The Ultimate Guide to MTG Arena’s Historic Format

Last updated on May 28, 2026

Ugin's Binding | Illustration by Mark Poole

Historic is one of MTG Arena’s Eternal formats. It was created in November 2019 after the platform's first Standard rotation, and it’s a format exclusive to MTG Arena.

Historic is similar to Legacy in the sense that you can play almost all the cards ever released on Arena, minus a ban list. The digital-only cards from Alchemy sets also receive rebalances from time to time.

With regular Historic Best-of-One and Best-of-Three Qualifier Play-Ins happening on the client, and powerful cards trickling in from each set, now is a good time to learn the format.

What Is the Historic Format on Arena?

Esper Sentinel | Illustration by Eric Deschampsk

Arena Historic is a format on MTG Arena that’s composed of nearly all cards available in the client. That means you can play with all the Standard-legal sets, the bonus sheets like the Strixhaven Mystical Archives, supplemental sets like the Explorer Anthologies and Historic Anthologies, as well as all the Alchemy sets and rebalanced cards. If we were to trace a parallel with paper Magic, Historic would be similar to Legacy, while the Timeless format is more akin to Vintage, in which all card are available and only a few have restrictions.

Who Is Historic For?

Historic is a very good fit for veteran MTG players who have played on MTG Arena for a long time or any player with a big collection. It’s a good format for deck brewers, because the card pool is huge and the metagame always evolves.

It’s not really a good starting point for beginners. The games can be very complex and high-powered, and if you get into Historic with a Standard or Pioneer deck, expect to get wrecked.

Historic is also one of the best places to explore the uniqueness of digital-only cards and mechanics, like Oracle of the Alpha, Dragonweave Tapestry, or Rope Line Attendant. Historic gives you access to different strategies that receive a digital boost to be more competitive, like ninjas. Still, if you want to step up your MTG game, you can craft a deck and get into some Historic queues and see if the format suits you.

Arena Historic-Legal Sets

Historic includes all Standard-legal sets present on Arena. This includes every major Standard release from Ixalan forward, as well as re-released sets like Khans of Tarkir.

In addition to Standard releases, which are automatically added to Historic’s card pool, the format allows cards printed in various other sets and collections, including:

• Alchemy releases that accompany Standard sets (Alchemy: Wilds of Eldraine, Alchemy: Secrets of Strixhaven, etc.)
• Remastered sets (Amonkhet Remastered, Kaladesh Remastered, Shadows over Innistrad Remastered)
• Anthologies (Arena/Historic/Explorer Anthologies)
• Jumpstart sets
• “Straight-to-Modern” sets (Modern Horizons 3, Lord of the Rings)
• Arena-only sets (Pioneer Masters, Jumpstart: Historic Horizons, Arena Base Set)

Historic Rules

Historic matches are 1v1 with 60-card decks plus a sideboard (which can contain up to seven cards in Best-of-One, and up to 15 cards in Best-of-Three). Between main deck and sideboard, you can have any number of basic lands and up to four copies of any other card. Each player starts with 20 life and seven cards in hand, then they may take mulligans to change their initial hand.

That’s not to be mistaken with Brawl, which is a totally different format. In Brawl (formerly “Historic Brawl”), players play with rules that are more similar to Commander, with 100-card singleton decks, a legendary creature or planeswalker in the command zone, and players start with 25 life instead of 20.

The main difference between Historic and Timeless is that cards that are banned in Historic are legal in Timeless. If you take a look at the Historic ban list below, these cards are all legal as a four-of in Timeless, with some being restricted in Timeless, like Demonic Tutor, Channel, and Tibalt's Trickery.

Another big characteristic that sets apart formats like Historic and Standard/Pioneer/Timeless is that in MTG Arena, some cards were digitally rebalanced. In Historic, you’ll play with the rebalanced version, while in formats like Pioneer and Timeless, you play with the original card.

For example: Orcish Bowmasters is nerfed in Historic since it doesn’t trigger on ETB, so if you play the card in Historic and in Timeless, there are two different versions of the same card.

