Since the August 10th ban announcement, the Standard metagame has largely revolved around Mono-Green Landfall and Izzet Spellementals. While both are strong, the latter archetype’s consistency and dominance in creature-dense matchups can make it particularly frustrating to play against.
If playing against it in Standard weren’t annoying enough, Izzet Spellementals has now broken out in Pioneer, too. Putting two pilots into the top eight of this weekend’s Pioneer Showcase Challenge, this deck is quickly emerging as a multi-format force.
Same Core, New Upgrades
Despite appearing in an entirely different format, Pioneer Spellementals in the hands of Magic Online user ChuChuMTFKR features a very similar game plan to the Standard version. The goal is to successfully reduce the cost of Hearth Elemental and Eddymurk Crab by filling your graveyard with cheap spells. From there, these threats make it trivial to jam Sunderflock on the cheap, resetting your opponent’s creatures.
Where this deck did get a decent chunk of upgrades, however, was in the instant and sorcery department. Joining Sleight of Hand, Consider appears as a stronger Opt variant, surveilling cards into the bin to help accelerate your bombs. With this in mind, this decklist even goes as far as to play Otherworldly Gaze over Opt, potentially enabling Heart Elemental as early as turn two.
Beyond the cards that smooth your draws, Pioneer’s vast card pool also gives a boost to your disruption. For removal, Fiery Impulse does an excellent job killing problematic three-toughness creatures like Greasefang, Okiba Boss or Archon of Emeria. Then, once you actually get a haymaker into play, protecting it with Stubborn Denial goes a long way towards pushing your advantage.
Powerful in a Different Environment
Ultimately, despite facing an entirely different metagame, Pioneer Spellementals has a lot of appeal against many top decks. Right off the bat, your array of big threats lines up exceptionally well against the typical removal spells of the format. Izzet Prowess decks can’t kill your creatures with burn spells, while Fatal Push and Abrupt Decay are completely useless from the Golgari Midrange side.
This only increases your odds of being able to jam Sunderflock unimpeded, which immediately dissolves all pressure from the opponent’s side. Given how fast this deck can reliably get Sunderflock into play, it’s incredibly difficult for Mono-White Humans or Selesnya Company to successfully race it, either. You even get to bounce Earthbent lands, which is an enormous setback for the opposition.
Unfortunately, this deck still has one obvious weakness: graveyard hate. With Greasefang and Izzet Phoenix decks still roaming the streets of Pioneer, plenty of players are loading up on Rest in Peace out of the sideboard. If that weren’t enough, Izzet Prowess’s popularity has also led players to lean on High Noon, which significantly slows you down. Because of this, your matchup versus Azorius Control is particularly poor.
As such, Izzet Spellementals in Pioneer is far from perfect, even if it is quite powerful when undisrupted. Following multiple elite performances, however, it wouldn’t be surprising if the deck continues to pick up steam. Make sure to keep this deck on your radar moving forward.
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