Magic: The Gathering’s return to the Eldraine plane, Wilds Of Eldraine, features a ton of returning mechanics from the original Throne Of Eldraine set, such as Adventures and a Food token theme.
Within Wilds Of Eldraine, there are plenty of cards that can make a splash in Pioneer. There are a lot of cards that support existing strategies and ones that can create new archetypes entirely. Wilds Of Eldraine has powerful cards that exist in all colors, and in some cases colorless, that allow for any deck to splash them in with no problem.
10 Sleight Of Hand
Sleight Of Hand is a very simple card, letting you pick a card from the top two cards of your deck and put one into your hand. It is essentially a card draw card, but you have slight control over the card that you are drawing.
Sleight Of Hand isn’t a new card, but its reprint in Wilds Of Eldraine is the first time it’s in a Pioneer-legal set. Its strength is in the mana cost, only costing one blue mana making it a solid cantrip in decks that want to be casting a lot of spells like Izzet (red/blue) Phoenix.
9 Rankle’s Prank
Rankle’s Prank does a whole lot for just four mana. It greatly sets your opponent back, though also affects you as well. However, you get to choose how many effects are used, so you can keep control, so you don’t hurt yourself more than your opponent.
The best effect is forcing each player to sacrifice two creatures, since, if you don’t have any creatures, it won’t affect you as well. The burn effect is good at closer games as well and the discard effect can come up if you have a hand of cards you want in the graveyard.
8 Spell Stutter
Two mana counterspells are always going to be good, even if they don’t always guarantee they’ll counter a spell. Spell Stutter falls in line with this, countering any spell unless the control pays two. What is the attraction to Spell Stutter specifically is that the two mana can be much larger if you are playing a deck built around Faeries.
Even just a few Faeries in a deck can make Spell Stutter a formidable counterspell. With how many Faerie cards are available in Wilds Of Eldraine, it’s very possible a strong deck utilizes the creature type to make Spell Stutter an amazing counterspell for the archetype.
7 Sleep-Cursed Faerie
Sleep-Cursed Faerie is a very strong card for just one mana. Although it enters the battlefield with three stun counters, there are plenty of ways to get these off quickly. Once the stun counters are gone, a 3/3 with flying and ward is both great evasion and protection.
Sleep-Cursed Faerie even has a built-in way to untap itself to get the stun counters off of the card quicker. With this, if you play Sleep-Cursed Faerie on turn one by turn three you can have it untapped and free of stun counters.
6 Eriette Of The Charmed Apple
There are plenty of strong Auras available in Pioneer that cause negative effects to befall your opponents and their creatures. As such, Eriette Of The Charmed Apple is a solid addition to the Pioneer card pool. It turns all your Auras into lifegain and burn damage, helping to deal devastating amounts of damage.
Eriette Of The Charmed Apple has solid stats on its own, making it a good blocker and attacker. It also shuts down the ability of your opponent’s creatures to attack you when they’re enchanted to make them solid stun cards as well.
5 Virtue Of Persistance
Virtue Of Persistence costs a fair bit of mana, but despite this, it is still powerful since it’s also attached to a solid removal spell. Giving a creature -3/-3 will often kill most creatures. Since it gives a stat decrease, it will also get around indestructible creatures.
The Adventure side plays into the enchantment side, which can revive a creature you removed. Virtue Of Persistence is an amazing top-end card in decks that can run black to recycle any cards in the graveyard.
4 Elusive Otter
Elusive Otter is a fantastic one-drop that is good both early game and late game. The Adventure side lets you dump a ton of +1/+1 counters when you have excess mana to cast it with. On the battlefield, Elusive Otter can ensure it gets in for damage when its stats are high.
Not only does Elusive Otter’s prowess effect help make it hard to block, but its Adventure side can make it even harder to block when you give all the counters to an Elusive Otter on the battlefield.
Extraordinary Journey is a way to stall out your opponent’s creatures by making them have to recast them. The card can be cast for X, which that X will allow you to exile that many creatures until they recast them. This makes it so creatures that took a mana investment have to be made again. It becomes especially strong if Treasure tokens were used to get a creature out faster or it was reanimated.
As if that wasn’t good enough, Extraordinary Journey also acts as card draw when a card was used from exile – not just when it’s recast from its effect. It’s a fantastic card to include in control decks as a way to slow your opponent down while you get to your win conditions.
2 Beseech The Mirror
Tutors are always among some of the best cards in Magic: The Gathering as they provide decks with a ton of consistency to ensure they get a card you want into your hand. Beseech The Mirror is a phenomenal one despite its higher mana cost as it can immediately cast the spell you got if the bargain cost was paid.
There are plenty of spells that cost four or less mana that Beseech The Mirror can cheat in. It can turn a simple token into something powerful like a Sheoldred, The Apocolypse. Even if you can’t pay the bargain cost, you are still able to get any card out of your deck into your hand.
1 Agatha’s Vile Cauldron
There are no shortage of Pioneer decks that heavily rely on the graveyard. Agatha’s Vile Cauldron is not only a way to get your opponent’s cards out from their graveyards, but also boosts the stats of your creatures with +1/+1 counters while also giving them the abilities of the creatures exiled.
It also lets you use any mana as any color for your activated ability of creatures – not just the ones exiled with the Cauldron. Agatha’s Soul Cauldron does a whole lot for just two mana, making it a very strong sideboard staple that could even be played in the main deck with how good it is.