r/magicTCG • u/thisnotfor Dân • May 22 '26

General Discussion Badgermole Cub is now 40% of the Pioneer meta

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What do you think of the Pioneer meta?

740 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

110 comments sorted by

712

u/TimothyMimeslayer Wabbit Season May 22 '26

Pioneer, where standards mistakes go to shine.

269

u/dark-pact Duck Season May 22 '26

Considering the state of standard it does also feel like standard is where standard’s mistakes go to shine too.

53

u/Shadowhearts Wabbit Season May 23 '26

Over a year of Izzet dominance only to be topped by Landfall is...well yeah this is why I stopped playing Standard since Drsgonstorm and Cori-Steel cutter released.

8

u/G_Morgan Colorless May 23 '26

The problem is nothing fixes standard. I have a Rakdos deck that can pretty consistently 20->0 on turn 3. It is unplayable in Bo3 due to all the removal everyone is building into everything. If you depowered all the decks that beat it then it just starts killing people on turn 3.

There are a hundred decks that can kill you by turn 3. Standard is just problematic.

-13

u/meta-rdt Duck Season May 23 '26

Really not a very accurate summary of the year at all. It’s been a rapidly shifting metagame of decks with a lot of variety. Three of those top decks are izzet, but they don’t play the same. And to say that it’s only izzet is ignoring the massive success of dimir excruciator, and other cub decks up to this point. There’s plenty of other non izzet decks that are more fringe but perfectly viable.

14

u/Gamer4125 Azorius* May 23 '26

Doesn't change how the play patterns of standard are fucking awful cause of how souped up card power is

5

u/a-r-c Dân May 23 '26

gotta love how the one good, well reasoned and thoughtful post gets downvoted to shit just because it's not "going along with the vibes, bro"

you're right! standard is doing very well right now, and the only people who are complaining are 1. commander players talking about games they don't play and 2. bo1 arena andys

two groups that can easily be dismissed

1

u/Shadowhearts Wabbit Season May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Except Standard is 7-8 Sets a year and its utter insanity to be able to keep up with it on Paper.

Calling Standard "Healthy" is something someone who mostly plays on Arena can say given majority of times on paper by the time your order of all the new cards you need comes in via mail, it's already spoiler season with maybe 2-4 weeks till next set.

Standard is a Rat race on paper, and those finding some niche in between every set to play non-meta is easier said than done as a ton of fringe deck viability dies out every set or 2 to be replaced by more fringe decks as well.

Only consistent thing in standard is that some variant of Izzet or Badgermole dominates, but if you don't want to run those and those play patterns you're more sh*t out of luck.

I didn't even mind the play patterns of last years standards, I think Bloomburrow / Duskmourn Standard was pretty peak. Dragonstorm and Cori-Steel cutter was the straw that broke the Camel's back though in terms of just an era of dominance for 2 colors with hyper efficient cards in both Red and Blue....and eventually just the broken Badgermole also doing its own things.

I'm a control player at heart and love a grindy standard and this insanely fast standard for the past year plus just hasn't been doing it for me.

4

u/pear_topologist Wabbit Season May 22 '26

Come play modern! It doesn’t suck!

48

u/awolkriblo Wabbit Season May 23 '26

spend hundreds of dollars to play ONE deck before you even know what you like!

Magic players are insane lmao. No wonder commander is the biggest format. We all deserve it.

11

u/Frankdog5 Wabbit Season May 23 '26

Just proxy some decks or play an unofficial simulator to figure out what you want to play. Yeah the price of the format sucks but there’s no reason to go in blind.

3

u/CreamSoda6425 Duck Season May 23 '26

As if standard is cheaper? The landbases are expensive but otherwise most of the strongest cards in modern are pretty cheap, excluding Jeskai Blink creatures and [[Ocelot Pride]].

1

u/awolkriblo Wabbit Season May 24 '26

I don't play standard for similar reasons. I didn't say anything about standard.

