What are the best MTG Arena decks? Grinding up Magic: The Gathering Arena's ranked ladder is tough, so there's no shame in looking up a tournament-winning Standard deck. This guide tracks the best MTGA decks every month, based on the latest competitive results.
Each month, we review which decks are performing best, break down how they work, and explain them in our guide to the top deck lists below. You can also find crucial info in our FAQ section to help you understand how different decks win games.
Before we dive in, here are a few more handy guides that can help you plan your perfect deck. You can find up-to-date details on the latest boosters in our guides to MTG sets and the ever-updated MTG release schedule.
The best MTG Arena decks in Standard are:
- Simic Ouroboroid
- Izzet Lessons
- Dimir Excruciator
- Izzet Looting
- Mono Red Aggro
- Sultai Reanimator
- Dimir Midrange
- Selesnya Landfall
- Frequently Asked Questions
Simic Ouroboroid
An archetype that has been evolving ever since Edge of Eternity printed its namesake card, Ouroboroid is so Simicy I keep searching the decklist for Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Growth Spiral (don't worry, they're not in Standard). This is a Timmy deck through and through - with buckets of draw, lashings of ramp, and a sizeable side dish of+1/+1 counters.
The deck's play pattern starts simple: use your elves, moles, or spider avatars to ramp into an Ouroboroid, then let your opponent sweat while it grows your board at a frightening rate.
Just as important as the plant wurm creature is the spell Nature's Rhythm. This versatile tutor can summon up anything you need, from a Badgermole Cub for extra ramp, to a Reclamation Sage to handle a tricky permanent, to Craterhoof Behemoth when it's time to win the game.
Izzet Lessons
Izzet Lessons is an emerging deck that appeared alongside the return of lesson spells in Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's a spellslinger deck that relies on looting, using cards like Abandon Attachments and Artist's Talent to fill your graveyard with this instant and sorcery subtype.
Once you have three or more in the yard, a whole bunch of effects get much stronger. Accumulate Wisdom become peerless card draw, Combustion Technique is efficient removal, and Gran-Gran makes all your non-creature spells (which in this deck is pretty much everything) cheaper to cast.
The deck has access to excellent damage-based creature removal, and can keep the board clear from threats while it loots and loots and loots, whittling the opponent down with Monument to Endurance. If something goes wrong, there's always the backup plan of repeatedly casting Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser's Talent to make an army of otters.
Dimir Excruciator
A top tier mill deck is a surprising thing to see, but Dimir Excruciator took home the trophy during Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed. The plan for this deck is to get a copy of Doomsday Excruciator into the graveyard, then clone it using Superior Spider-Man, to mill everyone down to six cards.
After that, all it takes is activating the land card Restless Reef, and you've all but decked your opponent.
Like any strategy revolving around graveyard interactions, this build is pretty easy to sideboard against. But it also runs plenty of hand disruption, which should ensure you can stop your play pattern from getting messed up. Don't let anyone get in your way, or tell you that.
Izzet Looting
While many of the Izzet strategies of last year were focused on prowess creatures, this year, we're all about drawing cards or pitching them into the the graveyard.
Whereas Izzet Lessons makes this work using non-creature spells, this deck goes the more traditional route, with lots of cheap threats that care about card draw, such as Tiger Seal, Marauding Mako, Fear of Missing Out, and Duelist of the Mind.
The focus on draw and discard for the pump effects means that, while this deck runs a lot of instants and sorceries, it's not reliant on those to pump like a Prowess deck would be. As a result, it runs a higher creature count than Izzet Cauldron or Izzet Prowess did for a slightly more traditional creature-based aggro strategy.
The deck also runs useful enchantments to trigger delirium, allowing Fear of Missing Out to enable some scary turns as your big fliers get to attack twice.
Mono Red Aggro
Far fallen from its total format dominance earlier this year, the current variant of Mono Red Aggro has a decent burn package. It uses spells like Burst Lightning and Lightning Strike, alongside creatures such as Sunspine Lynx, to provide enough reach to go around the enemy's defenses.
Old favorites like Emberheart Challenger and Screaming Nemesis have been joined by Nova Hellkite for a deck that looks to hit hard and fast, but will crumble if the game goes long. Avatar has given it some useful tools - Iroh's Demonstration is effective at sweeping weenies and zapping moderately sized targets; Zhao, the Moon Slayer is a STAX piece that makes non-basic lands enter tapped; and The Legend of Rokku provides two turns of impulse draw before turning into a game-ending threat.
Sultai Reanimator
Through the Omen Paths hasn't had much impact on Standard, but it does have a four mana sorcery-speed reanimation effect, Kavaero, Mind-Bitten, and that's proven mighty enough to fuel an entire strategy. The dominance of aggro had kept a lid on the strategy, but with Vivi gone, Sultai Reanimator is in a position to start making waves.
