Arena Historic (BO1) Metagame Tier List and Rankings – Post-Uro Ban – March 2021

Introduction

Discover the best Magic: The Gathering Arena Historic decks and archetypes that the players are using to climb the ranked ladder and win tournaments. Explore the Traditional (BO3) Historic metagame as we regularly rank the top decks in a tier list, as well as our comprehensive analysis and review.

• Click here to view the separate analysis and tier list for Traditional Historic (BO3).
• Click on the deck archetype name to find a brief description, links to the full deck guide with a more detailed overview and to find the latest decklists representing it.
• Each deck will be ranked in numerical order as well as tier order. The higher something is within the tier, the better it is than other decks.
• Below the tier list you will also find a curated decklist for each archetype as well as a full explanation and reasonings behind these rankings and tiers.

Methodology

When constructing the tier list, we take into account a variety of factors and sources:

• Field representation, win rate and matchups: How prolific a deck is on the Mythic ladder and how it stacks up against the other popular decks in the metagame.
• Third-party applications: that track matches and publishes the data directly from ladder play. Currently, we have access to Untapped.gg, MTGA Assistant, MTG Arena Pro and MTG Arena Tool.
• Tournaments: Important results shaped professional players. MTGmeta.io and MTG Data aggregates these results to analyze their performance.
• Game Mode: As a general rule, best-of-one (BO1) prefers linear strategies and the metagame is different from Traditional best-of-three (BO3). Read more about the differences here. Generally speaking, the tournaments results are in BO3 only, have a much smaller sample size and its environment is very different from an open MTG Arena ladder experience.
• Opinion: Our own ladder experience and in consultation with players.
• Others: If a deck doesn’t appear below, either the play rate of it is too low for it to make a tangible impact or it falls below the tier 3 threshold which we sometimes will highlight as Honorable Mentions below. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad deck either, as this will just be focused on the most popular decks in the current metagame.

Legend

• Tier 1: The best of the best. The most consistent decks that sport the highest win rates and generally, the highest play rates.
• Tier 2: Very solid decks that are slightly lacking in some capacity, whether it’s consistency or power compared to the Tier One archetypes. These can still be strong choices for ladder or for tournaments if you are highly skilled with the archetype or play them during the right metas.
• Tier 3: Either these decks are poorly positioned or have a lot of power/consistency issues. These are decks that see play, but are generally worse choices than your other options.

Tier List

• March 5, 2021: Updated for Kaldheim and the Post-Uro ban.
• December 11, 2020: Updated tier list ahead of the Arena Open! Some considerations have also been made in light of the Zendikar Rising Championship tournament results.
• November 25, 2020: Welcome to the first edition of the BO1 Historic tier list. Since there are no Historic BO1 tournaments (until the next Arena Open), we will be basing this heavily on the BO3 data and Untapped.gg data available since the release of Kaladesh Remastered.

TIER ONE

1. SACRIFICE