Well that was an eventful week in Magic wasn't it? A crazy Mythic Championship, another card banned in Standard, a completely unexpected brand new format... it's all just too much to take in!

Breathe everyone, breathe.

Let's start with a quick Mythic Championship V recap, as I deserve a little brag time for going a perfect five for five on my predictions!

Prediction One: Field Of The Dead Decks Will Have A Sub-50% Win Rate

Correct!

The field came ready to beat Field of the Dead, and while it was by far the most popular deck in the tournament only one copy made Top 8 of the event.

According to the excellent metagame matchup breakdown from MTGGoldfish, over 188 matches Bant Golos only achieved a 49% win rate. The much lesser played Golos Fires of Invention won 50% of its matches over a 48 game sample size, and Kenji Egashira (aka. NumotTheNummy) was the only player playing Four Color Golos and managed to swing a winning record at 64% over 14 matches.

Regardless of its medium performance at an event where everyone was gunning to beat it, Field of the Dead was still rightly banned which we will discuss a bit later. Even without taking the victory, Field of the Dead was still far and away the talk of Mythic Championship V and the defining characteristic.

Prediction Two: There Will Be At Least Four Maindeck Disdainful Stroke In Top 8

Correct!

While the Golos Prediction was close, this one was not.

Both William Jensen and Gabriel Nassif made Top 8 with the Simic Food deck that their team played, both playing full playsets of Disdainful Stroke in the main. While they didn't advance past Top 8, there's no doubt that with Field of the Dead now banned that some form of Simic is the current deck to beat in Standard. We won't likely be seeing maindeck Disdainful Strokes in the new format, but it was a brilliant metagame call for this event.

Prediction Three: Ken Yukuhiro Has The Best Deck In The Room And Will Top 8

Correct!

Calling for any one player to make Top 8 of a 68 person event filled with the best players in the world is daunting, especially when they are the only person in the entire room playing their rogue deck. Well that's exactly what I did, and Ken Kukuhiro did not disappoint!

Ken's hyper focused Rotting Regisaur plus Embercleave deck sliced its way through the competition all tournament, with Ken playing exceptionally well with the deck. It will need to be reexamined in the new format with Field of the Dead no longer around to prey on, but if you'd like to see me playing the deck I did my Monday video on it this week!

Prediction Four: There Will Be More Copies Of Embercleave In Top 8 Than Fires Of Invention

Correct!

Another slam dunk.

Embercleave was the breakout card of the tournament, not only being showcased in Ken Yukuhiro's deck as well as Ben Stark and Eric Froelich's more traditional Mardu Knights decks, but also in the winning Gruul deck by Javier Dominguez.

Fires of Invention sputtered out and didn't make much of an impact. The Golos Fires decks performed very averagely, and other decks based around the powerful enchantment didn't find any traction at all. With Field of the Dead banned, Fires of Invention is likely ready to make some moves, but those moves didn't happen at Mythic Championship V.

Prediction Five: The Ban Hammer Is Coming

Correct!

Field of the Dead, we hardly knew ye.

We all felt something was coming; the question is was it the right thing? Which leads us to our next topic:

The Ban That Was And The Bans That Weren't

So they banned Field of the Dead, which frankly makes a lot of sense given both the results of Mythic Championship V as well as just the overall look of Standard in general. There are few good answers to Field of the Dead currently, it's too easy to set up, and it creates a frustrating and inevitable endgame.

However, is the format really better now that it was before?

The Simic core of Oko, Thief of Crowns, Nissa, Who Shakes The World, and Hydroid Krasis alongside all of the good ramp options are still unbelievably powerful. Oko in particular has drawn much of the communities ire for invalidating basically every creature you could ever want to play, and I get the question "why does Oko have a +1 not a -1, that must be a typo right?" on an average of three times a stream.

We will see how it shakes out, but it's sad to see Standard struggling again.

A New Format!

But while my predictions were, well, predictions and the ban was somewhat expected, what wasn't expected was the announcement of a totally new format:

This one took everyone by surprise, as not only were we not expecting a new format but the placement of and platform of felt very odd. My initial reaction:

Making a new format that is between Modern and Standard but isn't playable on @MTG_Arena is astoundingly perplexing. Who is the target audience for this format?

— Jim Davis (@JimDavisMTG) October 21, 2019

Thankfully here I get more than 280 characters.

As a Magic player, I'm excited for basically any new format. A new format means a new puzzle, as well as a chance to brew in uncharted waters. There's no doubt that's a blast and you can bet I'll be playing a ton of Pioneer in the coming weeks. But as someone who loves Magic and wants to see it succeed, the introduction of Pioneer as a format has left me confused.

What need does this format fill?

We already have a ton of different formats in Magic, spanning the history of the game and all platforms, from paper to digital and casual to competitive. Adding another one is a cost, because it further divides the player base and adds even more complication to the game, so when you do so it makes sense for this format to solve a need or fill a role that isn't currently being met. Commander was formed out of a need for a casual multiplayer format to be unified under one rule set where fun old cards could see play. Modern was formed because the reserve list made Legacy a huge issue and Extended had its own host of problems.

I struggle to see what need Pioneer fills.

Our current need for a format in Magic is one that can bridge the gap beyond Standard for MTG Arena players, so once their cards rotate they have something to do with them. Historic was supposed to be that answer, but now we see another format arrive in its place between Modern and Standard but specifically not for MTG Arena as they have stated. This makes Historic basically a non-starter, and leaves MTG Arena players feeling left out as for some reason Wizards of the Coast is trying to go back to Magic Online. This sucks and feels like a big step backward.

Clearly we're not going to be playing Pioneer on MTG Arena in 2019. There are 16 sets that would be need to be added to the client, which is a colossal undertaking. However there needs to be some sort of plan for the future here and right now what we have from Wizards of the Coast as an official statement is "Currently, there are no plans to add it (Pioneer) as a format to Magic: The Gathering Arena."

This leaves us in quite a bind. We have a new format to be excited about, but not if you're an MTG Arena player. We've got MTG Arena players who have no idea what to do with their copies of Scapeshift and Nexus of Fate that they spent hard earned money to craft. We've got Modern players confused about the long term health of their format. And all of this is hidden behind the excitement of brewing in a new format that will undoubtedly eventually coalesce into a stable metagame of a few top decks like it always does, at which point reality will set in.

What if instead Wizards of the Coast announced now that the plan was for Pioneer to be available on MTG Arena in 2021? In the mean time they would be adding one old set at a time to the platform, which would be playable in Historic and bring more depth to that format with the end goal of Historic and Pioneer eventually meeting and merging into one unified format when all the sets are released. This way MTG Arena players get to experience both the new format as well as some of Magic's history, while Wizards of the Coast gets to have the post-Modern format they want. Historic becomes very interesting because it will be a constantly changing format for brewers to enjoy that has some value for the future, while at the same time MTG Arena players can feel good about knowing their cards will still have value beyond Standard.

It's a long way down the road, but giving players the confidence in MTG Arena and Magic as a whole while providing a constantly changing game play experience feels like a win on all fronts.

One Can Only Hope

Will this happen? One can only hope I suppose, but I would hope that Wizards of the Coast will take notice beyond the excitement of a new format to the backlash it is creating from MTG Arena players. Wizards of the Coast has made huge pushes forward with MTG Arena, so to see it and its players getting shafted like this has made a lot of people uneasy and hurt the overall confidence in the platform. We were being sold Magic Online 2.0, but moves like this make it look like Duals of the Planeswalkers 2.0.

For now I'll just be brewing Pioneer decks and exploring this new format because I'm a Magic player and that's what I do, but I really hope they can clean up this new mess they have created.