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Dramatic Azami

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Control Mono-Blue Wizards

Roryrai

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Creature (16)

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Commander (1)

Commander: Azami, Lady of Scrolls

Artifact (16)

Enchantment (2)

This list should now be updated for Aether Revolt. Notable changes include Baral, Chief of Compliance, Whir of Invention, and Paradox Engine. I'm currently testing a list with Paradox Engine in place of Mind Over Matter due to the increased safety of the combo.

I'm working on updating the primer and I aim to have everything up to date by the time Aether Revolt comes out.

UPDATE 01/13/17

  • Card choices are updated for Aether Revolt.
  • Key Combos are updated for Aether Revolt.
  • A section on Mind Over Matter vs. Paradox Engine has been added in Key Combos.

DISCLAIMER

This list is a theorycrafted, optimized list for a competitive Azami, Lady of Scrolls build. I'm cheap and don't own a Flusterstorm, a Timetwister or a Mana Drain. Or the Zendikar fetches because they're unreasonably expensive.

Budget List

The budget list (which I am waiting on the last five of six cards for) can be found from that link. The budget list will not be getting a primer however I will explain each card replacement I made and why I chose that particular card. Mostly this is just downgrades of expensive cards.

The Primer

Why you should play Azami, Lady of Scrolls

  • You don't want to spend money on a two or three color mana base
  • You like telling your opponents no
  • You want to win instantly via combos
  • You like having a lot of cards in your hand and keeping multiple different paths to victory open
  • Wizards!

Why you shouldn't play Azami

  • You think counterspells and control are unfun
  • You don't like having lots of cards in hand at once
  • You prefer to win by turning creatures sideways (though technically this deck does do that a lot)
  • You don't like wizards for some odd reason

So what is Azami anyways?

Azami, Lady of Scrolls is, in my opinion, one of the top commanders if you're looking to play mono-blue, and is also one of the best options if you're looking for a non-stax control deck. If you want to play stax, you're looking at the wrong commander. Go play Teferi, Temporal Archmage or Derevi, Empyrial Tactician instead.

Azami's control is much more counterspell oriented, though she does have a good suite of removal spells at her disposal. Controlling an entire table is hard, though, so we don't want to try to overload the list with counter magic. Instead, we want to run just enough counterspells and removal to prevent other people at the table from going off before we do.

Variants

There several different ways Azami can be played. This particular list is a combo-control build, with a focus on early control to keep fast combo decks from exploding in your face. The rest of the primer will focus on this particular aspect of Azami and how cards fit into the overall goal of the deck.

  • Dramatic Azami: Dramatic Azami focuses around the Dramatic Scepter combo. That's what this list is.

  • Temporal Azami: This is another strong archetype for Azami. It has less of a control focus in exchange for faster combos through the use of extra turn effects. Take a look at AzamiLadyofScrolls's list here for a good Temporal Azami list.

What types of cards will Azami want to run?

  • Wizards!

Azami's ability is good on its own, sure. But once we start adding in more wizards, it becomes rather ridiculous. So, most of our creatures are going to be wizards to allow Azami to abuse her ability to its fullest potential. Primarily, we want low-cost wizards with good EtB or static effects. Tap effects need to compete with Azami's own ability, and while some, like Aphetto Alchemist, do, most will not be worth it.

  • Acceleration

Being mono blue means that most of our acceleration will have to come from artifacts. This includes cards like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Chrome Mox, and the like. Cards like Sapphire Medallion and Helm of Awakening will also be extremely useful to us. Sea Scryer is fantastic for this.

  • Control

There are a few different types of control: Removal, stax/lockdown, and taxes (which are frequently used as part of stax decks).

  • Removal

Removal spells consist of spot removal, boardwipes, and counterspells. With some of the best spot removal spells, like Swords to Plowshares, unavailable in our color, we have to fall back on things like Rapid Hybridization, Reality Shift, and Chain of Vapor. Our primary boardwipe will be Cyclonic Rift. Counterspells are basically preemptive removal, and blue has an abundance of good counterspells. The best ones for this deck will be free counterspells like Force of Will and Pact of Negation, but I also run a lot of situational 1 mana counterspells that are here to hit specific targets.

  • Tax

Basically all we get here is Mystic Remora, but that's really all we need. Either it slows down opponents and lets us catch up, or we get a ton of free cards.

  • Lockdown/Stax

A lot of stax effects are detrimental to Azami. Things like Winter Orb that are auto-includes in Derevi and Teferi decks work against Azami if we play them in this list. We primarily want effects that don't hurt us, but that will bother our opponents a lot, such as Back to Basics.

  • Win Conditions

Every deck needs ways to win, so we should probably have a few of those in here somewhere. Our primary goal is to combo out and kill the table, so we just need a few ways to do that. Infinite mana, infinite draw, and infinite bounce are just a few ways we can win. Win conditions will be discussed more in the "Key Combos" section below.

