Table of Contents
Hello everyone! Yesterday I covered what’s going on in Standard and today we’re going to look at what’s up with Historic! Despite Historic changing less dramatically than Standard during a set release, there’s still been some large shifts happening within the metagame that we can examine.
Like the Standard snapshot, since the tournament scene for the new meta hasn’t really started yet, this will be focused on best-of-one (bo1). Let’s get into it!
SYNERGY DECKS ABOUND
Enchantments (25)
Lands (24)
60 Cards
$159.66
Creatures (14)
Instants (14)
Sorceries (11)
Lands (21)
60 Cards
$170.2
Companion
Creatures (15)
Enchantments (24)
Lands (21)
60 Cards
$114.38
Sideboard
1 Cards
$1.29
Although these decks look drastically different, they’re all connected by a common thread: they push their synergies to the max. Bo1 formats generally maximized speed over everything else as any stumbling could be punished to the umpteenth degree, and while that still holds some precedent, it’s not nearly as strong of an indicator of a good deck as it used to be.
Let’s take the first list as an example. Enchantress is most certainly anything but fast, realistically it acts like a combo deck more than anything looking to assemble Solemnity and Nine Lives to make themselves invulnerable to damage. This won’t always be fast, but they can draw through their deck very quickly, interact with the opponent, and have a few alternate win conditions in case that isn’t good enough. Enchantress ironically doesn’t seem to want to play anything from the Enchantments matter set, but it didn’t really need anything either. Nevertheless, this deck can’t win quickly (most of the time), but is a foil for a creature decks so this doesn’t exactly count right?
Well if we’re taking into account that Phoenix has been holding strong in the Bo1 metagame as well, then all bets are off. Phoenix is neither amazing against creatures nor a particularly fast deck, but it’s just a good deck. You have interaction, plenty of filtering, and a powerful game plan. I would definitely argue that you’d rather face creature decks than something like Dragonstorm, but Phoenix doesn’t prey on them either. With these two, it seems Bo1 Historic is starting to shift away from fast decks being the only game in town.
For the final list, we still have classic Auras which definitely falls into the fast deck category. Using the power of the new Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice, now Auras is flush with good Aura creatures they can use to overwhelm the opponent and Light-Paws is a monumental upgrade over Stormchaser Drake. You would think that me including Auras to this list would run interference to my previous argument, but I think it actually bolsters it. Auras is a fast deck, but it still requires multiple pieces to get working and won’t always kill quickly like a traditional aggro deck is looking to.
To sum up, it seems that speed isn’t necessarily the most important factor in Bo1 Historic like it is in Standard, but instead it’s how well you line up against the other decks. All 3 of these decks have different game plans and different speeds, but since they all share their strength against the average Historic deck and they all focus on pushing their synergy to the upmost limit, they can flourish. That said, these certainly aren’t the only decks that can succeed.
CREATURES ARE STILL GREAT
Creatures (32)
Artifacts (4)
Lands (24)
60 Cards
$75.52
Creatures (32)
Instants (4)
Lands (24)
60 Cards
$258.34
Creatures (32)
Instants (4)
Enchantments (2)
Lands (22)
60 Cards
$297.06
Don’t worry aggro fans, your decks are still very good!
Interestingly enough, Mono Red has seemed to have gained a lot of ground recently. In my experience, I definitely face it a good amount and it’s not too hard to see why. It’s relatively cheap, it’s fast, it’s efficient, and it punishes slow or clunky draws. Going one, two, three, into Embercleave can only be so bad right? Although a lot of players enjoy this strategy and it’s certainly good, I always feel like I’m the outlier for Mono Red. Personally, I have felt in both old Standard and Historic that Mono Red is too fragile and it only takes a few removal spells and a solid game plan to completely mess them up Nevertheless, I can’t let my personal bias get in the way of recognizing a good deck for the meta.
