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Tarkir: Dragonstorm had a big impact on the best of 1 metagame, introducing several new decks that work great for the format. Izzet Prowess leads the charge, an aggro-combo deck that's nearly as popular as Bo1 staples Mono Black and Mono Red.
MTG Arena’s Standard Bo1 meta is quite different from the Traditional Bo3 format. With just one game on the line to win a match, most successful decks aim for a consistent early game with win conditions that are difficult to stop.
Here's the meta tier list for Bo1 Standard this week, featuring decks with high win rates for you to try.
Tier List
| Tier | Deck | Meta Share |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Mono Black | 10.1% 🔽 |
| Mono Red | 9.6% 🔼 | |
| Izzet Prowess | 8.0% 🆕 | |
| Tier 2 | Boros Auras | 5.6% 🔼 |
| Esper Pixie | 2.8% 🔽 | |
| Omniscience | 2.7% 🔼 | |
| Azorius Artifacts | 2.4% 🔼 | |
| Tier 3 | Orzhov Pixie | 2.0% 🆕 |
| Jeskai Control | 1.9% 🆕 | |
| Orzhov Lifegain | 1.5% 🔽 | |
| Boros Dragonstorm | 1.5% 🆕 | |
| Azorius Control | 1.0% 🔽 |
Tier 1
Mono Black
Combine a ton of removal with some demons in a ritual chamber and you have the best deck in the format. Mono Black can kill pretty much everything the opponent plays and keep doing so thanks to pdsk-118p-unholy-annex-ritual-chamber. Mopping up with dsk-119-unstoppable-slasher or big flying demons makes this a surprisingly quick deck to queue with.
There's a reason Mono Black has been king of best of 1 for so long. It has everything: hard-hitting creatures, efficient removal, hand disruption, and card draw. It has game on any opponent and with mana smoothing, you can reliably get to the 4 mana needed to start dropping bombs.
Mono Red
For the fastest matches, nothing gets it done faster than Mono Red. It’s got cheap, aggressive creatures that can grow, along with enough burn and pump spells to push through blockers and bash face harder.
Prowess and pump spells result in big damage, especially for opponents with less than optimal draws. blb-138-heartfire-hero, one-124-cacophony-scamp, and woe-221-callous-sell-sword-burn-together can even fling for the finish.
tdm-103-cori-steel-cutter and tdm-108-fleeting-effigy provide an additional avenue of attack by creating an essentially free prowess attacker. fdn-79-boltwave instead of Lightning Strike makes sense if you have less mana to work with for the flurry trigger.
Izzet Prowess
Tarkir: Dragonstorm brought us tdm-103-cori-steel-cutter, which single-handedly brought Izzet Prowess back to the Standard meta. With lots of cantrips and smoothed mana, it's not difficult to string a bunch of spells to pump your attackers for double digit damage in a turn.
A good enough hand can certainly win games faster than even Mono Red. You only need to be careful against instant removal, but you can outgrow damaged-based spells. With very little artifact removal in Bo1, you won't really run out of Monks against control matchups.
The deck is light on interaction aside from some shocks, only sporting blb-52-into-the-flood-maw to slow down problem permanents. Against combo decks, Izzet Prowess can typically swing for lethal faster but it often comes down to the coin flip.
Tier 2
Boros Auras
Boros tones down on the aggression in favor of making its creatures bigger and more resilient. dsk-21-optimistic-scavenger along with versatile auras make it more difficult for opponents to deal with your threats. dsk-29-shardmages-rescue can save for very cheap while blb-13-feather-of-flight can break ground stalemates.
The challenge with the deck is getting a good balance of mice and auras, since sometimes you draw too much of one type and either end up with tiny threats or a stacked one that's more vulnerable to removal when you tap out.
Esper Pixie
Esper Pixie does as well in BO1 as in BO3. The value engine of otj-20-nurturing-pixie and dsk-58-fear-of-isolation bouncing enchantments can take over the midgame if the opponent isn’t fast enough. Once it stabilizes, dsk-220-kaito-bane-of-nightmares can keep the cards flowing.
Notable inclusions in this featured deck are tdm-29-sunpearl-kirin and dsk-290-entity-tracker, providing some flexibility in protecting key permanents as well as extra card draw.
Omniscience
Imagine having m13-63-omniscience by turn 4. That's what this deck can do with draw-discard spells and lci-1-abuelos-awakening. Once your spells are free, you can draw even more cards, dig for mom-61-invasion-of-arcavios-invocation-of-the-founders to tutor for silver bullets, and with a big enough flying spirit even swing for lethal with m19-217-heroic-reinforcements.
dmu-36-temporary-lockdown, and mom-55-epharas-dispersal to a lesser extent, is incredible at slowing down aggro decks. Mono Black can give this deck a hard time with its disruption but unless they have a fast clock, you can draw out of trouble.
Azorius Artifacts
tdm-32-united-battlefront and big-36-simulacrum-synthesizer from the two most recent sets are a match made in artifact heaven. With the synthesizer down, you can build massive constructs while dealing with opposing permanents. dft-56-repurposing-bay lets you tutor for all the artifacts you want.
dmu-36-temporary-lockdown is too strong not to include despite sealing away your constructs. All modes of otj-75-three-steps-ahead are great for the deck, and you're probably winning if you can afford to chooses more than one.
Tier 3
Orzhov Pixie
Remove blue from Esper Pixie and slap on demons from Mono Black and you essentially get this Orzhov monstrosity. In theory this results in lots of value, card advantage, and board control, but its mediocre stats (at least compared to most decks above) show it's not as effective as it hopes. It might just be too slow against aggro and don't have enough for goldfishing combo decks.
Jeskai Control
tdm-223-shiko-paragon-of-the-way is a perfect fit for a control deck, providing a large vigilant body along with either free removal or card draw. It makes tdm-41-dispelling-exhale more effective and lets you reuse the best spell for the situation. tdm-196-jeskai-revelation is amazing once you get there, and it should be smooth sailing after that.
Orzhov Lifegain
This lifegain deck wants to plop as many small creatures as it can, with several notable creatures getting you incremental advantage like blb-12-essence-channeler and lci-221-amalia-benavides-aguirre. The big wallop comes when you cast fdn-22-raise-the-past to get numerous triggers off blb-116-starscape-cleric, often enough for a huge life swing if not an outright win.
Boros Dragonstorm
A fun goldfish deck only possible in Arena Bo1, Boros Dragonstorm can essentially win the game when you get to 5 mana and cast tdm-101-breaching-dragonstorm. This will get you one of only 19 other spells in the deck, until you hit lci-238-quintorius-kand. His mini helix triggers every time you cast from exile, which is what every spell in the deck does. This lets you chain enough triggers to win, since mom-137-etali-primal-conqueror-etali-primal-sickness is two triggers as well as hitting lci-238-quintorius-kand when another one is already in play.
Azorius Control
Like all blue-white control decks before it, the current versions of Azorius Control has the typical permission, targeted removal, mass removal, and draw spells. dft-25-rides-end and dft-67-stock-up are excellent examples of what the deck wants to do. one-57-jace-the-perfected-mind and dft-57-riverchurn-monument seem to be the best way to end the game at the moment.
