Pioneer Deck of the Week: White-Blue Goes Big

In the past, when you thought about White-Blue Control in Pioneer, you'd think of cards like , , and . Recently another variant has taken over that uses none of these. Instead of keeping the field clear, its first order of business is to get the Field online, meaning . If necessary, it retrieves the key land with or grabs one of either or . Both enable the Field to come down on turn three without a sacrifice.

This means you get to untap with five mana, which conveniently is enough to cast , which conveniently untaps enough mana at the end of your turn to cast or on the opponent's. Spending a total of nine mana on your fourth turn (cycle) is nothing short of amazing, and mind, none of this even requires a fourth land drop!

Sure, the format knows decks able to outpace or trump this. Green Devotion can theoretically generate and spend hundreds of mana on turn four. But the option for a control deck to do its own broken thing, to take the lead, is something else entirely. It can cast on turn four, it still has and . Only sometimes it will go Proctor into Field into Teferi plus another Field, then use to make the opponent skip their fourth turn. That's hard to beat.

coincidentally has plenty of utility defensively. A 1/3 flier can be great against Spirits. Its ability hobbles draws that rely on or . It often cancels 's card draw and stops from finding . It takes the Blood from and the option to remove Deluge from . The list goes on to include highlights such as or and .

The main deck doesn't have enough countermagic to win a fair fight against a more traditional control build. However, thanks to Field, it can win an unfair fight by sideboarding . It substitutes brute force for the contemplative maneuvering expected of control mirrors, but that's the whole point of the deck anyway.

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