What types of cards do we want to avoid?

  • Non-wizard creatures

Only wizards draw cards. Non-wizards are therefore significantly less good. We can judge a wizard both by the words on the card and by our ability to tap it to draw a card every turn. That said, we probably don't want wizards with tap abilities that will have to compete with Azami. As mentioned above, certain cards can definitely do it, but we don't want too many of them.

  • Cards with effects that are also on wizards

If a non-wizard card has an equal or almost equal effect printed on a wizard, we always want to run the wizard instead. A good example of this is Future Sight vs Magus of the Future. These two are functionally the same card, though the Magus is a bit easier to remove because he's a creature. In exchange, though, he provides a solid body, and we get to tap him to draw a card as well.

  • Draw spells

Azami already draws more cards than we will often know what to do with, so having any extra draw spells is often redundant. Certain cantrips like Ponder have proven to be quite useful though. Basically, a draw spell has to be really, really powerful in order to be worth a slot.

When I first built this deck several years ago, I already knew of Azami's reputation for being a top tier combo commander, and I wanted something to be able to compete with the Narset and Animar decks that had recently cropped up at my LGS. At the time, though, I had no idea how to build a competitive deck at all. my original Azami list was basically just wizard tribal, with a ton of counterspells. My only win condition was Mind Over Matter, and I had no idea how to play the deck.

Naturally, it stands to reason that I couldn't compete with the top tier decks. I made a few adjustments fairly quickly as I determined which things were bad. But I didn't have the card knowledge or the experience to make it competitive yet. After a few months I got the list to a place I was satisfied with it and didn't touch it for a couple years. It was still nowhere near optimized, but it was proving to be a threat to competitive decks and was dominating casual players. I assumed that the problem was that I didn't know how to play the deck.

Around the end of last summer, though, I discovered the commander tier list here on tappedout, and from looking at the example lists there I realized that not only did decks exist that were far more competitive than mine, but that I could also do a lot to my own list.

The problem that I had been having Azami at the time was speed. Up until Kaladesh, I was using either Mind Over Matter or Palinchron and an infinite mana outlet as my primary win conditions. I even had a couple extra turn spells in the list so that I could abuse Sigil Tracer. But all of this was far too slow and unreliable for a competitive list, so I set out to make it better.

The release of Kaladesh was perhaps the best time I could have started to optimze my list, because it brought with it a new win condition: Dramatic Reversal. Not only does it provide a lot of value on its own, if you put it on an Isochron Scepter it gives you infinite untap, which turns into infinite draw with Azami, and infinite mana with rocks. I decided that this would be the new focal point of my Azami list.

The new Dramatic Azami build showed promise in initial testing, so I kept working on it, trying to get it to be as fast and reliable as I could. This meant running every rock and every tutor I could get away with. I couldn't afford any of the best rocks at the time, so I just theorycrafted the list here.

Even with the rocks and tutors, it still felt slow. Playtests against other top tier decks showed that I needed more ways to deal with them in the early game. I started trying to optimze counterspells and removal, aiming to get my CMC as low as possible. Most of the time, I realized, cards like Delay, Remand, and Spell Pierce were just better than the 3 mana hard counters like Dissipate I had been running before. If I can't cast my counterspells, they don't do much good.

Around the end of 2016 I got the list to a point where I was satisfied with it. I had also recently started picking up the cards I was missing, with notable acquisitions being Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond, and Force of Will, among others. And then Aether Revolt got spoiled, and I had to change it up a bit.

There were 2 new cards in Aether Revolt that I was interested in: Baral, Chief of Compliance and Whir of Invention. Originally, I thought Paradox Engine was too expensive to be really worth it. I slipped the first two in, but pretty much ignored Paradox Engine for about a week. I was on vacation at the time and didn't care to do a lot of testing, so I didn't see what it would be capable of.

Turns out it's capable of a lot of things. Recently I've been doing tests where Paradox Engine replaces Mind Over Matter and it's been going fairly well. I have a section later on comparing the pros and cons of the two cards, and explaining what I think the benefits of the switch will be. If it doesn't work out, I can easily just slot Mind Over Matter back in.

Those three changes bring the list up to where it is now. I don't know if it's perfectly optimized yet, but it's certainly pretty close. The rest of the primer will be devoted to explaining card choices, combos, and how to play the deck.

This is a detailed explanation of what each individual card brings to the deck. Sometime in the distant future I may split each card type up by smaller categories instead of just listing them alphabetically.

  • Azami, Lady of Scrolls: This is pretty self-explanatory. She's the commander, her job is to hit the field as quickly and safely as possible in order to begin the draw engine. Because her ability doesn't have a in it, we can use it to tap any wizard, including herself, the turn that card comes into play.

  • Aphetto Alchemist: This provides a decent amount of utility. Primarily we get to untap mana rocks like Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt or Mana Vault. He can also untap enemy things, which can have fringe use cases.