Historic Ban List

Here are all the cards banned in Historic:

• Ajani, Nacatl Pariah
• Ancient Tomb
• Arid Mesa
• Armageddon
• Blood Moon
• Bloodstained Mire
• Brainstorm
• Broadside Bombardiers
• Channel
• Chrome Mox
• Commandeer
• Crop Rotation
• Dark Depths
• Dark Ritual
• Daze
• Demonic Tutor
• Devoted Druid
• Eldrazi Temple
• Entomb
• Field of the Dead
• Fireblast
• Flare of Cultivation
• Flare of Denial
• Flare of Duplication
• Flare of Fortitude
• Flare of Malice
• Flooded Strand
• Food Chain
• Force of Will
• Frantic Search
• Fury
• Grief
• Harbinger of the Seas
• Intruder Alarm
• Land Tax
• Library of Alexandria
• Lightning Bolt
• Mana Drain
• Marsh Flats
• Memory Lapse
• Mishra's Bauble
• Misty Rainforest
• Mox Opal
• Mystical Tutor
• Natural Order
• Necropotence
• Nexus of Fate
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Once Upon a Time
• Painter's Servant
• Polluted Delta
• Preordain
• Pyrokinesis
• Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
• Reanimate
• Scalding Tarn
• Scholar of the Lost Trove
• Seething Song
• Show and Tell
• Sneak Attack
• Solitude
• Spreading Seas
• Strip Mine
• Subtlety
• Swords to Plowshares
• Temporal Manipulation
• Thassa's Oracle
• Tibalt's Trickery
• Time Warp
• Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
• Vampiric Tutor
• Veil of Summer
• Verdant Catacombs
• Wilderness Reclamation
• Windswept Heath
• Winter Moon
• Wooded Foothills

Where to Play MTG Arena Historic

Historic can be played in a few modes:

• Historic Play Best-of-One (Ranked and unranked)
• Historic Best-of-Three (Ranked and unranked)
• Historic Event
• Traditional Historic Event (Best-of-Three)

There are a few derivatives from this like Historic Pauper or Historic Artisan, and in these cases, you’ll have rarity restrictions to deckbuilding, like playing only commons, or only commons and uncommons. Historic Gladiator is a variant where you’ll play a 100-card singleton deck, but it follows Traditional 1v1 rules.

Historic can also be played from time to time in competitive formats, like the Best-of-One and Best-of-Three Qualifier Play-Ins.

Historic Decks

To get a good vision of Historic’s metagame, I use Arena Tutor (and you should use it too!). Arena Tutor offers a pretty robust metagame tab breaking down the best decks in the format.

Deck: Boros Energy Aggro

Ocelot Pride | Illustration by Chris Seaman

Deck Source

Rebalances to Guide of Souls, Galvanic Discharge, and Ocelot Pride aim to slow this deck down.

The deck can still have pretty fast starts thanks to MH3 cards like Ajani, Nacatl Pariah and Guide of Souls. Ocelot Pride remains potent and doesn't need much in the way of additional lifegain support. Your cats tend to pass through unharmed most of the time thanks to Ajani's flip condition. Another interesting card in the deck is Goblin Bombardment, which allows you to sacrifice creatures for additional damage or to flip Ajani.

Deck: Izzet Wizards

Symmetry Sage | Illustration by Jehan Choo

Deck Source

Symmetry Sage, Dreadhorde Arcanist, and Soul-Scar Mage all benefit from casting instants and sorceries, and they share the wizard creature type, improving spells like Wizard's Lightning and Flame of Anor. The aim of the game is to be as aggressive as possible, combining your creatures and noncreature spells, dodging enemy removal, and killing them off in a swift turn. The deck is fast and if they don't interact with your creatures, they’re toast.

This already great deck has been the beneficiary of many of Magic’s best cheap instants and sorceries coming to the client, like Chain Lightning, Ponder, and Preordain. Some versions have adopted Flow State as a backup or alternative Expressive Iteration.

Eldrazi Ramp

Sowing Mycospawn | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

Deck Source

Simic forms the basis of Arena’s Eldrazi ramp decks, which are fundamentally decks that rest on the combination of Eldrazi Temple and Ugin's Labyrinth to ramp out Sowing Mycospawn, then chain the ramp from that card into haymakers like Emrakul, the Promised End, Ugin, Eye of the Storms, or Sire of Seven Deaths.

Malevolent Rumble and Devourer of Destiny give the deck great consistency, while Kozilek's Command and Ugin's Binding offer strong interaction. Plus, and early kicked Mycospawn chews up an opponent’s land, which makes it hard to keep pace with the deck.

Affinity

Kappa Cannoneer | Illustration by Jesper Ejsing

Deck Source

Artifact synergies have risen up thanks to the inclusion of more cheap artifacts on Arena, plus real artifact payoffs like Krang, Master Mind and Kappa Cannoneer. These are some of the regular finishers bolstered by a supporting cast of Ornithopters and Mox Ambers.

