MTG Arena's Historic is Broken, Here's How to Fix It.

We are a now about 2 weeks in from the release of Jumpstart: Historic Horizons on Magic Arena, and about a week and a half away from the release of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt on Arena. The Metagame around Historic has settled into a problematic state. Let’s examine the meta and ways that Wizards of the Coast can fix it.

The Problem Meta

The current meta is one that is somewhat diverse, but the decks at the top end are far and away better than the rest of the field. The two decks that are currently sitting at the top of the meta are Jeskai Control and Jeskai Indomitable Creativity Indomitable Creativity Destroy X target artifacts and/or creatures. For each permanent destroyed this way, its controller reveals cards from the top of their library until an artifact or creature card is revealed and exiles that card. Those players put the exiled cards onto the battlefield, then shuffle. .

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Both of these decks are rocking a very similar set of tools. Both decks have Memory Lapse Memory Lapse Counter target spell. If that spell is countered this way, put it on top of its owner's library instead of into that player's graveyard. , Lightning Helix Lightning Helix Lightning Helix deals 3 damage to any target and you gain 3 life. , and 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. , but have very different game plans. The Jeskai Creativity game plan involves playing a control game and resolve Hard Evidence Hard Evidence Create a 0/3 blue Crab creature token.
Investigate. (Create a Clue token. It's an artifact with "{2}, Sacrifice this token: Draw a card.") and an Indomitable Creativity on the two tokens to get a 2 Serra’s Emissary Serra’s Emissary Flying
As this creature enters, choose a card type.
You and creatures you control have protection from the chosen card type. s into play. They then pick the 2 most relevant card types for their opponent’s deck and win the game from there. For control, they generally are winning off Teferi, Hero of Dominaria Teferi, Hero of Dominaria +1: Draw a card. At the beginning of the next end step, untap up to two lands.
−3: Put target nonland permanent into its owner's library third from the top.
−8: You get an emblem with "Whenever you draw a card, exile target permanent an opponent controls." and Shark Typhoon Shark Typhoon Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, create an X/X blue Shark creature token with flying, where X is that spell's mana value.
Cycling {X}{1}{U} ({X}{1}{U}, Discard this card: Draw a card.)
When you cycle this card, create an X/X blue Shark creature token with flying. tokens.

These strategies are very strong, and this color combination has been holding the top spots in the metagame since Strixhaven and the Mystical Archives were introduced to Historic. Over the course of the various releases, a few cards have been at the forefront of the pack in terms of power level, namely Brainstorm Brainstorm Draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order. , 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 Memory Lapse Memory Lapse Counter target spell. If that spell is countered this way, put it on top of its owner's library instead of into that player's graveyard. . Brainstorm has been suspended, but Memory Lapse and Iteration have been alive and well in the format.

In addition to these two cards, Indomitable Creativity poses some other issues. It dodges a lot of the widely played blanket hate against much of the rest of the field. Cards like Rest in Peace Rest in Peace When this enchantment enters, exile all graveyards.
If a card or token would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead. and Grafdigger’s Cage Grafdigger’s Cage Creature cards in graveyards and libraries can't enter the battlefield.
Players can't cast spells from graveyards or libraries. are used to deal with Dragon’s Rage Channeler Dragon’s Rage Channeler Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard.)
Delirium — As long as there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard, this creature gets +2/+2, has flying, and attacks each combat if able. decks, as well as 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. decks. The only real hate card against this deck is Containment Priest Containment Priest Flash
If a nontoken creature would enter and it wasn't cast, exile it instead. , which is very narrow in the decks that want to use it.

Tibalt’s Trickery

Throes of Chaos — *Wizards of the Coast*

The other deck that has gained quite a bit of popularity in the past week or so is the new and improved Tibalt’s Trickery Tibalt’s Trickery Counter target spell. Choose 1, 2, or 3 at random. Its controller mills that many cards, then exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile a nonland card with a different name than that spell. They may cast that card without paying its mana cost. Then they put the exiled cards on the bottom of their library in a random order. deck. With the addition of Throes of Chaos Throes of Chaos Cascade (When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card that costs less. You may cast it without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom in a random order.)
Retrace (You may cast this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.) to the format in Historic Horizons, the trickery decks have been given an answer to solve their problems.

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These problems are first off finding Trickery. Throes lets you cascade into it with 100% consistency as everything else in the deck is more expensive than Throes. Then the 2nd problem is having a spell of our own to counter. Traditionally the deck would play a Stonecoil Serpent Stonecoil Serpent Reach, trample, protection from multicolored
This creature enters with X +1/+1 counters on it. to counter, but now we can counter our own Throes. This opens up the rest of the deck to be lands and powerful bombs that help us end the game.

