Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor — Pioneer Metagame Breakdown
Taking a look at the Top Decks in the room at Chicago, in presence, win rate, and breakdown
PT MKM took place this past weekend with a couple of surprises that a murder mystery set seems apt to uncover.
Pioneer had some preconceived notions that ended up getting…Ripped out of our heads almost immediately!
If you’d like to watch and listen to my breakdown in video form, check it out on my YouTube Channel:
ChannelFireball came out with a Rakdos Vampires list that no one really expected, pairing the normal Rakdos Midrange shell with a Creature type for Cavern of Souls and a way to turn Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord into it’s best Show and Tell version in years! Being able to drop a Vein Ripper on Turn 3 was something decks were not prepared to handle, especially when some decks couldn’t pay the Ward cost!
Besides Vampires, we saw a surprising uptick in Lotus Field Combo decks, with 8.9% of the room playing one of the multiple versions of the combo deck — and 2 of them making the Top 8! What we also saw was a continuation of Izzet Phoenix being a long time staple of the format, while Azorius Control had it’s worst weekend in a while with some unknown decks in the field it wasn’t properly teched for.
Looking at how the metagame shook out, it seems like there were clear top decks in the room — and then everyone else. However, as Pioneer has been evolving since the introduction of Amalia Combo, so have the tried and true deck lists that we’re used to seeing. Besides the stand out differences between Vampires and normal Rakdos Midrange, decks had tweaks to their 75 (or 95!) that set them apart from the rest of their archetype. For my breakdown, and to avoid the already stellar job Frank Karsten has done, I will be looking at these specific distinctions to inform you of the specific deck lists that performed, just in case you have your eyes set on a certain type of deck!
I’m also using the outputs from Melee.gg — which for some reason is missing an Izzet Phoenix deck list. Even though I know what the deck is, Melee doesn’t have the results for it! So while my analysis is still out of the 258 decks Frank counted, Phoenix is missing one…
So how did I break down the decks?
Take a look:
I saw a few trends with the deck lists as they appeared on Melee…
- There was a distinct difference in Rakdos Midrange lists having Inti or not having Inti. Lists with Inti tended to favor Smuggler’s Copter, while lists without Inti tended to favor Reckoner Bankbuster and sometimes went up the curve to Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal
- The Lotus Field Combo lists were actually slightly different takes on the deck we’ve seen. Some lists ran the normal combo list with very few creatures maindeck besides Aboreal Grazer and Lier, Disciple of the Drowned. Others ran Dragonlord Dromoka or Atraxa, Grand Unifier in their maindecks, while another subset ran Strict Proctor as another way to “stifle” their Lotus Field triggers
- The majority of the Engimatic Fires decks settled on running Keruga, the Macrosage as their companion of choice — but one list decided on Yorion, Sky Nomand instead and went up to 80 cards maindeck.
- Izzet Creativity was the version we’d see at Pro Tours past with Worldspine Wurm and Xenagos, God of Revels trying to kill someone in one swing. However, there was one version that ran Torrential Gearhulk and Magma Opus instead — which I named Gearhulk Creativity
I broke these apart in my analysis to get a better picture of what kinds of cards these decks were running instead of getting a larger sample size for an archetype. Although I will be going into how decks performed against one another, I know that a lot of people are looking at these breakdowns and looking for a deck they can vibe with and win with — so hopefully my categorization is a bit easier to follow along with, even if the match up Matrix is a little less definitive!
Top 10 Presence Decks at PT MKM
We saw this in the previous images as far as number of decks and metagame share are concerned, but taking a look at the Win Rate (WIN%) of the most popular decks in the room shines a lot more light on how they actually performed.
Starting from the top, Izzet Phoenix put up the 3rd best performance of the Top decks in WIN% despite having the most decks in the room by far. Goes to show that even with stock lists of Phoenix still the main choice at the PT, pilot skill and Delve cards go a long way! The fact that the deck can win games seemingly from nowhere thanks to Galvanic Iteration + Temporal Trespass makes it always a winnable angle for the Phoenix player if they pilot themselves into the clear.
