Introduction

Discover the best Magic: The Gathering Arena Alchemy decks and archetypes that the players are using to climb the ranked ladder and win tournaments. Our MTG Arena Best of Three (Bo3) Alchemy metagame regularly reviews and ranks the top decks in the format. We also follow up our choices based on a variety of factors and sources, with comprehensive analysis from the data available. Updated Late December!

Alchemy Best of Three (Bo3) Meta Tier List

• Tier 1: Decks that are both popular and have few weak spots against other top decks, making them formidable in the current meta.
• Tier 2: Decks that are strong in executing their game plan, but struggle against some number of the Tier 1 decks, making them strong choices but not the best in the current meta.
• Tier 3: Decks that struggle against several of the Tier 1 and 2 decks, or are largely unproven.

Tier 1 Decks

Grixis Heist

Key Cards and Gameplan: The King is back! Grixis Heist is a midrange/control deck looking to heist their opponent’s spells and dominate the mid to late game with their best tools and their opponent’s best tools combined.

Heist has had a resurgence lately thanks to the buffs/changes to the Chorus cards giving it better removal and better card advantage in the early and mid game.

Ribald Shanty is great removal early and late, Hymn to the Ages is good card advantage early and late, and Mycelic Ballad can easily clean up a board in the mid and late game. They all play great with each other, obviously, and the deck can easily get back into games it was losing by top decking a Hymn to the Ages after the intensity has been increased a few times.

This version has chosen to go light on Heist creatures, just deploying Impetuous Lootmonger to heist early and make treasures, but still has the heist spells with Grave Expectations and Weave the Nightmare for flexibility, and Triumphant Getaway for a drain win con.

The deck has also involved in another way, which is to included the combo of Stormchaser's Talent and This Town Ain't Big Enough Stormchaser's Talent makes a token to either start beating down with or chump block with, and then levels up to return a heist spell or chorus card to keep the game plan moving forward.

then, it can be bounced for cheap with This Town Ain't Big Enoughto allow us to redeploy it and use its level 2 again for even more card advantage. This Town Ain't Big Enoughis also great for bouncing Triumphant Getaway for more heisting, or Nowhere to Run for more removal.

Playing Against this Deck: There are a ton of tools to use against heist decks. Cards like Aven Interruptercan put a heisted spell they cast into your exile zone, and make all of their heisted spells cost two more to cast. In general, bounce spells like Paths of Tuinvale and Into the Flood Maw can return your heisted creatures to your hand, and cards like Parting Gust and Getaway Glamer can exile heisted creatures to return them to our side. In general, try being aggressive, and consider using counterspells or discard spells to back up your aggressive creatures.

Why Tier 1? With the nerf to Boros Mice and other red aggro decks, and the buff to the Chorus cards really rounding out the deck, Heist has bounced back to King of the format again. Without aggro to keep it down, Heist preys on other slow decks by stealing their impactful plays, and can grind out any deck with its card advantage engine. Even against aggro it has great tools, making it truly a menace in the format.

Boros Mice

Key Cards and Gameplan: Boros Mice is an aggressive deck looking to curve out to pressure the opponent early, and can play into the mid game thanks to card advantage from Emberheart Challenger and Recruit Instructor.

This deck is built around the mice of Bloomburrow and their mechanic, Valiant, which rewards you for targeting them with a spell or ability you control. All of the threats in the deck have valiant or trigger it for free.

The curve starts with Flowerfoot Swordmaster and Heartfire Hero which grow into real threats, Emberheart Challenger that can exile cards with its valiant ability, and Recruit Instructor which drafts a spell each time we attack with any of our mice, and makes mice itself when we target it. Brave Meadowguard gives us a Might of the Meek into hand, and also grows into a threat thanks to valiant.

Even though Heartfire Hero was nerfed, it still grows pretty quickly, and packs a punch as the game goes on.

Manifold Mouse and Valiant Emberkin, which doubles all of our valiant triggers, both target our creatures for free to trigger their valiant ability. They either grow their power or give them double strike or trample to help force through damage.

