Dryad Militant ability is useful versus Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise plus its agressive stats - all for 1CMC - is something that probably will be strong versus Nexus, Phoenix and Ux Control decks which I believe will be the new hotness after bans.
With so many creatures maybe move Vryn Wingmare mainboard would be good idea depending how metagame *****fs?
Mentor of the Meek is only ok for grindy matchups and then Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is better. With Benalish Marshal in play you're missing his ability most of the time as well. Militia Bugler might actually be a reasonable pick but he wouldn't be able to tutor the best, curve-end cards avalible and might fizzle quite often with current build. History of Benalia is OK but kinda slow as standalone card. I've tried Mono W Human Knights couple days ago and without some critical mass of creatures the card wasn't really that impressive. Brimaz, King of Oreskos underperformed to me as well. 3CMC 3/4 isn't that impressive even for Pioneer. Still, I'm having him as 1-of in my list as I really like him and maybe it will shine someday.
With so many colorless sources and high land count adding some Eldrazi might be better take instead of some mediocre anthem/pump creatures that are avalible in current Pioneer card pool. Mostly thinking about Eldrazi Displacer, Matter Reshaper and Thought-Knot Seer but maybe even Reality Smasher (although 5CMC is quite a lot without mana acceleration).
Yesterday we had small Pioneer tournament at LGS with 8 participants where I went 3-0 beating UR Phoenix, GB Constrictor Aggro and some UR Eldrazi jank. Here's the decklist:
Some takeouts from this tournament:
- Mana base is bad. There were 3 games when my opening hand contained Castle Ardenvale and Mutavault or Scavenger Grounds meaning I can't play 1-drop on t1. 14 White sources is definately not enough to consistantly play Benalish Marshal on curve (I had a game when I had 3 lands, 2 of which were colorless sources, for like 3-4 turns) and 8 Plains isn't enough to have Castle enter the battlefield tapped. Reducing the amount of Mutavaults to 2 is probably good idea. Scavenger Grounds prevented Phoenix player to cast its Treasure Cruize on g1 and Shefet Dunes allowed lethal push once.
- Gideon Blackblade was OK. He died immediately after he came into play vs GB player, pushed some dmg vs Phoenix player and exiled Thing in the Ice which had 1 last counter on it, which was crucial for me winning this game. Spear of Heliod killed Awoken Horror once, which was pretty big as well.
- Venerated Loxodon underperformed, as I expected. There was never a good time to cast him as there always was something else to cast and push some damage the same turn. Tapping out creatures to cast him and get them buffed proved to be very big downside as it pretty much means timewalking for oponent. I'll be definately cutting them and get something in their spot. Here I'm thinking of 2 options:
1) Lower the curve by getting some more cheap, efficient creatures (like 2x Dauntless Bodyguards to protect Marshals and maybe some additional 2-drops); this way I make my anthem effects better as well;
2) Increase the curve by getting more stong, standalone 4-5 CMC threats (thining about Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Heliod, God of the Sun and Archangel Avacyn). I'd also add +2-3x Legion's Landings to ramp up and play them more consistantly. The problem is that if I include them then the deck looks like more agressive but ultimately I think worse version of Azorius Tempo or Mono White Devotion. So this might be worse idea, dunno.
Overall deck feels OK, not great yet because there is definately a place to improve here, but I think I'm on the right track to make it a very viable archetype for this format.
Its main competition is Humans though (and not specifically mono white, humans can go Jeskai very easily). You said 2-drops were bad for weenies, but Humans have very good 2-drops. Hopefully Copter can fill the slot so easily in any aggro deck ! And if you have Mutavaults, you can still attack with one when you have nothing to do on turn 2.
I think that manabase for pioneer doesn't support 3c aggro decks that well. There is high risk that you won't have UWR on t3 to consistantly play Mantis Rider on curve. Aggro deck should stick with up to 2 colors in this format (Knights might try going Mardu with Tournament Grounds being avalible). Also sticking with Humans while their only payoff is Thalia's Lieutenant isn't that appealing. If I had to play some white tribal deck I'd rather play Knights (all good knights are Humans as well so Lieutenant can find home here too).
I don't want to stick with 1 tribe though. It limits decks options. Playing Dryad Militant, Selfless Spirit or Hushbringer is much worse then and the payoff isn't probably worth it.
