The holiday season is rapidly approaching, but that hasn’t slowed down the grind on MTG Arena. Over the last week, we’ve seen a ton of decks, particularly from the Historic format, that have been shared with us by players who have had great runs up the ranked ladder.
This article is a return to our Top Mythic Decks series, where we review some of the most highly ranked decks that we’ve been sent over the course of each week. This week is particularly exciting because we have an entirely new ranked format that has arrived on MTG Arena: Alchemy.
The format is brand new, and while it’s going to take a week or so before the full influx of Alchemy ranked decks start rolling in, we do have a couple examples to take a look at from the first few days. In the future, Alchemy will be a consistent part of the Top Mythic decks series, so long as we receive a steady stream of decks in that format. So keep them coming!
In the meantime, let’s dive straight in and check out our top decks from the week. We’ll get started with Historic, where we received the most decks across the board, and then move on to Standard, and finally Alchemy.
An evolution of the Food/Sacrifice decks, Jund Citadel has been a significant part of Historic for nearly as long. Rather than grinding the opponent out with the Cat/Oven combo (Cauldron Familiar/Witch’s Oven), Citadel decks look to push into the late game when they can resolve their namesake card, Bolas's Citadel.
The deck still takes advantage of the sacrifice synergies provided by cards like Priest of Forgotten Gods and Mayhem Devil, while dumping tons of little creatures onto the board as fodder. Well-known Mythic grinder Altheriax took this particular build of Jund Citadel all the way up to the #4 slot – our highest ranked deck from the week.
Increasingly, we’ve been seeing decks cropping up in Historic built around Lotus Field, the powerful hexproof land from Core Set 2020. Despite coming with the steep downside of sacrificing two lands when it enters the battlefield, players have been finding ways to abuse the three-mana-producing land. In particular, Archmage's Charm pairs very nicely with Lotus Field, especially when the Lotus Field is untapped on the turn it’s played thanks to a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.
Meanwhile in best-of-one, player Giacomo Landi took this version of Mono Red Madness up to #94 Mythic. Since Jumpstart: Historic Horizons added a slew of powerful cards to the format, Madness decks based around Dragon's Rage Channeler have been serious contenders – especially in best-of-one.
That brings us to the end of our Historic decks this week. You can browse the full collection of the week’s Historic decks below. Keep scrolling to check out our decks from Standard and Alchemy.
Love it or hate it, Mono White Aggro continues to be one of the top decks in Standard, even more so in best-of-one where とら took their version of the deck to #76 Mythic. The low-curve aggressive deck has a strong ability to get underneath Izzet and other control decks, even getting under other aggressive decks like Mono Green with some consistency.
Speaking of Izzet, our next deck is another iteration of Izzet Turns, this one optimized for best-of-one by Lupita at #152. Anybody who plays Standard at this point is familiar with the Epiphany decks that notoriously set up for a combo turn that will ensure the opponent never untaps again with a chain of extra turns.
Izzet Turns is still one of the best archetypes in the format, and it’s certainly a deck that can take a skilled player to Mythic in best-of-one and best-of-three alike.
Esper Control hasn’t been a dominant archetype in Standard since back when War of the Spark was still in the format. However, thanks in part to the mana being so good in Standard right now, Esper (and other three color combinations) are pretty viable, and the three color control decks are competing on the fringes of the format.
This particular build, submitted by Agentbatz, is built to take advantage of the absurdly powerful Hullbreaker Horror. Agentbatz managed to climb to #202 Mythic with the deck, which is heavy on removal and sweepers to battle the Mono White and Mono Green decks that are everywhere on ladder.
And that covers everything from Standard this week. Next up, we’ll take a quick look at some of the Mythic ranked decks that have shown up in Alchemy so far.
An adaptation of one of the top archetypes in Standard, Mono Green Stompy has been one of the popular decks early in the Alchemy format. There are a handful of cards from the Alchemy: Innstrad set that are being tried, but the one card that has become a staple of Alchemy Mono Green thus far is Tenacious Pup. Granting vigilance, trample and a +1/+1 buff is no joke, especially when it comes stapled to a one mana play in an archetype that has been lacking in one-drops in recent times.
This version of the deck was assembled by Pierfrancesco1987 and also includes a few other Alchemy exclusive cards, such as the foretell wolf Lupine Harbingers.
Our final deck for today, which comes to us from Dafore, is a bit more reliant on the new Alchemy cards. Rakdos decks have been popular on and off in Standard, but have never been a top-tier deck since rotation. In Alchemy, however, the new dragon ramping card Fearsome Whelp is starting to look quite strong in the new format, and Rakdos Dragon decks have been popping up as one of the most successful dragon shells so far.
The deck is filled with some of the strongest dragons that have been brought to the Standard cardpool, particularly Immersturm Predator and Goldspan Dragon (in spite of the latter being nerfed in Alchemy). Also, Town-razer Tyrant from Innistrad: Alchemy is proving itself to be a threat to be reckoned with, especially when it only costs three thanks to a Fearsome Whelp.
That’s going to do it for this week’s Top Mythic Decks. In the future, expect more from Alchemy, but not to worry – we won’t be leaving behind Standard and Historic. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week!
This column is our weekly roundup of Standard, Historic, and Alchemy decks players are using to climb the ranked ladder on MTG Arena! Our goal is to curate and post a variety of deck archetypes and interesting card choices at the end of each week to help you keep up to date with the latest trends in the metagame. If you have any decks you want featured, please tweet us at @mtgazone or give us a shout at our Discord.
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