Timeless is the no-ban format ofMagic: The Gathering Arena. It includes every single card on Arena, with altered digital versions of cards from Alchemy reverted to their original paper printing. Rather than cards being banned, Timeless restricts cards, meaning you can only play one copy of them in your deck.
Due to the giant card pool that Timeless has thanks to Arena’s long history, it is a very high-power format. Decks are amazing and capable of doing some of the best combos in the entire game, both inside of Magic: The Gathering Arena formats and traditional paper formats.
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Izzet (red/blue) Phoenix is named after the namesake card Arclight Phoenix. The deck is built around getting Arclight Phoenix into the graveyard and cheating it out onto the battlefield by casting three spells in one turn. It is one of the best decks in both Explorer/Pioneer and Historic, and in Timeless it gets extra tools in Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Dragon’s Rage Channeler.
The addition of fetchlands in Timeless allows Izzet Phoenix to get lands into the graveyard for Dragon’s Rage Channeler’s Delirium threshold and also helps to thin your deck. With the exception of Expressive Iteration, everyinstant and sorcery only costs one manafor easy casting.
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Sneak Attack is cheating out giant creatures without ever actually casting them. Themain way to do this is with Sneak Attack, which lets you put any creature onto the battlefield with haste for just one red mana. The creature does get sacrificed at the end step, however. The two targets for it are Worldspine Wurm and Atraxa, Grand Unifier.
The other way to cheat out creatures is Natural Order, which trades one green creature for another. Assemble The Team and Demonic Tutor help you to get Sneak Attack and Natural order into your hand since the deck needs them to function.
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Commander players know how strong Thassa’s Orcale and Tainted Pact are together, and in Timeless it’s just as strong. The deck is singleton, meaning you only play one copy of each card, so when you cast Tainted Pact you exile your entire deck, so you’re able to instantly win the game with Thassa’s Oracle’s effect.
The non-combo part of the deck plays a control strategy, with removal spells and hand destruction cards along with counterspells. The only cards you have more than one copy of are Thassa’s Oracle and Tainted Pact as you need them both in your hand to combo so if there’s another in the deck it won’t stop it before your library is exiled.
A menace of Standard back in the day, Four Color Omnath makes its return in Timeless as one of the format’s best decks. It’s a ramp deck built around playing multiple lands in one turn to triggerOmnath, Locus Of Creation’s landfall effects. This is trivially done with fetchlands which give you two landfall triggers with one land.
Uro, Titan Of Nature’s Wrath is another way to get extra lands on a turn, all while drawing your cards and gaining you life. Four Color Omnath is a midrange deck with a ton of threats early and late game to always keep up with your opponent.
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Bant (green/white/blue) is a control deck that closes out gameswith powerful planeswalkers, an escaped Uro, Titan Of Nature’s Wrath, and Hall Of Storm Giants. While setting these win conditions up, you control the battlefield with counterspells to keep threats away and removal spells and board wipes to ensure no creatures stay on the battlefield.
Oko, Thief Of Crowns shuts down any creature abilities your opponent has while Teferi, Time Raveler locks them into sorcery-speed spells as Teferi, Hero Of Dominaria draws your cards and forces your opponent to answer it.
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Titan Field is a deck that utilizes Primeval Titan and Field Of The Dead. Field Of Dead creates 2/2 Zombie tokens when a land enters the battlefield, so long as you have seven differently named lands. Primeval Titan can get Field Of The Dead onto the battlefield directly from the deck once it enters the battlefield. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is another way to accomplish the same.
Field Of The Dead wants to do nothing but toss lands onto the battlefield to keep making tokens. When multiple Field Of The Deads are on the battlefield, it becomes almost impossible to lose, as even after a board wipe you can amass a board with just one land.
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Necropotence is a card so goodit was banned or restricted in every format it was legal in and is a major part of one of the best decks in Timeless. The deck plays a lot of low-mana spells that act as removal spells. Necropotence can hit the battlefield early thanks to Dark Ritual, which lets you cast it on turn one if you open both.
While you still have to discard for hand size at the end of the turn, March Of Wretched Sorrow lets you exile them instead - discount it to deal damage to a creature or planeswalker and gain you life. Sheoldred, The Apocalypse helps you gain life and Orcish Bowmasters prevents your opponent from drawing cards.
Domain Zoo plays all five colors and is the best aggro deck in Timeless. It plays no creature that costs more than two mana, almost all of which benefit from there being multiple land types on the battlefield. Since you are almost always going to have a creature with four or more power,Stubborn Denial can counter most spellsthat might try to remove one of your key creatures.
Leyline Binding can often be cast for just one blue mana to get rid of a problem permanent your opponent controls. Minsc & Boo is great for closing out longer games as it provides a great pivot to midrange if the need arises.
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Grixis (red/blue/black) Shadow utilizes Death’s Shadow as its main win condition. The card is a 13/13, but gets -X/-X equal to your life total. So if you have seven or less life, it will have its full power. Grixis Shadow wants you to have a low life total, so you can have a threatening creature at all times.
Even if Death’s Shadow gets removed, you have Lurrus Of The Dream-Den as your companion to get it back from the graveyard. It can also recycle Mishra’s Bauble for a free draw engine. It is a tempo deck wanting to get cheap creatures on the battlefield and control the game with removal spells.
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Sultai (green/blue/black) has access to all of the best cards in Timeless. The deck has a low curve with plenty of interaction to stop your opponent from keeping cards in their hand and creatures on the battlefield. Deathrite Shaman can take advantage of cards in the graveyard, either producing mana or burning the opponent. This and Orcish Bowmasters can deal in minor damage that continuously builds over time.
The top-end of Oko, Thief Of Crowns and Uro, Titan Of Nature’s Wrath are great game enders. Oko ensures your opponent’s best creature abilities aren’t something you have to worry about and Uro keeps your life total up and your hand full with card draw.