Rounding out the deck we have Might of the Meek to force through damage and trigger valiant, Sheltered by Ghosts for more removal and to trigger valiant, and Boros Charm for damage and flexibility. Boros Charm is great in this deck because it can just be four damage to finish the opponent off, but it can grant double strike to trigger valiant and sometimes do more than just four damage that way, or against most sweepers be used to save our team.

Playing Against this Deck: The best way to fight this deck is to take out their two drops, which are key to keeping their cards and power going. Manifold Mouse, Recruit Instructor, and Emberheart Challenger are all powerful and all must die. If you are a slow deck, pack sweepers and spot removal if you want to survive, and if you are a faster deck, focus your removal spells on those key two drops and try to pressure them out before they can establish their engine.

Why Tier 1? This deck is fast and powerful. It curves out with must-answer-threat after must-answer-threat, making it difficult to keep up. Its pure volume of powerful threats, good card advantage, and fast clock make it the premiere aggro deck in best-of-3. Although it was hit by the banning of Monstrous Rage and the nerf to Heartfire Hero, it is still a very consistent aggro deck, and keeps a lot of decks in the format honest.

Orzhov Token Control

Key Cards and Gameplan: Orzhov Token Control is the evolution of the Dollmaker Combo, thanks to new cards from Duskmourn and Alchemy: Duskmourn. It is a midrange and controlling deck that is looking to slow down the opponent early on, and then take over the board in the mid game to win with inevitability.

Despite being the evolution of the Dollmaker Combo, this list runs no copies of Three Blind Mice choosing to go for card advantage as their source of an inevitable win.

The core of this deck based around Dedicated Dollmaker and Caretaker's Talent. When Dedicated Dollmaker exiles the talent, it will return as a token, which will trigger itself to draw a card. You can then level it up to make a token copy of itself, which will also trigger immediately. This leads to an unending source of card advantage and eventually some buffs to our tokens.

Dedicated Dollmaker gets a new friend now thanks to Overlord of the Mistmoors, which can be played with Impending and then exiled with the dollmaker to come back as a creature and trigger its enters effect again.

This build is much more controlling than previous builds of this deck. We have a ton of removal such as Get Lost and Porcine Portent, as well as sweepers with Deadly Cover-Up and Harvester of Misery. Getaway Glamer can serve as removal, or a way to blink our Dedicated Dollmaker to get even more value with it.

Carrot Cake helps us survive early on, as with the banning of Monstrous Rage blocking is a viable strategy again, and Grave Expectations can heist a wincon or in a pinch serve as graveyard exile and/or life gain.

Fountainport is a four-of in this build, because of how good it is with Caretaker's Talent, getting around the “only triggers once per turn” problem by creating tokens on your opponent’s turn to trigger the talent and draw more cards.

Playing Against this Deck: Enchantment removal is necessary to fight against this deck. Be it to kill a Caretaker's Talent or an Overlord of the Mistmoors, you have to be ready to kill whatever they target with their Dedicated Dollmaker, or to quickly clean it up right after the fact. This is looking to control the mid and late game, so try to get under them and put the pressure on before they can assemble their huge card advantage engine, or go over the top of them with cards like Doppelgang.

Why Tier 1? This deck just feels solid in the current meta. It has great removal to deal with the various creature decks, a good card advantage engine, and a solid late game plan that can compete with the other control and midrange decks. If the format was a bit more aggressive, this deck would likely suffer, but right now it can hang with all the top decks in the format, and attack them from a difficult to answer angle.

Tier 2 Decks

Orzhov Bats

Key Cards and Gameplan: Orzhov Bats is an aggressively slanted midrange deck looking to curve out and overpower their opponent with fliers and life gain.

While there is a lot going on in this deck, Golden Sidekick is still the all star that powers its most aggressive draws. Thanks to flying, you are most likely going to get in a hit or two with Golden Sidekick, making your cheap fliers in hand way bigger than they have any right to be.

The curve starts on turn one with Awestruck Cygnet which can easily transform into a 5/4 flier as early as turn three-four, and Ruin-Lurker Bat, the perfect one drop to curve into Golden Sidekick to get the growing started.

