feels very easy to end up holding Archfiend of the Dross without being able to cast it.

Fire-Color Combo

As I understand it, this is a variant of Rona Combo. It keeps looting, then produces infinite mana with the following line:
Cast Retraction Helix targeting Rona, Herald of Invasion. Together with Mox Amber, this produces infinite blue (tap Rona to return Mox Amber to hand, cast Amber to make mana, then do it again).

It also has Bring to Light to find whichever piece is missing (Rona or Retraction Helix), or to find Valki, God of Lies and cast the back side, Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor, for a huge amount of resources, or to find a sweeper or another toolbox card.

With infinite mana, you can switch to bouncing Karn, the Great Creator back to hand. Each time Karn lands, fetch The Stone Brain from the sideboard or exile zone and exile the opponent’s whole hand/library.
Another approach is to find a way to land Tibalt after getting infinite mana and repeat the earlier infinite-mana loop. By now you also have red and black, so you can cast Tibalt infinitely, using the [+2] each time it enters to mill the opponent’s library dry.
The worst-case option is probably to land Atraxa, Grand Unifier to dig for resources and see whether you can combo next turn, or simply beat the opponent to death with Atraxa, which is not a bad option either.

Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler is used after infinite mana to loot infinitely, or to find resources, and also lets creatures’ activated abilities ignore summoning sickness.

Here’s a quick note on how to loot infinitely with Tyvar.
With Tyvar on the battlefield, first use the earlier loop to produce infinite black-green
Tap Rona to bounce Tyvar to hand
Cast Tyvar to untap Rona
Activate Tyvar’s [+1] ability to untap Rona, and in response to that ability, use Rona’s loot once
Repeat steps 2 - 4, looting infinitely until you find Karn or Valki

Last of all are Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast. I think Kinnan and Lukka are also there for acceleration and finding resources, and in the mid-to-late game they can find Atraxa as a final backup plan.

Gruul Vehicles

Vehicles is similar to earlier builds. The main deck adds the new WOE card The Huntsman’s Redemption. Besides being a three-mana 3/3 on its own, it can find sideboard creature-hate for post-board games, and finally gives two creatures +2/+2 and trample.

Enigmatic Fires

Enigmatic Fires is also similar to what I covered before, but it adds Up the Beanstalk, a two-mana tempo card. Personally I think it’s slightly better than Omen of the Sea, but since Fires basically doesn’t hard-cast many spells with mana value 5 or more, the extra draw is limited. Still, every little bit helps, right?

Rakdos Midrange

Rakdos Midrange performed quite solidly, but with more creatures it leans toward the aggro side.
The overall feel is about the same. The sideboard is lean, but a bit too lean; maybe there were too many options, and it would be better to pick the few most important ones to handle and raise the win rate in those matchups.

F2F Tour Championship - Calgary

After the European event, let’s look at the Canadian RC (Melee link).
This time Canada held it in Calgary, a city in south-central Canada.

177 players entered, with Pioneer as the format.
After 13 Swiss rounds, the top eight play single elimination, and the event is split over two days:
Day 1: eight rounds, and only players at 5-3 or better advance to Day 2
Day 2: five more Swiss rounds, then a top-eight single-elimination bracket.

Again, the deck shares first. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place, so they may not sum to 100%, and only decks with more than 5 copies are listed.

Archetype	Deck Count	% of Field
Mono-Green Devotion	21	11.9%
Rakdos Sacrifice	19	10.7%
Rakdos Midrange	16	9.0%
Izzet Phoenix	14	7.9%
Boros Heroic	12	6.8%
Mono-White Humans	12	6.8%
Abzan Greasefang	10	5.6%
Azorius Spirits	9	5.0%
Lotus Field Combo	6	3.4%
Boros Convoke	6	3.4%
Selesnya Angels	5	2.8%
Azorius Lotus Field	5	2.8%
Golgari Midrange	5	2.8%
Others	37	20.9%

Apart from Angels and Golgari Midrange, which are a bit surprising to see played, the rest are all meta decks.

Next, single-card usage.

	Card	Copies	Decks
1	Thoughtseize	227	32%
2	Fatal Push	212	32%
3	Fable of the Mirror-Breaker	192	27%
4	Rending Volley	116	41%
5	Bloodtithe Harvester	148	21%
6	Duress	126	32%
7	Llanowar Elves	123	18%
8	Elvish Mystic	120	18%
9	Bonecrusher Giant	108	16%
10	Portable Hole	96	15%

Yep, it looks about the same as the European usage table: the same cards, just in a different order with different counts.

Next, the top-eight decklists, with records again taken from the Swiss rounds.

Rank	Player	Decklist	Record
1	Boston Schatteman	Izzet Phoenix	10-2-1
2	Liam Kane	Rakdos Sacrifice	11-2
4	Attila Fur	Gruul Vehicles	10-3
4	Derek Pite	Rakdos Midrange	10-2-1
8	Drew Christensen	Boros Heroic	10-3
8	Gavin Bennett	UW Control	9-2-2
8	Andrew Kidston	Mono-Green Devotion	9-3-1
8	David Schnayer	Enigmatic Fires	9-3-1

Compared with the European RC, this is much slower; at least half of the decks aren’t fast.

Izzet Phoenix

As mentioned before, Phoenix is back in the meta now that it has Sleight of Hand. With more ways to find cards, it’s easier to dig up the right resources, and since Sleight of Hand isn’t drawing, it slightly lowers Sheoldred’s threat.
The build takes the older route: copying for two extra turns, keeping resources for a mid-to-late-game burst.
The sideboard has flexibility against control, plus the Saheeli combo.