by Johnny Cycles, September 20th, 2024

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Pioneer Curious! This month I’m playing nothing but Dragons! However, I’m making a last-minute change to my September Schedule (as I thought I might). Instead of running back my Gruul Dragons list in Pioneer, I’m excited to test out a Rakdos Dragons deck built around Magda, the Hoardmaster and Treasure tokens.

Decklist – Rakdos Dragons with Magda, the Hoardmaster

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Pioneer

Creatures (19)

4 Magda, the Hoardmaster
4 Atsushi, the Blazing Sky
4 Decadent Dragon
3 Stingerback Terror
4 Goldspan Dragon

Spells (11)

4 Fatal Push
3 Play with Fire
4 Thoughtseize
2 Go for the Throat

Artifacts (2)

2 Agatha’s Soul Cauldron

Enchantments (4)

3 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker

Lands (22)

2 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Blood Crypt
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Dragonskull Summit
3 Mountain
2 Raucous Theater
1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
3 Swamp
1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire

Sideboard (15)

2 Go for the Throat
3 Sheoldred’s Edict
2 Brotherhood’s End
2 Go Blank
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

Our primary game plan is to win a midrange game on the backs of big, flying Dragons!

Yes, I haven’t forgotten the name of the deck… Magda, the Hoardmaster is our build-around card, but, oddly enough, she isn’t our primary game plan. Why?

There are a few reasons for this. First, we don’t have access to some of Magic’s best early-game Treasure producers: Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Strike it Rich. This makes it impossible to accumulate three Treasure tokens by turn 3. That being said, even in my Modern builds with Magda, the Hoardmaster, I rarely wanted to cast her as early as possible. This leads me to my second reason the Dwarf isn’t our primary game plan.

She is too fragile. She dies to all the commonly played removal in the format. Running her out on turn 2 and hoping to untap with her is wishful thinking against most decks. Sure, Mono Green is still a thing, but more often than not, she’ll just draw out a kill spell. Without a legitimate threat in the 1-drop spot, like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Magda is almost guaranteed an early death.

We could solve this problem, of course, by playing something like Tinybones, the Pickpocket, but I’m saving him for next month’s article, when it’s Halloween time!

Where does that leave us with our primary game plan? Well, we’re playing a midrange strategy with early removal and hand disruption to get us to the mid-game, when we’ll start deploying our Dragons, most of whom make Treasure tokens themselves. Magda, the Hoardmaster, then, functions as our late-game finisher.

Ideally, our opponent will have died to our Dragon beats and Magda will remain with her hoard of Treasure. But, if they’ve managed to answer our big fliers, we’ll cast a Magda, the Hoardmaster and start pumping out Scorpion Dragon tokens on the back of our amassed Treasure hoard, hoping our opponent will have exhausted their potential answers to the 2-drop.

Will it work? There’s one way to find out!

But first…

Ways to Trigger Magda

Since Magda, the Hoardmaster‘s Treasure making ability can only trigger once a turn, we want ways to get value out of her on our opponent’s turn. The most obvious way we have of doing this is by casting our many instant-speed kill spells at some point before our opponent passes. However, since targeting our opponent’s graveyard also counts as committing a crime, we are incentivized to play main-deck graveyard hate that targets.

Enter Agatha’s Soul Cauldron.

We can trigger our Magda on our opponent’s turn, grow our team, and attack popular graveyard strategies, like Izzet Phoenix, all at the same time!

 

Why not Unlicensed Hearse? Honestly, I’m going to give this Vehicle a shot in some of my matches. There are some clear advantages to Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. First, we get two cards per tapping. This can certainly be relevant, as we see in our practice match against the Golgari deck playing Whip of Erebos. Second, it provides us another potential threat. Yes, growing a creature one +1/+1 counter at a time isn’t bad, particularly if we’re putting those counters on evasive Dragons or getting Magda out of reach of Play with Fire.

However, there will be games when even a 3/3 or 4/4 Magda, the Hoardmaster can’t attack profitably. With Unlicensed Hearse and its convenient crew , we can use Magda to pilot the long black car without losing our Scorpion Dragon generator in sneaky, or otherwise, combat.

Finally, Pioneer doesn’t seem flush with creatures with activated abilities. It may be there are decks we didn’t play where Agatha’s Soul Cauldron would really shine, but so far, I think Unlicensed Hearse is the better graveyard hate card that also triggers Magda on our opponent’s turn.

Match 1 vs. Golgari Graveyard

Match 2 vs. Gruul Prowess

Match 3 vs. Jund Sacrifice

Match 4 vs. Boros Midrange

Match 5 vs. Mono Red Aggro

Match 6 vs. Arcades-Walls

Match 7 vs. Ensoul Artifact

Overall Record: 3-4

Conclusion

Our final record is just under .500, which isn’t great. Our losses came against Jund Sacrifice, two aggressive Red-based strategies, and a Jeskai Ensoul Artifact deck. Our wins came against Golgari Graveyard, Boros Midrange, and Arcades-Walls, all of which are largely midrange strategies. Thus, we struggled against the aggressive decks full of cheap threats and 2-for-1 spells, while we were able to win the long game against more midrange strategies. Jund Sacrifice was the exception to this, though I’d call this deck more Combo than Midrange.

Thems are the facts. Here are the feelings:

The deck felt good. It felt powerful. It felt like it could beat any of the decks we played. The games we lost were close or due to total mana screw. I definitely made some mistakes along the way that compounded things, while in some of our losses, I could’ve taken a different line and possibly seen a different result. Our last match against Mono Red Aggro saw me take a patient line that may have given our opponent the chance to draw into the Embercleave they needed to win. Or, they could’ve had it the whole time and were patient themselves.

Unlike Rakdos Dragons in Modern, I firmly believe this is an archetype that can thrive in Pioneer. It may be a build without Magda, the Hoardmaster, but Rakdos has the cheap spells needed to interact with what opponents are doing, while the format lacks a plethora of commonly played removal for our big threats. The deck definitely felt competitive as is. Drawing a land on time, or a sideboard card we never saw, were the differences in some of our games.

Pioneer is Awesome

Full stop.

I didn’t run the deck through a league yet, so it could be the top decks are super degenerate. I’ll play a league next week when I have more time and find out. But, from what I saw in these seven matches, the format feels like it’s in a good place. Decks are fun, interactive, and synergistic. There’s a healthy amount of brewing and innovation. Midrange of old has a home among the best decks.

The more I play Pioneer, the more I’m convinced that if you yearn for a Modern circa 2015, then this is the format for you!

Thanks for reading and watching!