The deck has good disruption, with Deep-Cavern Bat attacking the opponent’s hand, and Darkstar Banisher going after their early plays. Zoraline, Cosmos Caller and Three Tree Battalionboth provide nice card advantage into the mid game, allowing the deck to keep up the pressure even as their first plays are answered.

Sanguine Soothsayer to shuffle free copies of Sanguine Bond into the top of our deck, which turns our life gain into life drain, and Starscape Cleric also turns all of our life gain into damage, helping us close out games.

The other few slots are flexible. While this build has a Valley Questcaller and Bitter Triumph, you could also play Sheltered by Ghosts for more removal, or even Case of the Uneaten Feast for more life gain and late game graveyard recursion.

Playing Against this Deck: Golden Sidekick is only powerful if it stays in play for a couple of turns. Remove it quickly and then deploy your own game plan. Most of their threats are small, making it easy to establish a ground game and pressure them. That being said, they are no slouch in the mid game, making it important to either end the game quickly or go over the top of them to control the board over and over.

Why Tier 2? I think this deck just has a lot of good things going on. It has powerful must answer threats, life gain helps it compete with aggro decks, and it has good card advantage to keep up with midrange and control decks. I think it is a bit below Tier 1 just because unlike Boros Mice, not all of its draws are super scary, and it does rely on finding cards like Golden Sidekick to really go off.

Izzet Otters

Key Cards and Gameplan: Izzet Otters is an aggro-control deck, looking to control the opponent’s board and plays early on, while developing their own card advantage and army of Otter tokens.

The keystone of this build of the deck is Stormchaser's Talent, as it makes an otter token with prowess for just one mana, and can level up to return a spell to our hand later on. The real power, just like in Grixis Heist, is how good it is with This Town Ain't Big Enough giving us a cheap bounce spell for an opponent’s creature all while giving us another one mana token.

Our other otter is Enduring Friendship, a great way to buff up all of our otter tokens, and a difficult to answer threat since it will return to play when killed. If left unanswered, it can attack to generate another copy into our hand, and since it will return to play, we can attack pretty freely to trigger Double Team.

Our other source of otter tokens is Ral, Crackling Wit, which can also help us dig for useful spells, or even build up to an ultimate fairly quickly.

The glue holding this all together is the buffed Chorus cards, Ribald Shanty and Hymn to the Ages. These spells give the deck good removal and card advantage in both the early and mid game, helping them control the board and find more action.

Phantom Interference and Three Steps Aheadhelp us control the opponent’s plays early on, while being flexible later. Burst Lightning is good removal early and good reach once we have a lot of mana, and Pearl of Wisdom gives us more card advantage to keep our game plan running.

Roaring Furnace is good removal early and card advantage later on, and is also great with This Town Ain't Big Enoughto bounce back to our hand and be redeployed for more removal.

Playing Against this Deck: This deck can be tough to play against, as their card advantage is difficult to disrupt and their creatures all feel insignificant to spend removal on. In general, you can either try to flood the board with pressure early, and hope to overwhelm their removal, or you can try to go after their copies of Stormchaser's Talent and Ral, Crackling Wit to try to prevent them from creating too wide of a board. They do have a variety of counterspells, so it can be difficult to go over the top of them, but it is doable.

Why Tier 2? This deck is pretty new to the scene, and it could prove to be a serious player in the format. It has good card advantage and removal, and a difficult to answer game plan. That said, I think that right now Grixis Heist does what this deck does but slightly better, and this deck could struggle against aggro decks that are able to overwhelm its removal suite, making think it is best suited for Tier 2 at the moment.

Golgari Midrange

Key Cards and Gameplan: Golgari Midrange is a midrange deck looking to use ramp and discounts to play expensive creatures far ahead of schedule to take over the board.

The main way we do this is to use Fountainport Charmer, buffed back in November, to reduce the cost of our creatures by one, or two if we pay for offspring, and cast five, six, and seven drops way ahead of time. Fountainport Charmer also reduces the cost of impending on our overlords, helping us get them into play for a bit cheaper.

We can also ramp with Wary Zone Guard, as long as we used a Fabled Passage, Escape Tunnel, or cast an Overlord of the Balemurk in the first two turns. Wary Zone Guard grows very quickly, and must be answered or it will continue to ramp us.