  • Baral, Chief of Compliance: Cost reduction on all our instants and sorceries as well as looting on counterspells for 2 mana.

  • Cursecatcher: Helps win counter wars and stuff. Cursecatcher also shuts off turn 1 tutors like Entomb, Vampiric Tutor, and Imperial Seal.

  • Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  : We can choose to flip him pretty much whenever we want by using Azami's ability instead of his own until we're ready, and then he gets to flashback stuff.

  • Laboratory Maniac: Our primary win condition. With all the draw power in the deck, it's relatively easy to deck ourselves. So, we run this guy and use that draw power to win.

  • Martyr of Frost: A 1 mana wizard that always holds counterspell threat.

  • Rayne, Academy Chancellor: I've had people ask why I run this card since I don't have anything to enchant her with, but just having the draw trigger often gives me enough defense to prevent people from messing with my stuff.

  • Sage of Epityr: A one drop wizard that sets up my next four turns for me. Solid.

  • Sea Scryer: It's a mana dork, and a filter, and when it does't need to be either, it draws a card.

  • Sigil Tracer: Sigil Tracer is a backup combo piece that I'll cover more in depth in the "Key Combos" section below. Besides that, though, it also provides with a solid response when people use annoying instants. If, for instance, someone tries to counter your thing, just activate Sigil Tracer, copying their counterspell, and counter their counterspell with it.

  • Snapcaster Mage: Instant and sorcery recursion, pretty standard.

  • Stonybrook Banneret: Cost reduction on almost all of my creatures is solid.

  • Trinket Mage: This guy fetches Mana Crypt, any of the Moxen, Sensei's Divining Top, or whatever else you need. Trinket Mage is standard in every Azami list I've seen.

  • Vedalken AEthermage: An instant speed wizard tutor for only 3 mana, this will often fetch Sigil Tracr.

  • Vendilion Clique: Flash, flying, a decent sized body, and an EtB that lets us pull a card from the strongest player's hand and get rid of it. Use this to take away a card that just got tutored for. If necessary you can also hit yourself in order to get rid of a dead card and trade it for a new one.

  • Voidmage Prodigy: A counterspell on a stick is nice, sure we have to sacrifice our wizards but that's often not the end of the world.

  • Back to Basics: Most of the top tier decks are multicolored, and this will severely limit their land base while not harming you in the slightest.

  • Mystic Remora: Taxing everyone else helps us catch up to the faster decks, or else we get a huge amount of card advantage.

Counterspells

Removal

Tutors

  • Long-Term Plans: This is the best tutor we can get. 3 cards down is not a drawback when we draw more than that each turn cycle. 3 mana hurts but it's an instant so it's not as bad as it could be.

  • Muddle the Mixture: Primarily a tutor to fetch whichever half of Dramatic Scepter you're missing, but it doubles as a counterspell as backup.

  • Mystical Tutor: Instant and sorcery fetch, pretty standard. Typically you'll be getting counter magic or combo pieces (Dramatic Reversal or Muddle the Mixture to fetch Isochron Scepter).

  • Whir of Invention: I have no idea why they decided to print a Chord of Calling for artifacts. That said, I'll totally take full advantage of it. This card fetches both Isochron Scepter and Paradox Engine, at instant speed. This greatly increases the safety of both win conditions, since we no longer need to telegraph the play by tutoring it at sorcery speed.

Value

  • Dig Through Time: This is one of the only draw spells I like in the deck, not much else has enough draw power for the slot.

  • Dramatic Reversal: This is probably the best card in the deck, and it's the combo piece that we want to focus around. I'll go into more detail in the "Key Combos" section, but basically if you can safely go fetch this card, do it.

  • Impulse: Impulse is a pretty solid draw spell because you can filter through the top four cards. It's a slightly less good Dig Through Time.

  • Merchant Scroll: This will fetch most things you could want. Namely counterspells for protection, but it also hits Dramatic Reversal, which is nice.

  • Ponder: Cantrip, pretty self explanatory.

  • Timetwister: Graveyard recursion and a fresh hand, not to mention it upsets and tutoring your opponents have managed to do.

  • Transmute Artifact: This list uses artifact combos as its win conditions, so being able to fetch them reliably is absolutely vital. Usually you'll justy end up sacrificing a rock to go fetch Isochron Scepter or Paradox Engine. Just make sure you tap the rock for mana first.

  • Jace, Telepath Unbound: He exists for his -3. Nothing else. If you use his +1, do it only so that you can use his -3 a second time. Since we can control when he flips, flip him only when necessary.

  • Snow-Covered Island: Instead of running normal basics, I've opted to run snow lands for a couple reasons. The primary reason for this is abuse of Extraplanar Lens (which is not currently in the list. Go figure.) Using snow lands allows me to benefit from the mana doubling, but prevents opponents running regular basics from gaining the extra mana. The other reason is that they're pretty.

