Introduction
The impact of Historic Horizons on the Historic metagame is immense. The Historic ladder is the Wild West of Magic. Everyone is trying a new tribal deck, figuring out some two or three card combos or trying to break the Modern Horizons All-Star 《Dragon’s Rage Channeler》.
With the Historic Arena Open this weekend, I want you to be excited and ready to battle. In this article I will share my findings since the release with the goal of giving you a good overview for what you can expect and how to “farm” the competition.
There are seemingly endless new archetypes to try out. From Merfolk, Humans, Shamans, Squirrels, Slivers and Zombies to various new combo decks. New build-arounds like 《Hardened Scales》, 《Soulherder》 and 《Territorial Kavu》. In addition the introduction of the new digital-only cards that see play like 《Tome of the Infinite》, 《Shoreline Scout》 and 《Davriel’s Withering》. This freshly baked format is a paradise for any brewer.
For the purpose of this article I will put the brewer in me aside and go spike mode. As a competitive player at heart my goal in a new format will always be to find the best deck for the given tournament or Mythic ladder metagame. I will introduce you to five decks that I think have a standing in this format and that I can recommend playing and investing your wildcards into.
The metagame is evolving and is not really established yet. Previous strongholds like Jeskai Control and Jund Sacrifice are not seeing much play on the Historic ladder. Both decks did not gain much in the way of new cards, while other strategies got an immense boost in power level.
Rakdos Arcanist
First up on decks that impressed me in my testing is Rakdos Arcanist. Two huge upgrades in the form of the incredibly efficient removal spell 《Unholy Heat》 and the equally efficient threat 《Dragon’s Rage Channeler》. Arguably two of the most powerful spells coming out of Historic Horizons. Currently I believe this to be the best home for the two cards.
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《Unholy Heat》 replaces the inflexible removals the deck had in the past like 《Spark Harvest》, 《Bloodchief’s Thirst》 or 《Fatal Push》. You reach Delirium quickly and consistently in this deck and six damage destroys almost everything in the format.
We had to make room for 《Dragon’s Rage Channeler》 by shaving a land, a 《Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger》, a 《Claim/Fame》 and the 《Young Pyromancer》. The 《Soul-Guide Lantern》 in the main deck is a nod to the mirror, other graveyard reliant strategies and gives us an artifact for Delirium.
My Twitch Chat has pointed 《Footfall Crater》 out to me, which can be an enchantment for Delirium or enable hasty 《Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger》 and 《Dreadhorde Arcanist》 attacks. I haven’t tried the card yet.
The sideboard is geared towards beating tribal decks with 《Witch’s Vengeance》 and 《Legion’s End》. 《Feed the Swarm》 is your best tool against 《Rest in Peace》 and 《Search for Azcanta》.
《Pharika’s Libation》 and 《Angrath’s Rampage》 are both tools to fight the 《Indomitable Creativity》 Combo deck with 《Serra’s Emissary》. I am unsure on those slots, they could also be used up by different removal spells. With open decklists for example your opponent could play around the sacrifice effects by leaving a Dwarf or Crab Token around.
When you are sideboarding, you can usually shave on 《Faithless Looting》 and 《Claim/Fame》. Looting is a better preboard card, postboard where your entire deck will be composed of good cards for the matchup, the deck selection is less necessary.
All in all, Rakdos Arcanist is a safe choice with a plan versus almost any of the other top decks.
Izzet Phoenix
Another deck that greatly appreciates the arrival of 《Unholy Heat》 and 《Dragon’s Rage Channeler》 is of course Izzet Phoenix. The deck is fast and proactive, the surveil of 《Dragon’s Rage Channeler》 putting 《Arclight Phoenix》 into the graveyard feels amazing, and I highly recommend doing it yourself.
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The list is fairly straightforward. 《Unholy Heat》 replaces some of the shocks. 《Dragon’s Rage Channeler》 enables us to remove a land and shave on some of the other threats like 《Crackling Drake》 and 《Stormwing Entity》.
Unfortunately we have to play three 《Warlord’s Fury》 to assure a high spell density, but that will change with the arrival of a great cantrip in the form of 《Consider》 in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. The main deck 《Spell Pierce》 and 《Brazen Borrower》 are a nod towards the 《Indomitable Creativity》 deck Zan Syed has reached Mythic Rank #1 with.
The sideboard consists of more tools to fight that matchup. 《Abrade》 is there to have a versatile answer for artifacts and annoying three toughness creatures. The sideboard planeswalker are for the control matchups and the second 《Ox of Agonas》 is for any grindy matchup and in particular for the 《Dragon’s Rage Channeler》 mirrors.
