Checked against Scryfall on September 24, 2026: 31 cards are banned in Pioneer.
Pioneer is a non-rotating 60-card format built from Return to Ravnica forward. It sits between Standard and Modern: a deep card pool that never rotates, without Modern's twenty years of history. Everything banned in it is below.
A banned card may not appear in a Pioneer deck or sideboard. The list below follows the most recent Banned and Restricted announcement automatically.
Built from Scryfall on 2026-09-24
Pioneer was designed with a deliberate first decision: the fetchlands were banned before the format started. Most bans since have followed the same logic.
The fetchlands were banned at the format's launch, not because they win games but because they make playing four colors nearly free. Removing them is what keeps Pioneer manabases a real cost and a real deckbuilding decision.
Combinations that assemble a win from the graveyard or from a single untapped turn, with no way for the opponent to interact at a normal rate, tend to get one piece removed rather than being left to define the format.
When a card is an automatic inclusion across unrelated archetypes, it stops being a choice. Pioneer bans these to keep the difference between two decks meaningful.
| Rule | Pioneer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum deck size | 60 cards | No maximum, though competitive decks sit at exactly 60 almost without exception. |
| Sideboard | Exactly 15, or none | Anything other than 15 or zero is illegal. |
| Copies of a card | 4 | Four per card name, main deck and sideboard combined. Basic lands are the exception. |
| Card pool | Return to Ravnica forward | Every premier set from October 2012 onward, plus the Standard-legal supplemental sets from that period. |
| Rotation | None | Sets join Pioneer and never leave, so only a ban can make a deck illegal. |
ArcaneMetriX validates Pioneer legality as you build, including the cards that are legal in Modern but not here, which is the mistake most often made when converting a list between the two.
They were banned before the format's first event, as a design decision rather than a reaction. Fetchlands make casting spells of any color close to free, and removing them keeps a Pioneer manabase something a deckbuilder has to pay for.
No. Every set from Return to Ravnica onward stays in the format for good, so the only thing that can take a card away from your deck is a ban.
They are close but not identical. Explorer is Arena's approximation of Pioneer, limited to the cards Arena has available. As Arena adds older cards the two move closer together, but a Pioneer deck does not always import.
Every premier set from Return to Ravnica in October 2012 onward. The cutoff is a set boundary, not a card frame, which is what makes Pioneer easier to reason about than Modern.
Test a Pioneer list before you sleeve it: draw sample opening hands, goldfish a few turns, and watch how the mana curve holds up, all in the browser.