by Johnny Cycles, March 13th, 2026
Hello! Welcome to another edition of Dragons in Pioneer! This month, I’m testing out the latest Dragon from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, North Wind Avatar. With a very powerful and unique enters ability that lets us get a card from our sideboard, this 5-mana 5/5 flier is undoubtedly a game changer. But will it be fast enough to compete in Pioneer? Let’s find out!
Decklist – Grixis North Wind Avatar
by Johnny Cycles
Format: Pioneer
Creatures (18)
| 4 Dragon Turtle | |
| 4 Magmatic Hellkite | |
| 3 Bonehoard Dracosaur | |
| 3 Glorybringer | |
| 4 North Wind Avatar |
Spells (11)
| 3 Fatal Push | |
| 3 Thoughtseize | |
| 3 Torch the Tower | |
| 2 Brotherhood’s End |
Enchantments (7)
| 3 Corroding Dragonstorm | |
| 4 Roiling Dragonstorm |
Lands (24)
Sideboard (15)
Deck Tech
Primary Game Plan
We are a true Midrange deck. In the early game, we’re looking to manage the board with interaction, while drawing cards to keep our hand flush with what we need. Once we transition to the late game, our Dragons will hopefully be too much for our opponents to handle. The centerpiece of the early game is Roiling Dragonstorm. It digs us for what we need and will frequently draw us more than six cards in a game.
Meanwhile, the centerpiece of the late game is our namesake card, North Wind Avatar. Our sideboard is full of silver bullets to cure what ails us. Once we resolve one copy of North Wind Avatar, whatever we get will hopefully either stabilize us or allow us to turn the corner.
Bridging the gap is the never-played (except by us) Dragon Turtle. Played on curve, we can tap down our opponent’s best threat, while also returning Roiling Dragonstorm or Corroding Dragonstorm to our hand. The value we get from this sequence is one of our main advantages.
Magmatic Hellkite serves as a powerful threat that can further slow our opponent down by hitting their resources. These two Dragons are excellent at buying us the time we need to make our land drops and find our finishers.
Glorybringer is the best Dragon in Pioneer. I was playing one copy in the board, but I cut it in favor of some graveyard hate.
Bonehoard Dracosaur is my true guilty pleasure card. Normally, I’d have another hasty Dragon in this spot, but I can’t resist the sheer card advantage we get from this Dinosaur Dragon should we untap with it. I think it’s too slow for Modern, which leaves Pioneer as the only 60-card format we can realistically play it in. Having played a few matches, however, I’m tempted to put one copy in the board to snag with North Wind Avatar and replace it with Stormbreath Dragon.
Sideboard
Given North Wind Avatar‘s enters trigger, the sideboard is full of silver bullet cards to help against the meta. In some cases, we’re playing two copies so that one can be sideboarded in and the other can remain a fetchable card with our signature Dragon. There is a lot of room for customization and I’ve already thought of tweaks I’d like to make after I finish the first league. That being said, most of my choices should be self-explanatory.
I’ve included a few more Dragons in the sideboard to snag to ensure we don’t run out of action. I’ve also included one Field of Ruin for those times we really want to keep making our land drops or need to kill a creature land.
I had originally planned on testing North Wind Avatar in Modern, but I think Pioneer is a better home for a non-hasty Dragon that lends itself to grindy games.
Match 1 vs. U/W Artifacts
Match 2 vs. Izzet Prowess
Match 3 vs. Amulet Titan (Spelunking Bear)
Match 4 vs. Greasefang
Overall Record: 2-2
Well, our real record was far worse. We lost to Greasefang two of three times and the Prowess decks three times, making our actual final record 2-6. I didn’t get to finish my second league and I scooped one whole match when I ran into the same opponent from my first league who played at a glacial pace (probably playing two matches at once). Stay tuned for match 5! I’m hoping to find a non-Prowess and non-Greasefang deck to play against for it.
Impressions From League Play
First, let me say a few words about Pioneer. According to mtggoldfish, 60% of Pioneer consists of Greasefang and Prowess decks. That’s nearly two-thirds of the the meta. Both of these decks play a game that requires maindeck hate to stand a chance, particularly for our Midrange strategy. I can tweak our deck accordingly, but going into the league, I didn’t think I’d run into these two decks for every match but two. Guess that one is on me.
Second, a meta dominated by a hyper aggressive deck and a graveyard deck is a pretty miserable meta, if you ask me.
However, having played these two decks so much, I would make a couple of changes to this North Wind Avatar deck.
First, I’d ditch Black for White. We need more exiled-based removal options to compete against the 2-mana creatures that fuel Greasefang via their indestructibility. White also gives us access to Temporary Lockdown and Authority of the Consuls, two cards that play well against both strategies. Alongside these two hates pieces, we can also run one of my favorite cards, High Noon.
And honestly, I only picked Grixis for this deck because I haven’t played Grixis Dragons much. My first instinct was to slot North Wind Avatar into my Azorius Dragons deck that I played for my last Dragons in Pioneer column, using my Jeskai Dragons build from Modern as a model. Hindsight being what it is, I should have stuck with my original plan.
Second, I would build my early interaction accounting for the meta more. I would definitely include Temporary Lockdown and High Noon in the main deck. Authority of the Consuls may go in the board.
All of this being said, North Wind Avatar is really powerful. The games in which we curved into it with things to do along the way were great. Sure, we still lost to Prowess when this happened, but it was always much closer (and we did win one game against them).
Much of our trouble wasn’t just match-up related. It was Midrange-related coupled with variance. With 24 lands, I didn’t expect to get mana screwed as often as I did. Too many games saw us lose, in part, to missing lands. I added the 25th land for my second league, and the deck played better.
As to the Midrange issue…well, that’s just the nature of the beast. When we draw lands and spells on curve (early interaction and card draw in turns 1, 2, and 3) and Dragons starting on turn 4 and onward, the deck felt competitive and powerful. However, if we stumble on mana, or simply find too many answers and not enough threats (or the other way around), then we’ll likely lose.
More card draw is a great way to ameliorate this, but with eight 2-mana enchantments to either draw us cards or sculpt our draws, I’m not sure how much more room we have to help with this problem. It is, unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of playing 5-mana creatures.
Changes to the Deck
Between leagues, I made a few changes worth mentioning. First, I cut the Corroding Dragonstorm. The lifegain and drain was only relevant in one game and, too often, we really wanted answers instead of more deck manipulation. I cut it in favor of one more Fatal Push, one more Torch the Tower, and two copies of Abrade.
I also cut Bonehoard Dracosaur, moving one to the board, to make room for these changes, plus the fourth copy of Glorybringer and another land.
In the sideboard, I cut some Dragons to make room for one Tormod’s Crypt and one Sheoldred’s Edict.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed the power and synergy of this deck! Unfortunately, Pioneer is in a place that makes this kind of Midrange strategy extremely difficult to win with. Major changes are required to fight the meta and, even then, our chances against Prowess and Greasefang might become 50/50. Both have very explosive starts, while Prowess is full of hasty threats that, with a single Boomerang Basics, come back from Temporary Lockdown to kill us dead.
That being said, North Wind Avatar didn’t disappoint. There is a ton of potential when building a deck around the new mythic from TMNT and I’m excited to see how it performs elsewhere. Thanks for reading and watching!
