MTG Arena 11 Best Historic Decks – Play a piece of history

The Historic format is a digital format exclusive to Magic The Gathering: Arena. The format includes all cards released on Arena (excluding cards on its banlist). Due to its nature of being a digital format, Historic utilizes re-balanced cards, nerfing powerful cards occasionally instead of banning them and buffing weaker cards to more playable statuses.

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Since the card pool for Historic is so large, there are many powerful decks in the metagame. While there are plenty of strong Historic decks you can play, these are the 11 best Historic decks in all of Magic The Gathering: Arena. 

11. Gruul Goblins

Gruul Goblins is an aggressive combo deck playing almost nothing but Goblin creature cards. The only non-creature spell is four copies of Cabaretti Revels which will put a creature from your library directly onto the battlefield whenever you cast a creature spell. It also plays Goblin Influx Array to discount your Goblin spells by one red mana and puts a Golbin into your hand every end step so you never run out of cards to play. 

Goblins are fantastic at flooding the battlefield thanks to their low casting costs and ways to get multiple on the field at once. Skirk Prospector turns your Goblins into ways to generate mana, and multiple cheap Goblins give your Goblins +1/+1 to make them threats in combat. Krenko, Mob Boss is one of the biggest payoffs to get multiple Goblin tokens, as it essentially doubles all of your Goblins.

10. Boros Artifacts

Historic has plenty of strong artifacts, making Boros Artifacts one of the best decks in Historic. It is largely thanks to Retrofitter Foundry, which you can shortcut into a 4/4 generator by creating Thopters by casting Ornithopter or Yotia Declares War. Since most of your deck is made of artifacts, Ingenious Smith helps you get artifacts into your hand quicker while growing in stats whenever you cast an artifact. 

Esper Sentinel is a great card draw engine the deck plays, turning every noncreature spell your opponent plays into a card in your hand unless they pay one mana. Michiko’s Reign Of Truth can give massive stat boosts since it gives any creature +1/+1 for each artifact and enchantment you control. If you are using Gingerbrute, this damage can be unblockable. Portable Hole acts as artifact-based removal, especially since many of Historic’s best cards have mana values of two or less it is rarely a dead card in your hand.

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The Azorius Variant Of Artifacts

The Boros build is more popular, but the Azorius version trades red for blue spells. This gives you access to Ensoul Artifact to turn an indestructible artifact land into a creature and Thought Monitor to draw excess cards with ease since it has affinity for artifacts. The Azorius build also has counterspells with Metallic Rebuke to keep your board safe and your opponent off of their best spells.

9. Dimir Control

Dimir Control was at one point a contender for best deck in Historic. However, its power was weakened by the nerfing of Orcish Bowmasters. Despite this nerf, the deck’s tools are still great to keep it within the top slots of the meta. The deck is hard control, with almost the entire deck consisting of only counterspells, removal, and interaction. Dimir Control is great at handling any deck in the metagame thanks to how much of a toolbox it has access to. 

Part of the strength of Dimir Control is the ability to give any spell flashback with Snapcaster Mage. It gives you a creature on the battlefield while letting you re-use whatever spell you need for any given game state. You also have Lurrus Of The Dream-Den as a companion, one of the best cards in the entire game to recycle any creatures or artifacts that get put into the graveyard.

8. Jund Midrange

Jund Midrange is a deck that puts down cheap creature threats and controls the game with removal spells and hand disruption. All of your spells can be recycled with Jarsyl, Dark Age Scion as it lets you cast a spell from your graveyard, and you don’t even need to pay its mana cost. You can put cards into the graveyard directly with Crucias, Titan Of The Waves which also replaces the card you discard and gives you a Treasure token in the process. 

There is also a sub-planeswalker theme, primarily with Liliana Of The Veil to force an opponent to sacrifice their creatures and have both players discard cards from their hand. While this can be a downside for you, Jarsyl can cast them anyway and it feeds into Kroxa, Titan Of Death’s Hunger’s escape cost. Historic has many powerful interaction spells like Fatal Push, which can easily turn on revolt by simply sacrificing a Treasure for its casting cost, and Molten Impact to take out multiple creatures.

7. Discover Combo

Discover Combo was so good in Pioneer that it was banned, but is fully legal in Historic. The deck is built around Geological Appraiser, which will always discover into Glasspool Mimic to enter as a copy of a creature on the battlefield or Eldritch Evolution to swap Geological Appraiser into a Trumpeting Carnosaur to continuously discover. You do this to flood the battlefield with Trumpeting Carnosaurs and copies of it, giving them haste with Doomskar Titan as the last card you Eldritch Evolution into. 

Historic’s Discover Combo comes with an extra combo start in Pantlaza, Sun-Favored which discovers four when it enters the battlefield. This only triggers once each turn, but that’s per copy of the card so if you discover into it again later you still get its effect. You can start comboing off as early as turn three using cards like Creative Outburst and Magma Opus that can discard themselves for two mana to create a Treasure token and you won’t ever discover into them and cut your combo short.

6. Izzet Phoenix

A star of the Explorer/Pioneer format, Izzet Phoenix is one of the best decks in Historic too. The deck is built around the namesake card Arclight Phoenix, playing ways to get it into the graveyard and cast cheap spells to put it onto the battlefield. Izzet Phoenix has access to some of the best Izzet spells like Expressive Iteration to dig through three cards of your deck and Faithless Looting to draw two cards and discard two as a way to setup your graveyard for just one mana (with flashback attached to it as well). 