  • Cavern of Souls: My wizards can't be countered. Stop.

  • Flooded Strand, Misty Rainforest, Polluted Delta, Scalding Tarn: The only fetches we're allowed to run, these essentially let us run a 95 card deck.

  • Minamo, School at Water's Edge: If it manages to stay untapped, you can untap Azami for an extra card each turn. Alternatively, untap Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to generate an absurd amount of mana.

  • Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: We have a lot of double or triple blue spells so the Shrine is another auto-include. This card is capable of generating ridiculous amounts of mana.

I have a section on this combo not because I run it in the deck right now, but because I wish to discuss exactly why it isn't in the deck. Mind Over Matter is the bread and butter combo for Azami. You tap her to draw a card, and discard a card to untap her again. Proceed to draw through your deck and win using Laboratory Maniac.

The Mind Over Matter combo is undoubtedly very powerful. You get to run a single card that, if you can find it, immediately wins you the game. Or so it would seem. The truth is, this combo is actually really dangerous to use. To start, Mind Over Matter is expensive, at 2UUUU. In a mono-blue deck the color restriction isn't huge, but being 6 mana does limit your ability to do anything else on the turn you play it, which is when you have to combo out with it. Waiting any longer is just asking the rest of the table to kill you, and while you're weak from having spent 6 mana at sorcery speed as well. This is one of the reasons I've never really liked the combo to begin with.

Secondly, the draw-discard nature of decking yourself means that you're going to have to throw away most of your best answers, keeping only the bare minimum in your hand. On top of that, you have to ensure that you have the 2U you need to cast Lab Man once you find him as well. You essentially need to be able to produce 9 mana, plus the cost of any protection you feel is necessary in the current situation. Any protection you've managed to keep in your hand, that is. Sure, you can discard more cards to untap land and rocks, netting you more mana, but once again it removes your ability to hold enough protection. As you get closer to winning, your board gets less and less protected. Your opponents' ability to respond to activations of either Azami or Mind Over Matter means that they have plenty of windows in which to respond.

Lastly, Mind Over Matter is an enchantment, and blue has pretty much no good way to find it. In fact, Long-Term Plans is the only tutor I have in here that does the job, and it doesn't even do it very well. Basically, if I'm searching for a combo, I'm better off trying to fetch Dramatic Reversal and Isochron Scepter.

What this adds up to is a combo that, while effective on paper, is expensive and risky to pull off in reality. Since I'm not the biggest fan of it anyways, I'm currently testing a list that doesn't run this combo. Instead, we replace the Mind Over Matter with Paradox Engine, leading to the rather silly interactions discussed in the next section.

Originally I was opposed to Paradox Engine, but in recent weeks I have come to appreciate the card so much more. I believe that it can reasonably replace Mind Over Matter in most situations. This section will be entirely devoted to explaining Paradox Engine's unique interactions with several of the cards in this deck, as well as a comparison to Mind Over Matter.

Paradox Engine vs. Mind Over Matter

Compared to Mind Over Matter, we can see a few things right off the bat. Paradox Engine is one mana cheaper, isn't bound by a quadruple blue in the mana cost, and is an artifact instead of an enchantment, meaning that it's a lot easier to tutor for. In terms of accessabiliy, Paradox Engine is a clear winner. But how do their effects stack up once they're on the field?

Mind Over Matter lets you discard a card to untap something. This can be used to get more mana, or to untap a wizard to draw another card. It has the advantage of being infinite as long as you keep drawing cards off of it.

Paradox Engine, on the other hand, untaps all of your nonland permanents, including wizards and mana rocks, whenever you cast any spell. This means that every spell cast nets you a number of cards equal to the number of wizards you have on the field, as well as a number of mana equal to the amount you can float after casting the spell. Right away this is better than Mind Over Matter. Not only are you going to get the spell, which you would otherwise discard to pay Mind Over Matter's cost, but you also get mana to cast another spell, as well as one or possibly more cards on top of it. The downside? It's not a true infinite combo like Mind Over Matter is. If you keep drawing into lands and counterspells, you'll eventually run out of ways to trigger Paradox Engine and be left staring sadly at a tapped field, wondering what to do next.

Personally I feel like this isn't much of a drawback, though. The increased accessability of Paradox Engine due to tutors like Whir of Invention (why did they print this?) and Transmute Artifact means that it's a more reliable way to win. Additionally, while you're trying to go off, you'll (hopefully) be drawing more spells than you're playing, and floating more mana than you're using, leading to the increased safety that comes with having lots of cards in your hand. Not to mention that if you can respond to something, Paradox Engine will continue to trigger off of that new spell, making it more difficult for your opponents to find openings.

Due to the increased safety, accessability, and speed that comes with Paradox Engine, I'm opting to run it over Mind Over Matter for a little while to see how it does. The only real drawback is the slight hit to reliability, as more often than not you should be able to go all the way with it.