Preacher of the Schism is fine on curve, and great for less mana, and Wingbane Vantasaur gives us removal or an answer to artifacts/enchantments. It also has reach to help us hold back pesky flying creatures.

Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayalis fine on curve, but great on turn four, and Perforator Crocodile can cycle away early, or come down on turn four after we cast a Fountainport Charmer with offspring on turn three.

The big payoff in this deck is Vaultborn Tyrant, a powerful creature that is card advantage and life gain by itself, but works great with our other creatures. With a kicked Fountainport Charmer it can come down on turn five, and is very difficult to answer since their isn’t much exile removal in the format.

Rounding out the deck we have good removal with Bitter Triumph and Virtue of Persistence.

Playing Against this Deck: This deck is very good at getting to its big plays, so either try to get under them and end the game before they get there, or be prepared to go over the top of them with big spells and sweepers to answer their big creatures. They have a lot of resilient threats, so exile removal is also quite good.

Why Tier 2? This deck is really sweet and powerful. Even the games it doesn’t discount its creatures, it is still able to just curve out and play a normal midrange game plan. It has a good presence right now, which has earned it Tier 2, but I do worry that it is a midrange deck in a format with a lot of grindy slow decks, that are going to be able to answer their big plays and then go further into the late game. That said it likely has an okay time against Grixis Heist, since a lot of its creatures are very expensive for their use, but can be cheap for your use.

Tier 3 Decks

Abzan Deserts

Key Cards and Gameplan: Abzan Deserts is a midrange deck built around the desert lands of Outlaws of Thunder Junction in combination with other desert synergy cards to ping the opponent down and scale into the late game.

There are a couple things going on in this deck. The first thing is the combination of Iridescent Vinelasher and Freestrider Lookout. Vinelasher turns all of our land drops into more pings, helping us end the game, and those pings are crimes, which will trigger Freestrider Lookout to find us another land and ping our opponent again.

The other part of the deck relies on deserts. Desert’s Due is good removal, and Outcaster Greenblade finds a desert and grows quite large to pressure the opponent.

Sandcloud Harbinger is what ties the deck together. Not only does it shuffle more deserts into your deck, it also clogs up the top of your opponent’s deck and turns all of your land drops into three life and a card. This helps the deck stay alive against aggro decks, and keep pace card advantage wise with midrange and control decks.

Fecund Greenshell helps us put more lands into play, and can pump up our team to help us end the game. We also have a ton of other removal to help us slow down our opponents. Dead Weight is nice because at just one mana it means we can play tapped lands early and still take out our opponent’s early play. While Porcine Portent and Virtue of Persistence serve double duty as removal spells and powerful permanents later on.

Overall, this deck is good at grinding the opponent down, slowly pinging them to death and controlling their board until they are lost to the desert sands.

Playing Against this Deck: This deck has a lot of powerful threats that must be answered before they snowball. Sandcloud Harbinger and Freestrider Lookout should be dealt with quickly, while Iridescent Vinelasher can quickly stack up a lot of damage, making it another important target to remove. This deck is quite slow, so try to go under them or out last them into the late game.

Why Tier 3? This deck is decently powerful, but it is quite slow. When compared to other decks in the format, it doesn’t have much resilience to its threats being removed, and while it does have a lot of removal, it doesn’t have a lot of card advantage if Sandcloud Harbinger is removed. This deck is an awesome Alchemy only brew though, making me love the diversity in the format right now.

Temur Ramp

Key Cards and Gameplan: Temur Ramp is a ramp deck looking to build up its mana from the early game, to cast powerful creatures and big spells in the mid to late game.

The ramp in this deck includes cards like Glimpse the Core for turn two ramp, and Overlord of the Hauntwoods and Ancient Cornucopia for turn three ramp.

We survive the early game thanks to cards like Shove Aside and Unsummon, and remove creatures in the mid game with Overlord of the Boilerbilges and Roxanne, Starfall Savant to remove individual creatures, and Ill-Timed Explosion to keep the board clear.

