Pioneer: 5 Decks with Aetherdrift to try out!

Aetherdrift is already knocking on our door. The new Magic: The Gathering expansion returns to themes around artifacts, vehicles and also brought some cards that care about discard effects and even the number of exiled cards in the game.

With so many different mechanics, it's natural that the new set will become a deckbuilding paradise as we approach its official release, with a dozen new strategies emerging in competitive formats.

In this article, we present five decklists with Aetherdrift cards and mechanics for Pioneer!

Rakdos Hollow One

With Bloodghast and the new Marauding Mako coming to Pioneer, it's a good time to revisit Hollow One and see if we can do something with it in Pioneer. It's possible to make a super aggressive list with Flameblade Adept, but I feel like Amonkhet's one-drop doesn't do enough for Pioneer's power level standards, especially since we don't have Burning Inquiry and Goblin Lore to discard three or more cards in a turn for a low cost.

We resort to the already known core of Bloodtithe Harvester, Fear of Missing Out and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker to add a bit more attrition to the list while taking advantage of our key cards. Instead of trying to go “turbo” with Hollow One in the early turns, we focused on having two or more copies of it in play by the third or fourth turn, while Marauding Mako has already grown enough to be a threat on its own.

Another iteration in this list involves Overlord of the Balemurk with Ox of Agonas, which ensures a decent flow of cards in hand in longer games while being able to be cast quickly with two Overlord triggers and/or with the number of cards we discard in the early turns.

Dredgeless Dredge

Dredgeless Dredge is a deck that emerged when Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath was released and disappeared from Pioneer along with its ban. Its plan involves putting several cards in the graveyard, including creatures that return with easy triggers like Narcomoeba or Silversmote Ghoul to pull Prized Amalgam from the graveyard and make a lethal attack with Driven // Despair.

Aetherdrift gave Bloodghast to this archetype, another way to maintain threat consistency and trigger Prized Amalgam more often. Quag Feast is another card that may deserve some testing, but its speed as a sorcery and the fact that it only mills two cards may limit its competitive viability.

Abzan Greasefang

Greasefang, Okiba Boss is probably the biggest winner of a vehicle-focused expansion, and Aetherdrift brought some options that deserve to be tested in the most varied versions of one of Pioneer's most famous combos.

Here, we focus on the Abzan variant because most of the new vehicles that matter are in this color combination, but since some of them have a colorless Cycling cost, they can also be included in the Mardu or Esper lists.

Valor's Flagship is probably the strongest among them, and it wouldn't be surprising if a new version of Greasefang gave up the mill effects in favor of a more efficient attrition plan and used Flagship's Cycling to enable the combo emerged. Unlike Parhelion II, it doesn't win the game on its own in two combats, but its self-sufficiency and seven damage with Lifelink and Flying already make a huge difference in many games.

Thundering Broodwagon probably competes for space with Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, with the difference that it deals with any permanent with a mana value of four or less, while Skysovereign is better at dealing with multiple minor threats in a turn. The Cycling means it enters the graveyard easily and doesn't require players to have access to the colors to use it.

Debris Beetle is probably the worst of them all and perhaps doesn't deserve a slot over a copy of Esika's Chariot, but the Lightning Helix it guarantees in the ETB, added to the six damage with Trample from combat, plus the possibility of casting it again the next turn if it has been reanimated, already adds up to 12 damage to the opponent, a respectable clock for several games.

Radiant Eggs

Radiant Lotus is probably the most interesting card to build around in Aetherdrift and enables the potential of an “Eggs” in Pioneer with Krark-Clan Ironworks molds, where we can use its mana to play more cards until we find Aetherflux Reservoir and win the game.

There are a few distinct routes we can take with this combo: the above version relies on the concept of Eggs with Brilliant Restoration to return Radiant Lotus and all the artifacts sacrificed to the battlefield, but we can also focus on versions with Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Sai, Master Thopterist alongside Scrap Trawler and Mox Amber to make micro-combinations that make one Lotus pull another until we have enough mana to win with Aetherflux Reservoir or, in a greedier version, Thassa’s Oracle.

We can also take advantage of Repurposing Bay and cards like Memory Guardian to get Radiant Lotus early, and with Scrap Trawler in play, we can sacrifice the Lotus and the other artifacts and start a chain of triggers that will return Memory Guardian and Repurposing Bay to our hand, cast them and get another Lotus or Aetherflux Reservoir to start a chain of spells with the other cards that Scrap Trawler returned to your hand.

Esper Ketramose

Probably the greediest deck on the list, Esper Ketramose tries to extract maximum value from the new god of Amonkhet through several cards that exile things from the battlefield or graveyard.

While the list is mostly , there are a few cards that we can use to get the most out of Ketramose, and my choice involved combining it with Abhorrent Oculus and a self-mill plan with Overlord of the Balemurk and reanimation effects like Can’t Stay Away and Flicker of Fate to blink the Avatar, making the list have up to twelve cheap threats that we can cheat in the additional costs while interacting well with Ketramose (Oculus almost single-handedly ensures that Ketramose can attack while Overlord’s interaction with Flicker provides an extra draw).

Other notable effects include Graveyard Trespasser as a targeted graveyard hate that provides card advantage on this list, and Skyclave Apparition for battlefield control - both of which also interact with Flicker of Fate or can be reanimated with Can’t Stay Away.

That’s all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!