The title is meant to be a reference to the Air Force Association, not the American Family Association (a conservative and Christian fundamentalist organization I had not heard of until I looked up the acronym).
Check out this Untapped.gg page to see the deck's performance in Standard Ranked Bo1. You can also easily import the deck to Arena from Untapped.gg.
Background
I've spent over half a year playing almost exclusively Azorius Faerie Vandal decks, and I think this deck is one of the strongest possible builds without any rares. I managed to take it to Mythic in Bo1 for the January, February, and March of 2024 seasons. I wouldn't call it competitive at Mythic, but it's very capable of getting you there.
In addition, I suspect MTG Arena does some deck-based matchmaking at Diamond and below in Bo1, meaning it tries to make match-ups based on the specific cards in each deck as opposed to ELO. Since this deck runs no rares and a number of cards that aren't really competitive, I got matched up against sub-optimal decks often than not while working my way up from Platinum to Mythic. Unless I'm really overestimating the average Standard Ranked Bo1 player, there can't be that many people running 250-card decks at Diamond. You can never fully escape Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Farewell, but I do believe this deck makes for more fun match-ups on Arena, in more ways than one.
Themes
There are a couple of themes I built around to make this deck highly synergistic. I'd suggest checking out my custom categories if you want to see cards and counts for each of the deck's themes.
As simple as it is, the deck's most import theme is the abundance of flyers. I don't encounter too many decks that are readily prepared to block flying creatures, and most decks don't have enough removal to deal with all the creatures I throw at them, especially when some can come back from graveyard via disturb. For those opposing creatures that do have flying or reach, this deck has a number of ways to keep pushing damage through. Even when I don't have one of the deck's numerous removal spells, Devoted Grafkeeper
can often decommission any defensive threat for a turn or two.
The graveyard is the best way this deck gets value, acting as a mechanism for card advantage and a way to stay in the game after board wipes. There are a number of spells (mostly creatures) that can be cast from the graveyard, and there's enough looting in the deck to get them straight there from hand. Getting disturb creatures into the graveyard is particularly important, as they only have flying if cast from the graveyard. Ruin-Lurker Bat in particular benefits from permanents being sent to the graveyard. It's very useful early game for scrying to hit land drops, especially in conjunction with Spyglass Syren or Obscura Storefront.
Given that each variation of this deck has been centered around Faerie Vandal, it should be no surprise that card draw is a big deal. Inspiring Overseer and The Modern Age
provide essential draw for this deck, along with adding flyers to the battlefield. One key tip for this deck on Arena: place a stop on your main phase for the turn after you cast The Modern Age. That way, if you draw Faerie Vandal on your draw step, you can cast it before The Modern Age draws you a second card for turn (thanks to flash). It's only one extra counter, but sometimes that makes all the difference.
In today's standard environment, there's really no way around having decent removal. While this deck has no artifact, enchantment, or planeswalker removal, I did try to implement a fairly dynamic creature removal suite that also provides some offensive utility. As much as I would love to fill this deck with Case of the Gateway Express for its combination of damage and buffing, there are a number of situations where it does nothing. The other removal spells in this deck try to cover its and each other's weaknesses.
These basic themes don't encompass everything the deck has going on, of course. I'd like to mention a few interactions that are important in the standard meta. Chaplain of Alms
has first strike in addition to disturb, allowing it to shut down Urabrask's Forge and make Elspeth's Smite a bit stronger. Elspeth's Smite itself is in the deck as a faster alternative to Case of the Gateway Express, capable of stopping Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor and Glissa Sunslayer from getting too much value via combat damage. Fading Hope is great against +1/+1 counter-centric decks, and it also resets Branch of Boseiju
, which used to be a big problem for this deck, to Boseiju Reaches Skyward
. Finally, a solved Case of the Gateway Express gets most of the deck's creatures to three power and out of range of Gix's Command, which was often game-over for this deck prior to MKM.
Going Forward
If this deck looks interesting to you, I'd highly recommend trying it out on Arena Bo1 Standard! If you've played even a modicum of Arena, this deck probably won't be too big of a hit on your wildcards, and certainly not the rare ones! I can't guarantee that you'll instantly win with this deck, but it's quite strong and a lot of fun once you get a hang for the common interactions and general strategies.
If anybody tries the deck and finds some cuts and additions that really work for them, please let me know. Any other suggestions are also greatly appreciated!
