The world of Explorer on MTG Arena is a bit up in the air right now. With the additional banning of
Expressive Iteration
Expressive Iteration
Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand, put one of them on the bottom of your library, and exile one of them. You may play the exiled card this turn.
and the exodus of the Izzet Tempo deck from the format, there were some clear winners to lead the pack. Well, there’s a couple of decks that have popped up in popularity, and they’re both Tribal decks! Today we’ll look at both of these decks, because they’re pretty easy mode for ladder.
Mono Blue Spirits
The first deck that we have is Mono Blue Spirits. This deck has existed on the fringes of the meta prior to the bans, but the meta has opened up for it to shine. It aims to leverage some cheap spirits and lords to get in some quick damage. It backs this up with some key counter magic and tempo plays.
The deck doesn’t go above 3 mana for any of its spells, so it’s also using
Curious Obsession
Curious Obsession
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and has "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card."
At the beginning of your end step, if you didn't attack with a creature this turn, sacrifice this Aura.
to keep the cards flowing. Here’s an importable list for this deck.
This deck can get off the ground very quickly, not requiring a ton of resources to get going. Often times you can pressure your opponent’s life total very quickly and seal the game off your tempo alone.
The next deck that we have is a the Explorer-ized version of a Standard and Historic staple.
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Selesnya Humans
Next up is Selesnya Humans. This deck looks familiar if you have played Standard and Historic in the last 6 months. Our goal is to get down some small but powerful human creatures, and snowball the tempo advantage.
Each of the creatures above are pretty staple for the deck. You can build a very big board very quickly with these. Now this version of the deck is utilizing a new Streets of New Capenna card,
Extraction Specialist
Extraction Specialist
Lifelink
When this creature enters, return target creature card with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. That creature can't attack or block for as long as you control this creature.
.
Extraction Specialist is a really interesting inclusion here. It reanimates a 2 mana value or less creature from our graveyard, but it can’t attack or block as long as we control Extraction Specialist. That may seem like a downside, but we can leverage that quick nicely by bringing back [/tooltips]Thalia’s Lieutenant[/tooltips] or
Luminarch Aspirant
Luminarch Aspirant
At the beginning of combat on your turn, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.
. We can get the value out of these creatures without having to attack.
Now to tie everything together, we have 1 particular card. It’s Selesnya Humans, so we have
Collected Company
Collected Company
Look at the top six cards of your library. Put up to two creature cards with mana value 3 or less from among them onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
as that green card in the deck.
Just like Curious Obsession for the Spirits deck, Collected Company is this deck’s way to keep cards flowing. It’s key for building back against removal since we can cast it at instant speed, so we can spring this at the opportune moment. Here’s the list for Humans.
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If you’re looking for a fast and strong deck to take the ladder on, these decks definitely can do that for you. Both decks are very strong, but I personally like Humans a bit more, but it does come down to play style.