Like Dimir Inverter, the Lotus Breach deck broke out at Players Tour Series 1. Pioneer Mono-White Devotion Creatures (24) Heliod would give the Walking Ballista lifelink with its activated ability, the Ballista would do one damage to the opponent and get another +1/+1 counter thanks to Heliod’s static ability, and then the Ballista would do one more damage and get one more counter, and on and on. Mono-White Devotion, while not a pure combo deck, included the two-card infinite combo of Walking Ballista plus Heliod, Sun-Crowned. It would then use Kethis, the Hidden Hand to repeatedly cast cheap legends like Mox Amber from its graveyard and switch the target of the Diligent Excavator triggers to its opponent in order to mill them out and win the game. The deck’s main goal was to mill itself with Diligent Excavator and Emry, Lurker of the Loch in order to fill its graveyard with legendary permanents. Kethis, the Hidden Hand was the namesake card of the up-and-coming Kethis Combo deck, which had been ported from Standard to Pioneer after the legendary cards from Dominaria rotated last fall. Despite being banned in Modern and Legacy, as well as restricted in Vintage, Dig Through Time will live to see another day in Pioneer. While Inverter of Truth was the headline card out of the Dimir Inverter deck, many players believe that Dig Through Time was the deck’s most important enabler. It would then win the game by playing either a Thassa’s Oracle or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries in the next turn or two. The deck’s goal was to combine and Inverter of Truth with a relatively empty graveyard in order to dramatically reduce the size of their library. Inverter of Truth was the linchpin (and namesake) of the Dimir Inverter deck that debuted at Players Tour Series 1. “We want to ensure that Pioneer can deliver an enjoyable play experience to players who are looking for an accessible, nonrotating format that’s closer to Standard in power level and offers a variety of archetypes and decks to choose from.” “We understand that this represents a large change to the Pioneer environment, and, frankly, that’s the intent,” they continued. “This should open up the field for more traditional midrange and control decks and put less pressure on aggressive decks to also focus on hand disruption and counterspells.” “Our intent is to dramatically reduce instances where players risk losing to a combo kill when tapping out in the early- to mid-game,” Wizards said. To that end, Wizards decided to ban a key card from each of the most popular combo decks: Inverter of Truth from Dimir Inverter, Kethis, the Hidden Hand from Kethis Combo, Walking Ballista from Mono-White Devotion, and Underworld Breach from Lotus Breach. Ultimately, how much fun players are having with the environment is the most important driving force behind B&R updates, and so we’re choosing to ban four cards to shake things up and push the competitive metagame away from combo decks.” Creating a New Metagame Wizards concluded that “t’s clear that many players who have been, or could be, interested in Pioneer are ready for a change. “We’ve heard feedback that the frequency at which one finds themselves facing an opposing combo deck restricts deck-building options and can make play experiences unenjoyable,” they continued, and “we’ve also seen a decline in Pioneer play rates on Magic Online throughout the course of the year.” It turns out that, in spite of a balanced metagame, the number of people playing Pioneer had been dropping. “While win rate data may not point to change being needed, a different, more important set of data does: player participation.” “Although we continue to see many different decks have success in Pioneer, and no decks with problematic win rates against the field, we do see that combo decks as a group make up a large portion of the competitive metagame,” Wizards said. The result of a second look at the format led Wizards to the conclusion that, while Pioneer had a balanced metagame, it was dominated by combo decks that were having a negative impact on players enjoyment of the format. A Balanced Format Isn’t Always a Fun Format
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