Pioneer: 5 Off-Meta Decks to try out!

Pioneer is going through a crucial moment in 2025. With the lack of competitive support in Regional Championships or Pro Tour, the format has been maintained mainly through digital platforms, such as Magic Online Challenges or ranked matches in Magic Arena, while waiting for Wizards of the Coast to decide to give it the opportunity to star in a larger-scale event the following year.

Despite this inertia in the competitive scene, Pioneer remains a popular format and its Metagame, although well-established, finds new additions to the Top 8 of Challenges almost every week, showing that, yes, there is a chain of better decks and the environment continues to evolve and move, but that there is still a lot of room for innovation and territories to be explored.

In this article, we highlight five decks outside the Pioneer Metagame that have achieved competitive results in the last two months to try out in Leagues or other events!

Mono Red Goblins

Goblins is an archetype that has been tried to make work for years in Pioneer, and the additions of Foundations and Aetherdrift have given essential support to the archetype and made it run Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to grant the abilities of cards like Krenko, Mob Boss or Draconautics Engineer to any creature you control, which can, together with Howlsquad Heavy, create very explosive turns where we have Goblin and Dragon tokens with Haste and attacking the opponent in the same turn.

In addition to these interactions, we still have Goblins like the classic Aggro-Typal with lords like Rundvelt Hordemaster and Hobgoblin Bandit Lord that make Krenko even more dangerous on a full board, and with Howlsquad Heavy giving Haste to creatures, it is a few steps closer to the Goblin variants that once dominated Historic, but obviously without Muxus, Goblin Grandee.

Some lists give up the Krenko package and the interactions with Soul Cauldron for a more aggressive list inBoros, taking advantage of Raise the Past to reuse the creatures that are destroyed or discarded.

Nykthos Stompy

Nykthos Stompy takes one of Pioneer's main staples - Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - and combines it with a handful of aggressive creatures with multiple green colored costs to add to the devotion, creating an archetype that focuses less on "big mana" and more on casting multiple threats in a turn while making it harder for your opponent to deal with them all.

Tyvar, the Pummeler and Tribute to the World Tree are the two key cards in this version. Tribute guarantees a draw for each creature with power three or greater that we cast and allows sequencing several of them in a turn, while Tyvar works as a win condition and mana sink by giving four or more power to each creature you control.

Overall, this is a very intuitive deck and, currently, very cheap to build on Magic Online, making it an excellent gateway to Pioneer on the digital platform.

Selesnya Cage

With the rise of Dimir Bounce in the competitive Metagame, it was to be expected that its natural predator in Standard would eventually migrate to Pioneer.

Selesnya Cage is an aggressive Midrange deck that aims to extract the most from the ETB effects of its permanents while having a more unfair take in the combination of Collector’s Cage with Overlord of the Mistmoors and Emeria’s Call - if its controller has three or more creatures with different powers, they can cast them for free.

To help with this plan and give the list more flexibility, players have adopted one of the most powerful mythics in Aetherdrift, Brightglass Gearhulk, which allows for a sort of toolbox with Pawpatch Recruit, Nurturing Pixie, Portable Hole and Dusk Rose Reliquary, in addition to several powerful one-ofs in the Sideboard.

Boros Equipments

An Embercleave that comes in for free can certainly motivate new archetypes, and although it took a while, Boros Equipments is the closest thing to Hammer Time that Pioneer can get.

This is an archetype based on artifacts that have relevance with creatures that benefit from equipment and/or artifacts being cast. In an ideal world, we'd have a Fervent Champion or Kellan, the Fae-Blooded equipped with Leyline Axe and Shadowspear to provide pressure each combat.

If this plan doesn't work, Legion Extruder (which has the bonus of being a removal) can create a small army of Golems, all ready to carry a Leyline Axe and other equipment each turn, making this archetype considerably resilient.

Temur Analyst

Temur Analyst was widely played at the end of last Standard season, and it took a while for its strategy to migrate to Pioneer. It involves using Aftermath Analyst and Lumra, Bellow of the Woods with the “Fetch Lands” from Streets of New Capenna and Fabled Passage, to fetch multiple lands in a turn and considerably speed up your mana availability, which can be used with Worldsoul’s Rage or Doppelgang to close out games.

Despite the slowness of its key turns (20 of its 40 lands come into play tapped), Temur Analyst is quite consistent once its gears start turning: Nissa, Ascended Animist can always fetch Aftermath Analyst on its second landfall, and Virtue of Strength, in addition to doubling the mana generated, can be cast as an Adventure to bring Analyst back to reuse the “combo” over and over again turn after turn.

A problem with this list specifically is that it feels like a very targeted version of what Temur Analyst already did in Standard, with almost none of the new things that Pioneer can bring to the archetype - there is a lot of potential for growth and exploration with a wider card pool, and while Ill-Timed Explosion or Fires of Victory were important for the archetype in Standard, Pioneer may require more efficient interactions.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!