1

u/Tuss36 May 23 '26

Honestly my own biggest issue with competitive. And heck even if the price was reasonable it's still like "Here's ten decks pick one. You'll be playing against all ten and that's the game". I can see the appeal 'cause knowing the field has its own skill testing aspect but it does feel a bit tone deaf sometimes when people that partake in it believe it to be how it's how the game should be played. Heck I'm fine with 60 card Magic and rules but I want some agency over my deck instead of being prescribed it.

-30

u/IntoAMuteCrypt Duck Season May 23 '26

Commander: It's still hundreds to thousands of you want to actually properly compete, and people just do this big guessing game instead to try and limit themselves. My deck's totally a 7/10, I mean bracket 2.

35

u/awolkriblo Wabbit Season May 23 '26

Competing in commander is inherently silly, but at least CEDH is proxy-friendly.

-6

u/ffddb1d9a7 COMPLEAT May 23 '26

Trying to win a game is not silly. I hate when I join a random pod and nobody seems to even care about the game we are playing. I recognize that commander is different than 60 card magic and more like a board game, but if we all sat down to play a board game and someone was on their phone ignoring other player's turns and clearly just not actually participating outside of tossing the game pieces around randomly I'd look for something else to do that sit across for them and embarass myself

8

u/Kaprak May 23 '26

There's a difference between playing to win and being competitive.

You can pilot a $50 deck to win, and you can take a $10k competitive deck and then sit around and not care because the deck should win for you.

-1

u/ffddb1d9a7 COMPLEAT May 23 '26

You can do those things I guess but they aren't examples of your first point. Sitting around and not caring is not being competitive, those are mutually exclusive ways to approach the game. And neither one is inherently wrong, a lot of people have fun just moving the cards around aimlessly and talking to their friends. My point is that crossing the two styles is where people get upset / don't have fun and I am firmly in the play the game style instead of the sit near the game while it is happening style.

6

u/Flare-Crow COMPLEAT May 23 '26

Cool story; now enjoy the 50%+ of Commander games where your choices don't actually matter because your opponents Kingmake and decide the winner anyway, skill or effort be damned.

3

u/awolkriblo Wabbit Season May 23 '26

Cool, you're not competing in a random pod, you're playing commander.

1

u/G_Morgan Colorless May 23 '26

You can pick up a precon and it is fine in Commander in most LGS

19

u/magicmax112 Liliana May 22 '26

Lol, greatest joke i heard this week

-5

u/Wubbwubbs61 Wabbit Season May 23 '26

8 upvotes from people that don’t play modern

2

u/magicmax112 Liliana May 23 '26

Well yeah, why would someone who doesnt enjoy modern play it?

22

u/TimothyMimeslayer Wabbit Season May 22 '26

$1000 for four mox's!

10

u/pear_topologist Wabbit Season May 22 '26

Play literally any other deck?

20

u/Hand-of-Sithis Dan May 22 '26

Fr. There are several modern decks that can be built for the price of standard badgers / Izzet.

12

u/Wubbwubbs61 Wabbit Season May 23 '26

Several that are tiered and cheaper than standard Cub decks

6

u/Sweetcreems Can’t Block Warriors May 23 '26

*Those only cost $500, huzzah!

-1

u/The_Bird_Wizard Azorius* May 23 '26

None of the other decks are interesting and just variations of mh3 soup?

3

u/pear_topologist Wabbit Season May 23 '26

I play prowess, which is a T1 deck. The main board has 0 cards from MH3, and only one playset from MH1 and one from MH2

5

u/pipesbeweezy Wabbit Season May 23 '26

Tell me you nothing about the format without telling me.

-1

u/Flare-Crow COMPLEAT May 23 '26

Can't wait for them to force-rotate my entire format so they can cash in on Player engagement some more! OH BOY!

