Fire Lord Azula Burn

Commander Overview

Fire Lord Azula is a true powerhouse, enabling a strong spellslinger strategy. Not only does Azula’s ability work very well with the spellslinger strategy, but it’s also perfect because we are in Grixis, which lends itself very well to being very powerful for this strategy. Azula’s abilities are also powerful. Being able to copy spells when you are attacking can help you win counter wars, pump up your creatures, or get rid of something problematic with a removal spell like Deadly Rollick. Azula having Firebending two also gives us extra mana to work with during combat, which can help us keep on casting spells. All of this combined into a 4/4 stat line makes Azula an actual slam dunk for the spellslinger/Burn, and is precisely why we chose her.

How to Play the Deck

Our primary goal is to be a burn deck, but we also have some control elements that allow us to protect ourselves. Our commander is a key part of our deck as well as our spell positive cards like Guttersnipe, Black Waltz No. 3, and Firebrand Archer. These can help us whittle down our opponents while we continue to build our board and prepare for a much bigger swing later in the game. Since we are a burn deck with a small control package, we can let the game go into the late-game. Azula will likely draw some attention from our opponents, but we can often wait until we are ready to burn them out and do some considerable damage before we go all in. We are perfectly content with resolving strong enchantments like Firebender Ascension or Propaganda. While we can be pretty aggressive, we don’t need to be; it all really depends on the flow of the game.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: In the early game we typically like to set up our mana rocks, play our ping creatures and try to get Azula on the boad as early as we can.

Mid-Game: in the mid-game is when we start generating mana and casting our spells, typically double with Azula, these are our main goals, start sticking some of our better creatures on the board as well.

Late-Game: in the late-game is when we strike, we should have a lot mana by this point,whether from creatures or spells and then we try to burn everyone out with cards like Crackle with Power

Card Breakdowns

Theme of the deck/Synergy’s

The theme of this deck is burn all the way, while we certainly don’t play like a traditional burn deck, we do have some huge burn spells like Electrodominance and Crackle with Power being two of the biggest and best, I’m also a massive fan of Mizzix’s Mastery. At the same time, it doesn’t work with X spells; it is powerful with all the other instants and sorceries we have, and being able to recast them can swing the game in our favor hugely. Azula helps with the burn game plan a ton since we can copy spells in combat, which can be ridiculous, especially with cards like Lightning Bolt and Lightning Strike. There really is nothing better than copying instants and sorceries, even our minor burn spells feel good. We can even use sorceries like Boltwave if we have Vedalken Orrery or Leyline of Anticipation, which lets us go even crazier. There is no better feeling than killing someone with Crackle with Power at instant speed. It’s a feeling everyone should feel at least once.
Ashling, Flame Dancer and Electro, Assaulting Battery, which allow us to stack mana like crazy in the deck and thus cast a huge burn spell and burn out our opponents. Even if the big burn option isn’t a route we do have cards like Bria, Riptide Rogue which gives all of our creatures prowess, which in this deck allows us to be pretty nasty in combat, we don’t prefer to go this way, but it is an option.

Ramp

While we certainly are not a green deck and dont have the typical ramp spells we do have some artfiact ramp that can be pretty helpful like the amazing Sol Ring and Arcane Signet as well as Bender’s Waterskin all of these help us get Azula out quicker as well as cast more spells in a turn which is always helpful for us. Another strong piece of ramp that we have is Seething Song as well as Desperate Ritual and Pyretic Ritual all of these work really well with Azula and can allow us to generate a ton of mana, these also work very well with Ashling, Flame Dancer and Electro, Assaulting Battery since we can keep all of that mana.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Our best piece of card draw definitely is Archmage Emeritus, which can give us a crazy amount of card draw, and since we have so much mana production within the deck, we oftentimes don’t have to discard to hand size. We aren’t as big on card draw as you may think, but since we are more focused on burn, we want to be doing that a lot more than drawing a ton of cards.

Removal

Toxic Deluge is a powerful piece of removal; it’s arguably one of the best removal spells in the format, being able to pay life allows us to kill pretty much everything. I typically only play this card when I am falling behind, specifically because of our low creature count. Delayed Blast Fireball is another piece of removal that truly gives us the best of both worlds. Being able to hit our opponents and their creatures is very strong. While this card is not super effective against every deck, it can do extremely well against token decks or just decks that have a ton of little creatures. We don’t have a ton of removal, even though we are playing black, mostly because we are so focused on burning our opponents out.

Protection

Most of our protection comes in the form of counterspells. We do have the namesake Counterspell as well as Arcane Denial. This is another type we aren’t super heavy on, but we typically use it to protect our commander or stop others from going crazy. Another form of protection we have is Feign Death and Supernatural Stamina, which allow us to protect our creatures (most often Vivi or Azula) and bring them back if they fall victim to removal.

