The Uncertainty of Pioneer's Future

The 2025 competitive season for Magic: The Gathering is coming to an end. Soon, we'll have Pro Tour Edge of Eternities in Modern format, followed by Spotlight Series Spider-Man in Standard format, and finally, the World Championship on December 5th, also in Standard.

Between these dates, the 2026 Magic sets roadmap and the competitive calendar for next year's Regional Championships and Pro Tour seasons are expected to be announced. This will include addressing an elephant in the competitive Magic room that Wizards of the Coast hasn't addressed all this time: Pioneer.

It was expected that 2025 would be a year of greater Standard dominance. When the season dates were announced, we didn't yet know that Universes Beyond would be included in the format. However, Wizards has been working hard to make Standard relevant in the post-pandemic world and put it back as the game's tentpole competitive format. This same change to include Final Fantasy and other Beyond sets is part of this initiative, and it validated the fact that almost all the year's large-scale competitive tournaments are held in this environment.

However, this change had almost no impact on Modern. Previously, it seemed logical to highlight the format in 2025 because Final Fantasy would be the equivalent of Lord of the Rings this year, but with the legality changes and the set's lack of traction in the format, there's even less expectation that Spider-Man, Avatar, or any other set from the year will be significantly relevant in the competitive environment.

Yes, we have Ketramose, the New Dawn, Quantum Riddler, Voice of Victory, Pinnacle Emissary, Cori-Steel Cutter, and Ugin, Eye of the Storms, but these are one-off additions that don't differ much from what you'd expect from each set in a format with such a high-power level.

Pioneer, meanwhile, is stuck in limbo. The format didn't participate in any competitive space in 2025. The events that were supposed to keep it going never happened, the community barely mobilized to keep the format alive with independent tournaments, and the general feeling inside and outside the community is that Pioneer was abandoned and relegated to the role of a "sub-format" between Standard and Modern, with the only "relevant change" being the rebranding of Explorer on MTGArena to Pioneer with a set that, in the end, still lacks some potentially relevant cards for deckbuilding creativity.

If we look at the current Metagame, the last major shifts were caused by Cori-Steel Cutter, a staple even in Legacy whose power level is so above average that it was banned from Standard, and the structural shakeup in the format caused by the rise of Mono Red Aggro with Sunspine Lynx, which became the police for the format's greedy mana bases and gave way to one- or two-color archetypes that try to work around this problem.

As players, it feels like we're on a bit of a stranded ship. We see some changes in one corner or another, like the recent Simic Scapeshift lists or the repositioning of Selesnya Angels as a potential Red Aggro predator, and finally the emergence of Hammer Time thanks to the additions of Cori-Steel Cutter and Cloud, Midgar Mercenary, but the overall feeling—from within the format and from the outside—is that everything is stale and maybe even boring.

The same old scenario still stands: Black Midrange — which has been in the spotlight as the best deck since 2021/2022 — followed by Red Aggro, which many now dissatisfy due to its dominance in the previous Standard season; Izzet Phoenix, whose place in Pioneer has remained the same, or even reached levels of dominance, after the banning of the Combo Triad; Azorius Control, whose position has also been almost always guaranteed in recent years; and Greasefang, a competitor that emerged in 2022/2023 and is transforming into different variants every year since then.

This effect isn't just due to Pioneer's larger card pool; without competitive support, the format naturally becomes static when there's no reason to explore new possibilities and seek appropriate Metagame solutions. Ultimately, what motivates competitive players to try to solve a format is competition. If there's nothing to compete for, there's no reason to try, and if there are no motivators to try, it's easier to just choose the "best deck” and try to play a Challenge with it.

Outliers like Nykthos Ramp, Abzan Amalia, and Vampires clearly created miserable moments, but while the overall picture remains similar to what we've seen over the past few years, players and content creators will offer harsh and constant criticism of the state of the format even when there's “nothing wrong” with it. Consumption patterns have changed to the point that the term “stability” is no longer synonymous with “good format.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how social media has changed our perspective on time. In it, I mentioned the following: a format like pre-MH Modern would be considered boring to players in 2025. Not because the Metagame was bad or the games weren't exciting, but because it was too stable, with little room for emerging strategies to emerge without major changes in the card pool or the release of a very efficient staple, as was the case with Fatal Push.

