In May 2025, Pioneer became an official format on MTG Arena, following a little over half a decade of being a format in paper and on Magic: The Gathering Online.

Unfortunately, now Pioneer seems dead in the water. There is zero support for the format throughout the year, leaving many who bought into the format feeling abandoned.

Today, I'd like to talk about how we got here, and why I feel that Pioneer deserves more serious support going forward.

Entering the Arena

At first, there were just too many cards crucial to Pioneer that weren't available on Arena. At the time, they solved this issue with Explorer. The Explorer format was a relative approximation made up of all Pioneer-legal cards on MTG Arena, but with several notable cards missing entirely.

Players were enjoying this half-baked version of Pioneer. So much so that sets like Amonkhet Remastered, Kaladesh Remastered, Shadows Over Innistrad Remastered, and even a direct re-release of Khans of Tarkir.

These sets were supplemented by various Explorer Anthology and Historic Anthology sets over the years, too.

Finally, at the end of 2024, the digital-exclusive release Pioneer Masters came out. This came hot off the heels of a major Regional Championship season that saw the format riding an unprecedented high.

The cards Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and Amalia Benavides Aguirre were banned, opening up the format tremendously.

By the time the Regional Championships (RCs) rolled around, there was no consensus on what the best deck was. Even the so-called best deck, Izzet Phoenix, had been cracked. High Noon and Damping Sphere offered solid defense against it.

It was truly a high point for the format. Pioneer was thriving after a period of disinterest and after the RCs wrapped up and Pioneer Masters came to Arena, there was a lot of optimism.

A Short History of Pioneer

Pioneer was revealed in a somewhat surprising announcement on October 21, 2019.

It would feature all sets from Return to Ravnica onward, including core sets. As it was designed, it was a perfect mid-point between Standard and Modern; this was great for those who have cards that recently rotated out of Standard, but aren't willing (or able) to get into more expensive formats like Modern or Legacy.

Another surprise made Pioneer stand out even more: only the five Fetch Lands from Khans of Tarkir would be on the ban list in the beginning.

From there, Wizards would let people try figuring out what's good in the format via Magic Online and then ban problematic cards aggressively for a few weeks' time.

The buzz for it was immediate. There was talk of what might be the best decks, strategies you could use in the format, and cards that could be good. It was a golden age for deck-builders looking to find the most diabolical brews, and they certainly succeeded.

This led to the following bans early on:

• November 4, 2019- Felidar Guardian, Leyline of Abundance, and Oath of Nissa are banned.
• November 11, 2019 - Veil of Summer is banned.
• December 2, 2019 - Once Upon a Time, Field of the Dead, and Smuggler's Copter are banned.
• December 16, 2019 - Oko, Thief of Crowns and Nexus of Fate are banned.

Most of these were obvious choices and were banned during their time in Standard, or even in multiple formats. Oath of Nissa and Leyline of Abundance might seem strange, but they were banned due to the extreme explosiveness of the Nykthos Ramp decks of the time.

Only Oath of Nissa and Smuggler's Copter would ever get a second chance and come off the ban list. Oath of Nissa continues to see play in Nykthos Ramp decks, though Smuggler's Copter no longer sees play anywhere.

The Aggro-Midrange decks from the early days of the format are outclassed by current ones, making the Copter feel useless by today's standards.

From there, we had a few major paper events in early 2020 such as Grand Prixs and their Player's Tour (a brief rebrand of the Pro Tour and Mythic Championship events). These would take place in Brussels (Belgium), Nagoya (Japan), and Phoenix (USA).

That momentum was abruptly stalled by the... events of 2020.

Pioneer in the Pandemic Era & Beyond

The unprecedented global emergency of the COVID-19 Pandemic brought all paper Magic play, and the world, to a standstill. Quickly, the growth Pioneer experienced in its initial months came to a screeching halt and never truly recovered.

On top of that, there were some absolutely busted sets being released at the time. Debuts of Throne of Eldraine, Theros Beyond Death, and Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths each broke multiple formats, including Pioneer.

Many of Throne of Eldraine's cards were banned by that time and several from Ikoria weren't far behind.

The real problem cards came from Theros Beyond Death. Cards like Inverter of Truth, Underworld Breach, and Heliod, Sun-Crowned led to te creation of combo decks that could kill opponents fast.

Players despised the play patterns these cards created. However, Wizards repeatedly insisted that they felt the format's numbers indicated balance and that bans weren't warranted.

Eventually, Wizards would cave and ban four cards: Inverter of Truth, Underworld Breach, Walking Ballista (which combos with Heliod), and Kethis, the Hidden Hand. Kethis was banned to stifle a deck that was rising in popularity and showing early signs of extremely problematic numbers.

The constant shake-ups and instability left a bad taste in players' mouths. Combine this with the feeling that the gameplay wasn't as deep as other non-rotating formats - particularly the ever-popular Modern - and popularity waned over the next year or two.

The format became the butt of the joke. It seemed like the competitive grinders only cared about it begrudgingly, when it was relevant.

The period in late 2024 following the Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and Amalia Benavides Aguirre bans was perhaps one of the few times players felt optimistic about the format. There was excitement again in an era where Standard was feeling a little duller post rotation and Modern was still reeling from Modern Horizons 3.

Of course, that was then.

The Events Begin to Disappear

Following a strong showing during the Regional Championships of late 2024, Pioneer took a backseat for events in 2025 outside of online play.

The format continued to be supported on Magic Online and it continued on MTG Arena as Explorer until May of 2025. Paper play, however, was a different story.

Four Regional Championship Qualifier (or RCQ) seasons were announced going into 2025. These included a Standard season, a Modern season, and two more Standard seasons after that.

This followed a pretty consistent pattern of annual rotations being some combination of one Standard season, one Modern season, and one Pioneer season.

That year, it made some sense not to see a Pioneer season. In the 2023-2024 Standard period, we had quite possibly one of the best Standard formats ever. Numerous viable archetypes were playable and new decks were being discovered all the time.

Moreover, the best deck would change from week to week giving the format plenty of freshness and variety.

This led to many players clamoring for more Standard events to highlight the format and try to revive it at the local level. As a result, Pioneer was cut out of the equation, leaving Standard and the more popular non-rotating format, Modern, as the only two options for the year.

Modern seemed like a good choice for 2025, too. Not only was it a popular format, but it was also riding high off the release of Modern Horizons 3. Once Nadu, Winged Wisdom was banned, as well as Amped Raptor, The One Ring, and Jegantha, the Wellspring soon after, it was clear there was a lot of room for the format to grow.

To add insult to injury, this pattern would also follow the fledgling Spotlight Series, a sort of spiritual successor to the Grand Prixs of the past. The events focused on Standard, Modern, and a single Limited event to celebrate the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

Then late in 2025, before we got word on any of the RCQ seasons ahead, the Spotlight Series events for 2026 were announced. Once again, Pioneer was missing. Despite more events taking place this year, each continued to lean solely on Standard, Modern, and Limited.

Pro Tour formats were revealed. No Pioneer.

This led to some speculation that Pioneer would not be supported as a RCQ format for the year, because Pro Tours frequently line up with their accompanying RCQ/RC formats that feed into them.

That wasn't always the case. The Standard season for which Regional Championships took place shortly after the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm fed into Pro Tour Edge of Eternities, which was Modern.

Despite all of this, though, 2025 was also the year that Pioneer became an officially supported format on MTG Arena. A few months prior to that, a major Arena event was Pioneer in all but its name.

The Arena Championship 8 event would feature Explorer, but even this made the format look messy and overrun with Red Aggro decks, with six taking the top eight. After that, though, support largely sputtered out aside from the occasional Qualifier Weekend events that feed into Arena Championships.

One Final Ray of Hope

By now, many were seeing the writing on the wall. Content creators had begun writing off the format entirely and there was this general air that it was only a matter of time before Pioneer was discontinued.

One final hope remained, however, when it caught a brief mention during the WeeklyMTG stream that followed the November 10th Banned and Restricted Announcement.

When they reached the Pioneer section discussing the banning of Heartfire Hero, Blake brought up players' comments on the lack of Pioneer events.

He recommended that everyone keep an eye out for the Regional Championship season announcement that was expected to land in February. He also acknowledged that play was down and they were discussing it internally.

Then, on February 3rd following Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed, we got details about the upcoming RCQ season. It wouldn't be Pioneer, but Modern.

Again, all was silent in terms of Pioneer. There were no upcoming events, no mention of the format at all.

The WeeklyMTG stream that followed later that day didn't offer any answers either.

A Thriving Metagame

Pioneer still has a lot of fun to offer, as it has for some time. There are a variety of flavors of Control, Aggro, Midrange, and even Combo for you to play.

Despite Mono-Red Aggro/Prowess taking a big hit with the banning of Heartfire Hero, the deck is showing it can still hang, posting results somewhat frequently. You also see decks like Greasefang, Okiba Boss variants popping up, Azorius Control, Izzet Phoenix, Golgari Midrange, Selesnya Company, Scapeshift Combo, and more.

The one deck that has been on Wizards' radar since the banning has been Izzet Prowess. The deck is essentially a juiced-up version of the archetype that was banned out of Standard last year. Thanks to Avatar: the Last Airbender, it now also began playing the Boomerang Basics plus Stormchaser's Talent combo.

