MTG Arena 11 Best Standard Decks – Which deck should you play?

Standard is the most popular format available on Magic The Gathering: Arena. This format follows rotation, meaning after three years the cards from the four oldest sets in Standard will no longer be legal, and only the most recent ones will be in the format.

If you are interested in Standard Decks, you should also check out the best budget standard decks in MTG Arena. You can also check out the best historic decks in MTG Arena.

Thanks to constant shifts in card legality and new sets entering the card pool, Standard remains one of the most dynamic formats in all of Magic. There are plenty of great decks in the format, but certain decks stand above the rest at the top of the metagame. These are the 11 best Standard decks in Magic The Gathering: Arena. 

11. Dimir Midrange

Dimir Midrange is a deck that plays the game out slowly, removing threats with removal spells and countering problematic cards before they ever hit the battlefield. The deck keeps your hand loaded with multiple ways to draw cards such as Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor and Preacher Of The Schism. Dimir Midrange’s game plan is to deny cards to your opponent while slowly hitting them for damage with your creatures. 

Deep-Cavern Bat acts as a way to disrupt your opponent’s hand while keeping your life up thanks to its lifelink. There are ways to make it explore, primarily with Subterranean Schooner to give it +1/+1 counters as well to make it both harder to remove and bring your life total up. There are plenty of low-mana removal spells like Cut Down and Go For The Throat that can destroy most of the commonly played creatures in Standard.

10. Rakdos Anvil

Rakos Anvil is a deck built around the namesake card Oni-Cult Anvil. The deck plays multiple ways to create artifacts such as Bloodtithe Harvester and Voldaren Epicure. Once you get one artifact on the battlefield, you can sacrifice them to have Oni-Cult Anvil create a 1/1 that you can sacrifice every turn to burn for one damage and gain a life. 

You can make Oni-Cult Anvil go from minor burn to massive damage if you pair it with Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might to make it deal four damage instead. If you want extra life gain and drain, Vraan, Executioner Thane turns any creature dying into two life for you and two life lost for your opponent. Rakdos Anvil is a tempo deck meant to slowly burn your opponent while keeping your own life high.

9. Rakdos Ramp

Rakdos Ramp wants to create as many mana sources as quickly as possible. Big Score is a way to turn any dead card in your hand into two different ones and two Treasure tokens. You also have mana rocks like The Irencrag and The Celetus to produce excess mana early in the game.

All of this mana gets dumped into large pay-off spells like Etali, Primal Conqueror, and Breach The Multiverse. Since you’re primarily ramping with little creatures on your side of the field, you need ways to handle the battlefield full of creatures. As such, the deck runs multiple board wipes such as Burn Down The House and Brotherhood’s End to wipe the field before you cast your big payoff spells.

8. Boros Aggro

Boros Aggro is full of red and white Human creatures that have low casting costs. In fact, no card in the deck exceeds a mana value of three. While aggro decks’ biggest weakness is running out of steam, Boros Aggro can circumvent that with Kellan, Daring Traveler, and Inti, Seneschal Of The Sun to get access to more cards. 

The deck is very explosive and capable of getting a lot of power on the battlefield very quickly. The primary way is with Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon which creates Gnome creatures equal to its power whenever you attack. Warden Of The Inner Sky helps you to control your top deck by scrying and Coppercoat Vanguard gives all your Humans ward one to give them an extra layer of protection.

7. Bant Control

Bant Control is very similar to popular Azorius Control builds, though splashes green for access to Up The Beanstalk as a draw engine and Nissa, Ascended Animist as a game-closer. The deck is about keeping your opponent off of creatures while you gain value off of planeswalkers as the main way to deal damage. It also plays Horned Loch-Whale as another creature to get damage in, also able to be used as a control spell by bouncing an attacking creature to the library.

Bant Control has a large selection of powerful removal spells, counterspells, and board wipes to keep your opponent from playing the game efficiently. Its power comes from how efficient it is at handling threats while offering powerful ones on its own thanks to lands that can turn themselves into creatures to avoid their own board wipes.

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Not just Bant, Azorius

While the Bant Control variant is more popular, you can opt to cut green out entirely in favor of a simpler land base and lean more into different control cards. This puts a heavier focus on planeswalkers as your win condition and many more counterspells you skip out on in the Bant version. While your draw power is weaker, you can deny resources much easier in the Azorius version of a Standard Control deck. Both are strong, but the Bant version is better than its Azorius counterpart.

6. Schooner Tokens

Schooner Tokens is a deck that is often played in Azorius colours as it has the most ways to create tokens. These tokens can be crewed by Subterranean Schooner to grow them in stats. The deck also has payoffs for a lot of creatures like Regal Bunnicorn to gain massive stats and Warden Of The Inner Sky to gain +1/+1 counters and control the top deck of your library so your explore triggers always give you a +1/+1 counter. 

Schooner Tokens has a sub-control theme, playing various counterspells and removal spells so that you can keep anything your opponent plays off the battlefield. Virtue Of Loyalty is a major card in the deck as a way to not just get tokens but give them all +1/+1 counters once you cast the enchantment side.

