Freezing Point: 7/32 - Azorius
Hello everyone, and welcome to the seventh installment of Freezing Point! In this series I'm going to brew a 75% EDH deck of each color combination from the ground up. The intended meta for these will be a casual meta, though while not built competitively they will be spiked as hard as possible. You may be confused seeing some pricier cards in here like Imperial Seal and Mishra's Workshop but if those help the particular deck they're in then so be it. Really expensive cards supporting really bad strategies. It's like when you've never played a game of paintball in your life yet you and your squad roll in with matching body armor and then can't figure out how to win. I'm not speaking from a first-hand account at all, why do you ask?
The title of the series is good and all, but what does it mean or stand for? Well, if you look at the number of possible color identities for decks in Magic then you will notice that there are 32 (one colorless, five single-color, ten two-color, ten three-color, five four-color, and one five-color). I wanted a title that could represent that idea. I wanted to go with calling the series 25 but some websites wouldn't display the superscript properly. Instead of that, I chose Freezing Point as the name as water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It seems to fit well.
While I haven't really ever wanted to be one of those people that had one of each color combination of EDH decks I did get inspired to brew them. I've looked at a lot of lists in my time and I usually enjoy seeing other people's established works and then working off that, either by improving it or making it suit my own style. I've learned a lot about EDH in recent history and decided that I would at least like to make each color combination of deck so that I have one that I can say is my deck and is not just 'the one that I play.'
With that being said, let's get into the deck. (complete list at end of the article)
Going through the options here it's clear that a wide variety of different strategies can be implemented. Noyan Dar is his own archetype, allowing awakening to happen when you cast non-permanent spells. Medomai Takin' Turns could possibly be build with the use (read: abuse) of Sakashima. Some blink tribal decks can be made around Ephara and Lavinia. Finally, some established decks can be made with Brago and GAA4.
These cards affect all players equally. We have the traditional extra draw cards here with things like Howling Mine, Font of Mythos, Kami of the Crescent Moon, and Dictate of Kruphix. This section also includes cards that, like the aforementioned ones, affect all players equally. Wrath of God, Meishin, and Minds Aglow are all unbiased. I've also included Well of Ideas in this section because even though we're getting extra cards out of it everyone still gets something. Hugs all around!
These cards all trigger for each player when they do various things. All of the effects here are different so we can involve as many people as possible! We hug the people playing creatures with Overburden. We hug the non-permanent-spell players with Hive Mind so everyone can share in the spoils. Give everyone a landfall - draw trigger with Horn of Greed. We even let people play other people's spells with Knowledge Pool, because sharing is caring.
These cards, like the ones in the previous group, trigger when your opponents do various things. Let them draw extra cards whenever they cast a spell with Forced Fruition. Hug them so tightly that they need to pay extra mana if they don't want bad things to happen to them with Chancellor of the Annex and Spelltithe Enforcer. The best part is our opponents enjoy our hugs so much that they want to give us something in return. When our opponent cast spells we get more of our own spells with Rhystic Study and they generously give us their own spells thanks to Mind's Dilation. So nice of them!
These cards have a constant effect on your opponents and the board state in some way. Kismet and Frozen Aether slow our opponents down, because we can't have people running away with the game when we're trying to hug them. Take a peek into our opponents hands with Telepathy. Make their various spells cost more with GAA4 and Aura of Silence. Hooray for constant hugs! Man, this is occasionally really weird.
We don't have many tutors, and I actually moved one to the sideboard because it didn't find much for us. Enlightened Tutor and Idyllic Tutor both find one of our many enchantments that we run. Academy Rector is also useful for pulling out any enchantment in a much more efficient fashion, though grabbing certain ones at certain times may paint a target on you.
This section is sort of the melting pot of the extra stuff, though it's by no means any less important to the deck. While less than I'd normally like to play our cheap cantrips are here, like Preordain. We can speed up everything we do with Leyline of Anticipation and Vedalken Orrery. Since we're playing very few creatures Karmic Justice, while not a proactive part of the overall strategy, can get nearly all removal pointed away from us. I mention the lack of proactivity because, typically, durdling is not a way to win in Magic, especially not in Commander. Be proactive with all the things that you do.
Aside from Enchanted Evening and Aura Thief closing out a game (which to me is hard to believe but then again I've never seen it go off in a game) we have a few different ways of killing our opponents. We have Psychosis Crawler and Sphinx's Tutelage to whittle away at our opponents over a long period of time. Laboratory Maniac can incidentally win if we go long enough. Last, we're on a secret beat-down plan with Starfield of Nyx which conveniently doubles as utility!
