What are the best MTG Arena decks? Grinding through Magic: The Gathering Arena’s Ranked Standard mode is tough – so there’s no shame in looking up a tournament-winning deck. This guide tracks the best MTGA decks every month, based on the latest tournament results, with full decklists and info on how to play each one.
On MTG Arena, the meta is constantly moving. With the busy MTG release schedule constantly adding stacks of fresh cards that unlock new winning strategies, and rotating old cards out of the format, the best MTG Standard decks can rise and fall very quickly.
Each month, we review which decks are performing best, crunch down exactly how they work, and explain the top decklists below. You can also find crucial info in our FAQ section to help you understand how these decks win games. Remember, the biggest changes come when a new set drops – you can find the full timeline in our guide to all MTG sets.
The best MTG Arena decks in Standard right now are:
Gruul Aggro
A deck that’s remained glued to the top of Standard since the start of 2024 as each set gave it new toys to play with, Gruul Prowess – a.k.a. Gruul Aggro – is a rather unique beast.
As with any aggro strategy, you’re still playing cheap creatures and turning them sideways, but this deck also relies heavily on the Prowess keyword. That means you need to be playing spells to land big hits, and Gruul Aggro opts for buffs and damage spells that allow it to win any combat and force hits through.
Bloomburrow gave the deck a swarm of mice like Emberheart Challenger, a natural fit for the deck with their Valiant keyword. Another new card, Screaming Nemesis, is a hasty attacker that’s very hard to get rid of, and can nullify lifegain for an entire match.
Aetherdrift doesn’t seem to have added much to this deck, but it’s still performing well.
Esper Pixie
An innovative deck that took off at the very end of 2024 without any new cards coming along to create it, Esper Pixie or Esper Self-bounce is a strategy that’s all about bouncing your own permanents and replaying them, to get the absolute most value you can from ETB effects.
This is particularly useful with disruptive enchantments like Nowhere to Run and Hopeless Nightmare. Esper Pixie decks will make opponents’ lives a misery by continuously recycling these, while accruing value with the likes of Optimistic Scavenger. Flying creatures like Fear of Isolation and Nurturing Pixie then let you get in for the win.
At time of writing, players are still experimenting, polishing, finding the best possible version of this tempo deck. For example, Entity Tracker, an incredible card draw engine with all those enchantments, has been dropped from the deck, as it’s too slow, a lightning rod for removal, and you can already play your own cards multiple times without drawing loads of new ones. The planeswalker Kaito is in – currently – able to gain lots of value while also providing another source of self-bounce.
Dimir Midrange
Dimir Midrange has been a powerhouse in Standard for many months, and is still one of the best MTG Arena decks in the meta.
As usual with this color combination, evasive creatures and removal spells abound. What is fairly new, however is the appearance of an MTG planeswalker: Kaito, Bane of Nightmares. Kaito is a really solid source of card advantage, and also works great against other midrange decks, being very difficult to remove.
As for the rest of the deck, it’s probably got the best card draw of anything on this list, allowing it to properly leverage Sheoldred the Apocalypse, which, as ever, remains one of the greatest four-drops in Standard.
Domain Overlords
Another deck that’s been kicking around at the top-end of Standard for literal years, Domain recently took a brand new shape thanks to Duskmourn.
The Domain deck looks to win the long game, and now uses multiple Duskmourn overlords to achieve that, keeping the board clear with removal until you build up steam for a devastating attack.
Over time the game plan has evolved to be more and more focused around these creepy creature enchantments, and the list above shows this with cards like Zur to animate them, and Scrollshift to blink them into play.
While it now tends to leave out red cards, aside from the Overlords, this deck still does a lot of what it’s known for: ramping, using Leyline Binding as absurdly cheap removal, and gaining loads of value from Up the Beanstalk. If you want to play a deck with a ton of mana colors, this one’s for you.
Golgari Midrange
Dimir and Golgari have been vying for top spot for months now, and while blue-black is top dog currently, it wouldn’t take much for Golgari Midrange to unseat it. Like most midrange decks, it pairs aggressively statted creatures that can beat down, with ways to generate value over a longer game, whether that’s casting spells from the graveyard, or drawing cards.
This particular iteration of the deck has a particular focus on demons, thanks to the excellent Room card Ritual Chamber. Capable of making a huge flying beater and drawing/draining an opponent out, it tends to define any game you get to play it.
