Standard: 5 Best Decks to Play Best of One

If you're looking to play Standard in Magic Arena and prefer the fast pace of Best of One matches, having an efficient deck that's well-adapted to the nature of the format's Metagame is essential, and understanding each archetype's place in a universe without Sideboards is necessary to achieve the winning streak you've always dreamed of in ranked play.

In this article, we'll introduce five popular Standard Best of One lists that are an excellent entry point for those who want to play the format, for those who already play and want to try out new decks, and also for those who wish to have a base of competitive lists to build in Best of One and, later, invest in improving them for the Best of Three.

Boros Burn

Boros Burn is one of the most famous strategies in Standard, both in Best of One and Best of Three, and much of it is due to its consistency in winning games and punishing unprepared decks, as it only requires three or four turns to execute its game plan.

This deck is basically the classic version of “Red Deck Wins”: cheap creatures, damage spells and some pumps to make your creatures grow to reduce your opponent's life from 20 to 0 in the least number of turns.

Emberheart Challenger, Slickshot Show-Off and Monastery Swiftspear are the protagonists of the list: they increase in power with each spell played and allow Burn to break away from the linear plane of other Prowess variants, being less dependent on spells that target your creatures to work.

This is important because Burst Lightning and Lightning Strike guarantee some board interaction. They allow, for example, to remove an opponent's Monastery Swiftspear while triggering your creatures' Prowess, in addition to having the flexibility to speed up the clock by targeting the opponent.

Boros Charm is the reason for the splash to white in this list. With it and Monstrous Rage or Turn Inside Out in a Slickshot Show-Off, it is possible to deal 16 damage in a single attack. In other cases, it will be used to deal 4 damage to the opponent and even to protect some creatures from cheap removals if necessary.

The weakness of Boros Burn is how prepared your opponents are to delay your game plan. There are several Best of One lists specifically aimed at this game, and it is not uncommon to come across one of them: an Authority of the Consuls on the first turn is already a significant delay in the game, and if accompanied by many cheap removals, it makes it impossible to win the game.

Boros Auras

Boros Auras follows a similar theme to Boros Burn, but gives up speed in favor of a game with more permanent power on the board.

In this list, we're betting entirely on the interaction of Manifold Mouse and Optimistic Scavenger with the Valiant ability, which become the core of our game plan, where Heartfire Hero and Emberheart Challenger are the main threats.

To trigger Optimistic Scavenger, we have a powerful Aura package that includes Ethereal Armor to speed up the clock, Sheltered by Ghosts as a removal that doubles as an effect to protect creatures early in the game and also as a way to win games for free against Burn and Red Aggro, and Shardmage’s Rescue to protect key creatures from removal.

Boros Auras, while similar to Burn decks, operates much more focused on the idea of ​​having creatures for your spells to work. On one hand, this makes your plan a bit better in the Aggro mirror because Sheltered by Ghosts and Ethereal Armor are very powerful cards in those matchups. On the other hand, it makes this archetype more vulnerable to removal and, consequently, with a worse topdeck on an empty board.

Mono Black Slasher

And speaking of removal, Mono Black Slasher combines the best cheap board interactions in Standard today with a two-card combo that doesn't give your opponent too much time to get back into the game.

The combo works like this: Unstoppable Slasher makes your opponent lose half their life when they deal damage. Bloodletter of Aclazotz says that whenever an opponent loses life, they lose double that amount rounded up. Since Slasher makes your opponent lose half, Bloodletter will make them lose double that half - that is, their entire life total.

This plan is complemented by cheap removal and some low-cost cards to hold the game, with many being needed to hold off the aggro in the Metagame, as well as a source of card advantage with Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber, which interacts with Bloodletter of Aclazotz and Archfiend of the Dross, one of our complementary threats.

Other creatures include Sheoldred, the Apocalypse for inevitability and Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal to hold off the aggro while making favorable trades against other attrition decks.

The problem with Mono Black Slasher is the same as with any other Midrange: it can draw the wrong half of the deck and lose to Burn and other Aggro because it has too many threats and not enough removal, or it can fall far behind against other strategies because it has drawn too much removal. The lack of a second color also significantly limits its amount of interaction.

Azorius Oculus

Azorius Oculus is a Tempo deck based on playing cards in the graveyard to reanimate with cheap effects, bypassing additional costs of creatures like Abhorrent Oculus while feeding Haughty Djinn and Kiora, the Rising Tide

Once Abhorrent Oculus is in play, it only takes a few turns for it to generate enough value and put so many bodies on the board to the point of taking over the game, and because we have many cards that return it to the battlefield, this deck, in part, invalidates many removals in the Metagame.

To feed the graveyard, we have cards like Picklock Prankster and Founding the Third Path, as well as Moment of Truth and Chart a Course.

We also have interaction: from bounces like Into the Flood Maw and Unsummon to cheap sweepers like Temporary Lockdown to hold off Aggro while Three Steps Ahead generates card advantage and deals with problematic spells or creatures before they reach the opponent's board.

The weakness of Azorius Oculus, like any archetype with many cantrips, is that it sometimes spends too much time drawing more spells that do nothing but draw more cards, wasting precious resources in mana and turns until it reaches its threat.

Another problem includes games where the deck spends too much time preparing a setup and the opponent takes advantage of this to win the race. Sometimes, an Abhorrent Oculus is not enough to hold off a Slickshot Show-Off when it comes with Monstrous Rage and another pump.

Golgari Midrange

Golgari Midrange is the classic archetype that aims to respond to everything. Unlike Mono Black Slasher, it tries to follow the most fair plan as possible and without combos: play efficient creatures, destroy anything that hits the board, win the game before your opponent can recover.

One of the advantages of this color combination was the reprint of Llanowar Elves in Foundations, which gave the archetype the possibility of skipping one mana on the first turn to play Glissa Sunslayer on the second and sequence it with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Archfiend of the Dross, making it faster to “hold” Aggro through a superior board position than the other variants.

In addition to the mana dork, the splash to green provides some specific answers for the graveyard with Scavenging Ooze or Tranquil Frillback, as well as removals against enchantments with Tear Asunder and Pawpatch Formation. Another relevant addition is Mosswood Dreadknight as both a threat and a powerful source of card advantage in longer games.

Golgari Midrange suffers from trying to answer too much and ends up not handling everything very well. It is possible to gear a list to deal with a specific Metagame: more cheap removals against Aggro, or more Scavenging Ooze against Azorius Oculus, but this comes with some concessions on the other side, and the deck can be punished for it.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!