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The second Historic Shakeup is here and with it, a medley of new decks and strategies to explore! The first Historic shakeup event they held back in June was a blast to play and allowed a lot of new ideas to be explored and a lot of old ideas to play out without their marquee broken card!
Check out the below guide for the latest edition of the event – March 2021:
Although you only get a reward after your first win, you’re more than welcome to keep playing as many times as you want with as many different decks as you want! If you want to get a break from the most oppressive cards from Historic, I highly recommend that you keep playing this until it’s gone!
Today, I’ve provided 9 different decks, some known decks without the banned cards, and some decks that haven’t had their time to shine yet in Historic. These decks may vary a lot in terms of strategy, but I’m confident that the power level of all of these decks will be relatively high for the format and should grant you the first win quickly! If there’s a certain strategy that you like to play, I’m sure one of these decks can be a great launching point for you to explore this fresh Historic landscape. Happy brewing!
Event Information
Shake up your Historic experience with the aptly named Historic Shakeup event, where we ban some of the format’s most played cards to give other sweet cards their turn to shine! In addition to the cards normally banned in Historic, we’ve banned a handful of other cards to mix things up.
- Duration: December 26, 2020 at 8:00 AM PST – January 1, 2021 at 8:00 AM PST
- Format: Historic Shakeup
- 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)
Banned Card List
Here’s the full list of cards banned in Historic Shakeup.
- Agent of Treachery
- Bonecrusher Giant
- Cauldron Familiar
- Collected Company
- Embercleave
- Field of the Dead
- Fires of Invention
- Kor Spiritdancer
- Llanowar Elves
- Lotus Cobra
- Muxus, Goblin Grandee
- Nexus of Fate
- Oko, Thief of Crowns
- Omnath, Locus of Creation
- Once Upon a Time
- Phyrexian Tower
- Teferi, Time Raveler
- Thoughtseize
- Torrential Gearhulk
- Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
- Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
- Veil of Summer
- Wilderness Reclamation
- Winota, Joiner of Forces
- Wrath of God
Event Rewards
- 1 Win: Mystery Cosmetic
Our Top Historic Shakeup Decklists
Here are our collection of decks you can use for this event. Scroll down for their descriptions!
NEOSTORM COMBO
When I first saw the banned list for the Historic shake up event, my first thought was to find the best deck I could that was completely untouched by the changes. For this Shakeup, that deck is Neostorm. Utilizing the combo between Sea Gate Stormcaller and Neoform to fetch out a bunch of Dualcaster Mage into a Tuktuk Rubblefort for the win, this extremely fast and powerful deck will likely be one of the easiest ways to secure your win in this event. With Thoughtseize being banned, there will be very few decks that will be able to meaningfully interact or outrace you.
MONO RED GOBLINS
Wait a second! Muxus was banned in this shakeup! You can’t play Goblins! I’m sure that’s what a lot of people are thinking, but the deck still functions quite well without your 6 mana one card combo! This version of Goblins plays the the board a lot more than the traditional version and your Goblin Matron are now used as ways to fetch anything that’ll be good in that scenario instead of almost always Muxus. This may seem like a try hard option, but honestly without the overbearing Muxus, playing with or against this deck can be quite fun!
TEMUR PARADOX COMBO
Similar to Neostorm, Paradox Combo also was left close to untouched with just Uro and Llanowar Elves being banned from the list. Although Uro was really strong in the deck, it was really only there when your Plan A of comboing out your opponent is possible or for grinding, but in Bo1, grinding is significantly less important. Llanowar Elves is a sizeable loss, but Gilded Goose is quite similar and also helps fuel Emry, even if you only get 1 mana from the initial investment. Paradox has a similar style and speed compared to Neostorm, but is probably slightly less fast comparatively. A nice feature of Paradox versus all the other options is that you still get full use of the sideboard between Jegantha and your 14 Karn Wish targets. Being able to tutor out your combo or a situationally powerful artifact is a really fun way to play which Paradox my top choice for this event.
MONO RED BURN
One of my favorite Historic decks of all time, Burn hasn’t had a chance to really shine since Uro has always been there to give it a headache. However, with the Uro menace banned, Red mages can come back to play! Utilizing a bevy of cheap one drops into a fistful of burn, if you enjoy killing your opponent quickly or being able to interact, this is the deck for you!
AZORIUS AURAS
Kor Spiritdancer did get hit with the temporary ban hammer, but that doesn’t mean Auras is now unplayable. With an extra Staggering Insight to help with the card draw and Hushbringer as a great threat that doesn’t have to worry about Uro, the deck is still more than viable and a great option if you love smashing with one beefy threat.
ESPER DOOM
Now we’re getting into some spice! Banning Wrath of God was a really weird choice for the event, but that’s easily replaceable with either Kaya’s Wrath or Shatter the Sky. This deck doesn’t focus on counterspells which can be hit or miss against a lot of the prospective decks you may face in the event and focuses on controlling the board instead which is a very reliable strategy against the many creature decks sure to be present. If you want to play a Control deck with this banned list, here’s where to start.
BANT TURBO FOG
Some of you just like watching the world burn, and I guess I’m here to help? Turbo Fog is a deck very reminiscent of one of the most loved and reviled decks in recent History, Nexus of Fate combo. Using interaction and Fog effects to stymie your opponent’s gameplan until you can ultimate a Teferi is a slow game plan, but it is extremely effective. If you want to win, not by any in game win con, but by your opponent losing the will to play, here’s your weapon of choice.
MONO WHITE PRISON
Similar to Turbo Fog, but way faster in enabling it’s lock, Monowhite Prison looks to win by assembling the combo of Nine Lives and Solemnity to make it that damage is no longer an effective win condition for the opponent. If you are looking to prey on the many aggro decks that are sure to be present then this can be a great choice, but you could be susceptible to any strategy that’s not looking to kill you with creatures. Never the less, you’ll have pretty quick games either way and with unlimited tries, you’ll surely make a lot of aggro players sad.
MONO RED INDOMITABLE COMBO
I couldn’t leave you all without including something super spicy in the mix. This deck is looking to get 2-3 tokens on the board so when you cast Indomitable Creativity, the only creature you can find is Terror of the Peaks! If you fetch out 2, you’ll get 10 damage split between 2 5 damage chunks to work with, and if you can get 3, you’ll get an instant 30 damage! This deck plays a lot of cheap burn to help stall until you can assemble a few tokens on board so this deck works quite against a variety of creature strategies. If you want to make your opponent feel safe until you kill them out of nowhere, I can’t recommend this deck highly enough!
