Commander Deck Tech: Fire Lord Azula

Azula, the firebending prodigy, is now in Magic: The Gathering as a Grixis creature. She'll show you how powerful she is with a strategy these colors truly enjoy: copying spells.

This card was released in the latest Avatar: The Last Airbender set, which will bring the beloved characters from the animated show to the MTG universe.

In this article, we'll explore Fire Lord Azula and show you two lists with her: the main one is a spellslinger/aggro hybrid, while the second centers around instants, sorceries, and combos.

Let's meet our commander.

Azula was a Fire Nation princess who was, for a long time, one of Avatar Aang's greatest enemies. She and Aang's friends faced each other several times, and by the end of the series, she even faced her older brother, Prince Zuko.

In this set, she appears in the following cards:

This young princess was raised primarily by her father, the Fire Lord, and encouraged to always be perfect, as only then would she be worthy of his affection. Ambitious, manipulative, and powerful, Azula became a firebending master at a very young age and could even "lightningbend", an advanced form of firebending.

In MTG, Azula is a Grixis creature, a color combination known for its villains. Like the fearsome Nicol Bolas, the Ravager and even the clumsy Dr. Eggman.

Just like other firebenders, Azula has "firebending", which triggers when she attacks and creates red mana that lasts until the end of combat.

Furthermore, if you cast a spell when Azula is attacking, you can copy it and pick new targets for the copy. Please note that this works with instants, sorceries, and permanent spells.

Here's our list:

Casting Spells with Flash

As we can copy spells we cast when Azula attacks and use the mana from her firebending to do it, we added cards that in some way help us cast spells that don't have flash at instant speed. Like so, we can take advantage of Azula's ability to copy creatures, enchantments, mana rocks, and whatever else we want.

Zuko's alter ego in the series was also released in this set. His name is The Blue Spirit, and he lets you cast the first creature spell every turn as if it had flash, including on your opponent's turn. If this creature goes into play during combat, you'll also draw a card.

Vedalken Orrery, Borne Upon a Wind, and Leyline of Anticipation will let us cast any spell as if it had flash.

Besides giving flash to the creatures in your deck, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir also prevents the opponents from answering you, as it forces them to cast spells only when they can cast a sorcery.

This creature will certainly make control players very frustrated even while they look for answers to remove it from play.

Split Second is quite strong. So strong we've already discussed it extensively in a previous article (click here if you'd like to see more about it). When you cast a spell with Split Second, players can't cast other spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities. This makes Shadow the Hedgehog one of the most powerful cards in this list!

This hedgehog states that any spell cast with mana from an artifact has Split Second. So, if you use Sol Ring to pay part of a spell, you can cast it at instant speed, and it can't be countered by Counterspell.

Creatures with Flash

Besides the spells above, we selected a few creatures with Flash that can be useful in different situations.

This list doesn't play anything to go around the legendary rule, like Mirror Box, for instance, but it does play a few very relevant legendary cards that you can cast during combat or at any other time.

Ertai Resurrected, for instance, can counter a spell or destroy a creature or planeswalker. This is an ETB effect, so even if its copy dies to the legendary rule, its effect will still go on the stack. The same goes for Wan Shi Tong, Librarian and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur.

Other very useful permanents with flash are Amphibian Downpour and Enduring Curiosity, Dictate of the Twin Gods, Fae Flight, Nowhere to Run, and Lost in Memories, as well as Fated Firepower.

Protection, Buffs, and Evasion

This deck works a lot better when Azula is attacking, as then we can copy our spells. To help her, we added some evasion:

As much as we'd like to add Shroud, we had to give it up because this list plays many spells that target Azula. If you'd like to use Whispersilk Cloak or something like it, you can, but please be careful with this restriction.

Here are our buffs:

With Avatar Roku, Firebender in play, even if we don't have anything to cast, we can take advantage of his activated ability for to buff a creature. Please note that his effect triggers when a player attacks, so it also triggers in the opponent's combat phase.

And, to protect Azula and cards like Avatar Roku, we have:

In this deck, you'll need to find the right time to cast the spells you want to copy with Azula.

These two enchantments will increase the damage the creatures on our board deal. If you want to copy them with Azula, here's my tip: cast them after your opponents declare their blockers.

This way, if they don't block your commander, you can surprise them by dealing a lot more damage. Buffs on attacking creatures are always great!

Boosting Azula

To trigger Azula's ability more times, we added these permanents:

Alternative List

Our alternative list has spells, storm, and combos that take advantage of Azula's ability to copy the spells we cast when she attacks.

When Fire Lord Azula was revealed, many players compared her to Kalamax, the Stormsire, and, in a way, they are really similar. However, while Kalamax only copies the first spell every turn and when it is tapped, Azula does that to all spells and copies them when she attacks. That's why we have to play powerful spells with our favorite villain, as well as support to give flash to everything we cast.

The boldest players can also try to build Azula in a spellslinger deck with a "copy" engine in the command zone.

If you liked this Elemental Dinosaur, you should give Fire Lord Azula a try.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!