How to Navigate Week 1 Explorer: My Top 5 Decks for Bo1 and Bo3 and What the Best Decks Will Be for Each Queue

Hello everyone! I'm sure you're aware by now that the new Explorer format queues and events are live on MTG Arena! If you need a quick guide on what Explorer is all about and good entry lists, you can check out the article below or our preliminary metagame snapshot.

Explorer Beginner’s Guide: Format Details and Starter Decks

However, that's just a launching off point for the format, we could do so much better. Since the queues have started, we can already start metagaming the competition before anybody knows the format well! This is actually a topic I've been working on for a month or so as I had earlier believed that there was a good chance this would be the new format of choice (thanks to the Written in the Past events) so I can give you the jump on the competition as well.

So how did I come up with these lists? Look at Pioneer and adapt! By analyzing the Pioneer metagame using our sister site, mtgmeta.io, I was able to extrapolate what's good there, why it's good, and how that could transfer to this format. A lot of Pioneer's top decks use cards that aren't available to us so it isn't as simple as just copying them so some analysis had to be done. Thankfully, I think I have a good grasp of what's going to be good and great bases to start off with. No matter if you are a Bo1 or ...