Take the current Pioneer as an example. As mentioned above, despite some specific changes, the format's overall metagame has, on average, remained in the same spot for the last two or three years, and the only times it hasn't presented this status quo were when the format was broken with combos dominating the competitive scene or when something was overpowering the rest by being too efficient.

Today, the Magic audience wants a format where many strategies are possible and where new decks can emerge with each new set, and they want this in every format. Not only because the game becomes more dynamic, but also because Magic has never been discussed as much as it is today. Therefore, there have never been so many people who can share the same sentiment as you and, consequently, spread your words and opinions as their own (have you noticed how many times you've heard that Magic is dead in the last ten or so years?).

As a bonus, the format also suffers from the increase of power creep that puts hated archetypes and/or cards in Standard at the top of its competitive chain, leaving it in a situation where it becomes even more rejected because those who came from Standard don't have fond memories of facing Heartfire Hero with Monstrous Rage, or of dealing with Cori-Steel Cutter, which stayed too long in the rotational environment, dominated a Pro Tour, and created a bad impression of what Standard should be — the same fate now awaits Izzet Cauldron players, who will likely migrate the archetype to Pioneer as soon as the ban hammer falls on one of their key cards.

What was once seen as a quality of non-rotating formats has now become a flaw: stability means always dealing with the same cards, perhaps the same decks, and having occasional changes only when something is released that is on par with the competitive environment's power level or when a card significantly leverages an archetype.

Also, due to power creep, it's difficult to achieve numbers like Modern did for a few years, when the best deck occupied less than 10% of the competitive Metagame and there was such a wide diversity of strategies that it was said that "almost any deck" could be played, and what really mattered on your 75 was choosing which archetypes you wanted to win and which ones you'd accept losing to.

Since Pioneer doesn't have—and shouldn't have—its own "Horizons set," it's at the mercy of what new Standard releases bring. And with such a solid structure of best decks and predominant strategies, it becomes overly dependent on expansions that bring new Heartfire Hero and Monstrous Rage to undergo substantial changes, which happen at about twice the rate of Modern—of all the non-dual land cards released in 2025, only 15 are present in the 16 most-played Pioneer decks today.

In this sense, there's a certain level of inconsistency in the perception of what Pioneer is compared to Modern. Much of the volatility in the Modern metagame is due to a mix of direct interventions with bans and unbans, coupled with intentional waves of power creep that alter the entire structure of the format with each Horizon set release: Eldrazi and Boros Energy, two of the main themes of the series' most recent expansion, are currently the two best decks in the format.

It became clear this year that Wizards of the Coast makes decisions primarily based on feedback. We have three Universes Beyond sets now because Lord of the Rings was so successful; we have more Horizons sets after the first two because, despite complaints about "forced rotation," they were the best-selling Magic sets until LotR, and we have fewer Commander precons this year and fewer releases in 2025 compared to 2024 and 2023 because the company listened to the demands of its community regarding product fatigue.

But let's be honest, it seems convenient for Hasbro that Pioneer ceases to exist. The format is meant to be a place where Standard's rotating cards can see competitive play, but three crucial changes have occurred recently that have essentially invalidated its usefulness:

Standard went from a two-year rotation to a three-year rotation

By this point, when cards leave the format, power creep has either done its job of rendering them irrelevant in most competitive spaces, or they've been solidified in other formats for years, while Standard players have grown tired of facing that card to the point where they don't want to see it again.

Consider Sheoldred, the Apocalypse as an example. She became one of the most expensive staples of the season, present in multiple copies in the best black Midrange decks, until she reached the point where she was no more than a one-of or two-of in lists, since better options were released—Kaito, Bane of Nightmares and Unholy Annex being the most important, as they completely restructured the Midrange shells at the end of 2024—yet, when her rotation arrived with Edge of Eternities, most of the community expressed relief at finally being free of Sheoldred, even though she had stopped being a "problem" almost a year ago.

Why would a Standard player want to play Pioneer just to face Sheoldred in a version of the Midrange decks she belonged in on steroids?