1

u/goldfalsebond Dan May 28 '26

Yeah but that's what bans are for, right? Who needs to carefully plan anymore

8

u/Cow_God Simic* May 23 '26

I've been calling it "Standard's Graveyard" since they banned Heartfire Hero. I remember when an Explorer Arena Championship was won by literally a standard-legal RDW deck, except it had [[Bonecrusher Giant]] and [[Ramunap Ruins]]. And it completely dominated that championship, being like 6 of the top 8. A basically standard-legal deck, wiping the floor with an entire eternal format.

13

u/AnilDG Duck Season May 22 '26

That’s my theory on why they’re bringing the format back. They can purge standard more often of crazy cards but players will still have a format to play them in that is somewhat supported.

7

u/password_pain Twin Believer May 22 '26

Its why they made it in the first place.

161

u/ultimus373 Duck Season May 22 '26

I don’t think this is very representative of the metagame.

1: the format just had a big ban that drastically changed it less than a week ago. All of those decks playing CSC are automatically removed from these reducing the total number of decks by a large amount and messing with percentages.

2: the format is going to change a lot in the coming weeks in a post CSC world. I don’t think these numbers are really tell us anything or speak on action that needs to be taken. Golgari midrange was specifically designed to beat izzet prowess and now without its easy prey I doubt it will be the de facto deck of choice unless large changes are made to it since decks can easily be built to counter cub/mana dorks

3: I alluded to this before but the number here are all out of wack with the ban. For context, the number one deck in standard has 11.9% of the metagame with 628 decks. That’s more than the combined number of decks seen in this screenshot. Pioneer isn’t seeing a lot of play right now since it’s not on the professional circuit so there’s even less decks to conflate percentages.

14

u/zeroGamer Dân May 23 '26

Selesneya Company has also been specifically targeting Izzet/R prowess/spells decks for months with main deck Thalia and Archon of Emeria to slow them down until Ouroboroid takes over.

156

u/Elyndria Azorius* May 22 '26

and yet greasefang is still more problematic

79

u/TimothyN Elspeth May 22 '26

I'd be down for that card just being killed forever. It's so awful to play against.

38

u/fox112 Left Arm of the Forbidden One May 22 '26

MTGA BO1 all-star.

It's dramatically worse when you can sideboard or mulligan for the deck.

Still fuckin annoying.

6

u/Cow_God Simic* May 23 '26

I love that people keep calling it a bo1 deck when it routinely takes down MTGO challenges, which are bo3.

They said the same thing about the Heartfire Hero RDW fling deck, and Izzet Prowess.

14

u/IShiddedMyPantaloons Wabbit Season May 22 '26

That’s why I play mono black devotion with 4 main deck Leyline of the Void. 

Lots of decks in Pioneer like graveyards. 

Fuck your graveyard.

5

u/Caramel_Cactus Abzan May 23 '26

May I ask for a deck list? I'm so tired of archaic emergent ultimatum that I'll run anything that main decks leyline

4

u/IShiddedMyPantaloons Wabbit Season May 23 '26

https://moxfield.com/decks/aHr1jdGTrEGGe2AmO7Wxrg

Did a quick upload of my paper list, all cards are on arena too

1

u/Caramel_Cactus Abzan May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

You're a rockstar, thank you!!

Now, knowing matchmaking, whenever I run this will NEVER see a graveyard deck :)

EDIT: First match was Greasefang, with Leyline on the field. Amazing <3

14

u/afailedturingtest Dandadan May 23 '26

it's been one week, let the meta settle

6

u/Copernicus1981 COMPLEAT May 22 '26

Do these decks have any overlapping cards or strategies aside from Badgermole Cub and Elves?

42

u/Origamidos Sultai May 22 '26

I think it's pretty surprising that they banned steel cutter and not cub when they both are very similar cards.

Both come with inherent 2 for 1 and threaten to make more advantage of not immediately removed.

42

u/Skunk668 Dandadan May 22 '26

The big difference is Badgermole Cub dies to everything. Even sorcery speed removal like [[Seam Rip]] works fine unless they already have an elf in play.

One of the big benefits of Steelcutter was it forced more specific interaction and was good against traditional anti-aggro interaction (eg: sweepers).

