Yorion, Sky Nomad | Illustration by Steven Belledin
When players think of Azorius () in Magic, they almost always think of control decks that leverage powerful tools like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Supreme Verdict to win extended games. While the time-tested tradition of blue countermagic and white removal has endured for a reason, Azorius creatures are still quite powerful.
From typal lords to card draw engines, disruptive threats to build arounds, Azorius offers a slew of interesting creatures to play in any format. Let’s find the best ones for your next deck!
What Are Azorius Creatures in MTG?
Cloudblazer | Illustration by Dan Scott
Azorius () creatures in MTG are creatures with a white and blue color identity. They often get this from both colors being present in their mana cost, but mono-colored creatures with activated abilities that involve the other color or that transform into multicolor permanents make the cut.
Azorius creatures often focus on value with strong enters abilities or card advantage. They can also be disruptive or staxy, leaning heavily on the white element, or focus on synergizing with fliers or flicker effects, which is a little bluer.
#30. Aven Wind Guide
Aven Wind Guide serves as a token lord. It doesn’t offer a power boost, but flying enables excellent attacks while vigilance keeps you safe even as you swing in turn after turn. It puts a fast clock on your opponents, and it’s even resilient since embalm means they have to kill it twice.
#29. Azor’s Elocutors
Azor's Elocutors isn’t the fastest win condition in the world, but it’s one of Magic’s few alternate win conditions. You can build around this pretty easily as blue and white have no shortage of proliferate effects and counter doublers, plus extra turn spells so you don’t need to worry about whether this lives for multiple turn cycles.
#28. Drogskol Captain
Lords are critical to any typal strategy; those decks rely on synergy to make up for any card quality lost in running, say, 20 spirits instead of the 20 objectively strongest creatures in their colors. Among typal lords, Drogskol Captain belongs near the top. Giving your creatures hexproof disrupts your opponents and keeps your board strong. It isn’t the most generally powerful Azorius creature since it’s useless outside of spirit decks, but it deserves recognition for the decks it holds together.
Hanna, Ship's Navigator offers a nice, graveyard-based value engine for artifact and enchantment decks. It works best with cards like Aura of Silence that sacrifice themselves for an effect so you can get them back later.
#26. Godhead of Awe
Godhead of Awe brings your opponents to their knees, awestruck by this Air Elemental. I love a strong, simple card like this one. It plays well with anthems like Glorious Anthem to ensure your creatures are stronger than your opponents', or you can pair it with Crovax, Ascendant Hero to wipe most creatures from the board.
#25. Drogskol Reaver
Drogskol Reaver is one of the best lifegain payoffs in the game. Sure, it’s pretty expensive, but what’s the point of gaining all that life if not to survive? It draws two cards whenever it gets into combat, but the key lies in surrounding it with many cards that trigger all the time—think Soul Warden, Inventors' Fair, and so on. These ensure a consistent stream of card draw that justifies the high mana cost.
#24. Empyrean Eagle + Thunderclap Drake
Empyrean Eagle and Thunderclap Wyvern give flying creatures a simple stat boost. Flying decks are already quite aggressive since they can attack without concern of blockers, so a source of extra damage ends the game even faster. They play especially well with cards that create flying tokens like Battle Screech and Spectral Procession.
#23. Heliod, the Radiant Dawn / Heliod, the Warped Eclipse
It takes some work to break Heliod, the Radiant Dawn—namely plenty of mana and wheels. You want to flip this into Heliod, the Warped Eclipse ASAP for flash and an incredible mana reduction ability. It works best with artifacts since the cost reduction makes colorless spells free with a wheel—you can even construct colorless-only combos like Karn, the Great Creator and Mycosynth Lattice to shut down your opponents.
#22. Daxos of Meletis
Daxos of Meletis slips past large creatures for an uncommon theft card—this effect is typically reserved for black or Dimir () cards these days. Daxos provides a cool source of card advantage that plays nicely with auras and equipment since it comes with soft evasion. It works best in tempo strategies with ample ways to protect Daxos and other high-impact threats that strain your opponent’s removal.