Paradox Engine + Azami, Lady of Scrolls

This is the interaction that's replacing the Mind Over Matter combo for testing. Casting any spell lets you untap all your mana rocks and all your wizards, allowing you to draw more cards and cast more spells. It's not a true infinite combo, but as long as you're able to get 2-3 wizards out before you try to go off, you should be fine. Remember, you don't have to draw your entire deck out with just this. All you have to do is draw into one of the many other true infinite combos that the deck has access to. Below I outline two cards that turn this interaction into an infinite combo, and how to go about using that combo.

Sensei's Divining Top

For this section, and the next, I will be assuming that you've already assembled Paradox Engine with Azami. Adding Sensei's Divining Top to that will produce an infinite combo assuming that you have 1 mana from rocks. Draw a card using the Top, then draw the Top using Azami. Tap your rocks, producing at least 1 mana. Play the Top, untapping Azami and your rocks. Repeat until you find Lab Man. Make enough mana to play Lab Man, then draw your deck and win.

Isochron Scepter

Isochron Scepter is just a silly card. It's already part of the Dramatic Scepter combo outlined below, but it also happens to go infinite with Paradox Engine and Azami as well. It doesn't even matter what spell you put on it. Since Isochron Scepter casts a copy of the imprinted spell, it will trigger Paradox Engine's untap effect. You can use this with Azami to draw your deck regardless of what spell got put on the stick. You can even put a counterspell on the stick and it works as well. You just cast a spell normally, then use Isochron Scepter to counter your original spell. The Paradox Engine trigger will resolve with the original spell and the counterspell still on the stack, and you can then activate the Scepter another time. Doing this an infinite number of times lets you draw your deck. If you want the original spell to resolve, though, make sure you copy that counterspell an even number of times. If you don't counter every other counterspell, your original spell won't resolve.

Dramatic Reversal is a fantastic card on its own in an Azami list, since it lets you untap all your wizards and rocks, giving you a ton of cards and more mana to play them all. But it's also part of two key combos. The Dramatic Scepter combo is the namesake combo for this build ("Dramatic Azami") and is the fastest, safest, and most reliable way for an Azami deck to win right now. Both of these combos aim to draw your deck, allowing you to cast Laboratory Maniac for the win.

Dramatic Scepter

Imprint Dramatic Reversal on an Isochron Scepter, and with any mana rocks that tap for 2 of any color you can copy Dramatic Reversal off the stick, which will untap your mana rocks and your Scepter when it resolves. Another rock produces infinite mana, and Azami is infinite card draw.

Dramatic Sigil

The Dramatic Sigil combo is very similar to the first one, however it is a backup combo that utilizes Sigil Tracer as a replacement for Isochron Scepter.

The way this combo works is that you cast Dramatic Reversal, and while it's on the stack copy it with Sigil Tracer's ability. If you have two wizards, and two mana from mana rocks, at least one of which is blue, the copy will resolve and untap all of those. With the original spell still on the stack, you can reactivate Sigil Tracer to create another copy. This provides infinite untaps for all of your nonland permanents. Add in another mana rock for infinite mana and Azami for infinite draw.

As with any deck that wants to be competitive, being able to judge your opening hand and mulligan accordingly can mean the difference between a win and a loss. There are two different ways you can play this deck, and your opening hand will typically tell you which path to take. You can either play a more classic control style, or if you have the ramp and the tutors you can just race to your combo.

Control Hands

Typically you're going to find one of these at the start of the game. Combo hands will generally only happen with a seven or sometimes six card hand.

Ideally, you'll want 2-3 lands, a mana rock, a wizard or two, and maybe a Force of Will or a Mental Misstep. If your rock is a Mox Diamond you'll want an extra land to pitch to it. If you don't have a good balance of mana sources, wizards, and control, it's probably not worth keeping. Mystic Remora in your opening hand will almost always be playable, the same goes for Mental Misstep.

You should also look at the other commanders at the table and judge the relative speed of your hand compared to how quickly those decks can accelerate. If your opponents have slower decks, you can get away with slower hands. Don't be afraid to mulligan down to six or even five cards. If those five or six cards are what you need, it can be much better than keeping seven. Your commander will make up the card disadvantage. Don't forget you get a scry if you go below seven cards.

Combo Hands

These hands are signified by having a high volume of mana rocks, and having 2 in any combination of tutors and pieces of Dramatic Scepter. Muddle the Mixture and Merchant Scroll are two important tutors to watch for. Long-Term Plans is good but you'll have to play a more control style to make it work. You typically want things like Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, or Sol Ring, and any one of the Moxen in the deck, for this to be ideal.

If you do have one of these starts, just race the table. You can assemble Dramatic just as fast as the tier 1 fast combo decks, if not faster, assuming you have what you need to do it. Because we're in mono-blue you often won't be able to race like this, but it's something to be aware of.

