Dead, White, and Blue

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Today we’re gonna talk about an event that just passed, the most recent Regional Championship (RC) tournament that was held in Washington, DC, and the Pioneer format going forward now that it’s over.

I’ll give y’all three guesses as to what I played at the event.

On a serious note, now that the event is over we know all about both what players were expecting going into the tournament, and what the actual metagame of the event itself was. First, let’s take a look at what we expected to see going into the RC:

As we can see here, the metagame has done exactly what I thought it was going to do, as mentioned in our (Too) Good Grief! article:

• Rakdos colors have all but taken over the Pioneer format. Three of the top 5 decks in the format (Rakdos Aggro, Jund Sacrifice, and Rakdos Midrange) make use of the combination of Thoughtseize, Fatal Push, and Rakdos-colored Creatures.
• Aggro is absolutely everywhere. I assumed that decks like Monastery Swiftspear Prowess decks, Mono-White Humans, and Izzet Ensoul would come back to the Pioneer format, and all of those are at least relevant metagame decks right now.
• Decks like Azorius Control and Selesnya Angels, which can be naturally good against these hyper-aggressive decks, are not only decent metagame choices but are actively good in Pioneer right now.

OK, so we know what the online meta did. What actually happened at the RC?

First things first. I consider Magic: the Gathering to be much more about the “gathering” than the actual Magic being played, even if it was a high-level tournament. So the fact that I got to meet up with some longtime homies (a special shout-out to Casey for bringing me copies of Sheltered by Ghosts when none of the SEVEN local gaming stores in my own area had any!), meet some folks I’d only interacted with online, and generally had a great time interacting with everyone at the event.

Even my opponents were all pleasant humans! Well, none of them were playing Humans, but you get it.

As for the tournament itself, the Washington meta actually adhered *somewhat* closely to the online meta! Sometimes playing paper Magic: the Gathering causes a tournament meta to be pretty different from the online meta, but this time the meta kinda did exactly what we all thought it would:

Probably the most important thing to note here is that Azorius Control, rather than Rakdos Aggro, was the most represented deck at the RC. Great news for us Spirits pilots, right?

Right?

As luck would have it, this was absolutely not my tournament to win. I faced zero Control matchups, zero Mono-Green Devotion matchups, only one Enigmatic Incarnation matchup, one Greasefang, Okiba Boss matchup, and SEVEN Rakdos Aggro matchups in the 15 rounds that made up the two days of competition. Even with that abysmal matchup spread, I managed to make Day 2 of competition and was only one win away from a Pro Tour invite. Can’t be too mad about that!

Even given the circumstances, an excellent weekend of Magic was played! I got to take advantage of all three of the new elements that I assumed would come from Duskmourn, as detailed in our From Dusk Til Mourn article:

• Floodfarm Verge made mana incredibly smooth, and I was able to painlessly deal with threats from the (many) Red decks with Portable Hole on Turn 1 with little-to-no problem.
• Enduring Innocence was just as good as I thought it would be in the midrange matchups, and there was a point where I’d resolved all three in a grueling Spirits mirror match and got WAY ahead on cards! The only big problem that I overlooked is that Etching of Kumano means that Innocence gets exiled when something bad happens to it, so be aware of that.
• Sheltered by Ghosts is wild. It looked awesome on paper and somehow performed even better! There was one point against Rakdos Aggro where I was so far ahead that my opponent cast a Jegantha, the Wellspring and, with 4 counterspells in hand, I just let it resolve because I was already at 33 life.

Sounds like a good time. So where does Pioneer go from here?

…and now we come to the unfortunate news. As fun as the Pioneer format has been, Wizards of the Coast has dropped the 2025 Organized Play schedule and it contains zero big-ticket Pioneer tournaments. Each of the Regional Championship Qualifier/Regional Championship formats next year are going to be Modern, Standard, or Limited.

For Pioneer fans, this is miserable news. No getting around saying that part. But I think that Modern is in a mostly-fine spot right now, and Standard is actively a very good format. Anyone who’s looking to get into competitive Magic and isn’t already entrenched, I think that Standard is an excellent starting point between Magic: the Gathering Arena, Magic: the Gathering Online, Standard Showdowns at your local gaming store (special prizes include Cowboy Bebop Secret Lair cards—my favorite anime of all time!), and of course any upcoming Regional Championship Qualifiers.

With all of that said, I’m glad my last big Pioneer hurrah (at least for awhile!) was an enjoyable experience. I’m also very much looking forward to getting into Standard and playing a bunch of various Modern decks over the course of the next year. And for anyone who gets to go to the Modern Regional Championship in Charlotte, I’ll see you there. Everyone else, I’ll see y’all in the next one!