The Best Decks & Stories from Pioneer LEC Athens

There's a lot you can learn when you go from casting spells as a player to the role of caster, doing commentary. Here are stories from behind the scenes, notes on the latest developments in Pioneer, the sweetest decklists, and more from the recent Regional Championship in Greece!

The coverage team

The coverage team

I was in Athens to provide commentary for Legacy's live stream of the European Regional Championship. The format was Pioneer, and over 450 qualified players came from all over the continent to compete for prizes and invites to the Pro Tour and even Worlds. Let's take a look at the metagame and the lists they brought to the table!

The Pioneer Metagame

Coming into Athens, most players had suspected that Rakdos Midrange and Monogreen Devotion would be the most popular decks. Much to nobody's surprise, the prediction proved true. However, the actual percentages were lower than what we had anticipated. Rakdos accounted for around 17% of the metagame and Devotion for 12%, while we were ready to see 25% and 20%, respectively. Interestingly, the third place did not go to Greasefang, Monowhite, or Lotus but to Izzet Creativity. After its win in Valencia the deck became much more popular, supposedly offering the perfect recipe for an interactive deck with a robust finish.

day 1 metagame
Data and graphics courtesy of Legacy European Tour

Another fact worth pointing out is that Enigmatic Fires and Rakdos Sacrifice ended up with a way higher representation than they enjoyed previously. Fires is a deck that preys on Rakdos Midrange, and Sacrifice is a spin on the black-red color combination that attacks from a different angle and is more proactive. It further shows that the Pioneer metagame is still evolving.

After Day 1 we managed to get aggregate win percentages for all the decks that participated in the event. Not so surprisingly, Rakdos and Monogreen won less than half of their matches. Despite being touted the best decks, the amount they actually won was pretty lackluster. Like a knight in shining armor on a pearly white horse, we see Azorius Control with almost 56% win rate, which is very high for a deck that's well represented. While it had a bad weekend in Valencia, it came back in full force at the Regional Championship level. Rakdos Sacrifice proved that it's a strong contender for the best black-red strategy in the format.

win rates

To advance to the second day of competition, players had to go 6-3 or better across the first day's nine rounds. From over 450 players, we went to around 110. Just about a quarter stayed.

Day 1 concluded with just a single player undefeated at 9-0, and that was Marc Tobiasch on … Combo with and ! Marc being the only person who had brought the deck meant that Storm Herald Combo automatically had win and conversion rates of 100%.

Storm Herald Combo by Marc Tobiasch
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Overall the Day 2 meta looked awfully similar to the Day 1 picture. The biggest difference was that Azorius Control jumped to the third place and we see Boros Convoke peeking through. Rakdos's representation further diminished down to 15%. I heard incredulous players tell stories of how they played against Rakdos not even once on Day 2. This time you couldn't just say, "I have a good Rakdos matchup so I'm fine," as the metagame had opened up tremendously.

day 2 metagame

The Top 8

The Top 8 featured seven distinct archetypes! And the archetype that appeared twice was not a deck you'd expect but Rakdos Sacrifice. It's a complete change from what we'd seen in Valencia, where Monowhite Humans and Izzet Creativity had dominated, neither of which made the cut here.

top 8 players

To get to the elimination rounds one had to go at least 11-3-1, but there were still four players with such a score who didn't reach the quarterfinals. Let's take a look at the lists that did.

Rakdos Sacrifice by Lorenzo Terlizzi
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Sacrifice had a really good weekend thanks to being so invulnerable to removal. and are not cards that you'd like to . In conjunction with and they make for a strategy that can easily grind through multiple pieces of interaction. Its own plan revolves around three-drops in and . One you cannot contend with on a one-for-one basis, and the other has a deadly ceiling but falls to .