A few cheap removal spells round out this decklist, and you also get the benefit of Restless Cottage, probably the best ‘man land’ in Standard right now.
Azorius Control
It’s been a moment since traditional Azorius Control had some time in the spotlight, as Standard seems to keep getting faster and faster. Now it’s back, however, with a traditional smorgasbord of counterspells, removal, and board wipes. Powerful creatures like Beza and Overlord of the Mistmoors help you catch up and pull into the lead once the enemy’s assault is curtailed.
What seems to have tipped the balance in favor of a slow, controlling blue-white deck is the MTG Aetherdrift card Stock Up. This card is sort of like a cheaper Memory Deluge. It’s an excellent card selection spell that is strong enough to see play in Vintage, let alone Standard!
White Token Control
An innovative, slower deck, White Token Control makes use of the sheer might of powerful card draw engine Caretaker’s Talent to try and win the long game.
Pair your engine with reliable token producers like Archangel Elspeth, and Sanguine Evangelist, and here you’ve got a deck that can just keep the value train going.
Recently, Enduring Innocence has added a second source of card draw to the deck, which has helped the mono-color version gain a competitive edge over the Boros variant. As much as I loved trying to win with Urabrask’s Forge, it must be admitted that the single color variant is more consistent.
Azorius Tempo
Finally, we have Azorius Tempo, a spell heavy deck that relies on the strength of just a couple of potent creatures, with an unexpected focus on the graveyard.
Those creatures are Haughty Djinn, who’s represented the Tempo archetype since 2022, and gets very big thanks to all the spells you’ll discard and ditch; Abhorrent Oculus, a one eye army who can drown you in card draw and tokens to block with, not to mention further fuel the graveyard strat; and Kiora, the Rising Tide, who makes massive octopuses.
The neat thing about this deck is while you’re dependent on hitting a few very important creatures, your prevalent self-mill means you can often revive those creatures. More often than you play them normally, you’ll cheat them onto the battlefield for cheap with a Recommission or Helping Hand.
Best MTG Arena decks FAQ
If you’re relatively new to Magic: The Gathering and are here for a helping hand to grab some wins, some of the terminology here may seem like daunting jargon (and it is) so let’s explain some of it.
What do MTG Arena deck names mean?
MTG Standard deck names are generally made up of two components:
- Colors – The first part tells you which MTG colors are in the deck (for example Mono Red or Blue/White).
- Archetype, mechanic, or theme – The second part either describes the strategy ‘archetype’ it uses to win games (e.g. Aggro); the main in-game mechanic it uses (e.g. Burn or Life Gain) or a distinctive theme to its cards (e.g. Rabbits or Vampires). If the deck is driven by a single powerful card, that card name might be used here instead.
Both halves of the deck names can get complicated, though. Players often refer to decks with more than one color by their in-universe lore labels, like Gruul or Azorius, rather than the straightforward colors. We explain every single one of these in our guide to MTG color combinations.
And when it comes to labelling decks’ strategies and themes, there’s very often more than one commonly used term to indicate a specific deck’s distinctive playstyle or win conditions – so you might see the same deck referred to by slightly different names by different players or websites.
It’s easy to identify these doppelgängers, though – just look at the cards in the decklists. They may vary very slightly – every deck has variants – but the core deck concept remains the same and builds on the same cards.
What are the main MTG Arena deck archetypes?
Magic: The Gathering has a huge range of strategic interactions and options in it – but generally, your deck needs to follow a single, coherent strategy to win games. Fans have grouped these winning strategies into six main ‘archetypes’, based not on which cards they include, but on how they set out to win games.
You can find full details in our guide to MTG deck archetypes – but here’s a short summary of the six types and how they play:
- Aggro – Win fast with aggressive damage, mostly using creatures.
- Control – slow down the opponent while you spin up powerful cards.
- Midrange – Use the best available mid-cost cards to outmaneuver both aggro and control.
- Combo – Set up and then play a specific, game winning card combo.
- Combo-Control – Play control and then win with a combo.
- Aggro-Control / Tempo – Disrupt the opponent with quick control cards, while chipping away life with cheap aggro.
And that’s our guide to the strongest MTG Arena decks right now! If you’re lacking the cards to craft one of these decks above, you might be able to gain a few free wildcards with our list of all the MTG Arena codes that still function. Alternatively, behold the priciest rare Magic cards on earth in our guide to the most expensive MTG cards.
Source: Wargamer
