Hey all. Strickles here with a breakdown of all the Azorius Aggro options currently seeing play in Standard. While many players, be they Standard or Pioneer players, will think of Blue and White decks as control decks, we currently have three different aggressive Azorius decks in standard.

I personally love aggro decks that have access to counterspells in the sideboard because it makes the post-sideboard games feel so good. You can overextend on the board and then counter a sweeper with a Negate, for example.

Another reason to be happy about playing white in Standard right now is Elspeth’s Smite. The one mana removal spell is key against any decks playing Leyline of Resonance, as it can be used effectively when on the draw, and exiles, preventing any dies triggers.

While I covered all of these decks briefly in my Meta Report on Monday, I wanted to give a slightly deeper dive on each of them, to help you make your choice as you tackle the ladder or any tournaments.

So let’s dive right in!

Azorius Artifacts

This deck has existed for a while, but it got some meaningful upgrades from Duskmourn, making it worth another look as we try to crown an Azorius king. 

While I have called it Azorius Artifacts, it actually plays a good mix of both artifacts and enchantments. However, because Zoetic Glyph, one of the deck’s key cards, requires an artifact, and the deck plays artifact cards that no other version of Azorius plays, I’ve decided to call it an artifacts deck.

Key Cards and Gameplan

The goal of this deck is similar to most aggro decks: curve out and beat the opponent down. This deck does it in a unique way though, and has several great ways to go over the top of opponent’s giving it good reach in the mid and late game.

The curve starts on turn one with Novice Inspector or Spyglass Siren. These creatures are key because not only do they come down early, but they make an artifact token that we can use for a variety of purposes later.

Warden of the Inner Sky is one use for that artifact token. You usually won’t deploy the warden on turn one unless you have no other plays, because ideally you would be able to activate it immediately to grow it and get a scry. This creature scales well throughout the game, and is one of our ways of flying over the opponent’s blockers later on.

Regal Bunnicorn scales based on how many nonland permanent we have, again making use of our artifact tokens, and although it doesn’t have trample or flying, we have ways to fix that. Splitskin Doll is usually going to just draw us a card, since we have so many one drops with power two or less, and gives us another artifact to use later on.

Steel Seraph is a great creature in this meta because it doesn’t die to Cut Down or Go for the Throat. It also gives a way to get in damage with our Regal Bunnicorn, giving it flying, or if we need some defense as well, can give vigilance or lifelink to help us protect our life total.

Subterranean Schooner is a great follow up to a one drop, turning it into a real threat as the crew 1 cost for the vehicle means that any of our creatures can crew it and send it in. It can help grow those creatures into real threats or find you lands thanks to the exploring, and is also good on defense thanks to four toughness.

The key card in this deck is Zoetic Glyph. It is a really scary card for any deck to face, as it creates a large threat, that again doesn’t die to Cut Down, Go for the Throat, Shock, etc. and if your opponent does kill it, we get to Discover 3, giving us a way to keep the pressure on. This is the main use of our artifact tokens from our one drops, but it is also fine to use it on a Subterranean Schooner or even a Splitskin Doll.

Our other new cards from Duskmourn are all great removal. Sheltered by Ghosts can remove any problematic permanent, such as Leyline of Resonance or Temporary Lockdown, but also grants a valuable ward 2 and lifelink to help race.

Unidentified Hovership gives us more removal, that importantly never gives the original creature back, and gives another way to turn our one drop creatures into damage, crewing the vehicle to get in with flying damage.

Tying the main deck together is Mockingbird, which is totally fine as just another copy of a value one drop, but great when copying one of our two or three drops. In a pinch, it can copy opposing creatures, and can even copy a crewed Unidentified Hovership for more removal.

Mirrex hangs out in the mana base over Fountainport, because the tokens Mirrex makes are artifacts, giving us more artifacts for Zoetic Glyph later in the game.

The sideboard of this deck has all of the good answers that I talked about in the intro, including counterspells Negate and Disdainful Stroke to answer sweepers, and Elspeth’s Smite to take out Leyline of Resonance decks.

When to Play this Azorius Deck over the Others

This deck is best when you’re expecting a lot of black midrange decks that rely on Cut Down and Go for the Throat for removal. They are frequently going to be frustrated when they can’t remove any of your key threats.

This deck should do alright against Leyline of Resonance decks, but game one will be tough when on the draw. When on the play, Sheltered by Ghosts is going to be a key card. In the post-sideboard games you have good tools against them. This deck can suffer versus Temporary Lockdown, so be smart with deploying your threats and making use of Negate.

Azorius Enchantments

If you opened a lot of Duskmourn and no other Standard sets, this deck could be for you. This deck is making the most of the new mechanic Eerie, that triggers when you have an enchantment enter. This deck has a lot of card advantage and very explosive draws, letting it play a short game and a long game.

Key Cards and Gameplan

Our creatures all generate good value and are all must answer in different ways. We start on turn one with Optimistic Scavenger, which will distribute counters as our enchantment enters. This is the key to our most aggressive starts, as it wears all of our auras very well.

Turn two we have another eerie payoff in Gremlin Tamer, which gives us a token every time an enchantment enters, this helps us go wide to stall versus aggro decks, chump block problematic creatures like Glissa Sunslayer, or overwhelm an opponent with few blockers.