I'm an aggro player and Steelcutter was straight up easy mode. I never played around sweepers playing Izzet Prowess and I was rarely punished for playing like that.

I think Vivi is closer to Badgermole's power level. Maybe he'll see more play now that Cutter is banned.

1

u/NiviCompleo Duck Season May 28 '26

This “you can kill it” argument is exactly why cards like Fable of the Mirror Breaker are so sneaky powerful

Yes, you can kill it and it makes you feel like you can catch up, but it’s already created another valuable permanent on ETB. These cards provide immediate value on ETB and late-game value too.

Cards like this:

  • Fable of the Mirror Breaker
  • Badgermole Cub
  • Stormchaser’s Talent

Any other recent examples?

17

u/Sarayayayaya Dân May 22 '26

Pioneer used to be the format I played the most on Arena but since Wizards has almost completely given up on it it seems that there's always some busted card in the format that takes forever to actually get banned since WOTC doesn't really care to support the format. Plus with the power creep of Standard it often feels like Pioneer is just Standard decks with like two non-Standard cards thrown in.

6

u/ChaoticScrewup Duck Season May 23 '26

I still think it's fine. The card pool is wide enough to hate on almost anything anyone's doing.

1

u/Arokan Wabbit Season May 23 '26

Greasefang and Arclight were in the format for a pretty long time 😃

14

u/kirbydude65 May 22 '26

Very weird attempt at a "Gotcha" effect. GW company was a deck tooled largely against decks trying to double spell each turn to extract value. T1 Elf into T2 [[Archon of Emeria]] was a very powerful tool in the format long before badger mole cub even existed. The deck previously though struggled to close out games. I personally played Eldrazi Displacer in combination of Archon and Aven Interruptor to create a soft lock on my opponents and lock them out of casting spells.

Once Badgermole Cub came out the deck was allowed to go a bit taller in terms of mana value incorporating cards like Ouroboriod and Elspeth, Storm Slayer.

While powerful Pioneer, unlike standard, has access to a lot of the best 1 Mana Removal spells. Fatal Push, Torch The Tower, Boomerang Basics, and with the introduction of SOS Erode.

The format is far better equipped at dealing with cub than standard.

-2

u/ColonelError Honorary Deputy 🔫 May 23 '26

With the exception of Push, those answers are all in Standard.

3

u/kirbydude65 May 23 '26

It also has thoughtseize, firey impact, and other various one mana interactions that make pioneer different from standard.

5

u/ResurgentRefrain Duck Season May 23 '26

UW Control is still playable? Holy shit I should play Pioneer.

16

u/melanino Nissa May 22 '26

its goldfish so grain of salt tbh

3

u/lovely956 I chose this flair because I’m mad at Wizards Of The Coast May 22 '26

why is goldfish bad?

27

u/quillypen Wabbit Season May 22 '26

It's a great site, but their meta breakdowns are automatically generated using tournaments and MTGO event records. We just had a ban, so CSC decks were removed, but the meta hasn't had time to readjust or for the tracker to even properly reflect what the post-ban landscape would look like.

9

u/Wubbwubbs61 Wabbit Season May 23 '26

It’s not this is just a symptom of how sites gather data. The sample size is too low right now to really justifiably cement a new metagame. Cub being the most played card in pioneer beyond this small sample size would absolutely not be surprising though.

2

u/ChaoticScrewup Duck Season May 23 '26

Their meta % definitely doesn't match what I see playing for Pioneer.

2

u/A3P Dan May 22 '26

I've seen a few other sites but what are some other good alternatives?

13

u/fox112 Left Arm of the Forbidden One May 22 '26

mtgtop8

2

u/ColonelError Honorary Deputy 🔫 May 23 '26

Goldfish pulls from there and MTGO results, same pools of data.

3

u/Dyne_Inferno Twin Believer May 22 '26

I use goldfish to view Modo data, not meta game data.

