During today’s Magic Showcase 2021 Stream, we got to take a sneak peek into what awesome sets and products are coming down the pipeline for Magic: the Gathering in 2022. While the focus was on the new sets and supplemental products like Secret Lairs, there were some little product advertisement tidbits dropped that we can look forward to. One of which was the newest iteration of a fan favorite product line, the Challenger Decks, but now for the Pioneer format!
What are Challenger Decks?
Wizards of the Coast
Challenger Decks were a product released back in 2018, and were preceded by Event Decks. These decks aim to give players a competitive deck in a specific format that they can sit down and play an event and have a good time doing so. These decks are often selected from staple meta decks in any given format, but are not at their full power. This leaves some room for players to upgrade these decks to their optimal versions, but it does get them most of the way there.
Pioneer Challenger Decks
With this set of 4 decks, players will have the choice of playing UW Spirits, BW Auras, Mono Red Burn, or Sultai Lotus Field Combo. Here are the deck lists for each!
UW Spirits
UW Spirits is an aggro deck that likes to play a bunch of flyers. All the creatures in the deck fly, which makes blocking them very difficult. There’s also some flying support cards in here such as
Watcher of the Spheres
Watcher of the Spheres
Flying
Creature spells with flying you cast cost {1} less to cast.
Whenever another creature you control with flying enters, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
and
Empyrean Eagle
Empyrean Eagle
Flying
Other creatures you control with flying get +1/+1.
, but most of the deck revolves around Spirit creatures.
Lotus Field Combo
Lotus Field Combo is a deck that looks to take advantage of untap mechanics and
Lotus Field
Lotus Field
Hexproof
This land enters tapped.
When this land enters, sacrifice two lands.
{T}: Add three mana of any one color.
. With all this mana, we want to use
Fae of Wishes
Fae of Wishes
Flying
{1}{U}, Discard two cards: Return this creature to its owner's hand.
or
Mastermind’s Acquisition
Mastermind’s Acquisition
Choose one —
• Search your library for a card, put it into your hand, then shuffle.
• Put a card you own from outside the game into your hand.
to wish a card from our sideboard to win the game. Examples of this would be
Omniscience
Omniscience
You may cast spells from your hand without paying their mana costs.
, or
Approach of the Second Sun
Approach of the Second Sun
If this spell was cast from your hand and you've cast another spell named Approach of the Second Sun this game, you win the game. Otherwise, put Approach of the Second Sun into its owner's library seventh from the top and you gain 7 life.
. This deck is not for the faint of heart, as there’s a lot of play decisions to be made here, but if you’re up to the challenge, this is a sweet combo deck.
Mono Red Burn
Mono Red Burn is your typical red aggro deck. It plays a lot of hasty red creatures and a bunch of ways to deal direct damage to your opponent’s face. This is a pretty straight forward deck, but one that can steal games out of nowhere if you’re not careful.
BW Auras
The BW Auras deck is a “voltron” style aggro deck. We want to stick a creature on the board, and play a bunch of enchantments on it to pump it up into a massive threat. We look to use
Sram, Senior Edificer
Sram, Senior Edificer
Whenever you cast an Aura, Equipment, or Vehicle spell, draw a card.
as our card draw engine, and between
All That Glitters
All That Glitters
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact and/or enchantment you control.
and
Ethereal Armor
Ethereal Armor
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 for each enchantment you control and has first strike.
we can make some seriously big creatures.
READ MORE: Major MTG Arena Updates Revealed by Wizards of the Coast On Stream
It’s great to see that Wizards of the Coast and the Magic team are still dedicated to supporting Pioneer. It’s become one of the community’s favorite formats, and hopefully these decks get more people into the format! These decks release on October 15th 2021, so be sure to get your hands on these!