Fiery Impulse and Lightning Axe are both great removal tools that handle most creatures in the format for only one mana. Thing In The Ice gives you another creature to benefit from casting all your cheap spells, flipping into a 7/8 that bounces all non-Horror creatures to the hand (and almost no Horror creatures are played in the format). Since you are putting so many cards into your graveyard, you also have Treasure Cruise that can delve them away to give you a spell to draw three cards for just one blue mana.

5. Kethis Combo

Kethis Combo is a combo deck built around self-milling yourself and milling out your opponent. The key to it all is Kethis, The Hidden Hand which lets you cast legendary spells from your graveyard and discount them by one. You generate infinite mana looping Mox Amber (a legendary artifact), getting even more mana out of it with Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy on the battlefield since it lets Mox Amber tap for two mana instead of just one. Rona, Herald Of Invasion lets you dig through your deck while putting cards into the graveyard, able to repeat this effect whenever you cast a legendary spell (which practically your entire deck consists of). 

Once your graveyard is filled, the win condition of Kethis Combo is Jace, The Perfected Mind. This can mill multiple cards into your graveyard, and then once you have enough mana and cards in your graveyard, you can continuously re-cast Jace and choose to use its ability to mill your opponent until they reach zero cards in their library so they lose by deck out.

4. Mono-Green Devotion

Mono-Green Devotion makes a ton of mana and makes it fast. It’s not uncommon to tap for absurd amounts of green mana in just the first few turns of the game. It plays multiple mana dorks, with Delighted Halfling the highlight as it prevents your key planeswalker cards from being counterable. Early game is about setting up your ability to generate excess mana early such as with Utopia Sprawl to make a land tap for two mana instead of just one. 

This paired with mana dorks can quickly get your green devotion count high so you can generate a ton of mana with Nykthos, Shrine To Nyx. This mana is dumped into Karn, The Great Creator to get whatever artifact you need out of your sideboard or Storm The Festival to cheat multiple permanents onto the battlefield. Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner lets you untap your Nykthos so you can generate even more mana to cast whatever spell you want. Mono-Green Devotion never needs to worry about its mana and why it’s one of the best decks in Historic.

3. Golgari Yawgmoth

Golgari Yawgmoth is the best Historic combo deck. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is the heart and soul of the deck, namely for its ability to pay two life and sacrifice a creature to put a -1/-1 counter on a target creature and draw a card. This combos with Hapatra, Vizier Of Poisons which will create a 1/1 creature token whenever a -1/-1 counter is put on a creature, giving you an infinite amount of sacrifice fodder for Yawgmoth’s effect. The other piece of the combo is Young Wolf, which has undying so when it dies it returns to the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter if it died without one. If you put a -1/-1 counter on a creature with a +1/+1 counter, those both cancel each other out, so you have a way to infinitely put -1/-1 counters on a creature. 

The deck can win by amassing an army of tokens with Vizier Of Poisons or through burn damage with Zulaport Cutthroat which makes an opponent lose a life whenever a creature you control dies. Agatha’s Soul Cauldron provides extra consistency for the strategy, as it lets any creature gain Yawgmoth’s ability.

2. Azorius Control

A staple in about every format, Azorius Control is one of the best decks in Historic. The deck keeps creatures off the battlefield with board wipes and removal spells, all while countering any big card the opponent tries to cast. The deck can get a creature on the battlefield at instant speed by using Calim, Djinn Emperor’s ability. 

Teferi, Hero Of Dominaria is the deck’s big highlight, creating a must-answer planeswalker to keep your life total safe while drawing you cards or returning problem permanents into the library. Since almost your entire deck can be cast at instant speed, the lands untapping that Teferi does is what makes the deck as strong as it is.

1. Izzet Wizards

Izzet Wizards is a deck that exists thanks to the buffing of Symmetry Sage to make it into a 0/3 instead of a 0/2 and give a creature base power of three instead of two when you cast an instant or sorcery spell. 

The deck is very explosive, able to close out games in just a few turns. Dreadhorde Arcanist lets you re-cast spells from your graveyard, allowing you to easily use Symmetry Sage’s ability twice in a turn. Balmor, Battlemage Captain adds on the damage by giving all your creatures +1/+0 and trample. The deck has a ton of one and two-mana spells that boost power to get in for even more damage with just one attack. 

That’s the 11 best Historic decks in Magic: The Gathering Arena. All of them have different playstyles, from hyper-aggro in Izzet Wizards to combo with Kethis and Golgari Yawgmoth. Historic has a deck for everyone, and while these might be the best ones, countless rogue decks didn’t make the cut that are just as playable as the decks featured on this list. Historic is a very diverse format with a lot of creative deck-building options not available in any other format of Magic.

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MTG Arena Best Historic Decks – FAQ

What decks count as historic in MTG Arena?

The Historic format is a digital format exclusive to Magic The Gathering: Arena. The format includes all cards released on Arena (excluding cards on its banlist).

What is the best historic deck in MTG Arena?

We believe that the best historic deck is Izzet Wizards.