Again, pretty similar to the Historic deck. The formats are quite a bit different, but the whole idea with the deck was versatility anyways, so a lot of the same cards and plans slot in against the Pioneer field. Warden of the First Tree and Mizzium Mortars might not be ideal, but I just like those cards, and I'm pretty happy with everything else in the main deck.
The only real absence from Historic to Pioneer is Maelstrom Pulse, which is a card that I love, but I'm replacing it here with Abrupt Decay and Dreadbore, which are cards I'd probably be playing instead of Pulse in Historic given the chance. Also, since Barren Moor isn't available, I'm not running the Witherbloom Command package, although playing some Canyon Slough and Witherbloom Command isn't the absolute worst idea if you're running into a lot of Witch's Oven stuff.
I'm high on Hissing Quagmire here mostly for the same reasons I like Raging Ravine in Modern. Cards like Lair of the Hydra or Den of the Bugbear are helpful when you're mana flooded, obviously, but they come with a drawback of being unhelpful when you're land light, here in a three color deck. In a game where it looks like you'll never activate your Den, which is a lot of them, it's worse than a basic Mountain, which is a card that wouldn't make your deck here. You'll be more likely to be missing a color when you have two lands and one of them is Lair of the Hydra versus when you have two lands and one of them is Hissing Quagmire. There will be hands where you have to mulligan because you have Lair of the Hydra instead of Hissing Quagmire, and taking a mulligan is bad and you should never do things that are bad.
The deck seems to be dealing with aggro decks nicely. We have 1,000 removal spells and stuff like Warden and Ooze and creaturelands to clean up. There's more of a burn presence is this format, including a bunch of decks that run Monastery Swiftspear, so cutting back a little on Shocklands and running one and two mana removal helps you get out of the early game.
Brad Nelson has a theory that it's a good idea to focus your midrange decks to beating aggro decks in the main deck, then worry about the control and combo decks in the sideboard. I've kind of had that same idea for a long time too, even in Modern, and there's a few reasons for that. First, aggro decks don't give you the time you need to draw the cards that are good against them. If I tell myself that I'm going to add two copies of Languish to my otherwise non-interactive midrange deck, I'd better hope one of those copies is in my top eleven or so cards, because if I don't have some interaction for the opposing creatures, I'll be dead. Conversely, if I add two Kroxa to my deck to bust up control decks, that could work pretty well, because I can expect to see quite a few cards in my deck before the game is over, since they aren't pressuring my life total.
I don't always buy the idea that you should build your decks to maximize your play skill over your opponent, because, you know, you might play someone better than you and have that backfire. Having said that, destructive midrange decks like this require having a little bit of format knowledge and deck familiarity to be piloted well, since all your stuff is so dependent on what your opponent is doing. You can't be a total noob to win with most decks, but there are going to be hands with the most aggressive decks that the Mario Kart 64 AI could pilot to a win. Setting yourself up to not lose to those draws and forcing your opponent to make decisions will win some matches. Again, not huge on this theory, but the more experience you have, the more you might want to try and extend the game, giving you more opportunities to make good plays and your opponents opportunities to mess up. This is probably a bigger deal if you're Brad Nelson, but you're smart too. Only smart people read jundlife.blogspot.com.
Also, when we play against control decks, all of a sudden we are the ones who are looking to shorten the game and compound bad draws from our opponents. A couple of Fatal Push in your hand might turn out to not be a problem if your opponent stumbles on lands or floods out a little bit and you just get them dead with your creatures.
Last point on this, against a control deck, or at least against a slower deck, you're more likely to be okay if you miss a land drop or two. If you miss your third land drop and your opponent just nails you with Questing Beast and Embercleave, it doesn't really matter how well set up your deck is for the matchup. If you're more susceptible to losing a game to an awkward draw to fast decks than slow decks, then I'd rather make sure I'm set up to win all three games against fast decks. If I'm confident that I have a good sideboard plan against slow decks and will be unpressured enough to be able to draw what I need, then it's more palatable to plan on not worrying too much about game one and taking down games two and three.
I've found in Pioneer that this theory works out well, just like it does in Historic. The aggro decks are fast and punishing, but don't always have a go-big plan like you might see in Standard. I have my sideboard set up right now to really punish the aggro decks further, with extra Fatal Push and Chevill in the board, plus Crush the Weak, which continues to impress me. I think that going forward, I'll probably cut back a little bit on that stuff as it becomes clear what cards are effective against the metagame.
One card that's impressed me is Damping Sphere. Pioneer has a considerable combo element, with stuff like Lotus Field, Jeskai Ascendency, and Izzet Phoenix, and Damping Sphere shuts them all down. It's clunky with Bloodthirsty Adversary, but you can always get around that by just casting Adversary as a 2/2 with haste, which isn't bad when you're trying to tempo out a combo deck anyways. Also note that Pioneer Phoenix decks are more combo oriented than in Historic, with no Sprite Dragons or Dragon's Rage Channelers, so Damping Sphere is more helpful than you might expect. I have even been boarding in Crush the Weak to clean up Phoenixes, which is only an okay plan in Historic. They play Thing in the Ice, so you can't just board all your removal out, but it's a little bit different of a deck.
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I have a plan to start trying to stream on Discord instead of Twitch, or maybe in addition to. I've set myself up a server there that you're free to go and check out, though there isn't really anything there yet. I've been doing some Modern Challenges on Sunday mornings but I think I might shift into Pioneer mode here and do that on Saturday evenings. Hit me up on Twitter or where ever to chat. Thanks for reading.
