Clever Combo

This week was a very exciting week in magic. The banning of Field of the Dead paved the way for an equally linear and oppressive Oko-based Standard, but more importantly, WotC announced a new format. Pioneer! We covered the basics of Pioneer in our last bonus episode, but JJ simply couldn’t wait to brew up some new decks for this shiny new format. In fact, he made three!  “Gone Myth-Thing” Azorius seems like a very strong color pair for control in Pioneer. The lack of the best blue counterspells from Modern means that cards like Dovin’s Veto and Absorb have a strong foothold for top counterspells. Sphinx’s Revelation is amazing, alongside Supreme Verdict. Since we’re in UW, I like the idea of going super hard on Instants with the main goal of flipping a Thing in the Ice and/or pumping up a Myth Realized. On the one hand, dropping these on turns 1 and 2 sort of gives away our game plan, but they are also terribly hard to interact with. A T1 Myth or T2 Thing will be backed up by a full grip of counterspells and