Azorius Control was arguably the biggest disappointment of the event, with only both “normal” Rakdos versions having a worse record. The Control deck struggled to deal with the metagame’s adaptations to it being on top for so long, while Amalia Combo’s presence waned a bit and opened the event up to a slew of different decks than before. I’m not going to count Control out of the picture entirely, but it’s going to be harder to deal with cards like Vein Ripper or the re-introduction of Boros Heroic with the stock lists as they are now. Shifting back to more low-CMC countermagic, less spot removal may up it’s game.
Both versions of Rakdos I split out had a rough weekend as well, with the Inti version of Rakdos Midrange being the worst performing deck of the top presence decks. While Smuggler’s Copter has great synergies with Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, decks at the PT ready to combat all the 2 mana cost cards in Amalia Combo or low mana threats from Boros Heroic and Boros Convoke were already prepared to deal with “2-drop” Rakdos decks. Both the normal Rakdos Midrange lists and the new Rakdos Vampires deck cut down on the number of 2 drops and went larger, with Rakdos Midrange going up to 5 CMC for Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal to punish Fatal Push, Torch the Tower, and non-exile spot removal like Get Lost.
Amalia Combo had a bit of a resurgence this event, with the Pioneer metagame having a few more Creature-based decks and a little less Control, Amalia was able to Explore it’s way to a WIN% that was just under Izzet Pheonix from the top decks. This combo-toolbox-Creature-boardwipe deck doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere any time soon — but it has shown it’s not unbeatable.
Boros Heroic was a deck that came back into the picture without really adding too much to the list! With Azorius Control and Amalia Combo wiping the boards of every Boros Convoke player that didn’t kill them by Turn 3 a new flavor of Boros deck was needed to attack the metagame — and boy did it! Simon Nielsen took the deck all the way to the Finals, with a speedy clock against decks like Lotus Field Combo and the ability to make it’s creatures survive a Supreme Verdict or Amalia, Benavides Aguirre explosion, this is most likely the flavor of Boros you should expect to see for a little while.
Breakout deck of the tournament with a 59.6% Match WIN% — the highest for the Top Presence decks and the 6th best of all decks at the PT was Rakdos Vampires. As my friend called it, “Sorin-Tell” attacked the Pioneer metagame in a two-pronged facet. At it’s core, the deck is a Midrange deck that takes advantage of Cavern of Souls to name Vampire, circumventing the large number of No More Lies from the Azorius Control decks, backing it up with powerful cards like Thoughtseize and Fatal Push. Thrown into the mix is forgotten 3 mana Planeswalker Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord — with two ways to add loyalty and an immediately useable ultimate ability that puts any Vampire from your hand into play. The card you want to see in your hand? Vein Ripper. Hard to remove thanks to Ward requiring a creature to sacrifice, and the fact that it deals damage even through being removed as it counts allied and opposing creature deaths. This big 6/5 flier was enough to close out games on it’s own as even Supreme Verdict wasn’t a clean answer for it.
Another big winner at the Pro Tour was Boros Convoke — whereas I mentioned Heroic may be the flavor of Boros you see more of, Convoke had a bit of life breathed into it this PT. The main reason for Convoke doing well was similar to the reason Amalia did well — seeing some fewer Control decks, and more Creature-based decks. Specifically for Convoke, the larger amounts of Rakdos and Phoenix decks lined up well for the deck that wants to throw tons of tokens onto the board and then follow up with a Venerated Loxodon or Knight-Errant of Eos that survive and/or restock after a Path of Peril or Temporary Lockdown. However, if Control is prevelent in your area, Convoke’s stock gets worse — so pick your Boros deck wisely!
Izzet Ensoul was a deck that I thought would be the breakout deck of the PT — but was upstage by Rakdos Vampires by a long shot. All in all, the deck ended with a 46.0% Match WIN% which wasn’t too impressive, but it did have it’s good matchups. Fast enough to get under the Lotus Field Combo decks and sometimes race the board wipes from Control, especially if you have a Darksteel Citadel that has been given 5 power! While some lists relied on just the power of Spyglass Siren and Ensoul Artifact, other lists added Zoetic Glyph and Case of the Filched Falcon for some redundancy. The best performing list however, curved Siren into Gleeful Demolition and forewent the extra animation effects.