Commander has already taken the role of being a home for rotating cards

Of course, Commander isn't as competitive or structured to be 1v1 as Pioneer, but it's the most popular format in Magic: The Gathering, and the communication from the panel that oversees its environment says almost categorically that "Commander is whatever you want it to be," including the space to play that Sheoldred, the Apocalypse that you can't use in Standard anymore!

As an environment where almost anything goes and with its popularity exploding over the last seven years, Commander has become a key point in game design to the point where mistakes like Nadu, Winged Wisdom were released as last-minute changes for the multiplayer environment, and the same can be said for several other cards that don't get as much attention — have you noticed how Unholy Annex and Heartfire Hero say "each opponent" instead of "target opponent" because that drawback is no longer possible in Commander times?

Of course, not every card can be applied to this rule, but those that can't usually end up finding space in other environments. And let's face it: the chances of a rotated card finding space in ten Commander lists are much higher than finding one-of slots in the sideboard of a Pioneer, Modern, or Legacy deck because the competitive nature of these formats doesn't allow for suboptimal deckbuilding choices.

Pioneer entered Magic Arena and flopped

Originally as Explorer, Pioneer arrived on Magic Arena with constant patches and card pool updates to transform it into a non-rotating format that was truly paper-like, a demand that had existed since the platform created the card rebalancing system for the Historic format.

Despite the initial excitement, Pioneer was, according to Wizards data in November 2024 and April 2025, the second least-played format on MTGArena, behind only Timeless, whose entry cost might be considerably higher, in addition to the perception of the Metagame being much less interactive.

At this point, there's another aggravating factor in this equation: following the rule they used to transform Explorer into Pioneer—having 99% of the cards considered competitive in the format's main decks—there are about 25 to 30 cards left to bring Modern to Magic Arena. And Modern's reception, due to loyalty, age, and competitive circumstances, is much better than that of other formats, especially for those dissatisfied with the current state of Timeless and Pioneer.

It's worth noting that Modern has an inherent advantage that should be considered compared to Pioneer: the Horizons sets, which are now coming to Magic Arena. In it, there's this extra demographic to offer a new product on the digital platform beyond Historic and Timeless players, while Pioneer doesn't offer this "extra revenue" from in-game sales.

Therefore, the time has come for the Pioneer community to mobilize and make the necessary noise for the company to reconsider the format's role in the competitive scale. Pioneer is still my favorite environment today: accessible if I want to play a League on Magic Online, dynamic if I choose to play ranked games on Magic Arena, less polarized than the current state of Standard, fairer than if I wish to play Timeless, and with less financial pressure than if I play Modern to create a deck guide—the same stability that some complain about makes it a comfortable place to do something that seems difficult in other scenarios: enjoy a Magic match in a 1v1 environment.

This preference doesn't blind my judgment, and I understand that the format spent 2025 in dark times. I've lived long enough in Magic to remember what happened with Extended: another rotating format where Wizards of the Coast made changes that eventually undermined its appeal and paved the way for the creation of Modern due to player demand for the ability to use older cards in an environment other than Legacy.

Unfortunately, times have changed, and it's no longer about using older cards in an environment where they wouldn't be devoured by a higher power level but about formats being fun and engaging, even if that means increasing the power creep a little more every six months or two years.

To keep Pioneer alive, it's necessary to tell Wizards that Magic players want to play the format, whether through mentions on social media, events at local stores, independent tournaments held on digital platforms like Magic Arena, or by filling Challenges to expand the competitive reception the format offers. Convincing players that stability is good at a time when everyone seems to care so much about "investment security" in a game of colored cardboard and showing that the format is much more than just that established Tier 1: seeking new possibilities, exploring new decks, and finding new ways to build strategies once forgotten is essential.

Without this, it won't happen in 2026, but perhaps in 2027 or 2028, Wizards of the Coast will decide that, at least in tabletop tournaments and Magic Online Challenges—there's no reason to remove it from MTGArena—Pioneer no longer deserves any attention over Modern.

And it would, in the end, be a shame to look at an article announcing the format's death and remember how much potential it had when it was announced in 2019 and what it could have been with a little more conscious and assertive decisions.