#21. Gold-Forged Thopteryx
Gold-Forged Thopteryx protects your commander and other legendary creatures. While this is a good disruptive piece, it doesn’t replace protection spells like Slip Out the Back, so make sure you balance your protection package appropriately.
#20. Vega, the Watcher
Vega, the Watcher gets better and better as more mechanics that let you cast cards from exile pop up. Since its printing in Kaldheim, plot, warp, and discover have been introduced, plus mechanics like cascade and suspend have appeared on new cards. Vega doesn’t suit every deck, but decks that enable it end up with a cheap, powerful draw engine.
#19. Mistmeadow Witch
Mistmeadow Witch has a fairly costly activated ability, but it works well in grindy flicker decks. You can hold up countermagic or removal, then use the Witch to cash in on a Cloudblazer or similar enters trigger if you don’t need to use it. It also offers combo lines with Peregrine Drake and other cards that untap lands to be a finisher.
#18. Deputy of Detention
Deputy of Detention riffs on Detention Sphere… or is a quirky Fiend Hunter? The important thing is that it’s a great tempo play. Removing an opposing creature, even just for a turn, gives you a window to attack and might make your opponent blow their removal early. It also hoses token decks since it consumes all tokens that share a name.
#17. The Council of Four
The Council of Four works best in Commander because you have four players that draw cards and cast spells to trigger it. Value engines that scale with the number of players always overperform. You can even enable this one yourself with Howling Mine effects to trigger the draw-two clause—and probably the other ability since your opponents will have plenty of spells to cast. Whether you use it in a group hug deck or just as a draw engine, you’ll profit.
#16. Faramir, Steward of Gondor
Faramir, Steward of Gondor needs to be built around with plenty of legendary creatures, but it stands out as one of the strongest monarch cards; few other monarch cards let you retake the monarchy turn after turn and provide an immediate reward alongside the card draw. Faramir is well worth the effort required to make it tick.
#15. Dennick, Pious Apprentice / Dennick, Pious Apparition
Dennick, Pious Apprentice offers great value as a cheap threat. A 2-mana 2/3 is pretty large, though the stat line seems to appear more and more often, and its graveyard disruption messes up a surprising number of strategies. Once your opponent brings themself to kill it, no they didn’t! Dennick rises once more as Dennick, Pious Apparition, trading the graveyard hate for card advantage. Nothing about Dennick breaks the game, but the whole comes together in a solid, annoying threat.
#14. Dragonlord Ojutai
Control decks must often be wary of tapping out for their finishers because their opponent could remove them, but Dragonlord Ojutai solves that with hexproof. You can trust that it survives until you untap, at which point you can hold up countermagic to defend Ojutai when it attacks. That resiliency combines with the card advantage produced by the saboteur trigger to make a great threat for control and midrange decks that drown their opponent in card quality.
#13. Geist of Saint Traft
Few cards demonstrate how obnoxious hexproof is like Geist of Saint Traft, a cheap threat that just kills you in a few turns since it attacks for an effective 6 damage each turn. When you pair it with cheap interaction, it becomes a star threat of tempo decks.
#12. Meddling Mage
I love playing with Meddling Mage; it feels like a very skill-expressive card as you need to understand your opponent’s strategy and what card to name to shut them down. Stopping a player from casting a key spell can be an annoyance that forces them to dig to a removal spell—assuming you don’t kill them first. It works best in aggressive shells that capitalize on the tempo it creates with quick pressure.
#11. Plagon, Lord of the Beach
Every time I come across Plagon, Lord of the Beach in Cube, I find myself pleasantly delighted at how well it slots into my decks. Though the textbox reads like a defender payoff à la Arcades, the Strategist, it only needs a few creatures with high toughness to justify running. Cards like Guide of Souls, Thraben Inspector, and Ledger Shredder are already high-value cards made even better when they curve into a creature that draws two or three cards.
#10. Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
Lavinia, Azorius Renegade ensures that your opponents play a fair game of Magic, shutting down most attempts to cheat spells into play. This works best at the highest power levels, where players throw around spells like Force of Will and various Moxen that Lavinia counters.
#9. Riptide Gearhulk
Riptide Gearhulk is great top-end for flicker or tempo decks because it provides plenty of pressure and clears blockers away to attack. Your opponents redraw their threat eventually, but you have time to find countermagic, removal, or a path to victory. It’s great in Commander because it bounces creatures from all your opponents.
