Pioneer Masters has now been available on MTG Arena for roughly five days, and we’re starting to see the Draft metagame develop. Wizards of the Coast spent a lot of time and effort adjusting the rarity of various cards to try to make Pioneer Masters a smooth and enjoyable Limited environment. Unfortunately, Pioneer Masters is one of the most lopsided Draft formats in years.
Aggressive red decks are everywhere, making it tough for slower strategies to compete without tons of removal. This format is fast, unbalanced, and frankly, not the most enjoyable. You don’t just take my word for it, however. Let’s take a look at what the data has to say about Pioneer Masters.
Red Above the Rest
According to 17lands.com, a site that tracks MTG Arena user draft data, Boros decks are by far the most played strategy in Pioneer Masters Draft. Despite being a relatively new Draft format, players have already Drafted Boros over 10,000 times! No other archetype surpasses 6,000 decks played.
Despite this, Boros is far from having the highest win rate. That title belongs to mono-red. Boros boasts a respectable 57.4% win rate amongst 17lands.com users. Meanwhile, mono-red takes it to another level with a win rate of 72.8%. This is an absolutely monstrous number.
The win rates of the top red commons provide more insight into red’s dominance in Pioneer Masters Draft. Akroan Crusader and Goblin Heelcutter have the fourth and fifth-highest win percentages when maindecked of any cards in the whole set. This includes seemingly broken rares and mythic rares.
At the same time, many of the strongest, more expensive bombs in other colors, like Progenitor Mimic, are closer to the middle of the pack. This heavily suggests that other strategies are having a difficult time keeping up with the blazing starts from mono-red and Boros.
Incredible Synergy
While it’s clear mono-red and Boros are quite successful, we need to dig a bit deeper to understand exactly what makes these decks tick. Obviously, the strength of the red commons plays a role, but there’s more to it than that.
First and foremost, the red commons and uncommons are both super efficient and incredibly synergistic with each other. Both Akroan Crusader and Monastery Swiftspear are fantastic one-drops that work well with spells that target your creatures. From there, Dragon Mantle and Rimrock Knight give you simple, low-cost ways to target your creatures.
Once you factor in Goblin Heelcutter as a way to prevent your opponent from blocking turn after turn, it makes sense why clunkier midrange decks may have trouble succeeding. Not to mention, there are a wide range of multi-color red cards that make for excellent support cards.
To bolster the Heroic plan, Tenth District Legionnaire and Anax and Cymede are great targets for Dragon Mantle and Rimrock Knight. You can also choose to use black as a support color instead for top-tier removal and Bloodtithe Harvester.
It’s hard to go wrong with red cards in the mix. The bad news is that all of this focus on red detracts from what could otherwise be a well-mixed format. It’s still early, so perhaps players will be able to adjust to the red menace. For now, though, Pioneer Masters is one of the worst draft sets in recent memory.