I've played yesterday in my LGS with list above including some of advices Dennis wrote above and it went much better. Ended up 3-1 beating Hardened Scales, Boros Feather and some bit janky Aristocrats, while losing to the Gu Stompy (splashing U for Oko and counterspells) mostly because of my mistake and mulliganing to 5 cards in game 3, so the deck performed very well. Some takeouts:
- First of all maindeck Declaration in Stone worked better than Conclave Tribunal. 2 CMC and ability to hit more than 1 threat was far better than Tribunals flexibility. I played 3/1 Declarations/Conclaves maindeck and changed 3 Fragmentizes for 3 additional Conclaves in SB. I might want to play all 4/4 in my 75.
- Mobilized District really sucks. I thought it would be much better because of extra stats and all Gideons being played but I actually never had opportunity to activate it below 3 mana and that's way too much. Mutavaults will probably be much better.
- Desert package on the other hand was good. Exiling GY actually won me a game vs UR Phoenix as it denied playing Treasure Cruise, other game Shefet Dunes gave me lethal pumping bunch of tokens made from lands.
- White has poor choice of 2-drops in this format, all of them seem underwhelming. 3-drops on the other hand are very powerful in Benalish Marshal, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Gideon Blackblade and even Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is top tier 4 CMC card. I'm thinking about dropping Precinct Captains, sticking to 7-8x 2-drops and taking another 1 or 2 Legion's Landing so I could more consistantly go to 3+ mana.
- Anthems on the other hand seem lackluster. Marshal is actually easly removed, Spear is rather expensive and its ability isn't that easy to activate and Gideon, AoZ, as strong as he overall is, costs 4 CMC and isn't used as an anthem that often. Lack of Honor of the Pure in Pioneer really hurts.
I think this deck has huge potential to be top tier contender for this format with a lot of powerful tools and a lot of strong sideboard options making it very flexible depending on the metagame.
I've tried to make Pioneer version of my modern White Weenie deck. I figured I don't lose that many cards and with Brave the Elements being legal it should be very viable option, especially for couple of first weeks. After some playtesting here's what I came up with:
Deck utilizes some of the strongest White creatures that are in the format. With everything on curve and without being distrupted it can regularly kill on turn 4. It also has a lot of staying power and high single card value.
Mana base is rather wild but without Blood Moon it's not really punishing to play more nonbasic lands in mono-colored deck. With 4 Shefet Dunes I've decided to run some Scavenger Grounds which also made me use less slots in SB for GY hate. Westvale Abbey has yet to shine but I think it might be worthwhile.
Sideboard is mostly intuitive as metagame isn't really stable yet and everything could be changed. Deafening Silence vs all Emry and Phoenix stuff, Grafdigger's Cage vs GY and CoCo decks, Pithing Needle mostly vs planeswalkers (Saheeli, Oko) and ugly creatures that ruin my deck (Walking Ballistamostly), Hushbringer because I love her and there is always a meta where her abilities are relevant, Gideons in grindy, control matchups, and 1 Selfless Spirit because board wipes are the scariest things that can happen.
Some things came out to me after first playtests:
- Smuggler's Copter underperformed a bit. This deck consumes mana for various things - Kytheon, Spear, land abilities - and flooding doesn't hurt that badly. Also there is quite high power of all cards which makes discarding them a tough decissions. In theory it could be crewed with all the 1/1 tokens produced by lands but I never had situation when I had mana and opportunity to make these tokens. With the current amount of Gideons Heart of Kiran might be a better option. It is a bit stronger, is better on defence and makes Mobilized District activation cost less.
- Gideon Blackblade underperformed as well. While his power is obvious I think he's a better card in slower meta. Right now there are a lot of combo and aggro decks running around and not sure if he's the right play.
- Spear of Heliod and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar are here because I really wanted more anthems in this deck to pump all the small stuff. They are quite expensive though and I'm not yet sure if that is the right decission.
- I'm split on removal choice between Conclave Tribunal and Declaration in Stone. On one hand Tribunal is much better all around removal that can also pick other nonland, noncreature permanents (Saheeli, Oko, Marvel, vehicles). On the other hand Declaration costs less and might remove more targets at once (thinking of Field of the Dead, Thing in the Ice and Arclight Phoenix mostly).
Deck feels very powerful with right curve and adapts easly to the matchup after sideboard. Right now the only matchup I know I will have problems are artifact heavy decks (looking at you Hardened Scales) but without Stony Silence I don't see any good answers for these decks (the best I found is Cleansing Nova which costs way too much). If this deck will be popular then I might be forced to play Solemnity even though the card is very slow.
