It has now been almost a week since the release of Theros Beyond Death, and the third week of the January 2020 ranked ladder season. It looks like the new expansion has added a lot of depth and variety to both new and existing Standard decks so far. We are very pleased to see the community at large liven up again and be excited to start brewing with the new cards in a fresh metagame. As a result, a lot of decks were shared so far this week from Mythic ranked players (more than ever before), and we can only hope it keeps up!
While the new Standard format obviously still remains open (and fun) until we see some early tournament results, it looks like we are starting to see the stronger deck archetypes shape up amongst all the experimental decks from day 1 many players are trying. Here are the decks we are seeing as standouts so far:
- Mono Black Devotion: Lots of variations of the deck at the moment, whether you are going through a discard, aggro, sacrifice or more midrange strategy. All of them still feature Gray Merchant of Asphodel which rounds the deck together.
- Mono White Aggro / Devotion: A white weenie, lifegain deck is making an impact on Standard! There are also some variations to the build at present, whether you want to go for a more aggressive or midrange style. The deck can be quite resilient thanks to Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Elspeth, Sun’s Nemesis.
- Azorius Control: There are three new components to this deck archetype that has reinvigorated this deck archetype to become more than just a flash counterspell deck of the past. The new Saga enchantments (such as The Birth of Meletis and Elspeth Conquers Death) are showing serious value, a four mana board wipe in Shatter the Sky, and a great finisher in Dream Trawler.
- Esper Hero / Control: The new planeswalker Ashiok, Nightmare Muse is making a huge difference, as well as the two new Temples to help with the mana base.
- Simic Ramp: Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath is obviously a powerful card but is even more so in combination with Cavalier of Thorns.
- Jund / Rakdos Sacrifice: The sacrifice decks receive a lot of cool cards to experiment with, such as Woe Strider and Nightmare Shepherd.
There are even more interesting ones we have not mentioned above, so in the next few days keep your eyes out here at MTG Arena Zone as we delve into these decks in more detail. The Standard Metagame Challenge event is coming to MTG Arena on January 24, and with that we plan to update our BO1 and BO3 Standard Metagame Tier List with preliminary data. Without further ado, here are the Mythic deck roundup for the first week of Theros Beyond Death Standard!
Standard Decklists
Check out our Standard deck database for more decks!
If you have missed it, MTGO has also published some early Standard decks from its events in the last couple of days so check them out if you have not already!
- January 20: MTGO Standard League
- January 19: MTGO Standard Standard Challenge
This column is our weekly roundup of Standard and Historic 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 wish to be featured, please tweet us at @mtgazone or give us a shout at our Discord.