I am experimenting with one 《Leyline of the Void》 to fight the graveyard decks. A one-sided 《Rest in Peace》 is extremely powerful and in the case we draw 《Leyline of the Void》 off the top, we can use 《Faithless Looting》 to turn it into an actual card. I would feel comfortable playing this deck into a lesser known metagame, because of the sheer power it can assemble.
Humans
The one tribal deck that really impresses me and I have lost to maybe more than any other deck is Humans.
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Three big new additions in the form of 《Esper Sentinel》, 《Ranger-Captain of Eos》 and 《Thalia’s Lieutenant》 have pumped this strategy up into the upper Tier of decks. Especially spell dense decks hate to see the combination of 《Esper Sentinel》, 《Thalia, Guardian of Thraben》, 《Elite Spellbinder》 and 《Ranger-Captain of Eos》.
《Dauntless Bodyguard》 and 《Faceless Haven》 make sweepers look embarrassing. The toolkit of 《Ranger-Captain of Eos》 allowing you to search for the powerful 《Mikaeus, the Lunarch》 or 《Giant Killer》 if need be has been really good.
The deck is resilient, the individual power level of the cards is high, which will make them better against disruption compared to for example Elves or Merfolk, where when the important creatures die, you are left with just a couple of weak enabling creatures.
The sideboard is fairly self-explanatory. 《Containment Priest》 can be used against 《Collected Company》, Reanimator and of course 《Indomitable Creativity》. 《Gideon Blackblade》 punches hard and is difficult to deal with for Control.
《Linvala, Keeper of Silence》 is for Sacrifice decks, Elves, Goblins and various decks that have a lot of useful abilities on their creatures. 《Drannith Magistrate》 is a good card in conjunction with 《Elite Spellbinder》 and can also shut off entire strategies like the 《Tibalt’s Trickery》/《Throes of Chaos》 deck. If you enjoy playing aggressive tribal decks, I can vouch for this one.
Jeskai Opus
Now to my favorite and best performing archetype as of writing this. One of the absolute best cards coming out of Historic Horizons is without a doubt – 《Archmage’s Charm》. The card steals creatures, 《Hardened Scales》, 《Witch’s Oven》 and whatever else you can think of. In addition it works greatly with 《Torrential Gearhulk》.
At first I took the Jeskai Control list my team and I played in the Challenger Gauntlet and updated it with four Charms. The deck played well, but I realized that 《Teferi, Hero of Dominaria》 got worse with 《Unholy Heat》 in the format and not having a quick way to stabilize made me reconsider. The Jeskai deck was built with other Jeskai decks in mind, but nobody was playing those currently on the ladder. The amounts of 《Mystical Dispute》 and 《Memory Lapse》 felt low enough to go back to Jeskai Opus.
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The mana base had to be adopted. We don’t have space for 《Castle Ardenvale》 anymore. We have to make the decision to have our secondary colour to be either red or white. I opted for red, for the reason that I believe 《Anger of the Gods》 is much stronger than 《Wrath of God》 in this metagame.
To make space for 《Archmage’s Charm》 we had to cut 《Narset, Parter of Veils》. 《Narset, Parter of Veils》 is weak with fewer blue decks around and all these fast creature decks in the format. The combination of sweepers and good removal makes the matchup against Aggro really good. The blue interaction helps shore up the Combo matchups. All in all, this deck has everything I want to be doing right now.
One aspect of the sideboard you might be curious about, is the low number of flash threats like 《Commence the Endgame》 or 《Shark Typhoon》, which used to be important to fight the control mirrors. Playing a Control mirror, making a huge token and having it stolen by an 《Archmage’s Charm》 is a miserable feeling and a really bad exchange for you. 《Archmage’s Charm》 makes those flash tokens much weaker.
The deck plays the most powerful cards in the format and is a ton of fun to play, this is my frontrunner for the Historic Open as I am writing.
Dimir Control
Lastly, but not least. The Meta-Meta Deck. If you are expecting Jeskai Opus and Creativity to take over the format might as well metagame against the two by playing Dimir Control.
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I have put the least amount of work into this deck, but I still want to leave you with it, because I think it has potential. 《Yahenni’s Expertise》 has been great, for similar reasons that 《Anger of the Gods》 is fantastic right now.
The combination of cheap discard, counters and 《Narset, Parter of Veils》 is difficult to tackle through with the Jeskai decks. 《Legion’s End》 and 《Go Blank》 are fantastic sideboard cards you get access to.
This is all I have for you today. I hope you could take a lot of information out of my findings and be prepared for the Historic metagame. I will be streaming a ton of Historic until the next Innistrad Set releases. I will be sharing my testing process with you. In case you have any more questions you can always stop by the stream and ask me.
