MTG Arena Zone Historic Open #5 Decklists and Metagame Breakdown

Our fifth MTG Arena Zone Open Tournament this week attracted 101 players to compete in best-of-three Historic for a chance to win cash prizes and a month of Premium membership. Here, you can check out the full VOD as well as metagame data and the top performing decklists. You can also view the full tournament details on our MTG Melee tournament page and follow us there if you wish to be notified of future tournaments. To commemorate the brand new Historic metagame featuring new Jumpstart cards and the banning of Nexus of Fate and Burning-Tree Emissary, we also doubled the prizes for this event!

VOD

Today’s tournament consisted of 7 rounds of Swiss, followed by a top 8 playoff. We want to thank sidetraK for production, all the competitors, viewers who tuned in and this week’s coverage team to make today’s event possible – be sure to give them a follow!

• Tom Anderson
• Mason Clark
• Waifu Gate
• TheUltimaRatio

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Metagame

The early Historic metagame has shifted to the next powerful card available – Field of the Dead. This typical ramping archetype had been somewhat overshadowed by the hyper aggressive Gruul Aggro, Nexus of Fate combo decks and a host of cards that have been introduced to the format to hate against it. Below is the table of the major archetypes registered by players, but keep in mind Bant Scapeshift, Bant Lands and Five-color Golos are all similar ramping Field of the Dead decks adding up to more than 20% of the metagame.

Of note, the new Goblins deck featuring the new Jumpstart cards have replaced Gruul as the aggro deck of choice for now. Combining with the Rakdos and Mono Red builds, it consisted of 10% of the metagame. It can flood the board in quick order being able to accelerate extra mana with the help of Skirk Prospector and Wily Goblin, and can do so again with the help of cards such as Muxus, Goblin Grandee and Goblin Ringleader.

Combo decks will always be a cornerstone of eternal formats, and in Historic it keeps Field of the Dead decks in check. Kethis Combo looks to be the most established one to replace Nexus of Fate decks, as the introduction of Chromatic Sphere in Jumpstart increases its consistency. Breach Combo is another similar deck that made it to the top 8.

Archetype Name	# of Decks	% of Field	Win Rate %
Bant Scapeshift	8	8.2474%	56.7568%
Mono-R Goblins	7	7.2165%	61.3636%
Five-color Golos	7	7.2165%	60%
Bant Lands	5	5.1546%	57.6923%
Mono-U Tempo	4	4.1237%	35.7143%
Mono-R Aggro	4	4.1237%	43.4783%
Gruul Aggro	4	4.1237%	60%
Rakdos Aristocrats	3	3.0928%	20%
Jund Midrange	3	3.0928%	47.0588%
Kethis Combo	3	3.0928%	60%
Rakdos Goblins	3	3.0928%	63.6364%

Decklists

Here are the top 16 decklists below, but you can check out the full metagame data and more decklists:

• MTG Arena Zone Historic Open: MtGHistoric Subreddit Tournament #11 (MTG Melee)