For instance, if your hand is: Merchant Scroll, Sky Diamond, Mystical Tutor, Mana Crypt, Snow-Covered Island, Snow-Covered Island, and Remand

You should be able to win by turn 3 easily by taking this path:

Turn 1: Land, Mana Crypt, Sky Diamond. End of Turn Mystical Tutor for Muddle the Mixture.

Turn 2: Draw Muddle the Mixture. Play a land, tap Mana Crypt to float 2. Use 1 floating and 2 lands to transmute Muddle the Mixture into Isochron Scepter. Use Sky Diamond and the other 1 floating to cast Merchant Scroll, fetching Dramatic Reversal.

Turn 3: Tap Mana Crypt to play Isochron Scepter, imprinting Dramatic Reversal. Use 2 mana from lands to activate Isochron Scepter and untap your things, floating a blue off of Sky Diamond. This eventually produces infinite blue which you can use to cast Azami, draw your deck, and win with Lab Man.

The Magical Turn 1 Hand

If you get really lucky, you might see the magical turn 1 instant win hand. If you see this, or any permutation of it, snap keep it because you win as soon as it gets to be your turn.

The magical turn 1 win hand looks something like this: Dramatic Reversal, Isochron Scepter, any mana rock that goes +2 the turn you play it (Mana Crypt or Mana Vault), any Mox and a way to fuel it, and finally a fourth source of mana. This last source be in the form of either a land, or another mana rock. Ideally you also have a Pact of Negation in hand as well. With this hand, you play your Mana Crypt and Mox, use the Mana Crypt to play the Isochron Scepter and imprint the Dramatic Reversal. You should still have 2 mana available from your land and the Mox, so start up Dramatic Scepter to produce infinite blue mana. From there you cast Azami and win as usual, by drawing your deck and playing Lab Man.

Your early game has a few primary objectives: Accelerate into Azami, and stop everyone else from accelerating into their things. A secondary objective is to start assembling your combo. Of course, if you can find your combo quickly that becomes a primary objective, but generally you'll want to focus around a more control style first.

Accelerating into Azami

Key cards for this include all the mana rocks in the deck but primarily things like Mana Crypt, Chrome Mox, and Mox Diamond. The more rocks you get out early the sooner Azami hits the field and refreshes your hand.

Slowing your opponents down

This is primarily done through early counterspells and taxes. Key cards here include Mystic Remora, Mental Misstep, Ceremonious Rejection, and Spell Pierce. Mystic Remora forces your opponents to either wait for you to get your mana base out, or else give you a lot of cards to play with later. Mental Misstep hits enemy threats like Sol Ring, Sensei's Divining Top, Mana Vault, and most mana dorks. Spell Pierce hits noncreature acceleration and Ceremonious Rejection hits Moxen and other annoying artifacts. Watch out for green decks running Carpet of Flowers as it causes you to ramp them really heavily.

Generally either slowing down your opponents or speeding yourself up is enough to make it to the mid game without someone winning.

Assembling Dramatic Scepter

If you can, start working towards assembling Dramatic Scepter here. If you can't, don't worry about it and just focus on keeping the table from exploding in your face in the mid game.

This is where most competitive decks will start trying to go for a win. By this point, your combo decks are trying to combo out, and your stax decks are starting to find their locks. If we're going the control route, we need to have enough disruption through the mid game to keep the combo decks from winning, and the stax decks from locking us out. Depending on whether or not you were able to assemble Dramatic Scepter early on you may be trying to resolve combo pieces instead. With Dramatic Scepter Azami can sometimes pull out wins during the mid game, but primarily this is a late game deck. Proper mid game play will aim to keep your opponents from winning and transition into the late game in a strong enough position to eventually take the win.

Mid game is where we also need to set up out initial line of wizards, because without them we won't be able to recover our hand from the early game. Play your wizards safely, i.e. don't tap out unless it's really worth it (read: you're winning this turn). Holding open mana when you pass the turn is really powerful.

DISCLAIMER: This is really, really hard. It's even harder to explain.

Since you're the control player, learning multiplayer politics is extremely important. You have a few effects that let you manipulate the table, like Rayne, Academy Chancellor, but your primary form of politics comes from the threat of counterspells. Play as though you have counterspells available even if you don't. Even if you're tapped out, let an important spell sit on the stack for 10-15 seconds while you consider the implications of it resolving. It doesn't even matter if you have the Force in hand or not - just letting the spell sit there for a minute will get your opponents wondering if you do, and they have to play around the possibility. Leaving mana open at the end of your turn with cards in hand and untapped wizards can be enough to deter your opponents from trying to do things.

That said, you don't always want to bluff counterspells. Sometimes it's best to play as though you don't have them and try to bait opponents into playing things prematurely.

