I think one of the main reason why pioneer took the L on being a rcq format is my friend who owns a lgs and runs a lot of rcq said wotc allowed stores to pick the format they wanted to be for there rcq but would tell store to play standard but nobody would run standard rcq in 2023/2024 so wotc forced what formats would be played in 2025 and its 75 percent standard and we get a modern rcq season because modern is generally the most popular constricted format so pioneer got lefted out and that sucks it should have been 2 standard 1 modern 1 pioneer season this year
Agreed! Maybe pioneer can make its way back next year. That said standard is absolutely crushing and i think is overall better for competitive magic if its healthy and the featured competitive format. Modern at this point can really do no wrong. Even with MH and UB sets “rotating” the format people still cant get enough of it!
I'm real bummed about pioneer because it WAS the only format that was supported by WOTC and didn't rotate. Standard rotates every 3 years and modern rotating every 2 makes them terrible financial decisions.
Pioneer makes me sad i bought all the cards for greesefang when I was getting back into paper the Monday night before they announced the rcq formats for 2025 the next day at my lgs and that was kinda sad then the next Monday the store owner like sorry bro that pioneer isn't a rcq format till maybe 2026 and im like yeah it kinda sucks but at least the expensive cards are modern playable
Pioneer was not healthy at all last year. Preban and post ban. Looking at the format through the single winner of each event is just plain bad analysis. You analyze thru the averages. What people are playing the most and how often it makes day 2 and top 8s are what matter
Post ban the format was great. Having a different deck win a regional is just a piece of it. The fact there was a “best deck” and even then it didn’t really dominate any of the events. In fact even the decks that were played the most by players in those events were just sounth of a 54% winrate. Yea the format was miserable pre ban and that alone could’ve killed the format. Post ban during the RC season we had a diverse meta game where the most played decks weren’t oppressive and had a respectable win rate and conversion rate relative to their meta %. The pioneer meta right now is trash and needs to change, but to say that at no point pioneer post ban was a healthy format would be just be wrong.
@@crawdaddy23 you misconstrue win rate vs over representation. Sure Rakdos had a mid 50s winrate but the deck was always the most played deck by a large margin and that doesn't include the prowess and food variants. For those who played back when Twin was banned, that was why it was banned. The deck was just okay but over half the field played it in 2015. That's why I skipped pioneer season. I'm not interested in seeing various Thoughtseize enabling Combo decks. The ban here is probably Thoughtseize
Releasing Pioneer Masters on Arena then immediately killing Pioneer, was certainly a perplexing decision.
Especially when it really wasn’t that long ago that pioneer had a super diverse meta and everyone talking about how great it was
I think one of the main reason why pioneer took the L on being a rcq format is my friend who owns a lgs and runs a lot of rcq said wotc allowed stores to pick the format they wanted to be for there rcq but would tell store to play standard but nobody would run standard rcq in 2023/2024 so wotc forced what formats would be played in 2025 and its 75 percent standard and we get a modern rcq season because modern is generally the most popular constricted format so pioneer got lefted out and that sucks it should have been 2 standard 1 modern 1 pioneer season this year
Agreed! Maybe pioneer can make its way back next year. That said standard is absolutely crushing and i think is overall better for competitive magic if its healthy and the featured competitive format. Modern at this point can really do no wrong. Even with MH and UB sets “rotating” the format people still cant get enough of it!
I'm real bummed about pioneer because it WAS the only format that was supported by WOTC and didn't rotate. Standard rotates every 3 years and modern rotating every 2 makes them terrible financial decisions.
Pioneer makes me sad i bought all the cards for greesefang when I was getting back into paper the Monday night before they announced the rcq formats for 2025 the next day at my lgs and that was kinda sad then the next Monday the store owner like sorry bro that pioneer isn't a rcq format till maybe 2026 and im like yeah it kinda sucks but at least the expensive cards are modern playable
Pioneer was not healthy at all last year. Preban and post ban. Looking at the format through the single winner of each event is just plain bad analysis. You analyze thru the averages. What people are playing the most and how often it makes day 2 and top 8s are what matter
Post ban the format was great. Having a different deck win a regional is just a piece of it. The fact there was a “best deck” and even then it didn’t really dominate any of the events. In fact even the decks that were played the most by players in those events were just sounth of a 54% winrate. Yea the format was miserable pre ban and that alone could’ve killed the format. Post ban during the RC season we had a diverse meta game where the most played decks weren’t oppressive and had a respectable win rate and conversion rate relative to their meta %. The pioneer meta right now is trash and needs to change, but to say that at no point pioneer post ban was a healthy format would be just be wrong.
@@crawdaddy23 you misconstrue win rate vs over representation. Sure Rakdos had a mid 50s winrate but the deck was always the most played deck by a large margin and that doesn't include the prowess and food variants. For those who played back when Twin was banned, that was why it was banned. The deck was just okay but over half the field played it in 2015.
That's why I skipped pioneer season. I'm not interested in seeing various Thoughtseize enabling Combo decks. The ban here is probably Thoughtseize