What Arena’s New Pioneer Format Is Most Likely to Be and What the Decks Would Look Like

Hello everyone! About a week ago, Blake Rasmussen hosted an interview with Chris Kiritz about the state of the MTG Arena economy and other hot button topics concerning the community. While a lot was said, the general reception to the discussion was less than ideal. If you’re interested in what was discussed, you can check out the article below.

WotC Addresses the Arena Economy – Wild Card Bundles, Mythic Packs coming to MTGA

One of the most interesting portions of that conversation was actually one that mostly said as an off hand comment! When they received a question on if Pioneer had any plans to come to Arena, the answer was not quite yet, but that a different format was in the works as a non-rotating tabletop format that would be here soon to serve as a “bridging” format to Pioneer.

How that went so under the radar is beyond me, but I found that to be one of the most exciting pieces of news! A big complaint with Historic was that it was already hard to get into and supplementary products made this even more challenging, but this format would aim to be what Historic was marketed to be initially, a super Standard where old good decks could still see play. With that information, we have a good amount of information on what this new format could be and what we could expect of it! Let’s break down both potential options on what I think this format could be.

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FORMAT #1: PIONEER LITE

For those unaware, Pioneer is an eternal format introduced October 21st, 2019 that uses all cards from eReturn to Ravnica forward. This was a super interesting format as it was supposed to be a bridge from Standard to harder to enter eternal formats and would be curated very aggressively (that started with weekly ban announcements) to ensure a good format. While reception for the format was quite good, it suffered from two major stumbling blocks.

One, Pioneer wasn’t supported on the tournament scene particularly hard which hurt it’s chances of widespread play (albeit Star City Games used it as a replacement for Legacy in their events). However, that pales in extreme comparison with the real death kneel, the pandemic. Releasing a new format so close to Magic changing substantially was extremely hard on the format in general.

Nevertheless, Pioneer has persisted to be a fun format that many of it’s players stand by and its popularity is increasing day by day. This is significant especially as it has become an eternal format not “tainted” by supplementary sets with powerful cards such as Modern Horizons or Commander cards.

Furthermore, Pioneer was initially slated to be on Arena, as they began to introduce Amonkhet and Kaladesh Remastered sets but that decision was further rolled back for unknown reasons.

Just yesterday though, the Midweek Magic released for this week was What Was Written, a format where any card on Arena that was legal in Pioneer is legal in the event and the same Pioneer banlist. This meant that cards banned in Historic like Fires of Invention and Winota, Joiner of Forces are allowed.

What Was Written – Midweek Magic Event Guide and Decklists

While you may think that this would look like a really nerfed form of Pioneer, but you’d be surprised with the quality of the decks present. When looking into it, it turns out that Arena may have more of Pioneer already on it than one would previously assume.

Running the numbers, Arena has 5,649/8,934 (63%) of Pioneer’s cards and while that seems like a low percentage, you have to keep in mind that a vast majority of that is filler that would never see play even if legal. So that’s not necessarily the best parameter to go by, why not look at Pioneer’s most popular decks?

Azorius, Phoenix, and Winota respectively are some of (if not the most) popular decks in Pioneer currently. What would their Arena versions look like?

Out of all of these, I would argue that Azorius Control is the closest to a full port. The only card that we couldn’t play is Supreme Verdict, and while good, Doomskar is quite a strong wrath regardless making this a very close iteration to the original.

On the other side of the coin, Phoenix is probably hurt the most as it loses two of it’s best cards in Thing in the Ice and Treasure Cruise. While it could still survive without as you have similar options in Smoldering Egg and Ox of Agonas, they certainly aren’t as good.

Finally, Naya Winota is very close as well mainly missing Elvish Mystic and some auxiliary pieces like Voice of Resurgence and Selfless Spirit. Although they seem hard to replace, Gilded Goose is a reasonable change for Elvish Mystic and the other two can be replaced by any reasonable cheap non-Human threats.

All in all, this potential format would be as I explained it, a “Pioneer Lite”. We would be missing some very powerful pieces, but realistically any deck that’s legal there could potentially

While the concept for this event hold a lot of weight between how close the port is, the What Was Written event, and Pioneer initially was slated to be on Arena, it’s not the only potential eternal format either. The largest detractor from this theory is that there would be a greater emphasis on tabletop convertibility between Arena and Paper so still needing Historic supplementary products (albeit a few of them) would be quite weird.

While Amonkhet and Kaladesh Remastered wouldn’t be a problem (as they’re mostly just Standard cards), they did also include cards that weren’t available in Standard. On the other side of the coin, there are Jumpstart cards where some of those would fit into the Return to Ravnica forward category while a lot don’t. Having a mix of supplementary products where not all of the cards are legal in said products would definitely be rather strange. So what else could this potential format be?

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FORMAT #2: A BLAST FROM THE PAST

A month ago we had another event for Midweek Magic called a Blast from the Past with a simple premise, any card Ixalan forward is legal as long as it was Standard legal.

Blast from the Past – Midweek Magic Event Guide and Decklists

What this ended up being was a literal Super Standard. All cards available in Standard, all bans that happened in Standard, go nuts. This played very similarly like Historic with an expansive ban list, but I believe the format lived up to it’s thesis. What we saw was a great mix of decks from the different time periods of Standard and some decks that got major boosts if they had access to everything.

If you want period pieces, you could play Mono White Aggro from Ravnica or Dimir Rogues from last Standard rotation.

However if you want decks that are conglomerates of cards they have access to, then you could look towards Azorius Control or Sultai Ultimatum.

Although this is substantially less exciting than Pioneer on Arena, this would make a lot of sense as the potential format. It makes logical sense as it’s where Arena started, it wouldn’t require any supplementary products, and it would function like any other eternal format just with the shortest life span of any of them (end of 2017 forward).

All they would have to do then to implement this format is just decide on the initial ban list and could also explain how they could roll it out soon without much fanfare. I feel that if it was a format more akin to Pioneer, there would be a lot more hype generated from announcements and teasers, but with it being a more casual mention, I feel that it may be a more simple endeavor.

No matter which direction they choose, adding a true eternal format that can convert to paper and not require additional products is a huge win for Arena players where nearly all the Constructed formats require more and more products just to keep up.

Which of these formats would you prefer? Which do you think is more likely? Let me know what you’re thinking in our Discord community!

Have a great day!