
Deck tech
Interview - Azorius Spirits, the dominating deck in Pioneer Royale!
In this article, I present an in-depth interview with Bandit Keith, a player that has been accumulating multiple victories in Pioneer Royale, in which Keith was the champion three times!
By Exylem, 10/18/20 - 0 comments
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Interview
1 – So, Bandit Keith! You are achieving quite a name for yourself in our community after being the king/queen of Pioneer Royale three times, in addition to reaching Top2 multiple times. What can you tell us about the man/woman behind the mask? Who are you? =)
Keith: First of all I want to thank you and the entire Pioneer Royale / CardsRealm both for taking an interest in me, as well as appreciating and noticing me, and also making me feel welcome even though I am not Brazilian and do not speak Portuguese, so I cannot understand the match coverage or commentary. I am an American; 30 year old male, specifically from New York. Thusly, I would be a King, not a Queen (at least not yet, anyway) I have been playing Magic since Urza's Saga / 6th edition. And by playing Magic, I mean, being a dumb kid, opening packs with my friends and trying to get Nightmare (which I know now as a junk rare), and I thought Elvish Piper was the best card ever (Can you imagine a 4 mana 1/1, with Lava Darts everywhere? It seems unfortunate that when a person learns how to play competitively and what decks are good/not good, it takes away some of the Magic from Magic. I miss the days of seeing big mana cards and saying "Wow! What a strong and cool card!" and getting excited instead of automatically throwing them to the junk bin). I have played on and off and quit for a while, and wasn't around for Lorwyn, Alara, Time Spiral, or the New Mirrodin block. I came back and continue to play for multiple reasons. The competitive element of winning and solving intellectual puzzles (by picking the right lines of play) gives me intellectual satisfaction, and the fantasy part of the game gives me emotional satisfaction. The emotional satisfaction comes from resting my mind and my heart in the fantasy world that we nerds live in spiritually (no pun intended): a world of dragons, blue skies, green pastures... a world of Magic. It is the core identity of who I am - a gamer, a nerd, a dreamer, someone whose heart is in a different world - and by playing and continuing to play, it is an affirmation to the world (and to myself) of my identity. An important person to me showed me this world long ago, and though this person is not with me any longer, it is important to me to carry on this spirit, and relive these memories. I see myself as a boy in search of lost time. The competitive aspect - winning - makes me feel like I am a master of this world, and that I honor her memory well, and the very fact I choose to live in it and participate in it shows that I chose the right path in life.2 – Is Pioneer your favorite format?
Keith: Yes, Pioneer is my favorite format. I think I am like many people who were extremely excited for Pioneer when it was first announced, and we came over from Modern. I like the idea of an eternal format, but one which isn't too crazy. Eternal as in, I don't need to worry about rotations the way Standard players do - that their cards and decks will be worth less and not be used, with time - and I found Legacy / Vintage too crazy for me. One of the last times I played Legacy, I got killed by 3 different decks, on Turn 1, with an opponent playing first. So that means I lost the game before I could even play a single land out. So, like many others, I gravitated to Modern, since it seemed like a middle ground: an eternal format with many different archetypes around, where you don't need to worry about your cards losing value over time, and a format where the games felt more fair and balanced than other formats. When Pioneer was first announced, it did feel like having Modern all over again.Ad

3 – Pioneer is still an evolving format, and we had not so long ago a ban announcement that affected 4 of the most played decks on Pioneer. What are your thoughts on the format its future?
Keith: Of course, the story of Pioneer leads up to your question now. Pioneer was really amazing and exactly the sort of fun, interactive, and fair Magic that much of the players liked, and brought them to Modern originally... until the set Theros: Beyond Death came out. Then of course, as you know, Pioneer has suffered from having decks that upset people, and Wizards being slow to ban them. Pioneer has had many bans, and many ups-and-downs, especially since Theros came out. I think the fact Wizards seemed to not care about the format, and took so long to ban Inverter and other things that people didn't like, put a bitter taste in many people's mouths, and they just returned to Modern, and the fire in their hearts for Pioneer when it was first announced have died down. I think that only time will tell if Pioneer can recover its reputation, after having been through many bans and had a reputation of a combo format, where the best decks were only combo, like Inverter and Heliod Ballista. In terms of the future of Pioneer, I am unfortunately not optimistic, since aside from having to regain a hurt reputation that Pioneer has had lately (this is true for anything else in life; for better or worse, the initial impressions of something are difficult to erase, even if circumstances change), as we can tell from Standard, Wizards is having design problems, and they keep making broken cards that shake up formats. This is true now for all of Constructed, and no format is safe anymore. If we look at the formats like a ladder, you have Standard at the top, with the smallest card pool, and Vintage at the bottom, with the largest card pool. The design mistakes that Wizards have made in Standard, from Kaladesh's cat combo and Marvel, to more recently, with Oko, Uro and Omnath, can also filter through to Pioneer. In that ladder, Pioneer is next in-line, right after Standard, since it is the 2nd smallest of the major formats, and that's not a good place to be, being next to Standard. Last I checked Uro and Omnath, for example, are still legal in Pioneer, and to me it's not a good thing. What this tells me is that, while Magic's Constructed scene has had a crazy couple of years - and Standard alone was worse for even longer, with many bans - Wizards is willing to clean up and fix their mistakes for Standard much more so than they are willing to do that for Pioneer, as we saw from how long it took for them to ban the oppressive combo decks. In short, it is one of the smaller-pool formats, that doesn't seem cared about by Wizards as much as other formats, and the FIRE design philosophy has been a wrecking ball, all through-out Constructed Magic. I will add that even though Magic has been around for longer than 25 years, they printed the best creature (pre-nerf Lurrus) ever made, a card so strong it had to be banned in Vintage even, which is almost unprecedented, and the best planeswalker ever, Oko - a card that needs no introduction.Ad

