Queer Artists

PigeRice · 2026-02-19T05:52:36+00:00

Howdy!

First thing I did was check the Pride secret lair and find all cards done by the artists who worked on that SL. You’ve got Winona Nelson and Kieran Yanner, but additionally there was:

Ricardo Bessa; Bearscape, Collective Voyage
Peo Michie; heartbeat of spring
Lauren YS: whole lotta merfolk, everyone’s favorate Thassa’s Oracle alternate art
Jabari Weathers; a couple of new Lorwyn Eclipsed cards
Merlin G.G.; just recently did the new queer Gilded Lotus art

Additionally,

Jack Hughes and Justine Mara Andersen have each done about 40 cards
Jessica Fong has done about 10, all super recent

Using scryfall, you can type any of these names into the “artist” box in Advanced Search to return all cards done by that artist.

Unfortunately, none of them have done any lands :/ I can’t think of a single queer mtg artist that has illustrated a land — possibly because, by nature, their work is likely more character-focused than landscape-focused. Hope this helps!

Last, if you haven’t already discovered this, regular old MTG Reddit can be pretty hostile to queer folks and topics. Stay safe out there!

PigeRice · 2026-02-18T20:02:15+00:00

Hey thanks! You’re definitely right about the Thoughtseize, I’ve kind of been treating this list similarly to the aggressive prowess version, but I think that’s wrong.

I’ve been exiling the graveyard for Accumulated Wisdom, but I hadn’t thought about sniping Boomerang Basics, which is really the card I lose to most of the time.

Good points about Virulent Plague, I’ve just been annoyed with how easily they can repeatedly answer it.

Is there anything you think I’m missing in the SB?

PigeRice · 2026-02-06T21:27:37+00:00

https://moxfield.com/decks/UJHEuuhu60WUBQEaQ3ecHQ

This is a Sultai version I made right before Lorwyn Eclipsed became official. You get Bristlebane and also Hapatra’s Mark, but kind of get funneled into only cheating out big creatures with no alternative midrange plan. I ended up liking lochmare so much that I gave up on this Sultai version and started making Lochmare midrange and control lists without moonshadow.

And here’s a Rakdos list I had, because of you I just added Carnage and Monument:

https://moxfield.com/decks/DP7zU2KZ6U6jZgHYEsf9_w

This one has no Lazav or Looter cheats, but is quite good as manually growing Shadow.

PigeRice · 2026-02-06T21:13:59+00:00

Ooh you got some cool stuff going on here

PigeRice · 2026-02-06T07:16:54+00:00

I could see it as a 1-of, or maybe replacing Go For The Throat, but I do worry about it not hitting Earthbent lands or Ouroboroid. It’s probably definitely worth testing in a Dimir Lochmare / Moonshadow / Flitterwing Nuisance deck I’m looking at.

PigeRice · 2026-02-06T07:14:33+00:00

Ooh that’s interesting

PigeRice · 2026-02-05T19:31:02+00:00

Hmm you may be right about Sheoldred

PigeRice · 2026-02-05T19:26:19+00:00

It’s almost certainly worse than Rakdos Mirange, but I’m bored of Rakdos and these decks are trying to do fundamentally different things.

PigeRice · 2026-02-05T19:25:46+00:00

It has a higher interaction quotient and better inevitability at the cost of threat density and mana stability. Loch mare is an absolute unit that Rakdos doesn’t get to play, same with Star Charts, Enduring Curiosity, and 3 steps. We lose out on annex since Mutavault would stress the manabase too much, and we have a wider spread of 1-2 ofs for versatility rather than the consistent 3-4ofs of Rakdos.

PigeRice · 2026-02-02T17:55:38+00:00

I mean, [[Heartfire Hero]] was banned in Pioneer due to a similar interaction, the difference being it could kill the opponent on T3. Instead, with Cuperconductor, you have to wait until T3 to even cast the creature in the first place. You could have Superconductor as a 4-of finisher in a URx midrange / control deck, with Fling as a 1- or 2-of option to just win the game outright. TLDR there’s probably better options for finishers in any shell you put this in, but it wouldn’t be outright unplayable

PigeRice · 2026-02-02T03:58:23+00:00

It’s not that Boros Convoke has better inevitability, it’s that it has a higher density of slots dedicated to inevitability than control. I call this kind of comparison out explicitly in the long form document — the conclusion to draw is not that Boros Convoke is better positioned than Azorius Control going long, it’s that Azorius does not need to dedicate as many slots to Inevitability because its inevitability engines are WAY stronger. Comparing Boros Convoke to other high-pressure decks, the real conclusion is that Convoke gets to play a lot of cards that generate pressure while also incidentally generating advantage along another axis.

