Wizards of the Coast revealed today that they plan to release the first Pioneer Masters on MTG Arena by the end of 2020.
“We’ve danced around this one a little bit, so let’s just come out and say it—the next Pioneer-focused set remaster will be a Pioneer Masters set,” Wizards said. The set will be be a digital release that, similar to the Modern Masters series, will take cards from the various Pioneer-legal sets and combine them into one, cohesive, draftable set.
No other details were made available, only that this will be the first, “but likely not the last,” Pioneer Masters set.
Pioneer was created last October and is one of Magic’s newest formats. It is a non-rotating format that uses sets beginning with 2011’s Return to Ravnica and is intended to be a place for “players who started more recently and still want to play with their favorite [Standard] cards after rotation.” It began its life with a small ban list that quickly expanded and made a triumphant debut on the premiere tournament scene at Players Tour Series 1.
However, Pioneer isn’t supported on MTG Arena because the platform’s card pool begins with September 2017’s Ixalan—meaning that six years’ worth of sets that are legal in Pioneer are not available on MTG Arena. Wizards announced plans to add Pioneer support to MTG Arena via “remastered” versions of older sets, the first of which will be Amonkhet Remastered and will release on August 13, 2020.
Wizards has also made mention of another way they will add Pioneer cards to MTG Arena: Pioneer Masters. The first mention of this possibility came in March but didn’t mention a date, while today’s announcement commits to making the first Pioneer Masters set available by the end of 2020.
Unfortunately, Wizards hasn’t set a timetable for when Pioneer would be fully supported on MTG Arena. But with Amonkhet Remastered and Pioneer Masters on the way, that point may be soon approaching.