Magic: The Gathering Arena is a very difficult game to keep on top of, with constant changes to the Meta due to various cards being banned from standard play and new cards being released all the time. This means that it can be quite difficult for gamers to keep up with all the changes unless they are playing regularly.
As such, knowing which of the standard mode decks in Magic: The Gathering Arena are the best at any given time can be hard to keep track of. Fortunately, there are a few decks that have remained strong over time, as well as a few newer examples that are currently at a high-power level for winning duels in this excellent Magic: The Gathering game adaption.
6 Rakdos Midrange
This deck is so out of control and powerful at the moment that the makers of Magic: The Gathering Arena will have no choice but to nerf it in short order. There are a lot of powerful midrange decks in Arena, but none are nearly as devastating as the Rakdos deck. Featuring some of the best black cards in the game, this deck is hugely devastating to most opponents.
Including cards like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Invoke Despair, and Graveyard Trespasser, this deck is built to cut down opposition in the most brutal manner imaginable. It forces opponents to sacrifice their own monsters, and uses abilities like Death Touch to force their hesitation in attacking. The deck focuses on a wide range of card abilities that will confuse and interrupt an opponent's flow of play. Some of these cards will be taken out of play eventually, but some cards never vanish.
5 Mono Blue Tempo
While the midrange decks have been cleaning up recently, there is a counter deck for anything in Magic: The Gathering. Fortunately, there is a great solution for players when facing a midrange deck, and that is the Mono Blue Tempo deck. This deck is designed to frustrate those trying to use a deck like Rakdos Midrange. This style of deck has been popular longer than some others.
Mono Blue Tempo is filled with instants, which make up almost half the total deck. These instants are designed to frustrate opponents into inaction by returning creatures to their hand, and stopping or countering attacks. They can also help the player search quickly through their deck for the few powerful creatures waiting to pounce and demolish an enemy. One such card is the Haughty Djinn, which is more powerful the more instant spell cards are in the player’s graveyard.
4 Selesnya Enchantments
This green-and-white mixed deck has the best of both those worlds. It incorporates a lot of creatures and uses a mixture of enchantments and abilities to stack a huge number of +1/+1 counters onto them. This can make them massive enough to tear apart anything the enemy can throw at them.
This is a basic style of deck and is particularly good for beginners that aren’t used to more intricate styles of play in Magic: The Gathering. Still, there is plenty to be said for it going up against even highly-skilled decks. Cards like Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr, and Kami of Transcience make all the difference in this deck against some major opposition.
3 Esper Midrange
Another excellent midrange deck, Esper Midrange allows players the uncommon opportunity to play great cards from three different color. Esper’s deck is filled with white, blue, and black cards, a strategy that seems very difficult to pull off at first glance.
Also known as Esper Legends, this is a highly complicated deck that is filled almost entirely with mythic and rare cards. Strangely, the deck is almost entirely creatures and lands, with only two instants and absolutely no enchantments or other spells. Creatures like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse make another appearance, as do Adeline, Ao, and Raffine. This blending of styles feels counterintuitive to deck-building, but it works extremely effectively.
2 Azorius Soldiers
Exemplifying the best usage of white cards in MTG: Arena, Azorius Soldiers allows players to get down a lot of creatures and add up +1/+1 counters to them until they can devastate opponents. Another deck that unusually completely cuts out all enchantments and spells to focus entirely on creatures and lands, the reasoning behind this is quite clear.
Simply put, the abilities of the many legendary creatures that players will bring into battle can often negate enemy attempts to circumnavigate the player’s creatures with spells. The enemy will be frustrated into relying on their own creatures, which will be unable to tackle the growing immensity of the player’s forces once they have enough counters added to them. Balancing all these types of decks is one way that MTG: Arena has improved over the years.
1 Mono Red Aggro
One of the few purely red card decks that are effective under the current Meta in Magic: The Gathering Arena, the Mono-Red Aggro deck allows players a cheap way to potentially end a duel very early. Red cards are known for dealing damage to opponents even without going through their creatures first, and the Mono-Red Aggro deck is exceptional at this.
The deck features cheap instants like Play With Fire and enchantments such as Kumano Faces Kakkazan. The Mono-Red Aggro deck also has a large variety of creatures for a red deck like Phoenix Chick, Bloodthirsty Adversary, and the legendary Squee, Dubious Monarch. Between these, opponents will face the problem of a swiftly diminishing health bar without knowing how to block this wide variety of attacks.
Magic: The Gathering Arena was released on September 27th, 2018, and is currently available on Android, iOS, and PC.