5. Golgari Midrange

Midrange is one of the most popular play styles in Standard, with Golgari Midrange one of the best choices for the archetype. Like many other midrange decks, Golgari Midrange wants to prevent your opponent’s creatures from staying on the battlefield. 

Golgari Midrange is much more creature-focused compared to other midrange decks, with them taking up a third of the deck. They are all powerful, with Mosswood Dreadknight being a recurable draw card and Sheoldred, The Apocalypse punishing cards being drawn while rewarding you for drawing cards, something Golgari Midrange does with ease. Restless Cottage plays an important role in letting you have a creature after a board wipe while also doubling as graveyard hate and a way to generate Food tokens to keep your life total up.

4. Red Deck Wins

Red Deck Wins is almost always going to be relevant in the metagame, and is frequently the biggest budget deck in it. Red Deck Wins is a mono-coloured deck where the goal is to win in the first few turns before your opponent ever gets a chance to set up. 

Red Deck Wins plays a mixture of burn spells to get your opponent’s life totals down quicker or deal with problematic creatures. Thanks to the lack of good lifegain cards in the current Standard, Red Deck Wins is very well-positioned in the meta. Witchstalker Frenzy handles Sheoldred and any other creature with high toughness and Monstrous Rage gives even more explosive turns, sometimes enabling you to deal half an opponent’s life in just one turn.

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Red Deck Wins’ Gruul Alternative

If you want to sacrifice the guaranteed consistency that comes with a mono-coloured deck, Gruul Aggro is another option with a similar play style. It plays many of the same cards with the addition of pump spells along with Quesitng Druid to get a creature that constantly grows with each red spell cast. Cacophony Scamp can also close games out since you can deal its power to any target twice if it deals combat damage.

3. Azorius Soldiers

Azoirus Soldiers is another aggro deck at the top of the metagame that gets the added bonus of having counterspells to slow your opponent down. You can choose to play more defensively or aggressively depending on the deck you are playing against. Protect The Negotiators gives you a Solider token if you kick it and counters any spell unless your opponent pays mana equal to the number of creatures you have. Since you’re playing an aggro deck that primarily plays creatures, you will often be able to counter any spell with Protect The Negotiators. 

There are plenty of strong soldiers like Harbin, Vanguard Aviator to make your attacks much harder to block since it gives creatures you control flying when you attack with five or more Soldiers. Werefox Bodyguard is a great interruption spell that can exile a creature until it leaves the battlefield. If it ever gets targeted, Werefox Bodyguard can be sacrificed to gain two life to keep your life total up.

2. Domain Ramp

Domain Ramp wants to get a ton of lands onto the battlefield and get them there fast. The deck plays a lot of high-mana spells and ways to put multiple lands onto the battlefield such as Topiary Stomper and Invasion Of Zendikar. If left unchecked, they can hit their wanted threshold of seven lands to cast all of the spells the deck plays. Thanks to the triomes in Standard, it is easy to get all the colours you need along with the basic land searchers that put them directly onto the battlefield, so you’re never mana screwed out of the colours you need. To prevent your best spells from being countered, the deck plays Cavern Of Souls, often naming Angels since outside of Topiary Stomper the rest of your creature line-up are Angels. 

The main payoff for Domain Ramp is Atraxa, Grand Unifier. It refreshes your hand with cards while being a big threat on the battlefield with a ton of powerful abilities. Archangel Of Wrath helps you regain the life you lose by skipping the first few turns of combat since you won’t have mana for any of your creatures. Herd Migration floods the battlefield with tokens to act as solid attackers and blockers.

1. Esper Midrange

Esper is widely considered to be the deck with the most options in its toolkit, making Esper Midrange the best deck in Standard. The deck has a great creature line-up, with Raffine, Scheming Seer being the star of the show. When paired with Sheoldred, The Apocalypse it’s not uncommon for these two creatures to get you so much life its impossible for your opponent to win. Deep-Cavern Bat snipes a card out of your opponent’s hand that can interrupt your plays which helps to keep the rest of your cards safe.

Esper Midrange comes with a lot of draw power, giving you more consistency than any other deck. It’s rare for Esper Midrange to ever run out of cards in its hand despite playing its best cards and turning off your opponent’s abilities to cast spells. The deck has multiple removal and counterspells, all fantastic ones that can deal with any other deck in the format with ease. The deck does so much without having to invest in your field, letting you go from aggressive to defensive at any point while not losing out on any board presence.

That is the 11 best Standard decks in Magic The Gathering: Arena. The format is very varied, and while Esper Midrange may be the best deck, the gap between decks is very slim, letting many high-tier decks and rogue decks get tournament results. Thanks to the longer rotation period introduced in 2022, Standard has many options and many ways to build multiple archetypes. This allows a lot of creative deckbuilding in Standard despite its limited card pool and many decks to thrive in the environment.

Be sure to also check out how to play MTG Arena for free. You can also check out how to import decks on MTG Arena.

MTG Arena best standard decks – FAQ

What is standard in MTG Arena?

Standard is the most popular format available on Magic The Gathering: Arena. This format follows rotation, meaning after three years the cards from the four oldest sets in Standard will no longer be legal, and only the most recent ones will be in the format.

Are standard decks expensive in MTG Arena?

Some decks can be pricey but there are also budget standard decks.