As with most Reanimator decks, you've got a blend of cards that load the graveyard like Overlord of the Balemurk, Oblivious Bookworm, and even TLA's Gran Gran; and reanimation targets like Valgavoth, Ardyn the Usurper, and Bringer of the Last Gift. With some Duresses in the sideboard in case you come up against a blue deck, this does exactly what a Reanimator deck should - put hideous threats onto the battlefield on turn four.
Dimir Midrange
Dimir Midrange is pretty straightforward. It runs evasive fliers like Spyglass Siren alongside value cards like Enduring Curiosity and the MTG planeswalker Kaito, Bane of Nightmares to create card draw from attacking.
And with the blue/black color pair, you get the privilege of playing all the best single-target removal and counter spells in Standard. When Vivi was banned - taking Izzet Cauldron and Izzet Prowess with him - Dimir Midrange emerged to initially dominate the meta. The release of Avatar has tanked that - it's now merely a tier one deck.
Selesnya Landfall
Standard is starting to look more and more like Commander. First Craterhoof Behemoth became legal, and now there's a viable landfall deck.
Though a two-color deck by name, Selesnya Landfall is rather green-heavy. The game plan is to build up massive beaters fast with your land triggers and deliver a wallop that nothing can withstand.
Icetill Explorer and lands that sacrifice like Fabled Passage and Escape Tunnel help you get extra triggers for your heavy hitters. These include Sazh's Chocobo, which delivers pressure from turn one; Mossborn Hydra, which grows exponentially; and Mightform Harmonizer, which can turn anything into a game-ending threat.
Best MTG Arena decks FAQ
If you're relatively new to Magic: The Gathering and are here for a helping hand to grab some wins, some of the terminology here may seem like daunting jargon (and it is) so let's explain some of it.
What do MTG Arena deck names mean?
MTG Standard deck names are generally made up of two components:
- Colors - The first part tells you which colors are in the deck (for example Mono Red or Blue/White).
- Archetype, mechanic, or theme - The second part either describes the strategy 'archetype' it uses to win games (e.g. Aggro); the main in-game mechanic it uses (e.g. Burn or Life Gain) or a distinctive theme to its cards (e.g. Rabbits or Vampires). If the deck is driven by a single powerful card, that card name might be used here instead.
Both halves of the deck names can get complicated, though. Players often refer to decks with more than one color by their in-universe lore labels, like Gruul or Azorius, rather than the straightforward colors. We explain every single one of these in our guide to MTG color combinations.
And when it comes to labeling decks' strategies and themes, there's very often more than one commonly used term to indicate a specific deck's distinctive playstyle or win conditions - so you might see the same deck referred to by slightly different names by different players or websites.
It's easy to identify these doppelgängers, though - just look at the cards in the decklists. They may vary slightly - every deck has variants - but the core deck concept remains the same and builds on the same cards.
What are the main MTG Arena deck archetypes?
Magic: The Gathering has a huge range of strategic interactions and options in it - but generally, your deck needs to follow a single, coherent strategy to win games. Fans have grouped these winning strategies into six main 'archetypes', based not on which cards they include, but on how they set out to win games.
You can find full details in our guide to MTG deck archetypes - but here's a short summary of the six types and how they play:
- Aggro - Win fast with aggressive damage, mostly using creatures.
- Control - slow down the opponent while you spin up powerful cards.
- Midrange - Use the best available mid-cost cards to outmaneuver both aggro and control.
- Combo - Set up and then play a specific, game winning card combo.
- Combo-Control - Play control and then win with a combo.
- Aggro-Control / Tempo - Disrupt the opponent with quick control cards, while chipping away life with cheap aggro.
How do I build the best MTG Arena decks?
To build a Magic: The Gathering Arena deck, you'll need to collect all the cards necessary for the deck list (click on the images above each deck in our guide to see the cards you need), then navigate to the 'Decks' area in the game client, create a deck, and add all those cards to it.
How do you get the cards you need? Well, you'll either need to collect the cards from Arena booster packs for the sets they came in, or else directly 'craft' the specific cards you need using MTG Arena Wildcards - effectively tokens you can exchange for the exact Common, Uncommon, Rare, or Mythic Rare card you want, depending on the type of Wildcard.
Unless you're lucky enough to find exactly the cards you need in boosters, you'll need to earn a stack of Wildcards to craft the best decks. You get Wildcards by opening boosters, competing in events, and winning games to beat your daily and weekly challenges - so if you're short on Wildcards for the shiny new Arena deck you want to build, the best thing to do is get playing with the decks you already have!
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