While Pioneer is quite balanced right now, I personally believe that Lotus Field Combo has the most realistic claim to being the best deck in the format. It’s fast, consistent and difficult to interact with. It consistently overperforms expectations when it comes to tournament results. It always puts up a positive win rate, which is something that sets it apart from the other top decks in the format (for example, Lotus Field won 52.7 percent of its matches at Pro Tour Phyrexia, while Rakdos Midrange, Green Devotion and Gruul Vehicles – the three most-played decks – were all below 48 percent).
Before we go further, be aware that Lotus Field is quite a challenging deck. Simply navigating the deck at a basic level is complicated and counterintuitive. Playing around hate cards and winning under less-than-perfect conditions is even harder. If you don’t have the desire and the resources to put in the work, I recommend choosing a different deck. Don’t bring Lotus Field to a tournament unless you’re able to get a healthy number of reps with it first.
Thanks to Will Krueger and Brent Vos for being our team’s Lotus Field experts. Although Will wound up not being able to attend Pro Tour Philadelphia, he put in a ton of work and remotely coached me through learning a really complex deck. Thanks also to Arya Karamchandani for writing ChannelFireball’s original Lotus Field guide way back in April of 2022.