We have a full fetch suite, which is at a new record high of seven! Praise to MaRo and this format! On top of that we have the dual lands that don't enter tapped all the time with Tundra (dual land cycle), Hallowed Fountain (shock land cycle), and Prairie Stream (battle land cycle). Praise to fetchable, 'multi-color' lands! Those single-color decks have made me miss you! Because of the density of out permanent spells we can make great use out of both Nykthos and Serra's Sanctum.
The title of the series is good and all, but what does it mean or stand for? Well, if you look at the number of possible color identities for decks in Magic then you will notice that there are 32 (one colorless, five single-color, ten two-color, ten three-color, five four-color, and one five-color). I wanted a title that could represent that idea. I wanted to go with calling the series 25 but some websites wouldn't display the superscript properly. Instead of that, I chose Freezing Point as the name as water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It seems to fit well.
While I haven't really ever wanted to be one of those people that had one of each color combination of EDH decks I did get inspired to brew them. I've looked at a lot of lists in my time and I usually enjoy seeing other people's established works and then working off that, either by improving it or making it suit my own style. I've learned a lot about EDH in recent history and decided that I would at least like to make each color combination of deck so that I have one that I can say is my deck and is not just 'the one that I play.'
With that being said, let's get into the deck. (complete list at end of the article)
Overview
As we start to have more than one color in a legendary creature the number of options starts to drop. There is an era of odd, sometimes vanilla creatures that just happened to be legendary from the earlier years of Magic that are multi-color, some of which are based on D&D characters according to MaRo. Anyway, onto the list of potential commanders.
Going through the options here it's clear that a wide variety of different strategies can be implemented. Noyan Dar is his own archetype, allowing awakening to happen when you cast non-permanent spells. Medomai Takin' Turns could possibly be build with the use (read: abuse) of Sakashima. Some blink tribal decks can be made around Ephara and Lavinia. Finally, some established decks can be made with Brago and GAA4.
Sometimes though, instead of building around a particular commander and their unique abilities you just want to play a strategy and they're just sitting in the command zone being used for their colors. While it can potentially be a waste (since commander offers you the unique opportunity of always having a particular card and effect available to you) it can be funny sometimes. For example, Phelddagrif typically stands for a group hug deck even though he (she?) is rarely ever cast.
This is a group hug deck, in a sense. It's more like a group tax deck. The way I like to think of it is you're trying to give a friendly hug to everyone but you're dressed up like that creepy uncle that you have; the intention is that everything is good, but please get me out of here. Hanna was chosen for this in order to get back our stuff in the event that we start losing it, so it's not a complete waste of a slot but it could be better utilized in the grand scheme of things.
While getting this list together I organized the cards by who they affect or how far their reach is and then sorted cards that didn't fit into those categories into their own. As we get further from the 'group' categories I will start lumping other sections together since they tend to be only a few cards. I was also going to give this article a very overly-lovey feel to it but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Group Hug
These cards affect all players equally. We have the traditional extra draw cards here with things like Howling Mine, Font of Mythos, Kami of the Crescent Moon, and Dictate of Kruphix. This section also includes cards that, like the aforementioned ones, affect all players equally. Wrath of God, Meishin, and Minds Aglow are all unbiased. I've also included Well of Ideas in this section because even though we're getting extra cards out of it everyone still gets something. Hugs all around!When a player
When an opponent
These cards, like the ones in the previous group, trigger when your opponents do various things. Let them draw extra cards whenever they cast a spell with Forced Fruition. Hug them so tightly that they need to pay extra mana if they don't want bad things to happen to them with Chancellor of the Annex and Spelltithe Enforcer. The best part is our opponents enjoy our hugs so much that they want to give us something in return. When our opponent cast spells we get more of our own spells with Rhystic Study and they generously give us their own spells thanks to Mind's Dilation. So nice of them!Your opponents
These cards have a constant effect on your opponents and the board state in some way. Kismet and Frozen Aether slow our opponents down, because we can't have people running away with the game when we're trying to hug them. Take a peek into our opponents hands with Telepathy. Make their various spells cost more with GAA4 and Aura of Silence. Hooray for constant hugs! Man, this is occasionally really weird.Ramp, tutors, and control
Okay, onto real Magic cards. We're not playing green so out ramp is a bit limited to what rocks we're able to throw together. We have the standard, efficient package of the rocks that cost two or less with Sol Ring, Azorius Signet, Fellwar Stone, and the rocks that require a tribute. The only odd addition here is Thought Vessel, as normally having no max hand size isn't something you need to go for though since we're deliberately trying to draw a ton of cards it's more useful.
