Arena Standard (BO1) Metagame Tier List and Rankings: July 2021

Introduction

Discover the best Magic: The Gathering Arena Standard decks and archetypes that the players are using to climb the ranked ladder and win tournaments. Explore the MTG Arena (BO1) Standard metagame as we regularly rank the top decks in a tier list, as well as our comprehensive analysis and review.

• Click here to view the separate analysis and tier list for Traditional (BO3) Standard.
• Click on the deck archetype name to find a brief description, links to the full deck guide with a more detailed overview and to find the latest decklists representing it.
• Each deck will be ranked in numerical order as well as tier order. The higher something is within the tier, the better it is than other decks.
• Below the tier list you will also find a curated decklist for each archetype as well as a full explanation and reasonings behind these rankings and tiers.

Methodology

When constructing the tier list, we take into account a variety of factors and sources:

• Field representation, win rate and matchups: How prolific a deck is on the Mythic ladder and how it stacks up against the other popular decks in the metagame.
• Third-party applications: that track matches and publishes the data directly from ladder play. Currently, we have access to Untapped.gg, MTGA Assistant, MTG Arena Pro and MTG Arena Tool.
• Tournaments: Important results shaped professional players. MTGmeta.io and MTG Data aggregates these results to analyze their performance.
• Game Mode: As a general rule, best-of-one (BO1) prefers linear strategies and the metagame is different from Traditional best-of-three (BO3). Read more about the differences here. Generally speaking, the tournaments results are in BO3 only, have a much smaller sample size and its environment is very different from an open MTG Arena ladder experience.
• Opinion: Our own ladder experience and in consultation with players.
• Others: If a deck doesn’t appear below, either the play rate of it is too low for it to make a tangible impact or it falls below the tier 3 threshold which we sometimes will highlight as Honorable Mentions below. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad deck either, as this will just be focused on the most popular decks in the current metagame.

Legend

• Tier 1: The best of the best. The most consistent decks that sport the highest win rates and generally, the highest play rates.
• Tier 2: Very solid decks that are slightly lacking in some capacity, whether it’s consistency or power compared to the Tier One archetypes. These can still be strong choices for ladder or for tournaments if you are highly skilled with the archetype or play them during the right metas.
• Tier 3: Either these decks are poorly positioned or have a lot of power/consistency issues. These are decks that see play, but are generally worse choices than your other options.
• Tier 4: Off-meta or decks that are not in the rankings, but we have coverage on.

Tier List and Rankings

TIER ONE DECK ARCHETYPES

1. BOROS WINOTA

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 59.3% (17000 matches)
• Change: 2 -> 1

With the highest win rate and play rate, Boros Winota finally takes the spot away from Monowhite after a long while. With an extremely fast clock backed up by the absolutely punishing nature of Winota, Joiner of Forces, the deck is a huge force to be reckoned with.

2. MONO WHITE LIFEGAIN

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 58.0% (11000 matches)
• Change: 1 -> 2

Lifegain has been at the top of the meta for awhile and it looks like it’s not going anywhere. The deck is powerful, consistent, and great against the other creature decks of the format.

3. MONO RED AGGRO

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 57.7% (21000 matches)
• Change: 3 -> 3

Monored, like many other decks on this list, have been a mainstay in Bo1 for awhile and has firmly remained the most popular deck in Best of One. The deck has a very fast game plan and despite it not being the “strongest deck”, it’s sheer speed allows you to overwhelm any opponent.

4. MONO WHITE AGGRO

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 58.4% (9100 matches)
• Change: 4 -> 4

Although traditional Monowhite Aggro now has eclipsed Lifegain’s win rate, I’m still a little skeptical to place it above it. It’s such a small percentage and Lifegain is still the more popular option, so I want to be cautious and leave Monowhite at the bottom off Tier 1 for now.

However, with the power of the AFR cards maybe it can usurp it’s more popular brother from it’s ranking in the future if the data supports it.

TIER TWO DECK ARCHETYPES

5. CYCLING

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 57.3%
• Change: 5 -> 5

The top of tier 2, Boros Cycling is a powerful deck plagued by it’s own inconsistency. It can have starts that no deck can beat, but also have anemic starts where you do nothing the first few turns which makes the deck a little scary to play at times.

That being said, it’s an excellent and powerful deck to break into ladder with and will trounce nearly every deck thats not in the top tier.

6. MONO GREEN AGGRO

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 55.4% (14000 matches)
• Change: Unlisted -> 6

Much like Best of 3, Monogreen is really finding it’s stride as it’s the deck that picked up the most from AFR with Werewolf Pack Leader and Ranger Class. It has a solid win rate and sees a huge amount of play, but can struggle against the Monowhite decks which are also very popular. I’ll keep an eye out for this one as I wouldn’t be surprised if this breaks into Tier 1 at some point.

7. DIMIR ROGUES

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 55.6%
• Change: 7 -> 7

I’m surprised that Rogues performs so well in Bo1 as the meta is so aggressive, but if your list is teched towards other aggro decks it’s definitely not unreasonable. Rogues shines against off meta or untuned decks while still being reasonable against the fast decks, but the fact is Bo1 has a lot of fast deck swhich can give Rogues a hard time. However, Rogues good starts are so hard to beat no matter what deck they’re playing and it does perform well against Monowhite traditionally.

8. SULTAI ULTIMATUM

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 55.2% (12000 matches)
• Change: 9 -> 8

Although this isn’t as strong as it is in Bo3, it has picked up some steam allowing it to be a competitive choice in Bo1. That being said, it still isn’t the greatest choice by any means as the hyper aggressive nature of Best of One doesn’t suit Sultai Ultimatum particularly well, even if you build for aggro in mind.

TIER THREE DECK ARCHETYPES

9. MONO BLACK AURAS

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 54.0% (5800 matches)
• Change: 11 -> 10

Monoblack Auras sees reasonable play and sports a decent win rate, but does have some endemic problems it needs to work out. The power level of the deck is lower than most of the others in the meta and it really only shines against creature decks, being a complete dog to stuff like Sultai or Cycling. It’s a solid deck if you enjoy the game play or face exclusively creature decks, but it’s certainly not your best option.

10. IZZET DRAGONS

• Deck Guide
• Win Rate: 48.6% (6000)
• Change: Unlisted -> 11

The final deck for the tier list, Izzet Dragons is decently popular, but has a sub 50% win rate on ladder. The deck can be very powerful if it curves multiple interative spells into a Dragon, but when it doesn’t do that, it can crumble extremely quickly to an aggro deck. I would definitely steer clear of this for now.

Thank you for reading! Have a great day!