Want a fast deck that also has a strong synergy component to it? Can’t do any better than Selesnya Heliod! This deck has went through so many iterations since it’s inception, and I think it’s finally solidified on a list it’s happy with. Just the simple game plan of 12 Soul Warden creatures and 12 creatures that grow with every life gained is a surprisingly powerful strategy. Not only can you burst down opponents very quickly you can just as easily assemble a Soul Warden creature + Scurry Oak + Heliod, Sun-Crowned for infinite creatures, infinite life, and an infinitely big Scurry Oak! Although there are no true infinites on Arena, 99% of opponents are kind enough to scoop assuming their deck can’t win from that spot.
Want to go as blazingly fast as Historic will allow? Elves has been a mainstay in Historic for quite awhile truly living the principles of speed is king. Elves can goldfish incredibly fast putting up extremely hard to beat board states as early as turn 3 and consistently killing on turn 4. It is a bit fragile as you really need your mana engines to survive, but if they do, you will tear through your matches in a way no other deck can even compare.
The unfortunate thread that connects all these decks is that none of them got anything they want to use from Kamigawa (yet anyway), but still continue to be strong in the presence of decks that did have some gains and are only getting more refined as time passes. The meta may be changing, but the one thing that’ll never change is how good a fast deck can be in Bo1.
THE ANTI META DECKS ARE STILL HOLDING STRONG
Creatures (3)
Instants (17)
Sorceries (16)
Lands (24)
60 Cards
$341.98
Companion
Creatures (14)
Instants (11)
Artifacts (4)
Lands (23)
60 Cards
$418.9
Sideboard
1 Cards
$1.29
Creatures (14)
Artifacts (2)
Lands (24)
60 Cards
$277.51
In any good metagame, you can play counters to the most popular decks and have success in that metagame decision. Thankfully for Historic, that’s exactly the case. If playing creature or synergy decks isn’t your speed, these anti-meta decks may more suit your fancy.
First off, we have the pretty classic Jeskai Creativity which has been a great choice in Historic since the introduction of Serra's Emissary. This deck acts like a typical control deck, but then looks to lock out creature decks with Serra's Emissary on creatures which is an extremely effective game plan. This deck can struggle against the decks that aren’t relying on creatures to win and is never guaranteed to even beat the creature decks, but it’s strong presence and win rate still indicates it as a good choice.
If you’re looking to get grindier and put the squeeze on creature decks another way, Golgari Food is a similarly good choice. Food doesn’t have a particularly powerful game plan, but churning through the deck and slowly assembling a win condition is still a very effective game plan. Furthermore, Food is a classic anathema to many decks in Historic making it a much truer anti meta deck than anything else.
Finally rounding out the popular anti meta decks, we have Rakdos Arcanist which has had a really interesting time in Historic in general. Some weeks I feel like I only see Rakdos Arcanist, then the next week it’s completely absent from the metagame again. We’ve been in a period where Rakdos has been gone for awhile, but has recently remerged with a bit of a face lift. Rather than receiving any new cards from Kamigawa, it actually ditched the Lurrus of the Dream-Den package entirely! This was really surprising to me as Lurrus seemed like a cornerstone of the deck, but the results don’t lie. Gaining access to more expensive value cards like Seasoned Pyromancer, Chandra, Torch of Defiance, and Sorin the Mirthless is worth nixing the face of the deck.
CONCLUSION
Just like Standard, Historic has different levels to how you want to approach the metagame and what you want to tackled it with. Somewhat unlike Standard, Historic has a much wider breadth of options you can play and find success with.
This may not seem that surprising considering Historic obviously has a significantly larger card pool compared to Standard, but you could also argue that the power level is high enough to gatekeep a lot of strategies as well. Thankfully, it seems that this hasn’t been the case in Historic thus far as there are easily 15+ decks you could play and find success with on ladder. All in all, if you like Historic, this is an excellent time to be playing it!
Thank you for reading!