We don't have many tutors, and I actually moved one to the sideboard because it didn't find much for us. Enlightened Tutor and Idyllic Tutor both find one of our many enchantments that we run. Academy Rector is also useful for pulling out any enchantment in a much more efficient fashion, though grabbing certain ones at certain times may paint a target on you.
We run only a few counterspells as we're hoping that other people will also draw into answers (or threats) that will divert attention away from us. Just a few catch-all counters are here. Cyclonic Rift is also here because it is always useful.
Utility
This section is sort of the melting pot of the extra stuff, though it's by no means any less important to the deck. While less than I'd normally like to play our cheap cantrips are here, like Preordain. We can speed up everything we do with Leyline of Anticipation and Vedalken Orrery. Since we're playing very few creatures Karmic Justice, while not a proactive part of the overall strategy, can get nearly all removal pointed away from us. I mention the lack of proactivity because, typically, durdling is not a way to win in Magic, especially not in Commander. Be proactive with all the things that you do.
Anyway, As Foretold is just generally good especially when combined with a flash enabler. Replenish is our reset button in case things go really poorly. Finally, Enchanted Evening and Aura Thief are here because they're sort of on-theme and because I really want to get it off in a game.
Win conditions
Land
We have a full fetch suite, which is at a new record high of seven! Praise to MaRo and this format! On top of that we have the dual lands that don't enter tapped all the time with Tundra (dual land cycle), Hallowed Fountain (shock land cycle), and Prairie Stream (battle land cycle). Praise to fetchable, 'multi-color' lands! Those single-color decks have made me miss you! Because of the density of out permanent spells we can make great use out of both Nykthos and Serra's Sanctum.Additional thoughts
Omniscience was reluctantly moved to the sideboard. Even though it's definitely on-theme there's no particular lines that come after playing it. Sure we can cast our hand, but there's nothing too good that really comes of that. If you find a better use please feel free to edit the deck and include it.
Another thing I wanted to include was Alhammarret's Archive and an eldrazi titan of some sort. The plan was to draw ourselves even harder and be able to cycle the deck while everyone else can't. In a similar vein, we should probably have some sort of wheel effects. Windfall would probably be my first choice as it doesn't recycle graveyards and can probably get us at least seven cards each time, or more because of all of the Mine effects.
You may notice that aside from the counterspells and the inherent protection our board should provide to us there's little protection for the board itself. Our own counterspells should be used if we're going to get wiped by something (assuming someone else doesn't want to counter it), but other than that there's no protection. Privileged Position is sadly outside of our colors, but Greater Auramancy isn't. If you feel in any particular match-up that someone is going to have a lot of spot removal for your stuff then definitely side this card in.
You may notice that aside from the counterspells and the inherent protection our board should provide to us there's little protection for the board itself. Our own counterspells should be used if we're going to get wiped by something (assuming someone else doesn't want to counter it), but other than that there's no protection. Privileged Position is sadly outside of our colors, but Greater Auramancy isn't. If you feel in any particular match-up that someone is going to have a lot of spot removal for your stuff then definitely side this card in.
Opalescence was also removed as it doesn't have much use outside of a critical mass of enchantments, unlike Starfield. Since the time it's been spoiled I've wanted to animate Lunar Force and strap an Assault Suit onto it. You may say that that's evil, but the thing about that is I don't care.
Conclusion
And there you have it, a group tax attrition deck in Azorius colors! Click anywhere on the previous sentence to be taken to the full deck list. I had brewed up a Jeskai Ascendancy-less Noyan Dar deck a few years ago which I had edited for the sake of this article but ultimately decided to scrap them as I wasn't as happy with it as I thought I would be. The deck isn't bad, it just felt clunky to me. You can form your opinion of it after clicking on the previous hyperlinks to look at those lists. As always, thanks for taking the time to read one of my many, seemingly endless brain-children! Be on the lookout for the next installment of Freezing Point!
All cards owned and all rights reserved by Wizards of the Coast. I'm just some nerd who spent too much time staring at them.
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