Azorius Gives You Wings!

Hello internet, my name is Blue! Today, I want to talk about a deck I briefly mentioned on our podcast not that long ago: Modern Azorius Fliers. This deck has been around for a while but it always felt really weak in my opinion, especially compared to Bant Spirits. Fliers play a lot of the same cards as Spirits because a lot of the best fliers are also spirits, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move some things around to focus up more on the flying part of all those cards! Before we get into it though, I want to apologize for missing last week. I was going through some personal stuff and I couldn’t bring myself to write an article I was happy with. I’d rather provide no content for a week than bad content. Thank you for understanding. Now with that out of the way, let’s get into the deck!

New Cards

First thing’s first, let’s go over the cards that got me excited about this in the first place to write an article on it. Both of these are from Ikoria and both are easily 4-of’s in my opinion. They are Skycat Sovereign and Jubilant Skybonder. Skycat is a powerful addition as it gives us a mana sink that works from the battlefield, creates a wide board to work with some cards we’ll talk about in a minute, and becomes a huge go-tall threat if not answered quickly. As for the Skybonder, it protects our creatures really well with a strong tax effect for targeted removal, making a single Path to Exile, Fatal Push or Lightning Bolt cost three mana instead of one. Additionally, it protects itself as well so if they want to kill this first, they still have to put a lot of mana into it. I think the value these provide is just too good to pass up.

Tempo

Next, let’s go over what sets this deck apart from other strategies like this in modern, like Spirits. We get access to a ton of tempo by being a flying matters deck instead of a tribal deck that isn’t available elsewhere. Mainly, we gain Judge’s Familiar and Siren Stormtamer. There’s also Mausoleum Wanderer, which we do get to play, but it’s not necessarily unique when we’re comparing this deck to Spirits. With eight Force Spike‘s able to come down on turn one that double as a threat, we can force our opponent to play off-curve with things like Thoughtseize and that can easily sway a game in our favor. Stormtamer is also nice as it can completely counter a discard spell that gets through the other one-drops and serves as even more protection against removal spells and anything else that might annoy us. Lastly, this isn’t really tempo but Spectral Sailor is another option to help fluff up the one-drops and it’s a great mana sink against control in the late game. I’ve never not been happy to see a Sailor.

Going Big

Next, it’s time to go over the most important part of any creature deck – the lords. Flyers are unique as they only have two true lords. However, we’re only playing one of them because the other doesn’t actually feel all that great. The one we are playing is Empyrean Eagle. It’s a reasonable body as a three-mana 2/3 flyer in addition to giving all creatures you control with flying +1/+1. The one we aren’t playing is Favorable Winds. It’s a good card for this style of deck, but as an enchantment, it’s not a very good threat. You’re more than welcome to play it if you’d like, but the build I’m going over isn’t. Instead, we’re playing the last mana sink in the deck, Pride of the Clouds. Similar to Skycat that we talked about earlier, this gets +1/+1 for each creature with flying on the battlefield and it has Forecast to make 1/1 fliers to flood the board. While I think Forecast overall is a worse ability than Skycats since you can only do it during your upkeep, it’s done from hand instead of the battlefield so it’s significantly harder to answer against grindy decks that don’t have access to discard like UW or Jeskai.

Removal & More

For the last of the nonland cards, we’re gonna go over some noncreature stuff, namely removal and card draw. For removal, it doesn’t get much better than Path to Exile in white. It’s cheap and efficient. You can’t ask for much more, except maybe Swords to Plowshares. As for card draw, I wanted to go a little familiar with a package I’ve worked with a lot in the past, and that’s Curious Obsession and Staggering Insight. Both can turn our cards into bigger threats and they both draw us cards to keep our hands full. Additionally, Staggering Insight also gives Lifelink so we have a strong hedge against aggro, especially if we can protect it.

Lands

I’m not going to go too in-depth here as the mana base is pretty straightforward, but I did want to mention the list I’m looking at only plays 18 lands between a combination of fetches, shocks, fast lands, and basics.

Sideboard

Finally, I’m just going to go over some sideboard options. Not everybody will want the same sideboard because of differences in meta, so play what you want from this. For aggro, you could play things like Deputy of Detention for more removal or something like Kitchen Finks for life gain and as a solid blocking body. For control, there’s a lot of stuff from Teferi, Time Raveler to Mystical Dispute to Spell Queller to Dovin’s Veto. Play what you think may be best suited for your meta. For graveyards, Rest in Peace is definitely the most straightforward card, but there’s also Remorseful Cleric that can double as a threat. Stony Silence helps against artifacts as well as artifact destruction like Disenchant. It comes down to what you want to play.

Conclusion

What did you think of this little guide going over the deck? Do you think it has legs in the format? Is there anything else you’d play differently that I don’t have or something I do have that you wouldn’t play? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TheRealBlueMTG. Remember to follow the site as well @MTGOracle to keep up with everything we do here at the site! That’s it from me today. This is Blue, signing out!