Magic: The Gathering’s premier format is Standard. It’s the one Wizards designs for the most and is the one more intricately linked to each major set release of the year. It’s also likely your gateway to Magic, being one of the primary formats played not just in-store, but also on the likes of MTG Arena.

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Standard is known for its rotating nature, where sets enter the format, and then leave a few years later. It helps keep things fresh, with each new set often bringing major shakeups to the format. Whether you’re a veteran wanting to climb the Standard ladder, or a newcomer wanting to see what everyone is playing, here are the current top decks of MTG’s Standard format.

Updated April 24, 2023 by Joe Parlock: With the launch of March of the Machine, Standard is going through a period of big changes. Black is still on top, and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse has gained even more traction as the format's best creature, but we've also seen a rise in white decks. There's also lots and lots of Atraxa, proving it's one of the best reanimation targets ever printed.

These are the top decks in Standard as identified by deck aggregation site MTGGoldfish.

10 Azorius Soldiers

After being one of the main draft archetypes for The Brothers’ War, blue/white Azorius Soldiers have crept into Standard as a force to be reckoned with.

Borrowing some elements from the ever-popular White Weenie decks, like the addition of Skrelv, Defector Mite to slip attackers though, it also adds plenty Soldier-matters cards like Harbin, Vanguard Aviator; Valiant Veteran, and Skystrike Officer.

While Azorius is usually known for its control strategies, this deck mostly eschews instants and sorceries, and instead uses hatebear pieces like Dennick, Pious Apprentice to control the board.

While it has been relegated to the sideboard, it also can’t be understated how much of a powerhouse Brutal Cathar is in Standard, with its ability to easily remove potential blockers just by entering the battlefield.

9 Azorius Control

One of the strangest decks in Standard right now manages to get by with zero creatures. Through clever and reliable token production, and enough interaction to stop virtually any deck from doing anything, the goal is to stall your opponent until your constant drip of token damage builds up into a win.

There are four Planeswalkers, with Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim and The Wandering Emperor able to make tokens to dish out damage with. Meanwhile, Teferi, Who Slows The Sunset and The Eternal Wanderer can help keep your opponent in check.

The bulk of this deck is an astonishing number of instants and sorceries. There's counterspells with Syncopate, graveyard hate with Witness The Future, and even full board wipes with Depopulate and Farewell.

White Sun's Twilight and Blue Sun's Twilight are big hitters here, as White can make Mites and regain you life, while Blue can steal your opponent's bigger creatures to turn them back on them. This deck might lack creatures, but it has more than a few ways to bite back.

8 Jund Midrange

The black, red, and green Jund Midrange decks are almost completely unidentifiable from the start of Phyrexia: All Will Be One's time in Standard. Gone are the classics like Titan of Industry, and promising newcomers like Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler.

Instead, we're now using cards like Glissa Sunslayer, and the vastly improved land base All Will Be One introduced to play longstanding staples of the format, like Bloodtithe Harvester and the welcome return of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

This is still a midrange deck, so make ample use of removal like Go For The Throat, Unleash the Inferno, and Invoke Despair to whittle your opponent down until you're ready to drop that Glissa, transform a lot of Incubator tokens, and go for the win.

7 Mono-White Aggro

White is very strong in the current Standard environment, thanks in part to the high number of low-costed creatures. This deck has an incredibly low mana curve, letting you cast most of your creatures by turn two.

Leading the way is All Will Be One's Skrelv, Defector Mite, which is great for making your other creatures unblockable and giving your opponent poison counters. Your attackers are more likely to be the likes of Adeline, Resplendent Cathar (to make lots of tokens), or Hopeful Initiate to make use of its training.

You can control the board reasonably well too, thanks to Ossification, Anointed Peacekeeper, and, in case of emergencies, a Wandering Emperor. However, this isn't a midrange deck, and your main gameplan needs to be killing your opponent as soon as possible.

6 Mono-Blue Tempo

Dominaria United had more than just Sheoldred, as this mono-blue deck shows. It goes all-in on Haughty Djinn and Tolarian Terror, with the former reducing the cost of spells you cast, while the latter gets cheaper the more spells you've played.

The idea here is to try and get Haughty Djinn out as soon as possible, before using your huge number of cheap instants and sorceries, like Fading Hope, Consider, and Essence Scatter, to control the game.

With four Tolarian Terrors in the deck and so many spells in your graveyard, you'll be putting big Krakens down ahead of your opponent's ability to deal with them. Add to the fact that Haughty Djinn gets bigger and has flying, and you'll be ending the game before your opponent has any chance to build a board presence.

5 Mono-Red Aggro

A true mainstay of Magic: The Gathering, Mono-Red Aggro is often one of the cheapest decks to build and one of the easiest to play.

