Sideboarding

Not having access to the sideboard games is going to have an impact on which decks are better for a metagame, since having a good sideboard is a very important part of what makes a good deck strong. Generally speaking, the less a deck uses for sideboarding purposes, the better it should become for Bo1. 《Fae of Wishes》 decks or decks with extremely weak sideboards like Mono-Red are good examples of this.

Keep in mind that most decks might have an extremely narrow use for having a sideboard thanks to cards like 《Robber of the Rich》es or 《Agent of Treachery》 stealing effects that let you access to your sideobard!

Hand Algorithm

Even though we have no details on how exactly the Hand Algorithm works, we do know that best of 1 format has a “hand selector” at the beginning of the game that instead of drawing 1 hand, draws 2 or more starting hands and selects the one that’s more similar to the proportion of our deck in terms of lands and spells. We also know it doesn’t take in account colors or make any difference between type of spells; the algorithm only uses lands and spells.

This is going to make some decks way better. Others, not so much. It will make decks with relatively low land counts mulligan less, for example, since it is less likely that they will miss their critical mass of lands needed to start playing. It will also help less decks that do not mulligan much, like Boros Cycling. This algorithm is also better for mono-colored decks, since there is no thing as colorscrew for them, or an excess of tapped lands. The algorithm is going to make every deck function more often, but it won’t help every deck in the same way. It could be easy to think that mono-colored decks must be much better in Bo1 because of these two things I just talked about. But there is one more factor, always important in Magic, which is a lesson I did learn playing a lot of Bo1 for the 2019 Mythic Invitational.

Metagame

Metagaming is always a very important part of preparing a Magic tournament. Would you rather play a good deck when everyone is trying to beat it, or would it be better to play a slightly worse deck that is under the radar? Metagaming is always tricky, and that is also true for Bo1.

We’ve concluded decks like Mono-Red Aggro are likely better because of the no sideboarding factor and the algorithm. However, that might be obvious for your opposition as well. Is Mono-Red Aggro really a better deck if our opponents starting packing cards that are specifically against aggro just because they expect a lot of aggressive decks? Likely not.

For this reason, I think the best approach to play Bo1 is usually to play a deck that’s naturally good against aggressive strategies while you can spend a small amount of your maindeck slots to fight mirror matches. In the past, I considered Esper Control to be a perfect example of this with cards like 《Oath of Kaya》 and 《Kaya’s Wrath》 pulling all the weight against aggressive decks like Mono-Red.

《Oath of Kaya》 is a perfect example of a very good Bo1 card, since it is a “hate card” against aggressive decks, where it is a great draw at almost any stage of the game, while still not being completely dead, because it can deal with stuff like 《Narset, Parter of Veils》. I think it is very important for Bo1 deckbuilding to make sure our deck is packed with cards like this, that are very good where you want it but also never completely dead.

So far we’ve concluded decks like Mono-Red are likely going to be good, and decks like Temur Adventures are probably going to be stronger since the huge cost they pay to play 《Fae of Wishes》 is essentially free for Bo1. We also know that Jeskai Lukka is likely still very good, and that Bant Control is going to be surely worse since it is a deck that relies a lot on having an excellent post-sideboard configuration against everything.

Keeping all of this in mind, it is time for THAT question: