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There are a ton of different ways to playMagic: The Gathering. The game has multiple formats that all follow different rules. Some take advantage of multiplayer aspects while others keep it traditionally one-on-one. One of these many formats isPioneer.
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Pioneer is one of the game’s eternal formats, meaning that there is no rotation in the format. Its power level is somewhere between Standard and Modern and is one of the most popular ways to play the game. The barrier of entry is generally smaller compared to other formats and many Standard decks can be repurposed to get your foot in the door into Pioneer.
What Is Pioneer?
Pioneer is aneternal formatin which every card released in a premiere set from the 2012 setReturn To Ravnica and onward is legal. As premiere sets are those that were legal in Standard at their launch, sets such as Jumpstart and Modern Horizons are not legal to play in Pioneer.
Born of the Gods
Oath of the Gatewatch
War of the Spark
Wilds of Eldraine
The Lost Caverns Of Ixalan
In addition, bonus sheets, such as Mystical Archives from Strixhaven and Multiverse Legends from Phyrexia: March Of The Machine are not legal for use in Pioneer either, unless the card in question was already legal in it.
Pioneer isplayed one-on-one with an opponent. Games are played best of three (meaning first to two wins is victorious) and start at 20 life. Each player has a deck of a minimum of 60 cards, and a sideboard of 15 cards that they can put into their decks in between games two and three.
The only rule to the sideboard is it can never exceed 15 cards - so you can’t remove more cards from your deck than you started with.
What Cards Are Banned In Pioneer?
Like every format,Pioneer has its own banlist. Eternal formats tend to have much more active banlists as the card pool is wider and new cards can sometimes drastically boost the power of old cards to the point of being banworthy.
Despite its status as an eternal format, the Pioneer banlist is actually quite small. Most of the cards that were banned happened during the first weeks of the format’s existence. Most of the banned cards were either combo pieces that proved to be too strong or cards that shut down other strategies entirely due to how powerful they are. The most notable banned cards are the fetch lands, as they were preemptively banned to give Pioneer more of an identity away from Modern.
Wooded Foothills
How To Get Into Pioneer
The best way to start getting into the Pioneer format is tofind a deck that interests you. Thanks to it being an eternal format, there are strong decks for just about every play style. Pioneer is one of the most open formats in all Magic: The Gathering, which allows you to pick out a strong deck that you can win games with that favors your preferred playstyle.
If you don’t want to jump in building your own deck, Wizards Of The Coast also offersChallenger Decksfor the format which are based on meta-relevant decks. These are all solid starter decks that are meant to be playable right out of the box. The decklists are solid, and, while they are usually weaker versions of the meta deck, they are great to upgrade and add onto until you have a full-powered version.
RELATED:Magic: The Gathering – Building Your First Pioneer Deck
Where To Play Pioneer
Pioneer is a popular format, and there are multiple places where you can play the format. The most obvious is playing it with physical cards. You can take these to your local game store - many of which hold Pioneer events. Alternatively, if that is not an option, and you still want to play with cards in your hand, thenSpelltable is an excellent choice. This is a website that tracks everything for you as you play utilizing webcams pointing down at your board.
You can also play Pioneer digitally. The only current way to play with all the Pioneer-legal cards digitally is throughMagic: The Gathering Online. You do have to pay for the cards as you would for a paper deck. The benefit to this is that many staples tend to be cheaper on Magic: The Gathering Online compared to buying physical cards. There are also rental services that let you pay a flat monthly fee to borrow cards from them to build decks without dedicating a ton of money.
Lastly, you can playExploreronMagic: The Gathering Arena. Explorer is a format where all the Pioneer-legal cards on the client are legal. Though it is currently its own format, the ultimate goal of Explorer is to become Pioneer to make Magic: The Gathering Arena another way to play Pioneer digitally.
Currently, whilethe metagames are very similarthere are still a handful of key cards missing from the format that makes them distinguished, albeit similar until they get added.
