Historic Starter Decks

Hello and welcome to the Historic Starter Decks section of the site. The intention of this page is to list decks that have low resource requirements to help enable newer players to get into the incredible format that is Historic.

Historic is Magic the Gathering Arena's eternal format, which means nearly every card ever released on the platform is available for use. This makes Historic incredibly broad and powerful, but also means that newer players are unlikely to have all the cards they need to build decks for it.

These decks aim to bridge the gap between many players and Historic in general. They contain only 10 Rares, at least 4 of which are lands that can be played in many other decks, and 2 Mythics. The decks are designed to be fun, somewhat off meta, and to win an average amount in the "Play" queue or ranks up to platinum.

These decks are not designed to be ultra competitive, fast, or efficient decks. Care is not taken to spend wildcards efficiently on format staples or craft cards that go into multiple decks. You'll get a cheap deck you can use in the format at a low cost, but you may not get the pieces you need to rise the ranks to Mythic the next season.

Overview

This deck is all about small incremental value backed up by a decent dose of removal. At first glance Oni-Cult Anvil seems like a pretty weak card, but it can provide a very large amount of value if your willing to build around it. A good amount of that value is build around Dragonspark Reactor which can get very large very quickly and threaten your opponents life total or best creature. Finally you'll get some minor value with Reinforced Ronin who can finish off planeswalkers or simply trigger your Anvil or Reactor turn after turn. Plus it makes an excellent crewer for Mukotai Soulripper.

Overview

This deck is all about aggressive creatures being buffed by equipment and swinging in. The equipment archetype is a great budget archetype. Even though many of the best equipment are higher rarity, there are plenty of payoffs and even some filler equipment cards at the lower rarities as well. Maul of the Skyclaves and Embercleave are big here because many of our cards grow quite large and preventing double blocks means we keep them around. The lifelink from Shadowspear and the Haste from Rabbit Battery also means we can survive against aggro and comeback after a wrath.

Overview

Love it or hate it, Mill is a thing. And if your one of the ones who loves it, this deck might be for you. The deck revolves around draw based mill cards like Psychic Corrosion and Teferi's Tutelage to deck opponents out while doing what you already want to do, drawing cards. You'll have the chance to double up card draw with Teferi's Ageless Insight and control the board with counters and bounce spells. And of course two copies of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria make sure you have some staying power to end the game.

Overview

The skeleton tribe definitely deserves some respect in the budget rankings. It might not be as explosive as elves, or as aggressive as goblins but it puts up some really goos showings if you can delay the game long enough to get key cards like Skeletal Swarming, Death-Priest of Myrkul or Moldervine Reclamation online. The rest of the shell is removal, ramp, and card draw to keep us churning through the deck.

Overview

This deck is all about dropping haymakers and then hasting them up to swing in for big attacks. Threats like Elder Gargaroth, Trollbred Guardian and Proud Wildbonder can push out some serious damage when pumped up with Halana and Alena, Partners. You'll also have plenty of removal to handle any early game threats that try and take you out before you can haste your threats out.

Overview

Zombies are one Magics first class tribes. They get plenty of lords and effects even at the common and uncommon levels. The sheer amount of lords means this deck can go over the top of opponents (Quite literally with Eternal Skylord) and Necroduality means we can often go pretty wide as well. It's not uncommon to drop two lords into a Necroduality and end up smashing your opponents face for most of their life. Narfi, Betrayer King gives us some chance of recovery after wraths and Cobbled Lancer is both a cheap creature when we need one, and card draw when we have extra mana to burn.

Overview

This deck is all about drawing cards, going wide, and then jamming in with a big evasive threat for the win. Cards like Sythis, Harvest's Hand, Enchantress's Presence, and Satyr Enchanter make sure our hand stays full while Destiny Spinner and All That Glitters can give us big beaters then use Archon of Sun's Grace to make flying attackers or use Alseid of Life's Bounty to give protection and swing through.

Overview

Why play spells on your turn when you can play them on your opponents. Simic flash is all about holding up answers, while also holding up more answers, well also holding up threats. With 18 main deck counterspells, and plenty of flash threats you'll find yourself controlling the board. We also have plenty of ways to deal with things that sneak in between our counters with a full playset of Decisive Denial and a double copy of Ram Through.

Overview

Elves are just one of those classic creature decks that finds a place in almost any format. This deck aims to go wide, sometimes very wide and then pump up our team with Allosaurus Shepherd to win in one massive swing. We use a good number of mana producing creatures as well as some card draw to keep the ball rolling and our hand full, this means boards can get rather crazy rather quickly and make for some explosive turns.

A note on this deck, normally we keep pretty hard to the 6 non-land and 4 land rares, but Growing Rites of Itlimoc is Gaea's Cradle with extra steps which is historially very good in builds like this, so I included 2 copies of that over two generically good green sources

Overview

Goblins is another one of those classic tribes. This build is build around aggressive early game creatures that are followed up by Muxus to often close out the game very quickly. You'll want to focus on agression in the early part of the game so you can go wide and sneak in a cheap Embercleave for the win.

Overview

Back during our last visit to Ravnica I fell in love with the proliferate mechanic. I ran a Boros deck that used proliferate to pump up cards and close the game out quickly. This deck aims to provide the same spirit while being a much more budget oriented build.

Although we can go wide, more often we will be putting one or two creatures on the board and then pumping them up to very large sizes. This means we pack quite a few spells that can give our creatures indestructible so the math works out in our favor.

Overview

This vampire deck is just the right mix of aggressive and grindy to make my heart sing. There are plenty of opportunities for card advantage and it's not difficult to make a wide board with a few big creatures. Vampires also have a knack for gaining just enough life to make traditional aggro decks like mono-red fall behind long enough to close things out yourself.