#8. Brago, King Eternal
Brago, King Eternal has long reigned as one of Azorius’s most popular blink commanders. Blinking your entire board is exactly the kind of bombastic value engine you need to compete in Commander. Brago only gets stronger as power creep pushes cards further, with options like Agent of Treachery, Dour Port-Mage, and Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines that stand out as a few examples of recent upgrades to Brago.
#7. Cloudblazer
In a vacuum, Cloudblazer is a solid card: A three-for-one that shows you a bunch of cards, stabilizes you, and even pressures your opponents thanks to flying. Once we look beyond this card alone, it becomes terrifying: Azorius is the color of blinking and flicker effects. In the right build, this often draws four, six, maybe more cards. It isn’t quite as good as Mulldrifter since you can’t pull the evoke-flicker trick, but any deck that runs one probably wants the other.
#6. Pippin, Guard of the Citadel
Pippin, Guard of the Citadel is one of the many riffs on Mother of Runes. Protection from card types provides a unique angle of defense, especially for aggression. Mom falters when faced with creatures of different colors, but protection from creatures allows for absolute aggression. Since Pippin still protects your creatures from removal, this works great for Voltron decks or as a cheap threat in Cube.
#5. Reflector Mage
Would you believe that Reflector Mage caught a Standard ban to weaken a tempo deck? It’s frankly not surprising; bouncing a creature is annoying enough, but preventing your opponent from replaying that card the following turn throws so many wrenches into a plan, especially when this bounces a creature they have another copy of in hand. I’ve definitely played a 2-drop against Reflector Mage, then been forced to take turn 3 off. Once you mix in flicker effects, you can practically remove a creature from play with it.
#4. Soulherder
As important as creatures with good enters abilities are to flicker decks, actual flicker cards are just as, if not more important. Soulherder is one of the strongest. Many permanents that flicker a creature each turn cost 4 mana (Teleportation Circle, Displacer Kitten, etc.), which makes this an efficient choice. It also overwhelms your opponents by growing into a significant threat with just a few turns to accumulate +1/+1 counters.
#3. Spell Queller
Spell Queller dares to ask, “what if Fiend Hunter were a counterspell?” The answer is a staple spirit that enables powerful tempo decks. You feel like you’ve won when your 3-mana play eats your opponent's 2- or 3-drop on curve. Because spirits are so disruptive, they often have the tools to protect Spell Queller, either with spirit support like Rattlechains or just countermagic. Even without spirit synergy, it’s a great disruptive threat that slows your opponents down and presents a clock.
Aang, Swift Savior has just been previewed at the time of writing, so we'll see if it can step in where Spell Queller left off.
#2. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
Perhaps the most infamous Azorius commander, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV offers an immense mana advantage that rivals green. Perhaps more frustrating is the tax it imposes on your opponents. This creature hobbles your opponents’ ability to curve out, and it shuts down strategies like storm that rely on casting numerous spells in a single turn. It buys plenty of time for the large threats you deploy to beat your opponents out of the game—so long as you’re prepared to be archenemy #1 for putting this in the command zone.
#1. Yorion, Sky Nomad
We can all agree that companions are broken. Getting a free card for tweaking your deck was never fair, and Yorion, Sky Nomad proved to be one of the stronger companions. Magic just has so many great enters abilities these days that a mass-blink effect can often win the game—presuming you’re willing to sit through 10-12 triggers at a time.
Since it exiles your permanents until the end step, you can even use it as a protection spell of sorts, sequencing it with your Wrath of God or flickering it in response to an opposing Damnation. This would be a respectable creature even without companion.
Wrap Up
Deputy of Detention | Illustration by G-host Lee
Azorius’s creatures are incredibly diverse, ranging from cheap disruptive plays to overwhelmingly powerful threats. Whether you want to build an aggressive tempo strategy or sit back on a few high-quality finishers for your control deck, there’s a creature or two for your deck here.
What’s your favorite Azorius creature? How do you think Azorius creatures compare to the other guilds? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!
Stay safe, and thanks for reading.
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