Metagame Monday – Historic Decks to Try Post-Suspensions

On the fateful day of December 12, four cards were put on to the Historic Suspension list – Field of the Dead, Oko, Thief of Crowns, Once Upon a Time, and Veil of Summer. Most will also know that these cards are banned in Standard as well since November. Before this, Historic was turning out to be warped around some select deck archetypes – Gruul Aggro, Simic Oko, and Field of the Dead. Many players were rushing through to the top ranks with the powerful Gruul deck in a relatively soft metagame – we highlighted that in the Monday Metagame Historic article two weeks ago.

In today’s Monday Metagame, we will explore some early decklists that we curated, how Historic might shape up over the next few weeks before the release of Theros: Beyond Death and leading up to the upcoming Historic Challenge event.

Decklists

Let’s begin with the Historic decks! They are not necessarily tuned or refined, but rather we wanted to highlight the specific deck archetypes that could be the best ones going forward.

Check out all Historic decklists here!

• We expect different flavors of Nexus of Fate decks to be prominent in the metagame, which was one of the powerful archetypes even before the suspensions. Losing Veil of Summer does not hurt too much either, as Mystical Dispute is a pretty good replacement.
• Gruul Aggro is still fantastic! Llanowar Elves and Burning-Tree Emissary makes the deck explosive, and the combination of Questing Beast and Embercleave is still good enough in Historic. The mana base is also much better than Standard, which lessens the impact of the loss of Once Upon a Time.
• Control decks featuring the dual Teferi planeswalkers may make a rise again, and we think Esper and Azorius are both worth exploring and tuning.
• Aggro strategies that did not require Once Upon a Time may be viable again, such as Vampires, Dinosaurs (can use Commune with Dinosaurs instead), Mono Red Aggro and Knights.

Discussion

What do you think? What have you been facing in the Historic ladder after the suspensions? What archetypes do you think will be the top tier? Is it still too early to tell? Do you have a successful decklist you want to share? Let us know in the comments below or join the discussion in our Discord server!