The Ultimate Guide to MTG Arena’s Historic Format

Last updated on July 17, 2024

Expressive Iteration | Illustration by Kai Carpenter

Historic is one of MTG Arena’s eternal formats. It was created in November 2019 after the 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 the introduction of wildly powerful cards from Modern Horizons 3, now it’s a good time to learn the format.

What Is Arena Historic?

Esper Sentinel | Illustration by Eric Deschampsk

Arena Historic is a format on MTG Arena that’s composed of all cards available in the format. All cards in Arena, including 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.

Who Is Historic For?

Historic is a very good fit for veteran MTG players who have been playing on MTG Arena for a long time since these players will have a big collection. It’s a good format for deck brewers, because the card pool is huge and the metagame is always evolving.

It’s not really a good starting point for beginner, though. The games can be very complex and high-powered, and if you get into Historic with a Standard or Explorer deck, you’re going get wrecked.

Historic is also one of the best places to explore the uniqueness of digital-only cards and mechanics, like Crucias, Titan of Waves, Claim, Djinn Emperor, 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, and that’s the beauty of MTG Arena.

Arena Historic-Legal Sets

All sets released on MTG Arena are legal on Historic. Here’s the comprehensive list, from newest to latest:

Standard Sets

• Bloomburrow
• Outlaws of Thunder Junction
• Murders at Karlov Manor
• The Lost Caverns of Ixalan
• Wilds of Eldraine
• March of the Machine: The Aftermath
• March of the Machine
• Phyrexia: All Will Be One
• The Brothers’ War
• Dominaria United
• Streets of New Capenna
• Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
• Innistrad: Crimson Vow
• Innistrad: Midnight Hunt
• Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
• Strixhaven
• Kaldheim
• Zendikar Rising
• Core Set 2021
• Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths
• Theros Beyond Death
• Throne of Eldraine
• Core Set 2020
• War of the Spark
• Ravnica Allegiance
• Guilds of Ravnica
• Core Set 2019
• Dominaria
• Rivals of Ixalan
• Ixalan

Remastered Sets

• Amonkhet Remastered
• Kaladesh Remastered
• Shadows over Innistrad Remastered

Re-Released Sets

• Khans of Tarkir

Alchemy Sets

• Alchemy: Thunder Junction
• Alchemy: Karlov Manor
• Alchemy: Ixalan
• Alchemy: Eldraine
• Alchemy: Phyrexia
• Alchemy: The Brothers’ War
• Alchemy: Dominaria
• Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate
• Alchemy: New Capenna
• Alchemy: Innistrad

Anthologies Sets and Other Sets (no particular release order)

• Arena Base Set
• Explorer Anthologies 1-3
• Historic Anthologies 1-7
• Jumpstart: Historic Horizons
• Jumpstart 2022
• Jumpstart
• The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
• Modern Horizons 3

Historic Rules

Historic matches are 1v1 with 60-card decks plus a sideboard (which can contain up to 7 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 7 cards in hand, then they may take mulligans to change their initial hand.

That’s not to be mistaken with Historic Brawl, which is a totally different format. In 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.

Regarding the differences between Historic and Timeless, the main difference 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, and some cards are restricted in Timeless like Demonic Tutor, Channel, and Tibalt's Trickery.

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

This can set off some players!

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:

• Agent of Treachery
• Arid Mesa
• Blood Moon
• Bloodstained Mire
• Brainstorm
• Channel
• Commandeer
• Counterspell
• Dark Ritual
• Demonic Tutor
• Endurance
• Field of the Dead
• Flare of Cultivation
• Flare of Denial
• Flare of Duplication
• Flare of Fortitude
• Flare of Malice
• Flooded Strand
• Force of Vigor
• Fury
• Grief
• Harbinger of the Seas
• Intruder Alarm
• Land Tax
• Lightning Bolt
• Mana Drain
• Marsh Flats
• Memory Lapse
• Mishra's Bauble
• Misty Rainforest
• Natural Order
• Necropotence
• Nexus of Fate
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Once Upon a Time
• Polluted Delta
• Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
• Reanimate
• Scalding Tarn
• Show and Tell
• Sneak Attack
• Solitude
• Spreading Seas
• Subtlety
• Swords to Plowshares
• Thassa's Oracle
• Tibalt's Trickery
• Time Warp
• Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
• 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
• Historic Best-of-Three
• Ranked Historic Best-of-One
• Ranked Historic Best-of-Three
• Historic Event
• Traditional Historic Event (Best-of-Three)

There are a few derivatives from this like Historic Pauper or Historic Artisan, and in this case, you’ll have 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’m using Arena Tutor (and you should use it too!). These are some of the decklists that you can find on Arena Tutor’s metagame section:

Boros Energy Aggro

The deck can have pretty fast starts thanks to new MH3 cards like Ajani, Nacatl Pariah and Ocelot Pride. You can run lifegain in Soul Warden and Leonin Vanguard, as well as additional lifegain payoffs like Voice of the Blessed. Also, the deck benefits from the new Ajani because if a cat you control dies, Ajani becomes a planeswalker, so your cats tend to pass through unharmed most of the time. Another interesting card in the deck is Goblin Bombardment, which allows you to sacrifice creatures for additional damage or to flip Ajani.

Izzet Wizards

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.

Azorius Control

This deck aims to control the early game with cheap counterspells like No More Lies and Reprieve. If they get a good board going on, sweepers like Supreme Verdict and Divine Purge can do the trick.

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria’s card draw and inevitability has been a good win conditions for control decks, and here it’s no exception.

Cards like Hall of Storm Giants and Castle Vantress help this deck excel in the late game as well, while being mostly lands that come into play untapped. Snapcaster Mage is an excellent tool in blue control decks, because you can flash it in and cast an extra copy of a removal spell, counterspell or card draw that you’ve already played before.

Mono-Green Devotion

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 got beef, I have to tell you that.

Getting Started with Arena Historic

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. Depending on the cards used, you can even adapt it to other formats like Explorer, too.

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.

Here’s a good batch of cards to craft that’ll cost you only common and uncommon wildcards.

Expressive Iteration, Reckless Charge, Wizard's Lightning are good spells that see play in aggressive decks like the Izzet Wizards deck. Expressive Iteration also sees play in midrange/control builds.

Aether Spike and Galvanic Discharge are new energy-related cards that are good removal/counterspell with upside. You don’t need to be playing energy decks for them to be good, it’s just a nice upside.

Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, and Fanatic of Rhonas are the base of green ramp decks. Fanatic is extra good when you’re playing 4-power creatures early like Old-Growth Troll and Outcaster Trailblazer.

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 1/1’s and 2/1’s.

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 several sets, so there isn’t a specific better set to invest in.

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.

Wrap Up

Symmetry Sage | Illustration by Jehan Choo

Historic is on MTG Arena to let you play with your favorite Alchemy and Standard decks once they rotate. It is 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 Drafts and Sealed play.

Do you play Historic regularly? What are your favorite decks and takes on the Meta? Let me know in the comments section below, or let’s discuss it on Draftsim Discord’s Historic section.

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