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With so many creatures maybe move Vryn Wingmare mainboard would be good idea depending how metagame *****fs?
Mentor of the Meek is only ok for grindy matchups and then Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is better. With Benalish Marshal in play you're missing his ability most of the time as well. Militia Bugler might actually be a reasonable pick but he wouldn't be able to tutor the best, curve-end cards avalible and might fizzle quite often with current build. History of Benalia is OK but kinda slow as standalone card. I've tried Mono W Human Knights couple days ago and without some critical mass of creatures the card wasn't really that impressive. Brimaz, King of Oreskos underperformed to me as well. 3CMC 3/4 isn't that impressive even for Pioneer. Still, I'm having him as 1-of in my list as I really like him and maybe it will shine someday.
With so many colorless sources and high land count adding some Eldrazi might be better take instead of some mediocre anthem/pump creatures that are avalible in current Pioneer card pool. Mostly thinking about Eldrazi Displacer, Matter Reshaper and Thought-Knot Seer but maybe even Reality Smasher (although 5CMC is quite a lot without mana acceleration).
2x Castle Ardenvale
4x Mutavault
8x Plains
2x Scavenger Grounds
4x Shefet Dunes
Creatures (23)
4x Dryad Militant
3x Kytheon, Hero of Akros
4x Soldier of the Pantheon
4x Selfless Spirit
4x Benalish Marshal
4x Venerated Loxodon
1x Gideon Blackblade
1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Enchantments (2)
1x Legion's Landing
1x Conclave Tribunal
Artifact (5)
4x Smuggler's Copter
1x Spear of Heliod
Instants & Sorcieries (8)
4x Brave the Elements
4x Declaration in Stone
3x Conclave Tribunal
2x Deafening Silence
2x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Hushbringer
3x Pithing Needle
- Mana base is bad. There were 3 games when my opening hand contained Castle Ardenvale and Mutavault or Scavenger Grounds meaning I can't play 1-drop on t1. 14 White sources is definately not enough to consistantly play Benalish Marshal on curve (I had a game when I had 3 lands, 2 of which were colorless sources, for like 3-4 turns) and 8 Plains isn't enough to have Castle enter the battlefield tapped. Reducing the amount of Mutavaults to 2 is probably good idea. Scavenger Grounds prevented Phoenix player to cast its Treasure Cruize on g1 and Shefet Dunes allowed lethal push once.
- Gideon Blackblade was OK. He died immediately after he came into play vs GB player, pushed some dmg vs Phoenix player and exiled Thing in the Ice which had 1 last counter on it, which was crucial for me winning this game. Spear of Heliod killed Awoken Horror once, which was pretty big as well.
- Venerated Loxodon underperformed, as I expected. There was never a good time to cast him as there always was something else to cast and push some damage the same turn. Tapping out creatures to cast him and get them buffed proved to be very big downside as it pretty much means timewalking for oponent. I'll be definately cutting them and get something in their spot. Here I'm thinking of 2 options:
1) Lower the curve by getting some more cheap, efficient creatures (like 2x Dauntless Bodyguards to protect Marshals and maybe some additional 2-drops); this way I make my anthem effects better as well;
2) Increase the curve by getting more stong, standalone 4-5 CMC threats (thining about Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Heliod, God of the Sun and Archangel Avacyn). I'd also add +2-3x Legion's Landings to ramp up and play them more consistantly. The problem is that if I include them then the deck looks like more agressive but ultimately I think worse version of Azorius Tempo or Mono White Devotion. So this might be worse idea, dunno.
Overall deck feels OK, not great yet because there is definately a place to improve here, but I think I'm on the right track to make it a very viable archetype for this format.
I don't want to stick with 1 tribe though. It limits decks options. Playing Dryad Militant, Selfless Spirit or Hushbringer is much worse then and the payoff isn't probably worth it.
Anafenza actually might be reasonable. Will test her.
- First of all maindeck Declaration in Stone worked better than Conclave Tribunal. 2 CMC and ability to hit more than 1 threat was far better than Tribunals flexibility. I played 3/1 Declarations/Conclaves maindeck and changed 3 Fragmentizes for 3 additional Conclaves in SB. I might want to play all 4/4 in my 75.
- Mobilized District really sucks. I thought it would be much better because of extra stats and all Gideons being played but I actually never had opportunity to activate it below 3 mana and that's way too much. Mutavaults will probably be much better.
