All was quiet and chill in the Pioneer Format so far this season. It felt like the meta was really balanced, and every deck had it's fair shot at playing a good, honest game of magic. Little did we know it was all a ticking time bomb just waiting for Mono Green to literally explode back into contention for the best deck. We were all pretty sure that Niv to Light was the deck with the highest power level, and the one that felt the most consistent. It still may be, but now we have a new/old player back into the mix with a Mono Green list that has recovered from losing Karn, The Great Creator, and uses one of Thunder Junction's new plot creatures to amass even more value, and draw almost all of it's cards in the deck. You may wonder how a creature deck can do that - just keep reading.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is still an incredibly powerful land, and the decks are using this to almot go infinite on mana. Couple that with Kiora still being powerful, and allow it to run into a format that doesn't like to use many board wipes, and you have an incredibly well-positioned creature deck.
New, Relevant Cards
This card at face value looks pretty fair, you get a benefit from plotting, and it draws cards, but it's only a 4/2 as it hits the board. It appears that the toughness on it was a necessary drawback to make it so that the card isn't too crazy. Well, in this deck, it is bonkers regardless. With Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner, it effectively can turn into a two mana 4/2 that draws a card. It is just one of the many parts of the value engine that creates a relentless onslaught on the opponent's life total.
This is a newer card that is the only leyline enchantment currently printed to be legal in Standard. It allows for perfect mana fixing, and even allows the deck to play Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines without having any white mana sources if it doesn't want to. This also immediately gives four devotion for Nykthos as early as turn zero. It's evident that the deck has leaned even more into devotion to amass obscene discrepancies in value throughout the game.
Citadel allows for even more broken combos in the deck, because it allows only two lands to tap for a Nykthos activation. It also allows Lair of the Hydra to get in an extra point of damage. It may seem marginal, but the deck does an outstanding job of getting value in as many places as it can, and this is one of many things that start to add up over the course of the match and cause the opponent to simply be overrun.
New Additions in the Four Mana Slot
Oddity is a card that was popular in Standard when it first came out and allowed for some aggressive Mono Green Aggro decks to be in the upper echelon of competitive lists. As control became more and more popular, and with the advent of the board wipe meta in Standard, the card fell off a good bit. It is pretty well-positioned, however, in a format that doesn't have too many board wipes, and sees a lot of the control decks starting to fade. The real kicker here is when the deck has enough devotion on board to not only play the Oddity, but also to flip it in the same turn. It effectively creates a one turn kill where an inconceivable amount of power is on the board, and all creatures have trample and haste. Unless you are in the mirror and also have a crazy board, there aren't too many situations in the Pioneer Format where a player wouldn't simply be dead on board against that.
What Can We do About this?
OK, so we know that this is problematic for anyone who doesn't want to play Mono Green, so what cards can we add to our decks that will effectively deal with the oppression? I'll give you some insights into the cards that I will either add more of to my sideboard in my Waste Not deck, or cards that I will add to the sideboard that weren't there before. (Don't worry, the best option is a colorless artifact that any deck can play!}
This card has been somewhat of a staple for a lot of decks in Pioneer, and it is often used to shut down combo decks that may be centered around all having odd or even creatures. The good news here is that a lot of the powerful creatures in Mono Green are odd mana value, and the ones that have death triggers are also odd. This card will exile them, and minimize the value.
This is the spicy one that everyone can put in their deck. We actually saw the last Pro Tour Pioneer winning list run this in the original Rakdos Vampires Sideboard. This flat out shuts down Nykthos, and can stall the opponent before they even get a chance to get extra value from the devotion land. It also is pretty nifty against storm decks, and Izzet Phoenix due to making the extra spell casting increasingly taxed.
This is one where I'm not fully decided if I want to put it in the sideboard. It would immediately shut down the deck by us simply calling Nykthos when we cast it, but the problem is that it is three mana, and sometimes the opponent's deck can start popping off on turn three. We would basically need to also have a Field of Ruin and a Necromentia to deal with it if the opponent already has the Nykthos land out. If the opponent is late in playing Nykthos, it makes Necromentia a home run. It is also worth noting that we are taking off turn three of the game to do this, which sometimes is bad because that can be a pivotal point in the game where it is decided who will be able to get ahead on board, or at least who will be able to set themselves up in a way that gets them where they want to be.
I hope this evaluation was helpful, and let me know in the comments if you have any other sideboard recommendations to deal with the pesky Mono Green!
