Opinion: On Pioneer's Future and How We Got Here

Maintaining objectivity in this text without including myself in it is a task I'll allow myself to fail this time. If you haven't, I recommend hyperlink (read the article where I discuss the uncertainties surrounding Pioneer's future).

This was written before the famous announcement day, and also the day Wizards of the Coast unveiled the 2026 Pro Tour and Spotlight Series schedule, where the format is completely absent.

In it, I also elaborate on how Pioneer no longer seems necessary for Magic's interests and how the three-year-old Standard strips away its main purpose as a "space to play with cards that rotate"—spending so much time playing against the same cards already creates some exhaustion, and if players are already tired of facing Sheoldred, the Apocalypse when it leaves the format, there's no reason they'd want to do the same in another environment.

Today, the topic is a bit more sobering, not to say a bit sad. Over the past few weeks, I've been experiencing something I've dubbed "Magic burnout": a lot happened during MagicCon Atlanta, and I needed time to digest each piece of information revealed at the event. Fortunately, between covering Brasil Game Show and working on other games, I've had time to gradually abstract this feeling and, with it, gain some clarity about my exact impressions of everything—and the defining word is disappointment.

Some reasons won't be addressed in this article because they concern dissatisfaction with how Magic is handling Universes Beyond—of which I'm a strong supporter, but I see WotC making the same mistake with the series it's made with almost everything lately—but, in particular, Magic failed with Pioneer.

"Failed" might not even be the right word. Magic neglected Pioneer. The format was at odds with all the changes WotC introduced to the card game between 2020 and 2025.

The first mistake was the constant addition of power creep, which began to invalidate several exciting cards that existed in the format's extensive pool. Gradually, cards that were once considered staples of the format were replaced by a mix of more powerful tools and design mistakes.

We can't forget (or ignore) how much the triad of combos based on Thassa's Oracle, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, and Underworld Breach damaged the format's reputation during the pandemic. When Pioneer finally freed itself from these tools, Companions and other increasingly powerful cards dominated the Metagame, time and again.

The result was a format that was constantly oppressed in some way. From Lurrus of the Dream-Den to Expressive Iteration to Karn, the Great Creator to the Vein Ripper combo with Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord or Amalia Benavides Aguirre with Wildgrowth Walker, there has always been and continues to be a problem balancing the format's Metagame, because more powerful pieces have essentially "suppressed" most of the older cards that, by the format's design, had a place to be part of the competitive scene.

This failure to respond in a timely manner has given Pioneer a bad reputation within the Magic community. Combined with another factor, Pioneer has become extremely unpopular.

The release of individual sets aimed at Modern, which was another indirect factor in the state and public perception of the format. As exemplified by Pro Tour Edge of Eternities, Modern has a vast card pool that creates a much more balanced format with less chance of polarization, except when pushed by some absurd design mistake or a powerful wave of power creep.

This wave almost always comes from a product in the Modern Horizons series, whose function of introducing cards designed specifically for Modern has the Metagame as its natural "rotation" cause.

Despite the criticism, Modern Horizons opens two essential windows of possibility for the Magic community. The first is to shake up the Metagame; card game consumption patterns have changed and are now closer to games-as-a-service than to an MMORPG—the expectation is a certain level of turnover with each release/update, to the detriment of a stable environment with greater obstacles to change, as was the case with pre-MH Modern.

The other possibility these releases bring is that Modern Horizons sets could be excellent gateways to Modern. Take decks like Boros Energy or Izzet Murktide at the time of their respective releases, and you'll see that they're essentially an amalgamation of some of the new set's key cards, combined with a few staples and Modern's already established mana base. This makes it considerably easier for new players to acquire cards when these sets are released, even at the expense of playing historic archetypes to oblivion.

These factors have led players and content creators to harbor a certain bias toward Modern that they don't share with Pioneer. After all, Pioneer is a stable format, with little room for major changes and a Metagame that has essentially remained the same since the last wave of bans, with only a few specific changes brought about by Sunspine Lynx and recent additions to specific strategies over the past year.

It's impossible to say with certainty who is responsible for the format's current state. It's certainly partly Wizards of the Coast's fault for leaving Pioneer on ice for so long and not doing enough to improve the format, but the Magic community is also to blame for giving the company feedback that Pioneer is a "bad format" that can easily be replaced by Modern.

Pioneer no longer belongs to the ecosystem established by Wizards of the Coast and the player community, and I would venture to say it holds far less importance for both than a format like Pauper, which inspires many players to create their own National Championship scenarios, or large-scale events like Paupergeddon. Pioneer lacks this sense of identity, and because of this, it will hardly be able to captivate a global community without proper competitive support.

Given the lack of support for 2026 and the low likelihood of it being part of RCQ events, it remains to be seen what the future holds.

In the last article, I mentioned that it would be a shame to see, in 2027 or 2028, an announcement stating that the format has been discontinued and will remain exclusively on Magic Arena, given that there is no reason to remove it from there and the strong negative repercussions of taking out a format that people may have invested wild cards in.

It's unclear whether that day will come, or if Pioneer will simply languish in the limbo of Magic: The Gathering's 1v1 formats indefinitely, but the point we must consider is that there are few reasons for the player community inside and outside the format to move toward innovation when there are no drivers or reasons to try something new at the competitive level.

If there's less competitive drive or reason to innovate, there's less engagement with the format, and with less engagement, less content will be created—and consequently consumed—about Pioneer, leading to it being forgotten by most players until there's any news that puts it back in the spotlight from Wizards.

For me, Pioneer remains one of the best and most enjoyable formats in Magic today, for the same reason I was interested in it when it was announced: there's a degree of predictability about what we might face, but there's a lot of unexplored territory and potential interactions that aren't being properly evaluated. It's a shame, however, that the majority of the Magic: The Gathering audience doesn't see it this way and treats it simply as an unbalanced and stagnant format.

Again, I advise that if Pioneer players want Wizards of the Coast to pay more attention to the format, they need to take action. Tournaments must be established and played, creators must strive to keep the format's content alive, social media must be used to send a clear message that "we want to play Pioneer," and we cannot afford to accept that the format is dead, even if the general sentiment is exactly that.

I intend to continue creating content about Pioneer as long as it is necessary or relevant to our audience. I can't say that we haven't felt the decline in engagement with the format in 2025 and that the lack of competitive support in 2026 could lead to changes in my planning if there aren't new features and/or a sufficient audience. This doesn't change the fact that I see potential in Pioneer as a format, and I hope that the community inside and outside of it can see the same potential and keep it alive in another year of dark times.

It's a shame we've reached this point. It's a shame that Magic didn't properly manage a format created by Wizards of the Coast itself to meet a demand that existed in 2019 and that, theoretically, would have existed for a decade until another format with a similar format became necessary. And few things are as shameful as seeing a promising format slowly dissipate due to the negligence of those who should have been watching over it.