At the end of the Top 10 Presence decks is Dromoka Lotus Combo — which as you may recall is just one of the four different types of Lotus Field decks that were at the PT. This version looked to leverage Archdruid’s Charm to not only find the needed lands for it’s combo (Lotus Field or Thespian’s Stage) but also to find Dragonlord Dromoka at Instant speed to cast and lock out your opponent’s interaction as you combo off. It performed well against the top deck of the Presence decks, with winning records against Izzet Phoenix, Azorius Control, and the Inti versions of Rakdos Midrange. However, the Lotus decks weren’t always able to deal with the Aggro decks or other Combo decks at the PT like Amalia Combo.
Top 10 Win Rate Decks from PT MKM
The decks with the highest WIN% ignore the number of decks in the room and focus on only the results put up across all Pioneer matches. Given this, it’s a little surprising to see so many of the Top 10 Presence decks overlapping in this area. Rakdos Vampires was the top performing deck based on it’s metagame share, while Boros Convoke, Izzet Phoenix, and Amalia Combo all put up Top 10 WIN% performances across double digit amounts of decks.
The real story of the event though is Gabriel Nassif’s 8–2 overall record on Dimir Control. If you’ve watched my video on if Dimir Control was viable in Pioneer, YellowHat kind of took that notion, threw it out the window, and said “Nah, I can play it!” In all honesty, the deck looked amazing in Gabe’s hands, but I’m not sure it has the legs to dominate the meta in just anyone’s deckbox. Running three copies of the recently printed Deadly Cover-Up which let the Control deck have a better match up against Aggro and Midrange decks than previous versions stuck using Languish or Extinction Event. More importantly, the card was not just a dead card against Combo and Control lists either — with the collecting evidence part being able to “Surigical Extraction” away an entire piece of Lotus’s combo, or a powerful Planeswalker from Azorius Control. Torrential Gearhulk and Shark Typhoon were the main ways to win the game, with just a pair of Hall of Storm Giants and Hive of the Eye Tyrant as creature-land backups.
The other big standout at just one more match loss than Gabe was Ben Stark’s Boros Burn deck — a White-splashed take on the Mono Red decks we’ve seen in previous iterations of Pioneer. While Mono Red has gone up the mana curve recently to combat Amalia Combo with maindeck Rampaging Ferocidon, Ben’s version of Boros kept the curve at 2 mana outside of Bonecrusher Giant//Stomp. Eidolon of the Great Revel punished the decks lowering their mana curve to get under Combo and Control, while punishing every permenant that Amalia decks can cast. The deck was truly unlocked this PT thanks to the reprinting of Lightning Helix in MKM, giving the deck another 3 damage spell and putting Lightning Strike on the bench for good. The lifegain aspect of Helix is far too powerful in a Creature-based metagame, where a life swing of “6” thanks to dealing damage while gaining life can make or break a life total race. White also unlocked sideboard cards such as Get Lost which was able to deal with consistent threats to the Mono-Red versions of the deck such as Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.
Day 1 of LCI boogeyman Quintorius Combo had a pair of decks that ended the Pro Tour with a combined 65.05% WIN%. The deck hasn’t gone through many changes, utilizing their needed 4-of-higher mana curve with Quintorius Kand to enable Keruga, the Macrosage as a companion in the case they need to draw cards, in the case they don’t just ramp into an early Quint kill. Thought Distortion out of the sideboard helped the deck have a way to combo through Control decks and also shut down Combo decks that were too slow.
Talia Bael was the lone Jeskai Control pilot going 6–4 in the Pioneer rounds. While Azorius Control suffered a lower win rate this Pro Tour, the Jeskai version (which was a Yorion deck) splashed Red in order to play Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Lightning Helix, and Torch the Tower in the main deck, with no Red cards in the sideboard. With two copies of Regal Caracal as well, Reflection of Kiki-Jiki had a target that could provide some lasting value by leaving behind tokens and pumping everything for extra damage.
The last list that topped the WIN% charts with only a single copy was a Yorion, Sky Nomad version of the Enigmatic Incarnation/Fires of Invention deck. This 80 card version was able to run a 1-of copy of 15 different Creatures for all sorts of occassions, including Kutzil’s Flanker and Nimble Larcenist. The deck also added single MKM card in the form of Proft’s Eidetic Memory — cantripping and making it so when Up the Beanstalk was in play you could keep everything you drew!