Our other two drop creature is Inquisitive Glimmer, which discounts all of our enchantments. As we have a variety of enchantments that cost two mana, this can let us cast several spells the following turn. It is also an enchantment itself, triggering all of our eerie effects.

The value part of this deck comes in our three drop creatures. Entity Tracker draws us a card whenever an enchantment enters, and it isn’t limited to once a turn, letting us pop off the turn after we flash it in. Flash is really key on this card, as it lets us play around removal or in the post-sideboard games hold up counterspells or removal, and then if we don’t need it flash in the tracker.

Our other three drop is Enduring Innocence, which is an enchantment itself to trigger eerie, but also gives us more ways to draw cards. It has great synergy with Gremlin Tamer, as our enchantments will make a 1/1 token that will trigger the innocence. All of our other creatures also trigger the innocence, and if the innocence dies it comes back as an enchantment, triggering eerie effects again and keeping our engine in play.

Our enchantments fall into two main categories: removal and protection.

Our removal is Sheltered by Ghosts and Ossification, both are great with Inquisitive Glimmer, getting reduced down to one white mana, and both help us disrupt the opponent. Sheltered by Ghosts is particularly good because of ward 2, giving us a safe target to stack our counters and other auras on.

Our protection auras are Shardmage’s Rescue and Fae Flight. These give us ways to protect our threats at instant speed, and trigger eerie on our opponent’s turn. The flying granted by Fae Flight can also help us close out a game, sending our creature above the opponent’s board.

Our last aura is Ethereal Armor, which is just great with enchantments. It can make any of our creatures very large and very scary, and is great with the lifelink from Sheltered by Ghosts and flying from Fae Flight.

The sideboard gives us the same tools as other Azorius decks, but also gives us a sweet card in Kitnap, which synergizes well with our deck being an enchantment, and can help us close out games against big creatures like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Atraxa, Grand Unifier

When to Play this Azorius Deck over the Others

I think this is the best choice against Leyline of Resonance decks. Sheltered by Ghosts and Ossification are both very clean answers to their one drop creatures, and Elspeth’s Smite out of the sideboard gives us 12 good removal spells. We can also close out games quite quickly, giving them no window to come back from a removal spell or two.

This deck also has a rough time versus Temporary Lockdown, so try to use your copies of Negate in the post-sideboard games to answer that card and other sweepers.

Azorius Hand

Our last deck is a Helping Hand tempo deck. The goal is to fill our graveyard, return a powerful threat to play, and then control our opponent’s board until we can close out the game.

Key Cards and Gameplan

Our main two threats are Haughty Djinn and Abhorrent Oculus. The djinn is great with all of our self-mill cards as they fill our graveyard with instants and sorceries, the djinn’s power grows, making it easy to close out games in two or three hits.

Abhorrent Oculus is hard to cast, but our deck does such a good job filling the graveyard that we can easily cast it and pay the extra cost of exiling six cards from our graveyard, or even better, just bring it back with Helping Hand and protect it with a counterspell.

Both of these threats are the core of the deck, the whole point is to get on into play, protect it or keep recurring it, and close out the game in a few big attacks.

To fill our graveyard we have cards like Picklock Prankster, whose adventure will mill four cards and return a spell from among them to our hand. Moment of Truth gives some card selection but also puts a card into our graveyard, and Chart a Course can help us discard one of our threats to bring back.

Helping Hand is joined by Recommission as our ways to bring back our threats.

While Phantom Interference and Three Steps Ahead help protect them or just delay our opponent’s strategy early on.

Into the Flood Maw is a good bounce spell against Leyline of Resonance decks, as after they pump all of their spells onto a creature, for one mana you can undo all of their effort. Soul Partition can slow down an opponent or protect one of our threats, putting it into exile to cast on a later turn.

Tying the deck together is Sleight of Hand to help us find what we need, and in the mana base Meticulous Archive gives us a surveil to fill our graveyard and best case put one of our threats into the graveyard to later bring back.

This deck’s sideboard is similar to the other two but it does get some great tools the others don’t have, mainly Temporary Lockdown to slow down aggressive decks, as our own threats cost three mana, and Doorkeeper Thrull helps us out against a variety of decks relying on enters effects, as we have none in our deck.

When to Play this Azorius Deck over the Others

This deck is best when you are expecting a lot of decks playing Temporary Lockdown and Sunfall like Domain or Token Control decks, as they don’t answer our threats particularly well and we will be able to use our counterspells to answer spot removal like Leyline Binding or Go for the Throat.

This deck has good tools against Leyline of Resonance decks, but does want to spend a lot of time executing its own game plan, making it easy to get run over on turn two or three.

Obviously, graveyard hate is very powerful against this deck, so if you are expecting a lot of players to be packing graveyard hate, this deck might not be the right choice.

Wrapping Up

I think that each of these decks have their own merits and their own strengths and weaknesses, and I think that makes for a fun format. You can make a choice based on your own preferred play style or what you think will be strong on any given weekend.

I know a lot of players are down on Standard right now due to the non-games that Leyline of Resonance can create but I think that all of these Azorius decks have a solid game plan against those decks and play well against other decks in the meta, making them contenders moving forward.

Regardless, whatever happens in Standard I’ll cover it next week with my weekly meta update and an update to the Standard Tierlists, so keep an eye out for those.

As always, best of luck in all of your matches!