Letting your opponent's spells resolve can also be important. If someone plays a spell that doesn't hurt you, but annoys the other two people at the table, there's no reason to counter it. Sure, the two people who are impacted are annoyed, but that card hampers them in some way so they're less of a threat. The person who played the spell saw you let it resolve, so you might be less likely to get hate from them in the near future. This goes hand in hand with bluffing that you DON'T have a counterspell available. If you let enough harmless spells resolve, your opponents might get cocky and try to force something big through, only to have you promptly respond with a counter you've been sitting on for two turns.

Basically, the idea with counterspells and removal is to keep your opponents guessing. If they don't know if you do or don't have a counterspell, they have to play as though you do. If you can trick them into thinking you don't, then you can bait them into suboptimal play and punish them for it.

Keep in mind that it's a multiplayer format. You don't have to have all the answers to everything all three other people do (though if you're playing against low tier decks you very well might). If you can get someone else to deal with something annoying, do it. If someone plays a hatebear that doesn't affect you, don't bother. Similarly, if someone plays something that annoys you but that hurts someone else worse, make them deal with it instead. There's a list of common hate cards in the "Dealing With Hate" section below, broken down by how much you should generally care about them.

Learning to properly play the politics and bluff at the right times is crucial for a blue player, and it's something I'm still working on myself. Learning your play group and how to manipulate games based on the other decks at the table is a huge part of winning with a mono blue deck.

You only have a limited number of counterspells, so it's important to budget them wisely. You don't have to counter every single creature, so don't even try to. It's more important to wait and hit your opponents' win conditions directly than to try to shut three people out of the game at once. In the same vein as that, you pretty much never want to counter a tutor, except in certain circumstances. Let them fetch their card, then counter it when they play it since it costs them more mana that way. Countering draw spells is okay, but only if those draw spells would match the power of your card draw. Don't let someone else get card advantage over you. If you don't have a counterspell, bluff it.

Some things will be covered in more depth in the Matchups and Dealing With Hate sections, but these are just some strong cards to watch out for, and things that are generally annoying to see on the other side of the field. As I discover more cards that are annoying to deal with regardless of the deck they're in, they'll be included here.

What to counter

  • Any win condition. We can't win if someone else does first.

  • Carpet of Flowers: WAAAY too much ramp for us to deal with. Get rid of it if you can.

  • Survival of the Fittest: This is an insane tutor on a stick and most decks running it will use it to win either right after they play it or on their next turn. Don't let it hit the field if you can.

  • Entomb: Always counter Entomb whenever possible. It's too difficult to stop them doing what they want once the card is in their graveyard. The same goes for Buried Alive.

  • Intuition: Same logic as Entomb here. If they're smart about their search it's not possible to make a good decision about what to give them.

What NOT to counter

  • Most hatebears. They don't hit you nearly as hard as they will hit the rest of the table. The really annoying ones are taxers like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, or Spirit of the Labyrinth. See the "Dealing With Hate" section for a list of which hatebears are the most annoying ones to deal with. As a general rule, if it doesn't harm you, don't bother.

  • Most tutors. Often, you're better off letting a tutor resolve and dealing with the actual card later. Sometimes, though, that's a really bad idea. Whether or not you want to counter a tutor is matchup dependent, and there's a section for that.

  • Most draw spells. If it gives an opponent more card advantage than you, counter it. Otherwise it's not worth it.

You're playing mono-blue, so you need to expect to get hated out at some point. This section will explain how to deal with hate in a general sense, including which cards are the most annoying to deal with, and which ones can be safely ignored. This list is not set in stone - just because something is annoying doesn't mean you shouldn't let it happen, at least for a little while. If you can, let hatebears sit on the field until they become problematic for you. For example, you might want to let a Spirit of the Labyrinth resolve if there's an Edric, Spymaster of Trest player at the table. It hits him harder than it hits you, so you can expect that he will be looking to remove it as well. If he doesn't remove it by the time you're ready to win, then you can go ahead and get rid of it. A lot of this will be covered more in depth in the matchups section I'll be writing soon(tm).

If I'm forgetting any common hate cards someone tell me and I'll add them.

These kill us

You HAVE to remove these (or ideally just counter them) in order to continue playing. Removing them is harder than normal because we don't have access to our deck while they're on the field. That said, you're probably not the only one trying to get rid of these cards. Sometimes countering them directly isn't an option, but you can almost always counter something that will either stop these from entering or slow them down.

  • Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite: None of our creatures can stay on the field.

  • Humility: Not many decks can take advantage of this card. I haven't actually encountered one myself, but if it resolves it becomes extremely difficult to play the game. It does hit other decks harder than this one, though.

  • Linvala, Keeper of Silence: Linvala also hoses Azami since we can't draw cards anymore. If the player who has it is playing green watch for Living Plane since that will create a lock.

  • Sudden Spoiling while Lab Man is on the field with no more cards in your library and the Azami's draw ability on the stack: Oops, we lose. If you're worried about this, either use Surgespanner to bounce their lands before you win, or check their hand with Vendilion Clique first. I've never had it played against me though so I don't think it's too much of a threat when compared to other things.

