Magic: The Gathering’s Pioneer format really isn’t in the best of spots right now. With no major tournament support on the horizon, interest in daily events has withered. Less people are playing the format, which in turn means we’re seeing less deckbuilding innovation there. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and we saw one this past weekend. In a small Japanese Pioneer event yesterday, a plucky player went 3-0 with the seemingly-forgotten Mono-White Token Control.
This has been a fairly well-established deck in Standard for a while at this point, and it had its time in Pioneer, too. The printing of United Battlefront in Tarkir: Dragonstorm gave the archetype the teeth it needed in the format. When paired with banned-in-Modern Companion Yorion, it all came together rather nicely. The deck has been on the back burner in the format for a couple of months now, but its performance this past weekend could signal the beginning of a comeback.
Mono-White Token Control In MTG Pioneer
At its core this Pioneer Mono-White Token Control deck, which comes to us via K OHTA, has a similar game plan to the Standard version. It wants to stick either Caretaker’s Talent or Enduring Innocence early, then generate small tokens constantly to create card advantage.
By running token generators like Carrot Cake instead of full-on creatures, the deck manages to stay resistant to most removal. At the same time, it still presents a threatening board presence. By using this playbook, the deck is able to whittle down the opponent’s resources, and eventually close things out by maxing out Talent and swinging with a big token board. This is the subtle trick of Mono-White Token Control, and the secret to its success.
As you’d expect from the Pioneer version of this deck, K OHTA also runs a huge enchantment package. This is largely powered by four copies of United Battlefront, which is like Collected Company for noncreature, nonland permanents. This gives the deck some explosive power in the mid-game, especially given the quality and range of the targets on offer.
You can grab Caretaker’s Talent here, of course, but also Wedding Announcement for card/board advantage, Seal from Existence for removal, or The Birth of Meletis to hit your lands. You can even grab some of the deck’s one-of tech pieces, like Runed Halo and High Noon, in specific matchups.
United Battlefront gives the deck a ton of momentum and helps it stabilize or even turn the corner. The deck can operate just fine without it, of course, but digging six deep lets you get Talent online much more consistently. This is extra important here, since K OHTA is also running this as a Yorion Companion deck.
Companion Piece
At first glance, this seems like a bit of a strange decision. Yorion forces you to add 20 extra cards to your deck, which significantly impacts its consistency. Turns out the trade-off is worth it here, however, for how much it adds to the strategy.
A lot of the enchantments in K OHTA’s list can be blinked by Yorion for value. You can turn a flipped Wedding Announcement over to get more tokens and cards out of it. Alternatively, you can reset your Sagas like Birth of Meletis and Restoration of Eiganjo for extra lands and tokens.
The card’s usefulness isn’t just limited to enchantments, either. You can blink Carrot Cake to expand your board, for example, or an Enduring Innocence in enchantment mode to get more use out of its 2/1 Lifelink body. You can even reset the loyalty counters and ability uses on the deck’s two planeswalkers, Elspeth, Storm Slayer and The Wandering Emperor. The best synergy is actually with Beza, one of the deck’s very few creatures. One blink of this legendary Elk can get you tokens, mana, life, and card draw all in one.
These are all fantastic uses of Yorion’s ability. Since you’re a Control deck, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a window to pay three and add it to your hand, either. Like United Battlefront, Yorion is a way for the deck to press a big advantage all at once, which will often be how it wins games.
Unlike Battlefront, Yorion is also a solid finisher for the deck once the grindy mid-game is over. Outside of Go for the Throat, there’s very little removal in the format that can deal with Yorion once it lands.
Stick Or Twist?
As great as it is to see this deck return, there’s no shortage of obstacles in the path of its Pioneer dominance. For starters, while it did take down an event over the weekend, it was only a field of 13 players. Most Challenges and Leagues have bigger pools of competitors, and are therefore better for gauging a deck’s meta performance.
On top of that, the deck has some truly thorny matchups to overcome. While it can handle the likes of Mono-Red Aggro surprisingly well, Pioneer has a bunch of Combo decks that can take advantage of its sluggish nature. Whether it’s Orzhov Greasefang or Lotus Field, decks that can win out of nowhere are a nightmare for the list. While it can deal with creatures and permanents on board, it lacks meaningful disruption or interaction for combos. These decks aren’t top-tier anymore, but they definitely still exist.
The big Midrange decks in the format, Rakdos and Mono-Black, are better prospects. You have more breathing room against these decks, which means you can actually stabilize via United Battlefront and start grinding them down. Both decks run quite a bit of hand attack, mind you, which makes Yorion considerably worse. Since you’re forced to telegraph it in advance most of the time, they can just hold a Thoughtseize to get rid of it.
While it can definitely thrive against lower-tier Midrange decks like Selesnya Angels, Mono-White Token Control isn’t very well-placed against the wide variety of decks in Pioneer. Like many spicy MTG strategies, the timing just isn’t quite right on this one.
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