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Why everyone was wrong about Humans in Pioneer.
🕑 Added 2022-12-22 19:09:53 +0000 UTCWell not everyone was wrong as Humans was a popular deck in the metagame for all the RC’s and had one of the highest win rates, however when going into Dreamhack Atlanta a bunch of top players and pros all flocked towards Rakdos and Arclight Phoenix. So what happened, what was the disconnect? Anecdotal in the hall a lot of people told me they thought mono white might be the best choice but they ended up playing another deck.
From my personal standpoint looking and testing for Dreamhack Atlanta I had the deck as a B tier choice. By no means a slight on the deck and with every tier list it's never a surprise if a B tier deck does well. So what happened? How did we all get it so wrong?
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pioneer-mono-white-humans#paper
When talking about Humans I mentioned how it has an incredibly low fail rate and that is its strength. That is something that in formats like Modern I value incredibly highly, but for Pioneer I was looking to have more explosive draws available. The truth however is that as you play more Pioneer you come to see the flaws with every deck. No deck is perfect and they all have some real weakness that is exploitable and more importantly. They all have a serious fail rate.
This should have been a red flag to me. If everyone else is tripping over themselves every game we should be trying to capitalize on that. While your deck doesn't have a ton of interaction it does have a fair bit of post board with cards like Portable Hole, Lay down arms, destroy evil and Skyclave Apparition if you want it. I think myself and many others under-appreciated just how much having a singular interaction point can be all you need to push the damage you're needing. I should of also asked “Do I need a lot of interaction if I am simply killing my opponent or do I even want interaction?”
Speaking of pushing damage, there is a lesson I learned from Gerry Thompson that I had forgotten and once again has shown itself with this deck. “Grizzly Bears have no fail rate” I promise this isn't harping on the same point. It's more that your creatures with decent stats just kill people. I made the choice to play a fidgety cantrip heavy blue deck at the RC. Some games your arclight deck just spends time drawing cards and you fall behind on board and the opponent is able to pull ahead and win. While I do think arclight is a solid deck in Pioneer I think when its not open decklist combined with knowing what I know now, I would suggest avoiding it. While the Humans deck just always has creatures that push damage so when games go poorly you're able to capitalize and kill your opponent.
Don't get me wrong it's totally solid but it's just not as powerful or punishing as the Humans deck. Think about the best draw from the Humans player. Your opponent is dead on turn four. Now think about the same from phoenix? You can't even kill your opponent that early and it often is about lining up your spells well early. I am not saying interactive decks are terrible and you shouldn't play them, more you should be looking for times to exploit these choices people are making and lean into the strengths a deck presents along with not being scared to play the aggro deck at a big event.
This last part is one that a lot of players hinted at in conversation with me but I will just straight up say it. I wanted to qualify for the Pro Tour really badly, and I wasn't confident enough in my play skill with an aggro deck. I also wouldn't be able to stomach the fact that I might lose games because my deck just didn't come together. I let those things blind me and look at the flaw instead of seeing if the strengths outway those flaws. That is the sort of mindset that new players have who haven't come to fully appreciate the power of being the one asking the questions. I let a foolish and honestly flawed mind set dictate a big choice in my deck selection for a thing I really wanted.
While I did qualify for the Pro Tour I cant ignore this blemish in my preparation. I am a process driven person and want to be better than me from the last event, and while I did “do it” it feels more like luck then skill sometimes. So I wrote this article to highlight both the strengths of mono white and to hold myself accountable. If you can't be honest with yourself and others when you make a glaring mistake how can you expect to improve?
I hope you all learned something from this article today and you're able to do this sort of reflection in your own process and learn from my failings.
House keeping!
The sideboard article is still coming! I just had this in me and wanted to share it. I hope everyone is having a happy holidays and I hope you all have a great start to the new year AND the Pioneer RCQ season!