Doppelgang is our big payoff for ramping, letting us copy our Overlord of the Boilerbilges and/or Roxanne, Starfall Savant to deal a lot of damage directly to the opponent. It can also be used to further our ramp or even just clog up the board to buy time. Season of Weaving is another great payoff, giving us more cards, slowing our opponent down, or making more overlords.

Lastly, Case of the Locked Hothouse gives us another payoff for ramping, turning into a source of card advantage that lets us play off the top of our deck.

Our lands include the ping deserts like Eroded Canyon, which are another great target for Doppelgang for more damage.

Playing Against this Deck: Like against most slow ramp decks, try to be aggressive and use the early turns they have to dedicate to ramping to fill up your board and put the pressure on. You can also make use of counterspells and discard spells to answer their big payoffs.

Why Tier 3? This deck is good fun, and it is pretty good at staying alive and ramping up to its big spells. I just worry for this kind of deck in a world where Grixis Heist is so powerful and so prevalent. While Grixis Heist is not super aggressive, it can steal the late game payoffs from this deck, and has the counterspells and discard spells to deal with the big payoffs. I also worry about the matchup against Boros Mice, but this deck has the tools to take them on.

Sultai Ramp

Key Cards and Gameplan: Sultai Ramp is a ramp and control deck looking to spend the early game building up its mana, and then taking over the mid to late game with powerful spells.

The key to this deck is Up the Beanstalk, which is triggered by a majority of the cards in the deck, keeping your hand full of powerful spells, land drops, and removal.

Our ramp comes in the form of Overlord of the Hauntwoods, which will trigger Up the Beanstalk even when cast for impending, and Heaped Harvest, which can also be sacrificed to gain us life and find a land later.

Harvester of Misery and Perforator Crocodile are good early, discarding for two mana to act as spot removal or a new card respectively, and good after we have done some ramping to wrath our opponent’s small creatures away. Nowhere to Run rounds out our removal suite in the main deck.

All of this is to set up one of our two big plays. The first is straightforward: Doppelgang. After ramping up to at least eight mana, we can use Doppelgang to copy powerful permanents, or even just lands to keep ramping, to suddenly put a ton of power into play. As the game goes later, we can does this for larger and larger numbers, almost guaranteeing that we will win the late game.

The other powerful play is to use Lich-Knights' Conquest to get several big creatures into play early. Our cards like Nowhere to Run, Up the Beanstalk, Heaped Harvest, and Overlord of the Hauntwoods, can all be sacrificed to bring back our previously cycled copies of Harvester of Misery and Perforator Crocodile. The cool trick is that sacrificing Overlord of the Hauntwoods is “free” because it is then in the graveyard to be brought back.

Overall this deck is great at taking over the late game with its powerful spells.

Playing Against this Deck: There are a few ways to attack this deck. First, you can try to be aggressive and end the game before they get set up to sweep the board. Second, you can deploy counterspells and discard spells to try to counteract their big payoffs. Third, you can use graveyard hate to keep them off of Lich-Knights' Conquest, forcing them to go deep into the late game, giving you time to end the game.

Why Tier 3? While this deck is very powerful when it is going off, I just feel like it is quite easy to poke holes in its gameplan. It also likely struggles against Grixis Heist, as Grixis Heist can steal their top end spells, and has access to both counterspells and discard spells to disrupt their plan. That said, this is a cool deck that deserved a shout out in the tier list.

It’s a great time to play Alchemy!

With the nerf to Heartfire Hero, banning of Monstrous Rage, and buffs to Chorus cards, the Alchemy format has shifted in a big way to more slow and grindy decks. Which can produce a lot of fun matches with a lot of back and forth.

That said, if you are not a fan of Heist, you may be scared off of the format due to its high presence right now. What that means though, is that the format is open for a new deck to emerge that plays well into heist and the other slower decks in the format.

We’ve also added several cool new decks to the tier list this time, showing that the format is continuing to evolve and progress.

Alchemy is still largely unexplored, and it is a great time to give it a try! There are a ton of decks viable in the format that didn’t make it onto the tier list, so jump onto the ladder and I’m sure you face a variety of interesting decks!