Really annoying

These cards don't stop us from playing the game, but usually we can't win until they get off the table. These cards don't completely stop us from digging for removal, though.

Mildly problematic

These cards slow us down significantly, but also hit the rest of the table just as hard. These are primarily going to be stax and resource denial cards. It's probably not the end of the world if one resolves but it's still annoying to play against.

  • Kataki, War's Wage: Just pay for it. Seriously. It basically means we don't get rocks to untap, but that's about it.

  • Hokori, Dust Drinker, Winter Orb: These are painful but they also hit everyone else (except maybe the person playing them). You're probably not the only one who wants them gone.

  • Tangle Wire: It'll go away eventually, just try not to let the person playing it get too far ahead.

  • Spot removal

Not a problem

For the most part these cards aren't actually a threat and will hurt the rest of the table more than you.

Protection other decks will run

These are threatening primarily because they mean we can't stop other people from winning.

Detailed deck matchups. I'm aiming to have this finished soonish.

  • Docent of Perfection  : I've been adding, cutting, and adding him again for several iterations of the list. I want to run it but the 5 CMC keeps putting me off.

  • Time Warp/Temporal Mastery: Unsure about this as well. It has really good synergy with Sigil Tracer but at the same time it's 5 mana and not super useful if I don't have Azami and some wizards out. As AzamiLadyofScrolls has pointed out, Temporal Azami is something you have to either commit to or not do at all, and I'm leaning towards not going that route.

  • Extraplanar Lens: The best mana doubler we have access to. This is why I run Snow-Covered Islands, because it denies opponents running regular basics the extra mana. Currently testing other options in place of it so that's why it's down here.

  • Mind Over Matter: I'm testing a version of the deck where Paradox Engine replaces Mind Over Matter due to the increased speed, safety, and accessability of Paradox Engine. I suspect that the deck will take a small hit to relability but I'm hoping that will be made up for by the other things.

Cards that didn't quite make the cut

  • Mutavault: A land that's also a Wizard. Like Minamo, if you have the extra mana you can tap it to draw a card EoT. Problem is, it doesn't tap for blue. This is often very relevant.

  • Leyline of Anticipation: Leyline is a fantastic card and I absolutely love it, but spending the four mana for it hurts so much against the faster decks. Not having it in my opening hand made it feel like a dead card. It got cut in favor of Lighthouse Chronologist, who provides an arguably better function at a slightly higher cost, but is cheaper to play initially, safer to get rolling and also draws me cards at the same time.

  • Archaeomancer: It's a great card but it's really too expensive to feel worth playing. I ran it for a while but it's just not cutting it anymore. I'd rather get something else down earlier and draw more cards to get more answers.

  • Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir: Another fantastic wizard I've been running for a while but I want to try dropping it for a bit in favor of cheaper effects and higher synergy. Unfortunately he also competes with Azami which was ultimately the reason I cut him.

  • Vedalken Shackles: You know that annoying thing your opponent just played? How about all those other decks that require their commander on the field in order to function? Vedalken Shackles is here for when you need an answer to creatures that doesn't involve bouncing them again. Unfortunately, it costs 5 mana which is actually a lot.

  • Turnabout: Turnabout is a really high utility spell. It lets us either tap down our opponents, or untap all of our creatures for massive card draw, or get our land back to continue the turn. Not to mention that it has an infinite with Sigil Tracer. On the other hand, Dramatic Reversal is just better for what we need.

  • Forbid: I want to include it, but I feel like it's a more casual counterspell because it's so expensive.

  • Glen Elendra Archmage: Cutting this in favor of Cursecatcher because it's just so much faster.

  • Venser, Shaper Savant: Flash, and he can bounce both permanents AND spells? Seems pretty good. He can also bounce uncounterable spells as well, so Cavern of Souls stops being nearly as much of a problem. That said, I'd rather not have to hold 4 mana for him. It's fine in casual metas but in competitive it's too much. Unsubstantiate works just as well.

  • Rhystic Study: It's fun, but it costs 3 mana. I'd rather spend that on a Back to Basics.

This list is mostly of my own making, but this section is for shoutouts to people who have provided significant input on the deck and how to improve it.

Any feedback is always appreciated, whether it's card suggestions, thoughts on the primer, or some other random thing you think of. If you have questions about the deck in general, why I did or didn't choose specific cards, etc, I'll do my best to answer them.

I might do a matchups section eventually but that will take a while. If anyone really wants it let me know and I'll get to it faster.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Updated to be competitive — Oct. 30, 2016
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I switched out the list that I'm currently running for the list that i'm aiming to run eventually and updated the primer accordingly. This is my attempt at a competitive Azami list.

Added and removed a lot of cards to make the competitive switch.

A few edits made to the list — Oct. 13, 2016
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Updated for Kaladesh — Oct. 8, 2016
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