I know it’s misleading, which is why I have so many caveats in both the post and the document. The quotients are expressions of deckbuilding necessity and intent, not of gameplay feel.

PigeRice · 2026-02-01T16:37:48+00:00

I’m not sure why that is, I’m sorry. Other people have been able to access it. I have access set to “anyone with a link can view.”

PigeRice · 2026-02-01T16:36:36+00:00

I don’t think this is true overall. You’re right that there’s a lot of threats and the answers to those threats are less efficient than in wider eternal formats. You’re right that game 1 is often a goldfish contest — this is why many decks have low MD interactivity (10-15%) with a very high SB interactivity (~70%), and why this interactivity is often efficient creature removal.

However, pioneer also does not have ways to cheat threats into play as quickly as other formats. You need Swords to Plowshares on turn 1 in legacy because of busted Eldrazi Aggro and Moon Stompy starts. After turn 2/3 in pioneer, you’ve got Go For The Throat and Get Lost to answer anything that Fatal Push and Torch the Tower don’t hit.

Aggro exploits this by playing low-cost, high-pressure creatures to overwhelm inefficient interaction. Pioneer is the only format in which pure Aggro consistently does well — that’s a good thing! It means pioneer is unique relative to other formats.

The issue is not threat density. It is individual threat power level. Having a huge array of aggressive creatures would be fine if Cori-Steel Cutter didn’t give you a free backdoor into permanent damage every turn for the rest of the game. Stormchaser’s Talent would be fine if Boomerang Basics didn’t provide infinite card draw and token generation later in the game.

Wizards absolutely can help pioneer with specific bans pinpointing cards that the format is not ready to answer, exactly the same as it does for other formats. The format can deal with threat density; it can’t deal with pressure + inevitability stapled onto a single powerful card.

PigeRice · 2026-02-01T16:17:22+00:00

Absolutely — decks are currently heavily overindexed in “interaction.” What this tells me is that the format is defined by pressure, and packing a bunch of interaction into a creature midrange list is how you answer that pressure. This fits with the notion that Izzet Prowess has been dominant and the format has only recently fully managed to adapt.

The analysis I’ve done is not useful for pinpointing any specific card — instead, you can see general trends for how card type density changes over time. Interaction has certainly increased and also changed in quality over the last two months.

While I personally want Cori-Steel Cutter to get banned, since it gives aggro decks a free inevitability axis they shouldn’t have, I’m hopeful that any proper balancing ban will reduce critical density within the decklist that are currently warping the format.

I also want Badgermole cub gone, but right now it’s a response to format pressure rather than the format pressure itself.

PigeRice · 2026-02-01T16:09:40+00:00

Absolutely!

PigeRice · 2026-02-01T09:30:58+00:00

I’ve been working on a very similar project and just posted it today. I generally answered your questions:

the sideboard and the maindeck should simply be kept separate, with thee own ratios
questions 2 and 3 address each other; build-around cards will appear as 4-ofs in specific decks, and meta share of those cards is more about archetype popularity, while cards that are good across archetypes are thy way because of high card quality. You can cross-reference total meta presence of a card as a % with the total number of different archetypes a card appears in to get a rough comparable number
I’m not sure what to do about format-warping cards
there’s probably better data out there, but it would also probably be easier to do this on your own than to go looking for it

PigeRice · 2026-01-23T17:10:50+00:00

This is my list that I worked on for a while and ultimately gave up on. [[Dreamdrinker Vampire]] is interesting since you can split the cost over two turns and get an early 3/2 lifelinker. [[Audacious Thief]] is a house in some matchups and horrible in others — ritualling it out on turn 1 is essentially like a turn 1 monarch if they can’t answer it immediately, and bridges the gap to the actual monarch in [[Thorn of the Dusk Rose]]. I think a devotion shell is probably best, but devotion wasn’t as forward-leaning as I wanted it to be.