We have the ability to go off as early as turn 3, which is often not enough time for opposing decks to be able to stop us. On top of that, since Throes has Retrace, we don’t have to draw another to go off again the next turn.

While this seems like it’s only a Best of 1 deck, people have been hard at work building various sideboard plans for best of 3, and many have hit Mythic ranks with this deck. It may seem like a very fragile strategy overall and we haven’t had an opportunity to really see if this deck can shine in tournament play or not, but it poses the problem of a non-interactive play pattern that feels like it goes way over the top of nearly anything else going on in Historic.

The long and short of the problems in Historic at this stage is that 2 Jeskai decks continue to push the top end of the metagame further out of reach of the rest of a fairly diverse field, and we have a combo deck that has a fair bit of real resiliency and is very polarizing and non-interactive.

Solutions

How do we help fix the metagame in light of these issues? There’s a few different things that definitely need to happen and we’ll break each of them down.

Nerf Jeskai

The first thing that I’d say would need to happen is nerfing the Jeskai decks. Fully banning Brainstorm, and suspending / banning Memory Lapse would bring the Jeskai power levels down quite a bit. Next, Expressive Iteration has become a staple card in any Blue Red deck in multiple formats. It’s incredibly pushed and gives a TON of value at 2 mana. Seeing that possibly get a suspension may make some sense.

Lastly, suspending / banning Indomitable Creativity essentially brings that deck down a peg. While there’s other options such as Transmogrify Transmogrify Exile target creature. That creature's controller reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal a creature card. That player puts that card onto the battlefield, then shuffles the rest into their library. in the format, this only lets the deck get 1 Emissary out rather than 2. Additionally, it’s a bit easier to interact with the singular creature, rather than trying to deal with 2 different tokens. Additionally, this shuts down the other “Creativity” variant with The Locust God The Locust God Flying
Whenever you draw a card, create a 1/1 blue and red Insect creature token with flying and haste.
{2}{U}{R}: Draw a card, then discard a card.
When The Locust God dies, return it to its owner's hand at the beginning of the next end step. and Sage of the Falls Sage of the Falls Whenever this creature or another non-Human creature you control enters, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card. .

Land Disparity

Next, there’s a massive mana disparity between enemy colors and allied colors. The enemy color decks have multiple dual lands that come in untapped in the first 3 turns of the game. As the format becomes a bit faster and more complex, not having these options for allied colors makes those decks feel incredibly difficult to play. A simple solution here would be to add the allied color Fast lands from Scars of Mirrodin in the next Historic Anthology release. To a lesser extent, this problem becomes a bit more alleviated once the Shard Triomes get printed, hopefully in Streets of New Capenna.

Revisit the Banned List

Veil-of-Summer-M20-672 — *Wizards of the Coast*

The next thing that we could look at doing is revisiting the banned list. The Historic format has evolved a lot since many of these cards were banned. With Historic Horizons pushing the format closer to a “Modern Lite” feel, many of the cards are definitely much more fair, and potentially even healthy for the format. Since Historic is purely digital, Wizards could look at doing a limited time event similar to “Mirror Mirror”, but have the cards in their unchanged forms, just to see how things shake up. Not saying that every card would be playable here, but definitely some of them.

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt

While some of these suggestions may seem a bit hasty, I do think that we should wait until Innistrad: Midnight Hunt releases to get a sense of where goes with it. We do have some very playable cards in the set for the format, such as Delver of Secrets Delver of Secrets At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top card of your library. You may reveal that card. If an instant or sorcery card is revealed this way, transform this creature. , Pithing Needle Pithing Needle As this artifact enters, choose a card name.
Activated abilities of sources with the chosen name can't be activated unless they're mana abilities. , and Lunar Frenzy Lunar Frenzy Target creature you control gets +X/+0 and gains first strike and trample until end of turn. . That being said, I don’t know that these will make enough of a splash to move the needle on the top decks, but it’s worth waiting a little bit to see.

In my opinion, it’s a real shame that various Jeskai decks continue to be at the top of the metagame. There’s so much potential for diversity in the format, and with these decks running rampant, that diversity is suppressed quite a bit. Hopefully we’ll see a bit of action taken from WotC on the format soon, and the meta can truly thrive from there. What are your thoughts? Do you think these proposed solutions can help right the ship of the format? What changes would you make? Let us know in the comments!

Tagged Historic, Historic Horizons, magic: the gathering, MTG, MTG Arena

Historic is Broken, Here’s How to Fix It