Rakdos Midrange by Toni Martos
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Rakdos Midrange is the format's bogeyman, but only a single copy reached the playoffs—and managed to get as far as the semifinals. The list is largely standard, with the most remarkable choices its main-deck and three in the board, presumably gunning for Devotion and Convoke. instead of is nice technology to surprise players running , able to capitalize on its game-ending trigger.

Azorius Control by Tin Mihael Capar
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Do not adjust your screens. This is Azorius Control with triple in the land section. The idea originated with Shota Yasooka who added Mutavault to Rakdos Midrange as a land that's always untapped and provides utility at little cost. The same logic applies here, with Mutavault not only helping kill off planeswalkers but also getting pumped by and . It's a creature of all types after all.

Rakdos Sacrifice by Christoffer Larsen
Main DeckSideboard
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The second Sacrifice deck was almost card-to-card identical to the first. This version utilizes , though, to combat small-creature decks like Elves, Humans, or Convoke.

Monogreen Devotion by Miguel Simoes
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Stock Monogreen usually includes nowadays. It seems the Hydra is here to stay. A main-deck gave Miguel a higher density of threats—and answers. The sideboard is fifteen singletons, and can grab all of them.

Demilich Phoenix by Nils Gutierrez von Porat
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Arguably the biggest surprise of the weekend. Not only was there an deck that did well, which is already astonishing, but it also ran four copies of , a card that we have not seen in a long time. Ditching and for Demilich indicates a bigger inclination to go all in on the graveyard angle, embracing all the upsides and downsides that come with it. Cards like were nowhere to be found, which is a perfect environment for such a deck to thrive.

Azorius Spirits by Przemysław Olszewski
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Przemysław was one of the finalists who managed to secure a Worlds invite thanks to the outstanding result. He is a powerful Polish wizard who's known on the Legacy circuit, for example for his Top 8 in Copenhagen. The list he submitted was relatively normal as far as Azorius goes, but the choice over monobue is certainly important. When looking closely, we find the sideboard contains literally fifteen white cards, clearly a reason to opt for the additional color. You get to play removal, better disruption overall, and tools to go wide postboard. Azorius Spirits had a very good weekend.

Boros Convoke by Federico Vuono
Main DeckSideboard
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The eventual winner, Federico, brought the strategy that some consider as strong as . He finished in first place, qualified for the Pro Tour and Worlds, and took a huge lump of money home on top. This list eschews in exchange for a companion and . This choice makes it a tad less explosive but more resilient in the face of removal or games going longer. Huge congrats to the winner!

the champion

The Stories of the Weekend

There was no shortage of exciting moments and situations during the weekend. There were plenty unconventional plays and decisions and heartwarming moments. Let me share with you but a few.

I have to admit that the matches I covered were some of the best I'd ever watched. We witnessed our Top 8 Phoenix player win on a mulligan to four! That same player had multiple games where an army of Demiliches avalanched a stampede on the opponent. One time, with in hand, they decided to destroy instead of with the intention of playing more of a control game—and it paid off handsomely with this strategic decision winning the whole game and match.

We also watched Doomswitch, a renowned online grinder, use on his own , anticipating . This play converted the Troll into one more mana and isolated him from the mass removal. On the very next turn, the Rakdos player did deploy Event, making that Wand trick one of the best plays of the weekend.

There were also incredible twists and turns where one player went from losing to winning in a span of seconds. Far behind, the Rakdos Sacrifice player topdecked to take , which copied his and was then sacrificed to 's casualty! This sequence of events made that game so much more competitive.

All that said, the best card of the tournament was . I highly recommend rewatching the finals of the event, cast by yours truly, where this innocent Bird-Construct amalgamation was able to hold the fort for the Convoke player against Spirits. Had it not been for Ornithopter, we'd have a different winner.

ornithopter
All in all the event was a ton of fun. If you want to catch the coverage and listen to my commentary of the games, go visit Legacy's official YouTube channel. As always, remember to hold my hand, and let's pass the turn together. See you in Bologna. Cheers!

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of Cardmarket.