With the arrival of Edge of Eternities on MTG Arena, the current goal of many players is to collect the new cards, so they are therefore focusing on limited, so as to also practice for the Qualifier Weekend on August 23, which will be sealed.
However, the Premier Draft is not the only way to farm cards; the platform also offers a valid alternative for constructed players: the Best-of-One Events!
If you're interested in this route, I'm here for you, because today I want to show you what I think are the five best decks for succeeding in the Standard Event right now, which will allow you to gradually obtain all the cards while leaving you with a more or less unchanged amount of gems!
Before going on, however, it's important to note that these decks I'm about to share aren't the only valid ones; in fact, there are at least twice as many, due to the variance of the Standard Bo1 metagame and, above all, its ability to adapt quickly!
There's no absolute tier 1, and every deck has (very) unfavorable matchups against others. For this reason, I've found it nearly impossible to establish an accurate tier list that doesn't become obsolete the next day, and it's important to monitor the performance of the most played decks at the moment.
Boros Burn
The old, but golden, strategy! Being extremely aggro, so as to bring down the opponent's life before they can set up the game, is a strategy as simple as it is effective, and this time is no exception!
Instead of Boros Burn, you might want a version more based on aggressive creatures and pump spells, perhaps in Mono-Red or Gruul colors, but the good thing about Boros is that it doesn't rely on all its aggression on creatures and uses burn spells to get the last bit of damage it needs.
Thus, cards like Authority of the Consuls, decks full of removal spells, and the many wraths, including Pinnacle Starcage and Split Up, are not completely a disaster to deal with, because even if they stop the race for the moment, it can still resume on another lane, going straight to hit the opponent's face!
Boros Burn is one of the best decks to beat Azorius Control, and overall it has almost exclusively positive matchups, which would make it an easy pick if it weren't for one historic enemy that brings it back down to earth: White/Orzhov Lifegain!
Against a deck where everything gains life, the burn spells become practically useless. However, there is still a glimmer of hope if you can quickly kill all the main life-gainers like Hinterland Sanctifier, use Screaming Nemesis to hold back the huge Ajani's Pridemate and Essence Channeler, and above all, block the opponent's life gain by using Screaming Nemesis again, perhaps hitting it with a Burst Lightning!
Green Landfall
Green Landfall is another aggro deck, capable of explosive starts, but which doesn't always need to close out quickly, and which in some ways acts a bit like a combo!
This deck exists in both Mono-Green and this more recent Gruul version with Worldsoul's Rage, but in both cases the entire core of the deck remains the same, so feel free to choose whichever one you prefer.
There are 16 creatures with Landfall that grow whenever a land comes under your control, but the ones you need to watch out for the most are Tifa Lockhart and Mossborn Hydra, which have trample and are therefore able to overrun the enemy army, often in one single shot!
To achieve this, you use the fetchlands available in Standard, which allow you to bring more lands into play in a single turn, along with Traveling Chocobo, which doubles your Landfall triggers. If that's still not enough, Worldsoul's Rage is ready to bring back all the sacrificed fetchlands or lands milled with Icetill Explorer, thus generating an unmanageable number of Landfall triggers and/or hitting your opponent for direct damage (especially if you have it in multiple copies).
I haven't tested this deck extensively, but it seems to me to be somewhere in the middle, with matchups that aren't particularly bad, but not particularly good either. Azorius Control used to beat it, but replacing Snakeskin Veil with Defend the Rider has improved the matchup quite a bit, allowing our key piece to withstand any wrath other than Pinnacle Starcage, and also providing a solution to Strategic Betrayal or Tithing Blade for black-based decks.
Jeskai Artifacts
Azorius/Jeskai Artifacts is undoubtedly the best midrange in the format, and its core is Simulacrum Synthesizer, which creates huge Construct tokens simply when an artifact that costs at least 3 mana comes under your control.
Usually, decks built around a single card are unstable and dependent on luck, but this is not the case with Jeskai Artifacts, which has both Repurposing Bay and United Battlefront ready to bring Simulacrum Synthesizer into play, virtually increasing the copies of our key artifact to 12!
