Pioneer: The 10 Best Cards of 2023 for the format!

The year 2023 was intense for Magic: The Gathering. With the culmination of the Phyrexia arc, a journey back into the past with The Brothers' War, and the fateful conclusion of one of the Multiverse's greatest antagonists with March of the Machines, in addition to recent trips back to Eldraine and Ixalan.

This year was also the year in which Magic's competitive formats took their first big step outside the game's universe: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth became the best-selling edition in the game's history, and brought staples to all formats where its cards are legal!

In this week of retrospectives, I present the ten best cards released in 2023 for the main competitive formats, and today we will cover Pioneer!

The selection criteria for this list is based on the impact each card has had on Pioneer's competitive environment this year, whether by establishing a new archetype, leveraging an old strategy, redefining the way games are played, or by being present in multiple decks.

10 - Cavern of Souls

Despite not yet having had much of an impact on the Metagame in typal strategies, Cavern of Souls is one of the most striking and powerful reprints that Pioneer has received in 2023. Its ability to grant a free pass for creatures to be played while facilitating the use of multicolored strategies in this category, in addition to also ensuring that certain bombs can bypass counterspells, as players did with Geological Appraiser in the short period in which the card was legal, showcases the high potential this card has to impact the competitive environment.

9 - Allied Fast Lands

With the reprint of the allied colors in Phyrexia: All Will be One, the Fast Lands cycle is finally complete in Pioneer, and guaranteed a considerable improvement in deck building in its color combinations, especially for proactive strategies that need immediate access to mana in the first few turns of the game.

8 - Monstrous Rage

Monstrous Rage helped boost a somewhat forgotten archetype during 2023, Boros Heroic. As harmless as it may seem, Monstrous Rage operates as a pseudo-Embercleave in a strategy focused on making your creatures grow by targeting them with your spells, enabling potential hit-kills alongside Illuminator Virtuoso while making Favored Hoplite a much bigger threat.

Its advantage compared to other cards in the same category is that Monstrous Rage creates an enchanted aura on the creature, giving it permanent Trample for a very low cost while still amplifying the damage it deals.

7 - Sleight of Hand

Being a reprint of a card released in 1998, Sleight of Hand was a pleasant surprise from Wilds of Eldraine for Pioneer, and the main reason Izzet Phoenix returned to the top of the Metagame after a notable absence since Expressive Iteration was banned.

With 12 cantrips, Arclight Phoenix decks - now there are also Dimir/Grixis versions - gain greater ease in accessing their key cards, more speed in triggering Ledger Shredder and in casting Treasure Cruise, allowing greater flexibility in choices and spell cadence.

6 - Knight-Errant of Eos

Knight-Errant of Eos was one of the biggest highlights of 2023 by enabling a new archetype in Pioneer, the Boros Convoke, where it teamed up with Thraben Inspector, Voldaren Epicure, Gleeful Demolition and Venerated Loxodon to create a strategy capable of establishing unbeatable board positions as early as the second turn

While Venerated Loxodon is a huge power boost, Knight-Errant of Eos guarantees the gas running to proceed in the match while putting a respectable body on the board for little to no mana. It's challenging to imagine the viability of the archetype without the release of this card in March of the Machine.

5 - Bitter Triumph

Bitter Triumph is one of the most efficient two-mana removals that Pioneer has received recently, and one whose costs allow for several interactions with already well-established strategies, such as Greasefang, Okiba Boss decks.

But its biggest highlight in the competitive scene is the creation of a new variant of Arclight Phoenix decks, where players adopted a Dimir shell with Thoughtseize, Bitter Triumph and other powerful cards along with from the already well-known package of Phoenix lists. In some cases, it can play with several powerful bombs from the current Metagame, such as Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

4 - Get Lost

While Temporary Lockdown became one of Pioneer's best sweepers last year, Get Lost replaced Fateful Absence, being the best white removal in the format today.

Doubts about whether this card would completely replace its predecessor were resolved when decks like Azorius Control opted for multiple copies of it. After all, Map tokens, while offer decent filtering and amplify the opponent's clock, are irrelevant against a sweeper like Supreme Verdict or Farewell.

Another advantage of Get Lost is its scope: when hitting enchantments, it also found space in the maindeck or sideboard of decks like Humans to deal with the much feared Temporary Lockdown without giving up the flexibility of destroying an impactful threat, such as Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.

3 - Geological Appraiser

Geological Appraiser made its mark in Pioneer history as the fastest newly released card to be banned in the format's history, at just over two weeks.

Alongside Eldritch Evolution, Trumpeting Carnosaur and Glasspool Mimic, Geological Appraiser starred in a combo known as Geoform, where, when casting it, its controller would find one of the above cards with mana value three, which would repeat the loop when copying it, or when sacrificing it to fetch Trumpeting Carnosaur, establishing an unbeatable board position as early as the second turn.

2 - Amalia Benavides Aguirre

Like the card above, Amalia Benavides Aguirre is another newly released creature that establishes a new combo alongside Wildgrowth Walker and any instance of Explore and/or life gain. While, in theory, this combination seemed unlikely to be viable in the competitive scene, in practice, it features one of the most powerful decks in Pioneer at the end of 2023.

Given its potential for evolution and the already notorious logistical problems that Abzan Amalia has caused in major competitive tournaments and even in Magic Online, the future of this strategy's core card in 2024 seems uncertain, and it won't be a surprise if a ban awaits it in the next update.

1 - Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Pioneer has no shortage of powerful bombs: from Torrential Gearhulk with Magma Opus to Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, the format has a good variety of cards and impactful plays possible when we try to avoid costs in favor of putting something absurd on the battlefield - but none of these cards were as rewarding and motivated as many cheat-into-play interactions as Atraxa, Grand Unifier.

The Phyrexian angel not only improved the well-known Indomitable Creativity decks and put them in the spotlight, but also established a dozen other strategies with the same objective: getting Atraxa onto the battlefield as early as possible and winning the game with her, whether with Neoform transforming Tasigur, the Golden Fang into her, or with Transmogrify into Rakdos variants, or even in attempts to reanimate her.

No other card in 2023 had so many uses in so many competitive formats and, in Pioneer, Atraxa, Grand Unifier was the missing motivating element for players to be more daring when it came to cheating on mana costs and, thus, experimenting with new ideas that seemed impractical in other times.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks for reading!