Magic: The Gathering Arena - Complete Pioneer Format Guide

Magic: The Gathering Arena has officially added the Pioneer format to the client. It joins Historic and Timeless as a non-rotating format, and is perfect for those who want to play a format that's (mostly) the same as it is on paper as it is on Arena. With the addition of Pioneer, the Explorer format will be discontinued.

Pioneer has been a format of Magic: The Gathering for quite a while and has an established meta with years of experimentation. With its arrival on Magic Arena, more players have access to playing the format without needing the physical cards to play.

What Is Pioneer?

Pioneer was introduced to Magic: The Gathering on October 21, 2019, as a new non-rotating format to fill out a gap between Standard and Modern, as Modern was becoming harder to get into for new players due to how large the card pool was. With the high power level of Modern, many Standard cards would become useless after rotation for Standard came since the power level of them was much weaker.

Pioneer was created as a way for players to still be able to play their Standard cards after rotation as the power of the formats was a lot closer. The original banlist only consisted of the five fetchlands released in Khans of Tarkir and slowly expanded over the years.

Every set from Return to Ravnica onward is legal in the Pioneer format. The sets and cards that are legal in Pioneer are only sets that were Standard legal. As such, sets such as Modern Horizons 3 and Command Legends are not legal in Pioneer. If a Standard set has a bonus set, such as Strixhaven's Mystical Archive or Outlaws of Thunder Junction's Breaking News cards, these cards are not Pioneer legal unless they already were legal.

The following sets are the sets that are legal in the Pioneer format:

Return to Ravnica	Gatecrash	Dragon's Maze	Magic 2014	Theros
Born of the Gods	Journey into Nyx	Magic 2015	Khans of Tarkir	Fate Reforged
Dragons of Tarkir	Magic Origins	Battle for Zendikar	Oath of the Gatewatch	Shadows over Innistrad
Eldritch Moon	Kaladesh	Aether Revolt	Amonkhet	Hour of Devastastion
Ixalan	Rivals of Ixalan	Dominaria	Core set 2019	Guilds of Ravnica
Ravnica Allegiance	War of the Spark	Core Set 2020	Throne of Eldraine	Theros Beyond Death
Ikoria Lair of Behemoths	Core 2021	Zendikar Rising	Kaldheim	Strixhaven
Adventures in the Forgotten Realms	Innistrad: Midnight Hunt	Innistrad: Crimson Vow	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	Streets of New Capenna
Dominaria United	The Brothers' War	Phyrexia: All Will Be One	March of the Machine	March of the Machine: The Aftermath
Wilds of Eldraine	The Lost Caverns of Ixalan	Murders at Karlov Manor	Outlaws of Thunder Junction	Bloomburrow
Duskmourn: House of Horror		Foundations

Any new Standard releases are automatically made legal in Pioneer as well.

The Pioneer banlist is fairly small, with only the most egregious cards in the format getting hit by the ban hammer. These are all the banned cards in Pioneer that you cannot use in your decks:

Amalia Benavides Aguirre	Balustrade Spy	Bloodstained Mire	Expressive Iteration
Felidar Guardian	Field of the Dead	Flooded Strand	Geological Appraiser
Inverter of Truth	Karn, the Great Creator	Kethis, the Hidden Hand	Leyline of Abundance
Lurrus of the Dream-Den	Nexus of Fate	Oko, Thief of Crowns	Once Upon A Time
Polluted Delta	Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord	Teferi, Time Raveler	Undercity Informer
Underworld Breach	Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath	Veil of Summer	Walking Ballista
Wilderness Reclamation	Windswept Heath	Winota, Joiner of Forces	Wooded Foothills

Transition From Explorer

With the official introduction of Pioneer to Magic Arena, the Explorer format will cease to exist. Explorer was always meant to be a placeholder format until all the cards that see Pioneer play were available on the client. Explorer becoming Pioneer was always the end goal of Explorer.

Explorer was a format exclusive to Magic Arena where all the cards that were Pioneer legal on the client were legal in the format, and nothing else. It does not include Alchemy and Historic releases, and followed the same legality as Pioneer. The only card banned in Explorer that is Pioneer legal is Tibalt's Trickery.

Not every single card that is Pioneer legal will be available on the Magic Arena version. However, the majority of cards will be, and all the cards that are a part of meta and most rogue decks will be available. If any card suddenly pops up in decklists, they can still be added through the Anthology drops that Magic Arena does to directly inject cards into its formats.

For players of the Explorer format, you won't notice a ton of differences once it becomes Pioneer. The two formats were very close to each other already, with only a small handful of meta cards not on the client that kept certain decks from reaching their full potential.

Top Pioneer Decks

Izzet Phoenix

Izzet (red/blue) Phoenix has been a top deck in Pioneer for practically the entire lifespan of the format. It has had the longest staying power, and continues to dominate as arguably the best deck in all of Pioneer. The deck is all about bringing out the titular Arclight Phoenix from your graveyard by casting multiple spells and attacking with an army of creatures with flying.

The deck utilizes cards like Ledger Shredder and Picklock Prankster to dump Archlight Phoenix into the graveyards to cheat out by casting cantrips like Opt, Consider, and Sleight of Hand. With how much it uses the graveyard, Treasure Cruise is a consistent draw three cards for just one blue mana.

Rakdos Midrange

Rakdos (black/red) Midrange is a deck that utilizes the many tools that the color combination has. Rakdos Midrange decks use cards like Thoughtseize to cut off your opponent's most important cards while setting up cheap threats like Bloodtithe Harvester and Unstoppable Slasher.

There is a large removal suite available, with the most important being Fatal Push. Fable of the Mirror Breaker provides both card advantage and the ability to ramp and generate more of a board presence. Unholy Annex gives the deck draw power and burn as Demons like Archfiend of the Dross are also played.

Prowess

Prowess is primarily played as one of two variants, Gruul (red/green) or Rakdos (black/red). The Gruul Prowess version has access to more protection spells like Innkeeper's Talent with impulse draw on Questing Druid which also grows with all red spells. Meanwhile, Rakdos variants have removal in Fatal Push, and a more consist killing move by using Callous Sell-Sword's Burn Together to sacrifice Heartfire Hero to deal double whatever Heartfire Hero's power was to an opponent.

Gruul Prowess focuses more on consistency and resilience, while Rakdos Prowess is more combo-oriented to win the game as quickly as possible. Both have different tools in the sideboard, and there's no "wrong" version to be playing, all coming down to personal preference. However, Rakdos Prowess has more top results than Gruul Prowess.

Azorius Control

Azorius (white/blue) Control has been the staple control deck of Pioneer since its inception. It still remains the best option for fans of control, with a ton of tools to control the board state and prevent spells from resolving. You don't play many creatures, with the only way to generate them being through The Wandering Emperor. The other "creatures" are those found on lands, namely Restless Anchorage which can turn itself into a 2/3 flyer. Fountainport also helps to slowly amass an army of tokens.

As the name implies, most of the deck are cards that control what goes onto the battlefield and stay there. March of Otherworldly Light, Get Lost, and Portable Hole all act as removal for permanents on the battlefield, while Dovin's Veto and No More Lies counter spells so they don't resolve in the first place. Azorius Control is all about being the one in control of the game, and utilizing your resources to the maximum potential.

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