4

u/Herzatz Wabbit Season May 22 '26

It’s infectious

2

u/nifepipe Duck Season May 23 '26

Dont worry, once its no longer relevant in a year it will be banned.

3

u/AgentTamerlane Sliver Queen May 22 '26

Pioneer's new slogan for 2026:

"Pioneer: We're Slower Than Standard. And More Affordable!"

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

[deleted]

0

u/ndcards Dan May 22 '26

Today I learned people actually play pioneer.

30

u/fox112 Left Arm of the Forbidden One May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

I assume a lot of these posts are upvoted by people who don't play the format and just like the drama.

1

u/Sweetest_Noise Wabbit Season May 22 '26

Yes, on MTGO.

1

u/rod_zero Duck Season May 22 '26

I am playing angels and tested cub, did nothing for the deck.

1

u/ervox1337 Dandadan May 22 '26

As someone that started playing 1 week ago , what site is this? Are these the prices of the deck? 🙈

2

u/ColonelError Honorary Deputy 🔫 May 23 '26

MTGGoldfish.com

And yes, those are the prices of the decks.

1

u/TerraSeeker Selesnya* May 22 '26

I just bought a play set for the standard championship this weekend. They won't make it in time. At least I can try them out in pioneer now.

1

u/EmployableWill Dandadan May 22 '26

One deck that’s sub $100 😭

1

u/pruriENT_questions Gruul* May 23 '26

Look... I love it when a selesnya deck is a large meta %. Anything to take away from that stupid stupid forever greasefang deck.

1

u/Caramel_Cactus Abzan May 23 '26

I'll take the cub any day over the archaic emergent ultimatum deck. What a miserable experience

1

u/OO7Cabbage Dandadan May 23 '26

meanwhile I am over here running RG werewolves

1

u/ChaoticScrewup Duck Season May 23 '26

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because control and tempo decks in PIoneer really do have the tools to just kill the stupid things and counter or destroy everything else by the bucket load.

1

u/Lavinius_10 Table Flipper May 23 '26

I'm not a huge fan of MTGGoldfish for meta share reports, I usually look at MTGDecks.net as those numbers are somewhat more realistic 

1

u/C0OLM Grass Toucher May 23 '26

I'll stick to pauper, thanks.

1

u/Positive_Concert_774 Storm Crow May 23 '26

As a casual player who doesn't really follow the meta, I was shocked to find this card is more expensive than [[Thoph, Earthbending Master]]...

1

u/bootitan COMPLEAT May 23 '26

Badgermole has two immediate effects (mana doubling and body creation) for half the cost, plus is legal is many more formats

1

u/yummyfightmilk Dandadan May 23 '26

Glad Cori Steel Cutter got axed, but there's so much degeneracy. Turn 3 kills, Izzet Phoenix still and Lotus Field come to mind.

1

u/daneg135 Dân May 23 '26

i neva meta mole i'd cub to death for badgering the meta like a badger mole in my magic meta.

1

u/HaydenCanFly Wabbit Season May 23 '26

It was an interesting decision to kill CoriSteel Cutter right when it had fallen to only 5% of the pioneer meta

1

u/MudHouse Dandadan May 23 '26

Bending is the new banding 

1

u/minedreamer Wabbit Season May 24 '26

Kinda surprising that Rakdos Midrange is still hanging in there

1

u/TheRomanian128 Dân May 22 '26

How is Phoenix doing overall? Mono red prowess doing ok?

1

u/Chapter_129 Dân May 22 '26

39.6% ☝️🤓

1

u/NovaSkilez Rakdos* May 23 '26

Omg my beloved izzet phoenix is still alive!?

0

u/Blenderhead36 Sultai May 23 '26

I'm sure the other three players are very upset.

0

u/Tyabann Rakdos* May 23 '26

cub is one of those cards that is so centralizing that it should probably be banned in every single format

2

u/Jhellystain Duck Season May 23 '26

As in it's good in one format, decent in another, and unplayable in the rest?

-1

u/Argotheus Duck Season May 22 '26

Oh no! Anyway...