After a long time struggling in the format, The Brothers’ War brought Mono-Red Aggro back into the big leagues in a huge way. Monestary Swiftspear; Feldon, Ronom Excavator; and Mishra's Factory are all significant parts of the deck.

Kumano Faces Kakkazan and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are incredibly popular cards thanks to their ability to either give you more mana to throw out more creatures, or buff the ones you cast. Burn spells like Play With Fire and Lightning Strike also perform well here, especially when you have four Monastery Swiftspears in play to trigger prowess.

Bloodthirsty Adversary is finally getting its time to shine too, after being a promising card from Midnight Hunt that struggled to really find a foothold for most of its time in Standard. A 2/2 with haste is always good, but Bloodthirsty Adversary lets you dump more mana into it if you don’t draw it until the later game. Being able to cast spells for free is always good, and it’s even better here with all those new Swiftspears.

While this deck has remained mostly unchanged since The Brothers' War, it has picked up a few new tools, mostly with Koth, Fire of Resistance in the sideboard. This gives mono-red some much-needed ramp, or can quickly blast blocking creatures out of the way.

4 Esper Legends

The white, blue, and black Esper Legends deck tries to steamroll your opponent with value. There isn't a whole lot of legends-matter cards in here, simply a huge ball of powerful creatures ready to smash.

You've got cheap creatures like Skrelv, Defector Mite and the ever-popular Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, which will help keep your opponent on the back foot long enough for you to build up to bigger ones like Ertai Resurrect and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

Your main aggro tools will be Adeline, Resplendent Cathar and Raffine, Scheming Seer – two legendary creatures that have consistently been big in Standard since their debuts.

There is some legend fun to be had, though. Plaza of Heroes was often looked over when Dominaria United launched, but has since shot up as a major player. There's also the legendary lands from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, which have a reduced channel cost the more legendary creatures you control.

3 Mono-White Midrange

Mono-White Midrange is all about playing the long game by exiling and destroying all of your opponent’s threats until they ‘run out of gas’. From there, you can easily build up a board of creature tokens to quickly finish them off.

While previous iterations of this deck had a spike in the number of creatures it ran, the addition of Mondrak, Gloriy Dominus has pushed that count down and given more room to control elements like Ossification and The Wandering Emperor.

It still has Ambitious Farmhand for mana smoothing, and Loran of the Third Path for extra removal, but on the whole you'll be using the tokens stuff like The Wandering Emperor, Reckoner Bankbuster, Mirrex, and Wedding Announcement make alongside Mondrak.

To control the board in the early stages, Lay Down Arm is an incredible one-mana exile spell that scales based on the amount of Plains you control. Meanwhile, Ossification can be a tricky enchantment for your opponents to get rid of, and Destroy Evil will help you out in a pinch. Of course, The Wandering Emperor is also still a big part of white in Standard, thanks to its instant-speed removal of any tapped creature.

2 Grixis Midrange

Remaining in the upper echelons of Standard for a surprisingly long time is the blue, black, and red Grixis Misrange. It combines everything that makes the other black-using decks so powerful to make an utterly terrifying threat for your opponent.

Bloodtithe Harvester and Corpse Appraiser are the two main creatures of the deck, but it does also run multiple Sheoldred, The Apocalypse for good measure. Thanks to the addition of Phyrexian Fleshgorger, which can be very difficult to remove thanks to its beefy ward cost, this midrange deck runs a larger number of creatures than usual. It also uses Liliana of the Veil, a card that surprisingly doesn't make too much of an appearance in the current Standard environment.

Elsewhere, it's a rogue's gallery of the best of the best. Go for the Throat, Negate, Infernal Grasp, and even things like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker There’s even a Fable of the Mirror-Breaker to make Treasures and double up those Bloodtithe Harvesters and Corpse Appraisers later on.

The goal of this deck is to use things like Sheoldred and Bloodtithe Harvester to whittle down your opponent’s life, before dropping the Phyrexian Fleshgorgers to make big, hard-to-remove threads to close things out.

1 Rakdos Reanimator

A standout star of Phyrexia: All Will Be One has been Atraxa, Grand Unifier. It might not fit the black/red Rakdos colours of this deck, but it's perhaps one of the best reanimation targets of all time, allowing you to get a huge amount of card advantage.

Large parts of this deck are dedicated to pulling her out of your graveyard without paying that hefty mana cost. To get her into your graveyard, you'll be wanting to use Bloodtithe Harvester's Blood token or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker's second chapter, before cheating it into play with a Cruelty of Gix or Junji, the Midnight Sky.

This deck also has a light Dragon theme, which allows it to make use of one of the first cards from March of the Machine to show up so far: Invasion of Tarkir. A hand full of Dragons could make this two-mana Siege deal a lot of damage, and if not, then having lots of Dragons on the battlefield is always going to be good. NEXT: Magic: The Gathering – The Best Green Creatures In Standard