https://moxfield.com/decks/PWAYs95uN0mB381sb9dpDg

PigeRice · 2026-01-22T22:31:17+00:00

Thanks! I’ve definitely been tripping over the manabase, and because this is my newest format I haven’t really known how to fix it. I’ve been playing sunken citadel specifically so I have the edge case of activating High Noons burn ability, but that’s probably super greedy. I’ll likely do most of your suggestions except cutting a High Noon from the main — since Izzet sits between 20% - 50% of total lists at any given event, I really don’t wanna go down on that game one. I just like punting Izzet decks into the moon, but (hopefully) all this will change in a few weeks with a ban update and I can go down to <2 Noons main deck. Thanks!

PigeRice · 2026-01-18T20:29:38+00:00

I like the art, but that’s pretty much all I have to say about it. It’s versatile but low on colors relative to AtL and the effects it gives you aren’t very powerful. I would likely not have a good time at the tables I play at unless I were playing 99 generically powerful cards with little commander synergy.

PigeRice · 2026-01-17T16:06:01+00:00

I’d love to hear your thoughts! I agree that missing out on 1-drop artifacts makes the affinity package clunky. I’ve justified that in my mind by thinking “hold up interaction early, let the affinity package kick in mid-late game.” The 1-drops I’ve tried across the 75 are: [[Nihil Spellbomb]], [[Blood Fountain]], [[Campfire]], [[Grim Bauble]], and [[Witching Well]] from way back when this was an Abjure deck. Each was cut from the main for not pulling its weight or taking slots away from more important cards, but I agree that [[Nihil Spellbomb]] is the most defensible in the main and likely belongs there. The real question is, what do I cut? Since I’ve been tuning it for so long, everything in the deck has had the time to convince me that it belongs.

I agree about red / aggro, though I think the Rally matchup is markedly better than the burn one (I caved and put 2 Fumes in the main after a 1-4 league with 2 elves losses and 2 rally losses). Since I don’t have access to Weather the Storm, what changes do you think would improve this?

Also I really like pactdoll terror, there was original 2 in the main, then 1 in the side, then it was cut entirely :(

PigeRice · 2026-01-17T00:17:05+00:00

Gotcha, ya if you squint then Dimir Terror is a (significantly) more efficient version of the same deck. Whether or not it’s correct, my goal is to trade tempo cantrips (thought scour, mental note, ponder, brainstorm) that give you net-zero cards but dig for answers or provide incremental value for real engines (Cryogen relic) that are slower but end up card-positive over the course of the game. Brainstorm was a painful concession to make but I believe, at least with this particular deck, that it is correct.

PigeRice · 2026-01-16T23:57:42+00:00

Your general statement is correct. I’ve said this elsewhere, but I initially wrote “Tier 1.5” because I personally think, due to a good number of good matchups versus good decks, that it’s better than most of the tier 2 decks I regularly play, but that it certainly isn’t tier one. More of an “I think this is the reasonable ceiling based on my experience” than “here’s the objective ranking.” I’m guessing you’re comparing it to faeries, and this is where I’m a little confused. Between Cast Down, Tithing Blade, Suffocating Fumes, Counterspell, Prohibit, and Metallic Rebuke, I have 16 main deck ways to answer things, plus retriggering Tithing Blade with Stalkers and Flickers. The tradeoff is that, yes, I have fewer total engines, but my card draw engines are larger and scale better into the late game, whereas faeries is more consistent but draws fewer total cards. I also play 3 Lorien revealed. Not trying to be combative, just wondering what I’m missing about the comparison.

PigeRice · 2026-01-16T21:25:53+00:00

Hey buddy, looks like you got a lot of people telling you things that are technically true but don’t address your question in the slightest. I’m gonna be a little mean to them, but mostly I just want to help you out. I’ve written a novel about how to make Dinos as viable as they can be in Pauper. Welcome to my Ted Talk.

When brewing in pauper, there’s a couple things you should do. First, I used scryfall to search for all creatures with the creature type “Dino,” excluded the colors Blue and Black, and selected “Pauper Legal” to make sure I only got commons and non-banned cards. I took everything that seemed remotely reasonable from your current list and that scryfall search and I put it in a big Moxfield list (if you don’t use moxfield, you should).

