#153 - For Better or Worse: Historic Cards in Pioneer

The First Pioneers

While everybody is currently focused on the future and what the next set will bring for Pioneer this February, we thought it would be a good idea to look back. We did a few episodes on Explorer last year and how it inches ever so closer to a normal Pioneer format, but before Explorer was a thing everybody was playing Historic. I was one of those people and while everybody was out there trying to win, I was out there trying to collect cards that would be playable in Pioneer in the future when it came to the MTG Arena platform. I remember being excited by each Historic Anthology and looking for cards that I could make a "Pioneer lite" deck with, but now that Explorer is a thing I've kind of forgotten about many of those Historic cards.

But maybe we shouldn't have. Did you know that there are a good number of cards in Historic that came with Historic Horizons and Jumpstart that are legal in Pioneer such as Slivers? Or maybe you've always wanted to try and make Goblin Dark Dwellers work. Unfortunately, finding these Pioneer/Explorer legal cards on Arena can be a chore, especially if your parameters are set to only include Explorer legal sets. While some of these cards will show up if you type in the card type in a general search, if you don't know exactly what cards to look for you could be missing on on some neat tech your deck is missing.

But why stop there? While researching these cards in Historic, The First Pioneers thought it would be fun to see which other cards not in Explorer, such as the Modern Horizon or Alchemy Cards, might also make great additions to the Pioneer format in the future. And while you're listening, feel free to make a list of your own cards you think aren't too powerful for Pioneer from older sets and be sure to share them with us on Discord our Twitter!
Our Discord: https://discord.gg/SBRF8DH

Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/MtgPioneer

You can find our other episodes on the Untap Leagues website as well! https://untapleagues.com/author/the-first-pioneers/