Drix Interlacer is a huge digital-only payoff and enabler; it’s a cheap artifact that cheapens cards with affinity for artifacts and a way to recharge your hand after you’ve dumped all your cards.

Deck: Mono-Green Devotion

Polukranos Reborn | Illustration by David Auden Nash

Deck Source

This deck achieves a powerful balance between fast starts driven by ramp and mana dorks, a good middle game with strong cards, and late-game power with card draw provided by Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner and Outcaster Trailblazer. You can also tutor powerful artifacts with Karn, the Great Creator to fight off whatever they’re doing, or spend your excess mana on Storm the Festival. The deck’s definitely got beef.

Interestingly, you’ll find a ton of “mono-green” decks that run a copy or two of Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, which stops a lot of the affinity and energy decks’ gameplans. These decks rarely run white lands, instead getting the Mother of Machines into play with Storm the Festival or Noble Hierarch.

Deck: Rakdos Midrange

Crucias, Titan of the Waves | Illustration by Filipe Pagliuso

This Rakdos midrange deck hinges on a few Arena-specific cards in Sheoldred's Assimilator and Crucias, Titan of the Waves, and they're both good at finding you the answer you need. It has impeccable interaction in Thoughtseize, Fatal Push, Go for the Throat, and Sheoldred's Edict.

This deck gets utility out of its lands too with Hive of the Eye Tyrant to help ensure you have graveyard hate.

Getting Started with Arena Historic

Modern Horizons 3 is probably the single most powerful MTG set of Arena boosters available to acquire in the Arena Store, and the cards within are very good for decks that revolve around energy or Eldrazi. It’s not going to supply you with many of the Historic decks, but it helps to start and get one or two meta decks. Another set that has a high power level for Historic is Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, with many powerful staple cards coming from that set.

One of the best places to start is with Izzet () spells-matter decks. Aside from some rare creatures like Soul-Scar Mage and Dreadhorde Arcanist, the deck plays mostly commons and uncommons like Wizard's Lightning, Reckless Charge, and Expressive Iteration. That means it’s an easy-to-craft deck.

Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, and Up the Beanstalk are the base of green ramp decks. Beanstalk is extra good when you’ve ramped a bit as your mid-game spells draw you tons of value, like Elder Gargaroth and Railway Brawler.

Soul Warden, Static Prison, and Unstable Amulet see play in the same Boros () deck, while having other applications in lifegain decks or energy decks.

End the Festivities coming from the sideboard is an interesting way to fight the Boros () cat menace, because that deck is so heavy on 1/1s and 2/1s.

If you’re interested in immediately jumping into meta decks and playing at the highest level of competition, MTG Decks is one of your best sources for recent, successful decklists and meta breakdowns.

Historic Products

As Historic can be played only in MTG Arena, we don’t have any special product to get into the format. The card pool is very diverse and comes from many sets, so there isn’t a specific better set to invest in. Digital-only players can benefit from the Alchemist Bundle which gives you a decent one-time deal on Alchemy booster packs, which equate to a chunk of Historic-playable cards.

Naturally, players that have been playing Arena since the beginning have a good advantage. The best bet is to try to craft a deck that you identify with, even if you have a suboptimal version to start with. Modern Horizons 3 or Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth are good booster packs for starting points.

Historic Communities

If you want to really get into Historic, there’s nothing better than to discuss the format with the community. The main subreddit for Arena Historic is an excellent source of content. There you can find decklists being shared, new decks being brewed, championships and metagame discussion (and the popular “which card should be banned now” rant as well).

For all things MTG Arena related, check out the MTG Arena subreddit. Draftsim’s own Discord Server is another place where all MTG formats are discussed, from Limited to Constructed.

That's History!

Amped Raptor | Illustration by Alex Konstad

Historic exists to let you play with your favorite Alchemy and Standard decks once they rotate. It's also a place to play really powerful cards from non-Standard sets like Modern Horizons 1-3 and Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. Many of Historic’s staple cards see play in Modern and Legacy, so Historic is the closest we have to these formats in Arena.

If you play Arena, you have to have Arena Tutor by your side. It suggests your meta decks, tracks your collection, and gives you powerful insights on Draft and Sealed play.

Do you play Historic regularly? What are your favorite decks and takes on the meta? Let me know in the comments, or touch on it on Draftsim's Twitter. While you're here, check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

Thank you for reading folks, and see you on the flip side.