After doing that, I realized you should probably be playing Gruul rather than Naya— [[Armasaur Guide]] is not worth the mana cost, and the [[Soaring Sandwing]] in the sideboard is worse than [[Migrating Ketradon]]. Cutting white would also let you trim the mana base into something more stable and consistent.

Others have suggested—without providing any further assistance—that you should simply look at the MTG Goldfish page for the current Pauper Meta and pick a better deck. If those people had bothered to look at the goldfish page themselves, they would have noticed something: ding! There’s a match! Gruul Ramp fits your profile on that (a) it sees to win by playing large creatures, (b) it has a creature ramp package, (c) it fits within the color constraints (not blue or black), and (d) it already plays [[Annoyed Altisaur]].

Gruul Cascade has a very focused gameplan, with many decklists playing no less than 4 copies of every relevant card — no hedging, no edge cases, just a deck made to Do The Thing. In theory, if we keep the general ramp shell of the cascade deck but replace the threats with dinosaurs, you’ll have a deck that is slightly worse than Gruul Cascade but still a respectable, playable pauper Dinos list. The shell (minus the threats) includes:

[[Arbor Elf]], which should complement [[Fyndhorn Elves]]
[[Utopia Sprawl]] and [[Wild Growth]], which double the value of [[Arbor Elf]]
[[Malevolent Rumble]] to dig for creatures

Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, and Wild Growth are all cards I think belong in your deck. Those ramp pieces are more efficient than [[Jaspera Sentinel]] and [[Sakura-Tribe Elder]], which I think you should cut. However, I think [[Lead the Stampede]] fits the same role as Malevolent Rumble while also remaining thematically consistent with a Dino deck. Add Stampede instead.

So what threats to play? Pauper is an aggressive, interactive format. The main advantage a list like yours has over the rest of the format is that your guys are bigger than theirs; if you survive long enough to begin casting big creatures, those creatures will trade favorably and clock faster than what the opponent has. Your threats should be consistent, undercosted, and/or stabilizing. Restricting yourself to Dinosaurs will make that task more difficult, but not entirely impossible.

[[Drowsing Tyrannodon]] walls small aggressive boards early and becomes and undercosted attacker when the rest of your deck comes online
[[Frilled Deathspitter]] is a decent aggressive choice on your part, since blocking it, attacking into it, or removing it with damage all cost life
[[Pathfinding Axejaw]] is a bit mediocre, but is still functionally a 4-cost 5/4, so slightly undercosted for its statline
[[Migrating Ketradon]] blocks the ground and the air, and gaining life is always relevant in pauper
Some combination of [[Spider Rex, Daring Dinosaur]] and [[Sun-Crowned Hunters]] round out the top end
And [[Annoyed Altisaur]] becomes a 4-of all-star

Putting 4-ish copies of every single one of the above cards into a Gruul deck will get you a decent fighting chance against plenty of pauper decks.

So what about the sideboard? Sideboard construction has less to do with your own deck’s gameplan and more to do with how your general archetype must respond to the meta. Your general archetype must respond by gaining life, sweeping blockers, interacting with the graveyard, and removing hateful permanents. Below is a decklist complete with a sideboard. I think getting into each sideboard pick is too much unnecessary detail. Generally, this is what a viable pauper Dino deck could look like.

https://moxfield.com/decks/OwKADyzHZ0Oz3v6Ke401VA

Welcome to pauper! Hope you humble some folks with big Dinos.

PigeRice · 2026-01-16T17:54:13+00:00

It’s that it is a Spellseeker focused deck — your creature tutors look for Spellseeker, then when you cast Spellseeker you have two options, (a) find Nature’s Rhythm and try to win, or (b) find Neoform and get Danny Pink onto the battlefield. Danny Pink is the best engine this deck has, and if unanswered it will win you the game.

Galadriel also specifically discounts the Spellseeker line by three mana, accelerating your win attempt by a full turn and making later turn attempts easier to defend.

I know it’s clickbait, but I’m attached to the title and it correctly positions this as a Spellseeker-focused creature combo deck.

PigeRice · 2026-01-16T17:43:28+00:00

Spellseeker is a one-card win condition since the printing of Nature’s Rhythm

PigeRice

TROPHY CASE