Marvel-ous Timing!

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

It’s been a long while since I’ve had a chat with you all, and most of that is due to Pioneer having been removed from Magic: the Gathering as a format. Now that Pioneer has been announced to return to Magic in 2027, it’s time to get back into the swing of things!

Wizards of the Coast also had some fantastic timing (Fantastic Four-sight?) in making this announcement, as the Marvel Super Heroes set is about to drop. So now it’s time to both see what the Pioneer format even looks like in 2026, as well as going over a really exciting new set!

Pioneer is a very Creature-centric format right now, and from the looks of it pretty fast, but when you actually boil down the format to a few bullet points, there are three main problems to solve if you want to play Pioneer:

• Be able to remove Creatures with 5 or less toughness.
• Limit the number of spells opponents can cast in a turn.
• Do not leave home without Graveyard control.

From here, it sounds like the mid-range version of Azorius Spirits checks all of these boxes just great!

This list plays from Magic: the Gathering Online user “itstime” recently made the Top 8 of an online Pioneer Challenge event, making sure to play plenty of cards like Seam Rip and Sheltered by Ghosts to win against aggressive decks, or No More Lies and Spell Queller to win against the combo and control decks.

Enough with the old. What’s new?

Well, the new is pretty exciting right now. The Marvel Super Heroes set is about to drop this weekend, as of the time of this writing, and there’s a ton of both exciting new cards for competitive play and well-themed nonsense for more casual enjoyment!

The Mind Stone (very different from Mind Stone!) is one of those cards that just checks every box for me. It’s an Infinity Stone, which means it’s going to be expensive. It’s a 2-mana “mana rock”, which means it’ll see play in Commander tables. It’s a White “mana rock” in a format that already plays cards like Springleaf Drum in White decks, so maybe it has a place as a 1- or 2-of in some of those lists (Azorius Momo, for example), and the Infinity effect of blinking a card every turn is an effect people absolutely love. In my opinion, this is a near-perfect design from a card that isn’t even close to overpowered.

A pretty common Thing (ba-dum-tsh) in Fantastic Four comics is Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards) just deciding to build a machine that can absolutely ruin the multiverse on a random Tuesday. Usually it ends up being the Ultimate Nullifier, sometimes it’s The Bridge, but this time it’s The Fantasticar.

Most of us won’t notice the effects of this card, being that The Fantasticar is a Commander product. But Vintage players will cuss about this card for a LONG time. The idea is very simple: use Mishra’s Workshop to tap for 3 mana, conveniently the cost of The Fantasticar, then play a bunch of cards that cost 0… like Mana Crypt, Mox Sapphire and friends, and even Black Lotus!

If you don’t have a Workshop in your opening hand, that’s fine. Vintage players get to play with Tolarian Academy too, for some reason, and The Fantasticar doesn’t care whether you play it first, second, or third within a turn. As long as it’s on the table when you cast the 4th spell, you’re good. So yeah, enjoy this for a few months if you’re into Vintage, because this is probably getting restricted.

Marvel Super Heroes is also introducing a new cycle of allied-color lands (Marvel lands?) that I think are going to be very playable in each of Standard, Pioneer, and Modern!

The very first turn you play them, they just plain tap for their colors. This is excellent for decks like Spirits (of course) that appreciate having access to either color on Turn 1, and not dealing with self-damage like you otherwise would using cards like Adarkar Wastes. You do need a Basic land to tap for colors on later turns, and this is the part that will require some math to be done in formats without “fetch lands” like Flooded Strand, but I think these are worth considering.

But! Just like Adarkar Wastes, these lands also tap for Colorless. This is important for Eldrazi decks in Modern, since they actively need to be able to tap for Colorless mana when casting cards like Kozilek’s Command or Thought-Knot Seer. It’s also convenient that most effects that destroy lands (Field of Ruin, Cleansing Wildfire, and White Orchid Phantom) in Modern actively make you look for Basic lands, turning these Marvel lands on.

All-in-all, a great time to be coming back to Magic: the Gathering! Having new toys to play with in the middle of a Modern Regional Championship Qualifier season is pretty great, the announcement of Pioneer returning to pro play is exciting, and we’re about to see one of the most-anticipated set drops of all time. I plan on having a great time in the world of Magic this summer, I hope all of you do as well, and I’ll see y’all on the next one!