Reckoner Bankbuster and some Pioneer brewing hacks

Along with decklists for one of the format's sleeper best cards

I’m not really sure why, but a few weeks ago I thought: “What if Reckoner Bankbuster is quietly the best card in the format”. And I’ve been down a Bankbuster brewing rabbit hole since then full of 4-1’s and 5-0’s.

Pioneer Brewing Hacks

What initially really put Bankbuster on my radar was it being banned in Standard. Part of what makes Pioneer such a great brewing format for me is it’s a bit less popular than the three big competitive formats of Standard, Modern, and Draft. This means it is way less solved as a format, but also that our data on Pioneer is far worse.

To deal with that lack of data, I find it pays to look at the formats where we have far more information. Three things in particular I look for to help drive brewing ideas:

• Any card that sees play in Modern. Modern is much higher power level, so if it’s seeing play there strong odds it should be pioneer playable. This is why you will se me brewing so often with cards like Cleansing Wildfire, Treasure Cruise, and Yorion (the latter two being banned in Modern

• Any card that is banned in Standard. Standard is lower power level than Pioneer, but not orders of magnitude since so much of pioneer is driven by the last 4 years of sets. There are also way more matches of Standard played thanks to Arena, so if something is strong enough to get banned in Standard it’s worth focusing on.

• Cards that are towards the top of Draft stats on 17lands. My claim to fame using this technique is putting Bloodtithe Harvester on the map in Pioneer. While Draft is clearly far lower power level than Pioneer, this is by far the richest data set we have access to. And in general you want to be brewing with generically powerful cards and then enhancing that power with synergies, and the cards that make it to the top of these lists are the generically powerful ones.

Bankbuster falls into the banned in Standard bucket, so we should take notice.

What makes Bankbuster good

It’s kind of good against every deck in the format except Mono-Green because of Karn. This wasn’t obvious to me at first.

The key thing is it provides card advantage and pressure that is cheap to get on the board. The problem with running the most efficient interaction is you want back it up with…that’s right card advantage and pressure, so your opponent can’t eventually out grind you as the game goes on and the efficiency of your interaction means less.

Powerful decks are low curve, don’t run out of gas, pressure the opponent, and have efficient interaction. This is exactly what Bankbuster enables in a two mana card that fits easily on curve and gets under counterspells.

You may not want 4 against the aggro and combo decks, but still a couple are usually worth it because they help prevent the dreaded situation of you removing all their stuff, but they still win in the topdeck war.

As needed, it can allow you to play at instant speed, since the bulk of the mana spent on it is instant speed activations. And the flexibility of being able to thread in the activations is huge, especially when surrounded with a lower curve.

It creates a Treasure token which can be used to revolt Fatal Push, which is always a relevant feature for a midrange card.

In the current format, I feel it is better than Fable on average. On top of that it’s colorless so can go in a wide range of decks.

Bankbuster Brewing considerations

Bankbuster is kind of the ultimate midrange card, so all of my decks so far have been base black midrange decks (black being the ultimate midrange color).

While Bankbuster does see a fair amount of play in the format, I don’t think many people are running it as a 4 of in the main like I am. In most of these lists I’d run 6 if I could, so I think people are missing out by not focusing on Bankbuster and using it more as midrange mirror breaker.

As mentioned above you want to surround Bankbuster with a relatively low curve and efficient interaction.

Then the card tells you the other main consideration, you want 3+ power creatures to be able to crew it. You will see all these lists are 4 Graveyard Tresspasser and 4 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse as well. I’ve tried some other cards, but those two consistently pair great with Bankbuster.

I am looking forward to explore some non-black decks, likely WU and UR. And also explore some of the cards that combo more formally with bankbuster like powerstones and cards that reduce activation costs.

Decklists

Dimir Bankbuster

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/5772749

This is the list I worked the most on and got back to back trophies with this closer to finalized version. It’s really good. The counterspells give you more play against Mono-G and combo decks like Lotus and Creativity. The Memory + Sheoldred combo gives you another angle of attack to close out the game in matches that get bogged down.

Orzhov Bankbuster

I played a Jeskai Dragons list the other day and was surprised by how impressed I was with Nadaar. So I wanted to try Nadaar in a Bankbuster shell, since it’s a midrange 3/3 for three creature that pairs so well with Bankbuster (based on how well Trespasser pairs).

While the deck did not feel quite as good as the Dimir build, it felt good and there is likely some room to improve. The Vanishing Verse gives you play against Mono-G, which is key in these decks so that’s not an auto-loss.

Rakdos Bankbuster

This is what I’m currently working on. It’s basically Rakdos midrange with Fable and Bonecrusher removed. Those are the two “least efficient” cards in terms of immediate value for the mana in midrange, so cut them to support the Bankbuster plan, which is also less efficient immediate value for greater long term value. Also, Fable not crewing Bankbuster is a real knock against it.

This deck feels quite good so far and could see it being a real improvement over Rakdos midrange. However, I have not faced Mono-G with it yet and we will have to see how it lines up there.

Golgari Bankbuster?

I’ve drawn up some lists that look good at face value, but I don’t think will have any chance against Mono-G. So I’m putting those on hold until we see if we get any bans or any new tools from Wilds.