
Deck tech
Pioneer Set Review: Innistrad Crimson Vow
11/09/21 1 comments
In today's article, I analyze the cards from the new set, Innistrad: Crimson Vow, focusing on their potential for Pioneer!
Innistrad: Crimson Vow
Spoiler Season, it's time to make our reviews of the new set based on specific competitive formats. Today, I will be doing this review focusing on my current favorite format,Pioneer
.Graveyard Hate and Pioneer's Current State
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White





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really
needed! Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is one of the most powerful taxing effects in Magic to date, and is a Modern and Legacy staple, where it's commonly a huge delay for decks trying to abuse low-cost spells, which is exactly where Pioneer is right now: full of archetypes, such as Izzet Phoenix, Four-Color Ascendancy, Rakdos Pyromancer, Azorius/Dimir Control, Burn, Lotus Combo, among several other archetypes of the format trying to abuse noncreature spells to play with a low curve, and will now have to deal with a significant delay in their game plan if they don't have good answers for the new card. However, the main decks today tend to have good answers for Thalia, Guardian of Thraben: Izzet Phoenix has a number of efficient removals, ranging from Magma Spray to Lightning Axe, while Rakdos Pyromancer has Fatal Push, Magma Spray and Bloodchief's Thirst for this same purpose, so an archetype with Thalia will need to capitalize on this almost mandatory removal of the opponent on the card to take advantage of the “extra turn” generated by it. Among the archetypes that can use it, I imagine that Spirits, Selesnya/Bant Company and Winota are the ones that can take the most advantage out of her, but it is possible that it is also present in other aggressive archetypes.


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Blue






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Black



discard the card, rather than exile, a clause that makes
huge difference
. For one mana, the new discard deals with several Burn creatures and spells (which is important because Thoughtseize sucks against this archetype), with virtually every card from Rakdos Arcanist, Izzet Ensoul, and other Lurrus decks, with the cheap cantrips and counterspells of blue decks, with the more common Untap effects of Lotus Combo, and the occasional mana dorks of Jund Citadel and Naya Winota, while for three mana, it handles essentially everything the format has, which technically means it never loses its usefulness. However, which decks really need Dread Fugue? Rakdos Arcanist can certainly use it quite efficiently, but does the archetype really need two more copies of one-mana discards when its core proposition is to get both players to the topdeck mode? What about Vampires? Can it resort to more maindeck or Sideboard discards? And does Dimir Control need this card?Ad







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Red


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Green



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Multicolored


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Artifacts

Lands

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Conclusion
Innistrad: Crimson Vow
for Pioneer. I believe that the format has received some very interesting additions, and that some cards may be present among the most played archetypes, while others may have space in less competitive decks, or that are not currently in Tier 1. As for the amount of graveyard interactions on set, I think Wizards of the Coast wanted to be cautious with the power level that Innistrad's mechanics brought to Standard and Limited, or they are setting the stage for a future set with a strong focus in graveyard themes, something that commonly leads to problematic mechanics and decks that play Magic: The Gathering unnaturally. As for Pioneer, the more graveyard interactions we have the better, as we have some archetypes that are currently at the top of the format and use graveyards to their own advantage in different ways. And although the cards received in this set for this purpose don't seem to be enough for Pioneer, this new idea presented of “good cards with an added interaction” seems to me to be a good initiative on the game's development. Thanks for reading!
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