To help fuel this, it also began running Academic Dispute from Strixhaven: School of Mages. This provides the deck with a toolbox suite of Lesson cards from the sideboard, taking advantage of the Learn mechanic.

This provides access to the likes of Firebending Lesson, Octopus Form, Abandon Attachments, Iroh's Demonstration, Price of Freedom, and It'll Quench Ya!

While the deck has a problematic reputation and plenty of strong results, it is hardly the be all, end all archetype. Events still bolster a variety of deck archetypes among the top brackets, indicating there are still ways to fight back against such a powerful deck.

This has been what has made Pioneer such a fun and expansive format over the years: resilience and the abundant ways to play. It's always in flux, so there are tons of ways to enjoy it.

The Standard Issue

There's one other critical point: Standard.

Right now, Standard seems like a mixed bag. Many players are lauding it for its variety and diversity, with Lorwyn Eclipsed having been one of the coolest sets in a long time, allowing for tons of innovation. Better still, with the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and an endless stream of new cards this year, the format is still evolving.

Even with consistent expansion, some players feel that the play isn't interesting, which has led to some frustration alongside the excitement. And that frustration is only growing.

This current Standard RCQ season started shortly after the release of Avatar: the Last Airbender. In the few months since that set's release, we've also seen Lorwyn Eclipsed and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Before the Regional Championships these RCQs feed into, we'll also see the release of Secrets of Strixhaven.

This is causing a growing sense of unease among competitive players on two fronts.

The Rising Cost of Standard

The sheer volume of sets you can pick from in Standard make it difficult to maintain a satisfying, competitive card pool.

Anecdotally, I know I needed to acquire well over $1,000 cards for the season, including cards I missed from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Marvel's Spider-Man, and Edge of Eternities. That's in addition to a few cards I missed prior to that such as Monument to Endurance since it really didn't see Standard play, and a few premium mythics that cost a pretty penny.

This same thing happened again with Lorwyn Eclipsed and its wave of high-dollar cards. Even if you were able to get your hands on them at an affordable price, you ran into the issue of suddenly needing a playset of Roaming Thrones to play certain Elementals decks.

That was already sitting around $40 a pop thanks to Commander and shot up quickly to around $60, not to mention the struggle of finding it thanks to the high demand.

That's an absurd amount of upkeep that makes it a cost-prohibitive format for anyone looking to stay competitive. Tons of players settle for what they have or feel they can best pilot, thereby focusing on mastering that list after the fact instead of having the chance to brew something different.

Constant Churn

With new cards always entering Standard, it's causing the format to turn on its head constantly. That makes finding optimal strategies to beat the meta a nearly impossible task.

This was always a thing, even when we'd only see four Standard releases a year. In 2024, we saw five or six, depending on how you count The Big Score among releases. In 2025, we got six sets in total. Now in 2026, we're getting seven.

Not only does this make it a quicker pace of releases than we've ever seen in Standard before, but it also represents the biggest Standard card pool of all time, and by a significant margin at that. The format now sits shockingly close in size to Pioneer when it first started.

All of this doesn't even include the fact that Standard events are struggling to fire in many places. This includes not only events like higher level RCQs, but ones like weekly Standard Showdown and Store Championships. Those were innovations meant to help revitalize Standard, but don't seem to be doing the trick.

Players are burnt out from the sheer volume of releases that they have to keep up with in order to play. Not only that, but 2025 saw one of the highest numbers of Standard bans of all time. It's left many players wondering what comes next for bans and if their deck is even safe.

You know where that deck could perhaps be safe? Maybe even thrive?

Pioneer.

Conclusion

For years now, I've been a firm believer in the Pioneer format. I'm best known for playing Pauper, but I do like to play just about everything. In the last few years, I've competed in high level events for Standard, Modern, Pauper, and, yes, even Pioneer.

For years whenever I fire up MTG Arena to grind daily quests to fuel my next Limited event, Pioneer has been my go-to. I've played tons of different decks in the format and have loved the experience.

I had even held onto a modest Pioneer collection in paper, just waiting for the day that it would get a chance to shine again.

Now, though, I'm left extremely uncertain of the format's future. As it is, I feel like it may not have a future. I've sold most of my Pioneer cards. It feels like those of us who enjoyed Pioneer are just waiting for the announcement of its discontinuation.

I do not want to see that happen, though.

Pioneer is a rich format with fantastic gameplay and deserves its time in the sun. More importantly, it gives players a healthy stopgap between Standard and Modern, as well as a home for cards that rotate from Standard. Those cards famously have a difficult time entering Modern, which is overrun by Modern Horizons cards nowadays.

So, Wizards, I ask this: Please support Pioneer. Don't just throw it away. Give it the aid that it needs, and let's see this format that had people buzzing with excitement come back to life.

Paige Smith

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