Edge of Eternities then further strengthened this deck with Pinnacle Starcage, which is effectively a tutorable artifact wrath to keep the opponent's early game at bay, and with Cryogen Relic, which gives us card advantage and is incredibly synergistic with Pinnacle Starcage itself!
As if that wasn't enough, Brotherhood's End has been rotated out of Standard, and now there's only one card standing that separates Artifacts from being the king of the BO1 format: Ultima, played in Azorius Control. It alone destroys everything on our tabletop, so we only have two strategies to fight it: counter it and not overcommit!
That's why I included Negate, preferring it to Spell Pierce since the opponent usually waits until we accumulate enough pieces before casting it, and therefore the game can easily go to the late game.
As for not committing, in addition to not putting more than 1 or 2 Simulacrum Synthesizer at a time, Spring-Loaded Sawblades is a very useful tool not only against aggro but also against control, since its transformed version allows you to attack the opponent without them being able to interact in a valid way.
Finally, we find a couple of copies of Authority of the Consuls, which are there because aggro is often a problem as well and because they are also incredibly useful in the mirror match to counter the haste by The Fire Crystal.
Azorius Control
Azorius Control is the reference control deck and virtually the best deck, if it weren't for the fact that the format is so varied in archetypes and strategies that it is impossible for it to protect itself from everything, and its success is therefore very dependent on the matchups you encounter and how you set it up.
In fact, there are infinite versions of Azorius Control, with preferences that vary from player to player, depending on their tastes, playstyle, and ability to respond to threats, but in general we can summarize them in the version with Pinnacle Starcage and the one with Split Up.
Personally, I lean much more towards the latter since Pinnacle Starcage, while sometimes better, is at odds with Ultima, releasing the previously removed permanents, in addition to the fact that it can be bounced and destroyed with Into the Flood Maw and Abrade.
Consult the Star Charts is the new tool from Edge of Eternities that fills the void left by Memory Deluge in the Standard rotation just over a year ago and which, together with Stock Up, gives us advantage and card selection, enough to allow us to play any one-ofs, especially among the finishers.
Thanks to its arsenal of wraths and counters, the deck has a positive matchup against most of the field, especially when it comes to creature-based decks. Its negative matchups instead lie with Boros Burn, Esper Mill, and Dimir Midrange, which, if it continues to grow in popularity, might require an additional Get Lost as a solution to Kaito, Bane of Nightmares.
Vivi Cauldron
The only thing missing is a combo, and Vivi Cauldron is the ideal deck to fill this slot, as it is now widely recognized as the strongest deck in Standard Bo3 and certainly deserves this top 5, despite the Bo1 metagame being different, making it much less popular here.
This is by far the deck I enjoy playing the most in Standard and the one I've played the most, so I feel very confident in my posted list, which makes every single card count for my gameplay.
For those unfamiliar with the combo, it's based on discarding Vivi Ornitier, exiling it from the graveyard with Agatha's Soul Cauldron, and granting its mana ability to all creatures you control with a +1/+1 counter. At this point, you have a lot of mana and can use it to cast spells and draw cards, buff attackers with Proft's Eidetic Memory, and put hasty Dragon tokens into play with the ability of Draconautics Engineer, also exiled by Agatha's Soul Cauldron.
As for gameplay options, Steamcore Scholar is better here than Tersa Lightshatter for several reasons: opposing decks will often be more aggro than ours, and attacking with haste isn't a priority; flying and vigilance are both relevant for blocking, especially against Dimir; Steamcore Scholar can make you discard even just one card, giving you an advantage; Steamcore Scholar makes you discard after drawing to give you more options; and Tersa Lightshatter's attack trigger is almost never relevant.
Abrade 3x, as it's as useful against aggro as it is against Jeskai Artifacts and any deck that plays Pinnacle Starcage, not to mention Agatha's Soul Cauldron in a possible mirror.
Spell Pierce 2x, primarily for protection from wraths, but generally for both Artifacts and Azorius Control, as they're both bad matchups.
That's all for today! These are what I think are currently the top 5 decks in Standard Best-of-One. You can use them for your events as they are, or you can tweak them if something doesn't quite fit your playstyle. Remember, you're the pilot, and you'll be the one who makes the difference between victory and defeat, more than the deck itself!