Tutors

We really only have one Tutor, and it is one of our three game changers. I am, of course, talking about the excellent Demonic Tutor. This is nothing more than a powerful and efficient tutor; there is no real guide here on how to use it, but it is powerful, and what you grab is certainly situation-dependent.

Win Conditions

From top to bottom, we are a burn deck; we want to burn all of our opponents out, and our commander helps a ton with that! Being able to cast cards like Lightning Bolt twice can be extremely helpful. At the same time, that is nice to deal six to someone its much better to use our commander to generate us mana with cards like Seething Song and Pyretic Ritual and use one of our true finishers, with my personal favorite being Crackle with Power in my testing games i was easily able to cast this for lethal, we produce a ton of mana through cards like Ashling, Flame Dancer, Vivi Ornitier and Electro, Assaulting Battery which interacts amazingly with Avatar Roku, Firebender. Zuko, Firebending Master is another card that’s extremely strong for the deck and can allow us to produce a ton of mana. We don’t just have Crackle with Power; I have also ended games with both Fireball and Electrodominance. These are our primary win conditions. We can also attack as needed, but we typically don’t.

Utility / Support

One of my favorite support cards in the deck is Bria, Riptide Rogue, giving all of our creatures prowess, which is really strong and allows us to output a lot of extra damage. This is one of the ways we can take our unremarkable creatures and become a force to be reckoned with. Since we do start a little slow, another great support card for the deck is Propaganda. It supports our game plan a ton since we oftentimes cannot fight back against aggressive decks that attack very early. Leyline of Anticipation and Vedalken Orrery functionally provide the same effect and are extremely strong, with either one of these out, we can cast our big sorceries and finishers at instant speed, you truly havent lived until you’ve casted a Crackle with Power or a Mizzix’s Mastery at instant speed.

Mana Base

We have a strong manabase, it is mostly focused on getting our colors established and getting our duals out. We are playing all of the on-color fetches (Bloodstained Mire,Polluted Delta and Scalding Tarn) as well as all of the on-color shocks Blood Crypt,Watery Grave and Steam Vents) These allow us to get our colors established a lot quicker, even though we aren’t playing very much. Being able to have access to black mana is very strong. Xander’s Lounge as an option when we fetch is very nice as well.
We have some very nice support lands as well, like Fire Nation Palace, which can work really well with our commander, and since we typically have a lot of extra mana, this land is relatively easy to activate regularly. We also have Bojuka Bog, which, while not always relevant, can be pretty strong against a variety of decks, not just graveyard decks, either; it can be strong on self-mill-focused decks and really anything that tries to grab stuff out of the graveyard. Our final support land is Otawara, Soaring City. While it’s just an untapped blue land, we have quite a few legendary cards, so we can easily use its Channel ability for only one mana, which can take opponents by surprise.

Strengths of the Deck

One of the biggest strengths of the deck is being able to deal with opponents’ creatures, even though we typically save it for when we have a lot of mana, it can be powerful to use cards like Electrodominance on problematic creatures or commanders our opponents have.

Our commander is a huge strength of our deck, Azula is a true powerhouse, and not only contributes additional mana production, but we can double our spells cast in combat, which can be really strong.

Weaknesses of the Deck

One of the biggest weaknesses of our deck is also Azula, not in the way you might think, but because of her popularity and how strong she is, you often become the target when you bring them out. Being strategic about when you drop them on the field is important.

Control decks can be quite tough matchups for our deck. We are a Grixis deck, but are far more focused on burning opponents than control. Decks that have Stax elements or heavy control packages need to be dealt with first.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against five different decks

Game 1: Vs Esix, Fractal Bloom. Matchup Record: 3-2

This was quite a tough matchup for our deck, we were able to pull of three victorys but all of those victories where a grind, we need to be moderately more aggressive than we typically are, and the most important aspect of this matchup is to keep their commander off of the field, we can perform a lot better if they arent printing their best creatures over and over again.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Counterspell, Delayed Blast Fireball and Overwhelming Victory

Game 2: Vs Eriette of the Charmed Apple. Matchup Record: 4-0

This was quite a good matchup for our deck, mostly because we dont care a ton about attacking, it does feel pretty terrible when we cant use Azula on the Eriette player but we can still win the game with relative ease, this is a very good matchup for our deck.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Deadly Rollick, Leyline Tyrant and Jaya’s Immolating Inferno

Game 3: Vs Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. Matchup Record: 1-4

I played against a Stax version of Derevi and I struggled a lot, once they lock down our land and our creatures we can t freely produce as much mana as we normally can which stalls out our gameplan a ton. Derevi also has cards like Sunder and Portcullis which can also really stall us out.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Counterspell, Cyclonic Rift, Deadly Rollick

Conclusion

Fire Lord Azula is such a cool commander and allows for some very unique gameplay, and is a lot different than a typical Grixis deck. I had so much fun testing this deck; it was truly an absolute blast. This deck firmly fits into bracket three and can totally hang with the other decks that are there. I hope you all enjoyed this one!