It’s time once again to take a look back at some of the most highly ranked Mythic decks that we’ve been sent over the course of the week, but this week has a huge twist: on Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast announced sweeping changes to Standard, Historic, and Alchemy (along with changes to non-Arena formats) in a massive Banned and Restricted Announcement.
The B&R changes finally removed the notoriously oppressive Alrund's Epiphany from Standard, along with Divide by Zero in an attempt to give non-blue midrange decks a better chance and Faceless Haven to make the mono-colored aggro decks a bit less resilient.
Today, we’re going to take a look at the Standard and Historic formats with some decks that were posted both before and after the ban announcement, and have a bit of discussion about how each of the archetypes – and the formats at large – may be affected.
You can check out the links above to learn more about the changes to Arena’s formats, but for now, let’s get into some Top Mythic Decks!
Our top deck for today comes to us from Krowz, a Twitch streamer who reached #36 Mythic shortly before the ban was announced – although it was completely unaffected. This “Naya” deck is based on a fairly typical Mono White Aggro shell, but splashing both red and green mostly to play Halana and Alena, Partners. This Gruul legend is almost like a scaled-up Luminarch Aspirant, and it’s been running around the Standard format in recent months.
Funny the day they announce bans for standard I actually low key solved it. From it's creation it went 13-0 until I lost to rakdos tokens/sac. This is the most fun and strongest deck I've played in standard in this meta. #MTG#MTGApic.twitter.com/e88wY1MMQ4
Krowz goes as far as to say he “solved” the format right before the bans happened, but its possible that this deck only got stronger as none of its cards were affected, and some of the ripple effects of the bans may fall in this deck’s favor. The banning of Faceless Haven makes regular Mono White and Mono Green a bit worse, so something a bit more unorthodox like this may do well. However, now that Epiphany and Divide by Zero aren’t in the format anymore, a return of midrange decks like Orzhov, Rakdos, and Golgari could be brutal against this and other aggro decks if they take over the ladder.
Up next, we’ve got another Naya aggro deck, this one submitted by Twitter user Edoardo Tedesco. While this deck has quite a few cards in common with Krowz’s build, Edoardo is more focused on the Human tribal synergies, especially with Sigarda, Champion of Light. Like the first deck, Naya Humans is also reliant on Halana and Alena, Partners, a four-of in the deck.
Both of these Naya decks appeared in the days leading up to the ban, so we’ll be keeping our eyes on the Naya archetypes in Standard to see how they’re faring in the post-ban meta.
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise at this point to see that our next deck also heavily features Halana and Alena, although this one is quite a bit different both in terms of the rest of the deck and also the fact that this deck was posted after the B&R announcement. This deck, which is based on the Temur Treasures archetype that’s been running around in Standard in some form since shortly after Kaldheim brought us Magda, Brazen Outlaw and Goldspan Dragon, was submitted by regular grinder and frequent deck contributor Roy Varney.
Varney claims to have tried several decks after the ban trying to climb up out of the Mythic percentages before putting this deck together and going “X-1” up to #258 Mythic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this archetype do extremely well in post-ban Standard – it has a high concentration of some of the format’s strongest remaining cards, including the aforementioned Goldspan and of course Esika's Chariot (and apparently Halana and Alena).
While technically our next-highest-ranked deck should have been Jund Midrange by Delmo at #400 Mythic (and we encourage you to give it a look), I decided to feature this Mono Black list instead in the interest of diversity and including at least one deck in this week’s feature that doesn’t include Halana and Alena. It’s definitely a bit anecdotal, but it might be noteworthy that the card has been all over our spotlight this week. We’ll have to see how well it fares in the new meta.
Back to the actual feature: a Mono Black Control deck shared with us by Twitter user Mansonian. Mono Black Sacrifice/Control has been a popular deck on and off in both Standard and also Alchemy, where the deck has access to Sanguine Brushstroke. If the banning of two of blue’s best cards turns out to give a significant boost to aggro and creature-based midrange decks, archetypes like Mono Black and Rakdos sacrifice could benefit immensely.
That’s going to do it for our Standard feature this week – we’ll certainly be keeping an eye on the format as the meta continues to adapt and shift after the bans going forward. In the meantime, check out the rest of our Standard decks from the week, but keep an eye out for any that may include the now-banned cards.
Over in the Historic format, our top deck from the week climbed all the way up to #2 Mythic in the hands of Twitch-partnered streamer and MTG content creator TheNerdySteve. Food/Sacrifice decks have been a major player in Historic going all the way back towards the very beginning of the format. Originally, the archetype was almost always in a Jund shell featuring Mayhem Devil and Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, but thanks in large part to Jumpstart: Historic Horizons, Food decks have pivoted largely to the Golgari color pair.
The newer Golgari Food evolution of the archetype has been all over the place in Historic, but Steve’s take on the deck has a couple of interesting inclusions that you don’t always see in the deck. Firstly, two copies of Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons is an interesting inclusion, and I’d love to see it working in combination with the singleton copy of Squirrel General”]. We’ve also got an oddball singleton copy of Sawtusk Demolisher, a mutate creature that I can’t say I’ve ever seen turn up in a deck this high in Mythic – or anywhere on Arena, for that matter.
Our second-highest ranked deck in Historic this week is one that may be dead – or at least severely weakened – following the Alchemy rebalancing, and that’s part of why I’ve chosen to include it. Decks built around Inquisitor Captain and its absurd interaction with Glasspool Mimic have been everywhere on the Arena ladder in both Alchemy and Historic since the interaction was discovered. Now that the card has been changed so that its ability only triggers if you cast it, it will be interesting to see if blink decks like this one will survive, and if they will continue to include Inquisitor Captain regardless.
This deck, brought to us by regular contributor and high-Mythic grinder AlthMTG, is built to abuse the interactions with Inquisitor Captain as much as possible. Glasspool, Soulherder, Charming Prince, and Release to the Wind are all four-ofs in the deck to maximize the Captain as much as possible, but of those four tricks, only Release to the Wind can still trigger the Captain. Release is an interesting case, but it seems unlikely that the card can carry the archetype on its own.
Blink is one of my personal favorite archetypes across multiple formats, so I’ll be waiting with interest to see what the deck looks like in Historic after Captain. Inquisitor Captain is still a strong card, and it will likely continue to show up in Alchemy and Historic, but whether it should still a part of the Blink archetype remains to be seen.
In last week’s Top Mythic Decks, we saw a Mono Green Aggro list, submitted by well-known master of the archetype Rumti, reach up to #71 in our Historic showcase. This week, another example of the archetype showed up in the top 100 by streamer Dafore who claimed to have been inspired by Rumti to make some changes and play his own version of the deck.
Mono Green Stompy is a well-loved archetype, and I have no doubt that there are many players who will be happy to see the archetype doing so well in Historic. If you’re a stompy fan, have a look at this and also Rumti’s version and get out there and turn those creatures sideways! It’s hard to argue with the decks viability, at least on Arena ladder, with these kinds of results coming in every week.
And that will bring us to the end of our Top Mythic Decks for the week. Check out the full list of decks below, but just as with Standard, keep the recent B&R and digital rebalancing in mind.
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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