4 – So… Spirits. This is your signature deck on Pioneer Royale. Why did you choose this deck?
Keith: I chose Spirits because it suits my playstyle: which is, an aggro-based creature deck, but with a twist. I don't like playing decks which don't win through creature combat. I am an aggro player, and I love being pro-active, instead of reactive. However, if I played something like Goblins, and the opponent plays a Supreme Verdict, it makes me feel so helpless. But that's where Spirits shines as a deck, and that's where the twist is: it is an aggro deck that can kill with big powered creatures in the air, but it also has a lot of control elements, since the creatures have so much utility. They can counter spells, they can tap down enemy creatures, and Selfless Spirit even makes your team indestructible to Wrath effects. It's the best of both worlds: an aggro deck that can control its own destiny by simultaneously squeezing the opponent out of resources and killing him with evasive creatures. And we all know how good 2-for-1's are in Magic! In short, it is strong, cheap, and has a lot of durability.5 – Are you willing to share more about your decklist and how do you play against certain popular decks in the current metagame?
Keith: Yes. Well as suggested before, my decklist shows how Spirits is really almost a deck that's split in half: the aggro, where you have the lords, like Empyrion Eagle and Supreme Phantom for the aggro portion, giving power in the air (I've also played with 2 of Rally of Wings, and really, it can just kill out of nowhere), but also the control spirits: Rattlechains trying to stop a removal spell (and also making it that I can flash in spirits, for extra tricks, like flashing in a Selfless Spirit to give my team indestructible an instant speed - that's a hell of a combat trick), Spell Queller to act as a counterspell, and Shacklegeist / Nebelgast Herald to tap down creatures. With strong elements of both aggro and control, it takes a pilot a lot of practice and experience to know when to switch from one mode to the other.Ad

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6 – We have commented more than once about your slower playstyle. It feels like a chess match, where you are thinking about each movement, each piece (or spirit) in the board, being careful and striking precisely, instead of going all in. What can you tell us about it?
Keith: That is a very accurate assessment of me. I tend to be this cerebral and analytical in other regards of life too; it just fits my personality to think a lot. It's funny you mention chess, since I grew up on that game, and that's my favorite aspect of Magic's gameplay in a match: the chess element, where you need to think to make the right move, among many possible moves. I think to the viewers, it must be really boring, and I look like I'm taking a long time doing nothing, but for me, it doesn't feel like a lot of time has elapsed. I'm thinking about different moves, and the consequences of each move, even for turns ahead. I wouldn't know much time has passed if I didn't look at the timer. Time can be relative; what is a long time for an observer could feel like only a short-time to the person who is being observed.
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7 – Do you play Leagues in MTGO or in other competitive tournaments/events?
Keith: used to play in those, but not anymore for a long time. Back when I used to play - I didn't know it at the time - but I achieved an extremely high ELO rating (same rating system they use in chess, my score in Constructed was 1900+), and after someone pointed this out to me, I've gotten scared to ruin my high score by losing! It's almost like the parable of the centipede - which moves with so many legs - and someone asked the centipede one day, well, how do you know which leg to move and in what order, because it's all so complex? And the centipede was frozen after that, not knowing what to do. I feel the same way - once someone pointed out I had a really good score, I'm actually now frozen myself with fear that I am not good enough to maintain it, so now I am sort of "retired". But I did used to compete on MTGO and I have beaten some pros and such, here and there. But I'm no pro myself! Haha. Just someone who likes to think and learn to make the right moves.Ad
8 – Thank you for your time, Keith! Good luck on the future competitions! =)
Keith: Thank you for the interview Exylem. I want to thank the warm Brazilian community of Pioneer Royale - the hosts, the sponsors, the players - for not only playing with me and making an outsider like me feel welcome, but also for taking an interest in me, both in and out of the competition. I hope you have fun watching and analyzing my matches! I don't know Portuguese, but the language of love is universal, and I am very honored to play with you guys. Te adoro and obrigado! And to opp Karametra's demais ;)
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