- Desert package on the other hand was good. Exiling GY actually won me a game vs UR Phoenix as it denied playing Treasure Cruise, other game Shefet Dunes gave me lethal pumping bunch of tokens made from lands.
- White has poor choice of 2-drops in this format, all of them seem underwhelming. 3-drops on the other hand are very powerful in Benalish Marshal, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Gideon Blackblade and even Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is top tier 4 CMC card. I'm thinking about dropping Precinct Captains, sticking to 7-8x 2-drops and taking another 1 or 2 Legion's Landing so I could more consistantly go to 3+ mana.
- Anthems on the other hand seem lackluster. Marshal is actually easly removed, Spear is rather expensive and its ability isn't that easy to activate and Gideon, AoZ, as strong as he overall is, costs 4 CMC and isn't used as an anthem that often. Lack of Honor of the Pure in Pioneer really hurts.
I think this deck has huge potential to be top tier contender for this format with a lot of powerful tools and a lot of strong sideboard options making it very flexible depending on the metagame.
2x Castle Ardenvale
1x Mobilized District
10x Plains
2x Scavenger Grounds
4x Shefet Dunes
1x Westvale Abbey
Creatures (23)
4x Dryad Militant
3x Kytheon, Hero of Akros
4x Soldier of the Pantheon
2x Precinct Captain
3x Selfless Spirit
4x Benalish Marshal
1x Brimaz, King of Oreskos
2x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
2x Gideon Blackblade
1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Enchantments (5)
1x Legion's Landing
4x Conclave Tribunal
Artifact (5)
4x Smuggler's Copter
1x Spear of Heliod
Instants & Sorcieries (4)
4x Brave the Elements
3x Deafening Silence
2x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1x Gideon Blackblade
2x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Hushbringer
3x Pithing Needle
1x Selfless Spirit
Deck utilizes some of the strongest White creatures that are in the format. With everything on curve and without being distrupted it can regularly kill on turn 4. It also has a lot of staying power and high single card value.
Mana base is rather wild but without Blood Moon it's not really punishing to play more nonbasic lands in mono-colored deck. With 4 Shefet Dunes I've decided to run some Scavenger Grounds which also made me use less slots in SB for GY hate. Westvale Abbey has yet to shine but I think it might be worthwhile.
Sideboard is mostly intuitive as metagame isn't really stable yet and everything could be changed. Deafening Silence vs all Emry and Phoenix stuff, Grafdigger's Cage vs GY and CoCo decks, Pithing Needle mostly vs planeswalkers (Saheeli, Oko) and ugly creatures that ruin my deck (Walking Ballistamostly), Hushbringer because I love her and there is always a meta where her abilities are relevant, Gideons in grindy, control matchups, and 1 Selfless Spirit because board wipes are the scariest things that can happen.
Some things came out to me after first playtests:
- Smuggler's Copter underperformed a bit. This deck consumes mana for various things - Kytheon, Spear, land abilities - and flooding doesn't hurt that badly. Also there is quite high power of all cards which makes discarding them a tough decissions. In theory it could be crewed with all the 1/1 tokens produced by lands but I never had situation when I had mana and opportunity to make these tokens. With the current amount of Gideons Heart of Kiran might be a better option. It is a bit stronger, is better on defence and makes Mobilized District activation cost less.
- Gideon Blackblade underperformed as well. While his power is obvious I think he's a better card in slower meta. Right now there are a lot of combo and aggro decks running around and not sure if he's the right play.
- Spear of Heliod and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar are here because I really wanted more anthems in this deck to pump all the small stuff. They are quite expensive though and I'm not yet sure if that is the right decission.
- I'm split on removal choice between Conclave Tribunal and Declaration in Stone. On one hand Tribunal is much better all around removal that can also pick other nonland, noncreature permanents (Saheeli, Oko, Marvel, vehicles). On the other hand Declaration costs less and might remove more targets at once (thinking of Field of the Dead, Thing in the Ice and Arclight Phoenix mostly).
Deck feels very powerful with right curve and adapts easly to the matchup after sideboard. Right now the only matchup I know I will have problems are artifact heavy decks (looking at you Hardened Scales) but without Stony Silence I don't see any good answers for these decks (the best I found is Cleansing Nova which costs way too much). If this deck will be popular then I might be forced to play Solemnity even though the card is very slow.