Standard: Azorius Auras - Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

Azorius Auras is a strategy based on enchantments and their interaction with Optimistic Scavenger and Ethereal Armor, which amplify your creatures' stats and even allow easy paths to lethal damage with Silent Hallcreeper.

In the current Metagame, this archetype has been gaining more attention in Leagues and Challenges due to its mix of efficient clocking and interactive lines running Seam Rip and Sheltered by Ghosts to remove blockers and/or troublesome permanents while advancing our game plan.

This strategy would normally be very vulnerable against more interactive archetypes, but while the spotlight is on Izzet Cauldron and Mono Red Aggro, we have a bit more security and/or room to respond against more interactive games, while always having more explosive openings that allow us to bypass our opponent's game plan by just being faster.

Maindeck

The heart of the deck.

Optimistic Scavenger is the main reason to play this deck, besides Ethereal Armor. The ability to distribute +1/+1 counters on creatures for each enchantment played quickly gets out of hand in this strategy, making it a great support for Silent Hallcreeper.

While we don't have high-cost enchantments, the colorless mana reduction from Inquisitive Glimmer combined with a 2/3 body for two mana on an enchantment creature is enough to enable explosive follow-ups with Scavenger.

Entity Tracker is one of our sources of card advantage and also benefits from the wide array of enchantments we have by granting an extra draw for each of them that enters the battlefield.

Silent Hallcreeper is an unblockable threat and offers three options: more power, card advantage, or the ability to copy Optimistic Scavenger, Entity Tracker, or Enduring Innocence for extra value.

Enduring Innocence is another enchantment creature that triggers Eerie abilities while also granting an extra draw per turn when we play a creature.

The Auras.

Ethereal Armor is our main win condition. A boost of, typically, +5/+5 or more to a creature for one mana significantly amplifies our clock, especially with Silent Hallcreeper.

Sheltered by Ghosts offers board interaction, protection, and life gain in the same slot. It's essential for Mono Red Aggro or Prowess matchups.

Shardmage's Rescue serves as cheap protection against instant-speed removal while also triggering all our Eerie cards on the opponent's turn.

The interaction.

Seam Rip deals with any cheap threat while also being an enchantment that triggers our cards. If necessary, we can increase the number of them in the maindeck to four copies if we need more board interaction rather than dealing with the stack.

No More Lies and Spell Pierce guarantee stack interaction. We could use four copies of either, but there are advantages to only needing one untapped mana for Spell Pierce, while No More Lies is less conditional and more comprehensive in the number of spells it hits.

Still without Hallowed Fountain, we need to rely on Meticulous Archive to increase Floodfarm Verge's consistency in generating both colors. We complement the duals with Starting Town and Restless Anchorage, which act as a complementary threat.

Valgavoth's Lair is another decent option in this archetype, as it triggers our creatures' abilities with a land while also fixing our mana.

Sideboard

Negate and Disdainful Stroke unconditionally answer the main troublesome spells of Control decks.

Annul is our answer to Agatha's Soul Cauldron and Proft's Eidetic Memory and also works against the Overlord cycle and cards like Pinnacle Starcage.

Azure Beastbinder offers a permanent lock against Agatha's Soul Cauldron while also being a difficult-to-block threat for the archetype. Added with one or two auras, it's as capable as Silent Hallcreeper of winning games.

Rest in Peace is our main tool against graveyards and also triggers our cards. It's essential against Cauldron and also against Naya Yuna on the rare occasions the archetype still shows up in ranked matches.

Seam Rip and Get Lost function as complementary interactions, with Get Lost coming into play in many games where we need instant-speed removal or to deal with Planeswalkers, while Seam Rip continues to work best against strategies with more low-cost permanents, such as Boros Mice or Izzet Cauldron.

Izzet Cauldron

IN

OUT

Mono Red Aggro

IN

OUT

Dimir Midrange

IN

OUT

Azorius Control

IN

OUT

Izzet Prowess

IN

OUT

Temur Battlecrier

IN

OUT

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!