Historic No Banned List (Basically No Bans) Event Guide and Decklists

MTG Arena players are in for a treat until the release of the next expansion, Lost Caverns of Ixalan! Just like the popular first iteration of the event, players have free access to the Historic No Banned List event, where they can use any card on MTG Arena, including all the powerful cards banned in Historic such as Lightning Bolt, Brainstorm, Oko, Thief of Crowns, Time Warp and more.

However, unlike the last iteration, this event is dubbed Basically No Bans because well, three cards are banned for the event. You can find more information on the reasoning (and some interesting stats) in the Dev Diaries here.

The best part is that the event is All-Access, meaning you can build decks with cards even not in your collection. In this fun event with nothing else other than your wins at stake, find out how quickly the community discovers the most broken deck! Check out all the details including some decklists from us and the community below!

Event Details

• Duration: August 21st, 2023 @ 8:00 AM PST to September 4th, 2023 @ 8:00 AM PST
• Format: Historic No Banned List (Basically No Bans) All-Access
• Entry Fee: Free
• Ends After: You can play as much as you like for the duration of the event.
• Match Structure: Best-of-one matches (BO1)

Historic Basically No Bans Banned Card List

• Channel
• Demonic Tutor
• Tibalt's Trickery

Historic Banned Card List

For reference, below is the list of cards currently banned in Historic.

• Agent of Treachery
• Brainstorm
• Field of the dead
• Memory Lapse
• Nexus of Fate
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Once Upon a Time
• Thassa's Oracle
• Tibalt's Trickery
• Time Warp
• Uro, Titan of nature's wrath
• Veil of Summer
• Wilderness Reclamation
• Winota, Joiner of Forces
• Channel
• Counterspell
• Dark Ritual
• Demonic Tutor
• Lightning Bolt
• Natural Order
• Ragavan, nimble pilferer
• Swords to Plowshares
• Mishra's Bauble

Cards that exist in tabletop, such as Kumano Faces Kakkazan, are also reverted back to their original state if they were rebalanced, but Alchemy cards retain their current version.

Event Rewards

Wins	Reward
1 Win	1000 Mastery XP

Decklists

We start things off with six of Historic expert Altheriax‘s choice for the event, then more decks found in the community below!

Temur Titan Field Creativity

The most tested deck out of the bunch, this deck looks to utilize some of the banned cards to go big quickly. Click here to see the Video Deck Guide!

Simic Nexus Reclamation Combo

This is a combo control deck looking to use counterspells to interact in the early turns, and then use Wilderness Reclamation to produce a ton of mana, repeatedly dig for Nexus of Fate to try and set up infinite turns, then closing the game out with Mirrex, Kaheera, or Hall. Click here to see the Video Deck Guide!

Un-Nerfed Winota

Want the original Winota, Joiner of Forces back? Here it is in all its glory!

Azorius Control

Go the other way and frustrate your opponents trying to do broken things with cards such as Swords to Plowshares and Memory Lapse!

Natural Order Elves

Straightforward Elves deck with Natural Order!

Four-Color Omnath

This deck by Gamma_Frog from reddit has all the hallmarks of this event!

Jeskai Delver

Thwart your opponent’s plans with this Jeskai Delver deck from KillaDub!

Grixis Tempo

MTG_Joe has a tempo list that utilizes the original Dragon's Rage Channeler!

More Decklists

More decks will be added here from the community or from staff as we see interesting ones.

Wrap Up

More decks are coming soon! Keep an eye out here as the meta develops. We may even do special articles on it!