Top Presence Decks Matchup Matrix — PT MKM
With a lot of the Top Decks having high win rates, it’s important to take a look at where those wins were coming from to see if the deck was great as a whole or if it was specific to certain match ups. This matrix digs into where the decks took their wins against the most present decks at the event, so you know if the deck is right for your local metagame.
Izzet Phoenix as the most played deck did well against the other 3 decks that were popular in the room — Azorius Control, and both flavors of Rakdos Midrange. It wasn’t as great into the Amalia and Boros decks, but struggled against the Dromoka Lotus Field decks. It did however, match up well into the other Izzet deck, Izzet Ensoul, and was 50–50 against the tournament winning deck Rakdos Vampires. It’s going to be hard to say that Phoenix isn’t one of the best, if not the best deck in Pioneer looking at the breakdown from this event. Especially if Amalia Combo and Control decks keep Boros Convoke numbers down lower.
Azorius Control’s poor performance wasn’t just against some of the unknown decks like Rakdos Vampires, but it also struggled against Izzet Phoenix harder than we’ve seen it struggled at previous events. Level of player at the PT could be preying open a weakness in the match up that your average RC or MTGO League player might not be able to take advantage of. Meanwhile, both Boros decks had above-50% win rates against the deck — surprisingly so the Boros Convoke deck being higher than the Heroic version. Lastly, the Dromoka-equipped versions of Lotus Field Combo were better equipped at shutting down Control’s counter magic.
The two different versions of Rakdos Midrange didn’t do the greatest at the Pro Tour, but there are differences in their match up spread that might highlight which versions of the deck should be considered going forward (aside from just swapping to Vampires entirely). Decks running Inti were slightly worse into the Control and Convoke match ups, while they were also unable to get under the Lotus Field decks. Decks going larger were slightly worse against Amalia, Heroic, Ensoul, and the Vampires deck. Both versions were not great against Phoenix, and Control was slightly favored for the larger Rakdos version. It seems like slowing down gives the Rakdos deck more options for the Combo decks, but the slower clock can be an issue in some match ups. Adjust according to what your playstyle may be, as well as what your local metagame looks like if you plan to bring a normal, less-blood-sucking version of Rakdos to Pioneer nights.
Amalia Combo was better than expected, putting up a winning Phoenix, Rakdos Midrange, Convoke, and Lotus Combo match up. While Boros Heroic had a winning match record into the deck, it wasn’t the “hard counter” you might expect it to be with Amalia hovering around a 43% WIN% — similar to it’s WIN% against Azorius Control at this event. Speaking of Boros Heroic — the deck put up great results into Amalia, Phoenix, and Control — but struggled against all flavors of Rakdos and their plethora of removal and hand disruption. Otherwise, the deck could have been the breakout of the tournament with it’s match up spread!
Boros Convoke similarly beat up on the top of the metagame decks — save for the Amalia Combo decks. It also lost all it’s matches against Boros Heroic in the head-to-head “which Boros deck is best” — but with only 4 matches I’m not sold it means Heroic is strictly favored there. Rakdos Vampires also beat it 2 other times out of the 5 matches they played at the PT.
Izzet Ensoul failed to put up the best results against the top of the metagame decks, with it’s best win rates coming against bigger Rakdos decks and Amalia Combo at just 50.0%. While the deck can be fast, it stumbles when it can’t get going due to bad draws or good interaction, making it a toss up against Lotus Field Combo decks as well.
Rakdos Vampires rode even-or-better match ups against the top decks all the way to a Pro Tour Trophy. With such a positive match up spread against the field, Pioneer decks are going to have to adapt to a 6/5 on Turn 3 with hand disruption to land it on time. If you can get your hands on the Sorins and Rippers, this deck would be one to take to an event soon — before the metagame can adapt properly to it.
Dromoka Lotus Field decks put up results against the two decks it was seemingly built to combat — Izzet Phoenix and Azorius Control. It had the upside of beating up on Inti Rakdos Midrange but struggled against the bigger version and Vampires (in the 1 match up against Vampires that was played). The Aggro decks however, were the downfall of Lotus decks — as the aggro decks have historically been too fast for the Combo deck to beat.
That’s a wrap for PT MKM! What do you think is the best deck currently, and what will you be taking to Pioneer events near you?
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