Vein Ripper has been taking over the Pioneer format. Don’t get me wrong, Amalia combo is still a force to be reckoned with, but Vein Ripper is beginning to become a problem in an entirely different realm. We’ve seen a homogenizing effect thanks to the combo between this card and Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, allowing players to cheat in a Vein Ripper on turn three.
To be clear, homogenizing basically means that, because this combo is so easy to run in a variety of different strategies. Due to this, we are beginning to see multiple strategies pop up that utilize this combo. This restricts the viable strategies available in the Pioneer format. Anything that struggles to beat a turn three Vein Ripper may no longer be viable.
If you’re happy to play with the Vampire, there are lots of different choices! If not, things are getting tougher.
All of the Vein Ripper Decks
There are a variety of different Vein Ripper shells running around the Pioneer format. Between all the different options players have, they routinely dominate the top eight of various Pioneer events on Magic Online.
Notably, a vast majority of these decks are Rakdos. The midrange shell, complete with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker makes this combo a lot more consistent and viable. Both Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and Vein Ripper can become dead cards in hand when you don’t have both of them available. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker fixes this with its second chapter, getting rid of redundant cards and sculpting your hand to help find the other half of the combo.
Looking at recent events on Magic Online, there’s been a massive trend of Rakdos Vein Ripper decks popping up. In many, if not all, of the recent Pioneer Challenge top eights, two of the five decks have contained the Vein Ripper combo. As if this dominant Vampire wasn’t prevalent enough already, players are experimenting, and winning, with Dimir Vein Ripper too.
Should the new flavors of this archetype somehow not be enough, innovations from Bloomburrow may create yet another Vein Ripper deck. A new Rakdos variant utilizing Coiling Rebirth has appeared recently to further crowd the metagame. This variant can reanimate Vein Ripper and create a copy of it, making traditional removal for the card like Blot Out more difficult to use.
Will Vein Ripper Get Banned?
A huge ban announcement is slated for the end of August. This occurs on the 26th, to be precise. We already know that Modern and Legacy are likely to get some much-needed attention. Sadly, the future of the Pioneer format is less clear.
The dominance of two archetypes seems to be very pronounced at the moment. Vein Ripper and Amalia Life decks seem to be in a league of their own. While players aren’t paying as much attention to Pioneer right now, it is the format for the upcoming Regional Championship format. This means there will be a lot of competitive attention on Pioneer shortly.
Jumping into a format that is primarily constructed around two decks hardly seems like a lot of fun. Fortunately, there are many other options for players to consider, but none of them are quite as good as the best two options. It’s tough to know for sure if these cards are problematically strong or not, but the Regional Championships will reveal that without a doubt.
If you’re a Vampire fan, there has never been a better time to play your favorite MTG creature type than now in the Pioneer format.
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