Pioneer: Can Leyline of the Guildpact Bring Back Mono-Green Devotion?

Murders at Karlov Manor will bring back a classic Ravnica theme with Leyline of the Guildpact. In all, three Leyline cycles have already been released to the game, and all of them can start the game on the battlefield if they are in your initial hand. Some of them, like Leyline of the Void and Leyline of Sanctity, have become staples in several formats.

Leyline of the Guildpact, just like other leylines, can come into play straight from your initial hand. It also grants all lands you control every basic land type, besides granting all permanents you control all colors, making them multicolored.

In Modern, this card enables some interesting plays and interactions, such as Scion of Draco on Domain Zoo's turn 2, guaranteeing all your creatures, including Scion himself, Vigilance, Hexproof, Lifelink, First Strike and Trample. As it has all five colors, it is also useful as discard fodder to pay for the alternative costs of all incarnations, such as Grief and Solitude, besides free spells, like Force of Negation.

Even though these interactions seem quite powerful, Modern decks already have their own mechanics which help these interactions happen naturally and efficiently, such as using fetchlands in Domain and other more interesting cards to pay for Grief's Evoke in Rakdos Scam without disrupting the deck's consistency, for instance.

This card seems most interesting in Pioneer. Particularly when we look at its mana cost, and we notice the four hybrid mana symbols in this card because we remember that, in this format, there is a deck that is highly interested in mana symbols and Green Devotion.

Pioneer was released on October 21st, 2019. Right away, Green Devotion became one of the strongest and most oppressive decks in the metagame, and eventually Oath of Nissa and Leyline of Abundance became ban targets. These two cards were critical in this archetype because they maximize the effects of the core of this strategy: Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.

The greatest reason why this Leyline was banned so quickly was because of its powerful synergy in with this deck's strategy. It was a permanent that could start the game already in play, add 2 to Devotion and double the mana created by Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic. This would significantly speed up Mono-Green's early game, besides placing +1/+1 counters on all your creatures through its second activated ability.

This card alone doesn't seem like much, but its role in this deck's explosive early game at the time, and the speed with which it was banned, show how important it was.

But what about the new Leyline? Can it provide the same levels of early game explosiveness to this deck, even today, when Karn, the Great Creator is no longer in this format? How would this card go in Mono-Green currently?

To try and answer these questions, let's analyze the following list.

Karn was one of the greatest reasons to play Mono-Green in Pioneer, but, after its ban, this deck had to find other ways. This list really resembles 2019 Mono-Green because it focuses on impactful creatures, but it also keeps powerful cards from the most recent pre-ban build, such as Cavalier of Thorns and Storm the Festival.

Now, let's analyze the following, hypothetical, starting hand:

With this starting hand, we can already begin turn 1 with Leyline of the Guildpact and Nykthos on the board, create one green mana to play the Elf and finish the turn with five Devotion to Green. On turn 2, we can play the second land, create five mana with Nykthos, play Kiora to untap Nykthos and then create 6 mana to cast Cavalier of Thorns. If Cavalier finds another Nykthos, we can create even more mana and cast Storm the Festival, which is an extremely explosive turn 2.

After this mental exercise, it becomes obvious that Leyline of the Guildpact has potential in this deck.

There are still other advantages if we add this new Leyline to Mono-Green. One of them is how easy it will be to cast cards that usually don't go into this list, but create new possibilities for this deck. That's the case for Leyline Binding, for instance, which can be cast early, already on turn 1, for just one mana, which allows Mono-Green to interact with the opponent, and remove some unwanted threat from their board or even some sort of hate that they might end up playing, like Damping Sphere.

However, this card also has some cons we need to observe. To extract as much value as we can from it, we'd have to use four copies of it in this deck, and this opens space for weird situations, such as having multiple copies of Leyline of the Guildpact in our starting hand.

Drawing a Leyline when we're going second is also not very efficient. Another point to consider is what should come out of this list for this new card to come in? In the list I suggested, I chose to remove Oath of Nissa, which seems to be the most logical choice initially, but we'll need several tests before we reach a conclusion.

Leyline of the Guildpact created a lot of discussion in the community, and different opinions. It is a card that, on its own, doesn't seem to do much, but it can provide extremely powerful interactions. This is why this card created so much debate.

It is difficult to say this card will bring back Mono-Green to the top tiers in Pioneer, or that it will even make this deck one of the best in this format again. Post-ban Pioneer has changed, and only time will tell if Leyline of the Guildpact can help Green Devotion conquer a place in the sun in this format again.

Another article is finished; I hope you liked it. Leave your questions or article suggestions in the comment section, and I'll try to answer all.

See you next time!