A one-mana conditional counterspell, Gloin, and Faramir! Omniscience is probably a little over the top for a deck like this, but can be fine should you want to mess with it, as I believe older lists have run it in the past. It wouldn't surprise me too much to see more powerful tools show up in the upcoming Innistrad: Crimson Vow either. Each Challenger Deck comes with a complete 60-card main deck and a 15-card sideboard, plus five double-sided tokens that you'll want to have on hand when you head into battle. Its only flaw is the space where the archetype is currently in the Metagame, with few results. Secret Lair Stranger Things "Will the Wise . We use necessary cookies to allow our site to function correctly and collect anonymous session data. Glacial Fortress is fine, but the Temples are downright unplayable! All cards have been previously printed in Pioneer-legal sets and are legal in the . Adding Brightclimb Pathway ($20 a playset) and, ideally, Godless Shrine ($51 a playset) would give you the exact same main deck that raulramos recently used to 5-0 a league on Magic Online. The deck revolves around Sram, Senior Edificer and Hateful Eidolon, both cards allows you to keep your hand full as you cast your spells or if an enchanted creature dies, while permanents like Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters make your creatures huge in just a few turns. Buying these cards as singles will set you back a little less than $40, with more than half of that going toward the extra Brazen Borrower, which currently is $20. Narset vs. Goro-Goro & Satoru vs. Mono Green Burn vs. Ashnod | Commander Clash w/ Our Artist! Weekly drafts featuring a variety of formats new and old. And to be able to cast Collected Company, you'll need a bunch more dual lands, like Temple Garden, Branchloft Pathway, Botanical Sanctum, and Barkchannel Pathway. Orzhov Auras is, in my view, the most complete deck among the four lists, as it has virtually all the cards needed to function at its best, its dual lands are excellent compared to the other two-color list, and its creatures and spells are essentially the same as the most competitive lists. When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. So, which deck should you choose? Continue with Recommended Cookies. One of two events on the ATP Challenger Tour in Taiwan (also Kaohsiung), the Santaizi Challenger in Taipei is fast becoming a signature event on the circuit in Asia. Azorius Spirits essentially functions as a Tempo Deck, which aims to advance its evasive creatures while delaying the opponent's game by responding to their cards with counterspells like Lofty Denial or cards that perform relevant effects while also being creatures, like Spell Queller. Taipei | Overview | ATP Tour | Tennis On the other hand, Niv-Mizzet, Parun and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries work as card advantage and wincondition simultaneously. If they end up the same price as the Standard Challenger Decks ($2030), it's hard to see how you can go wrong buying any of the decks from a finance perspective. Full review of Azorius Spirits, the Pioneer Challenge deck! Here Comes a New Challenger: Azorius Spirits! - YouTube All original content on this page is 2012-2023 MTGGoldfish, Inc. and may not be used or reproduced without consent. Aethersphere Harvester is a good card in aggressive matchups, especially on red decks mirror, as it is an evasive threat that can give you up to 6 life with its activations. While the sideboard does need some work, this isn't especially surprising since sideboards change constantly in response to the meta. 2021's Challenger Decks release on April 2, 2021. With Azorius Spirits, the goal is to keep the opponent off balance long enough to push through to victory. Here's a list for example: Once again, this list still features much of the same general creature base. We've updated our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Otherwise, the deck, like most of the decks in the series, could use a mana base upgrade. Corporate Responsibility | OEC Group Thanks to Fae of Wishes, Lotus Field Combo relies heavily on the sideboard to find critical win conditions as well as potent cards to help stop whatever your opponent is doing. It really depends on your goal. 2023 by Cards Realm. First, because a deck like Spirits is not simple to play and is too punishing to be used in an unpretentious way and without a careful planning, and besides, this is by far the worst deck for pick-and-play. We talk about what the existence of Challenger decks means for the Pioneer format, why one would play Spirits at all in Pioneer, the actual contents of the Challenger deck, how to choose between one of FOUR versions of Spirits to upgrade the Challenger deck to, and we play through a 5-match Pioneer League with the Challenger deck as-is. 99. I've been a big fan of Pioneer since it was announced as a format and did quite a bit of messing around in its early days. Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 - Azorius Spirits The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Lava Coil is an efficient removal at dealing with creatures returning from the graveyard like Arclight Phoenix, while also resolving the archetype's other threat, Thing in the Ice. $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00. Four-player Commander battles featuring a new theme every week. Challenger Decks 2021 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING The issue with Orzhov Auras, however, is that the archetype is at a low on Pioneer these days and has made little or no significant results recently, but for a local Metagame, this deck definitely works well and manages to win on its own against unprepared opponents, while its Sideboard allows for better interaction in games 2 and 3. Optimizing the Azorius Spirits challenger deck! Turns out that even without those 2 powerful cards, the combo of Lotus Field and cards like Hidden Strings and Pore Over the Pages is good enough to keep it going. It bets on the tribal synergy that Spirits and/or flying creatures have thanks to Supreme Phantom and Empyreal Eagle to speed up the clock and end the game quickly. 2023 by Cards Realm. The Lotus Combo's sideboard is extremely flexible, and you shouldn't necessarily take all the cards on this list as written in stone and required, as each player has a different way of using the sideboard since it operates as a wincondition and toolbox thanks to Fae of Wishes. Grafdigger's Cage is a format staple and a needed means to counter various strategies that are among the most widely used archetypes today, such as casting cards from the graveyard or bringing them back into play like Rakdos Pyromancer and Izzet Phoenix do, or playing cards straight from their own deck, such as Bant Spirits. What deck is right for you mostly will come down to what play style you prefer and if you're planning to try to upgrade the deck to its optimal form or just play with the precon right out of the box. All Rights Reserved. Enter the Pioneer Challenger Decks. Nine Lives can win you several turns against aggressive decks, as it prevents a significant amount of damage and adds counters. Due to shipping issues, Challenger Decks will be delayed in some APAC regions. All rights reserved. In general, the first edition of Pioneer Challenger Decks looks solid. You'll get a playable budget version of the deck immediately, the fully upgraded version of the deck will use pretty much all of the cards from the precon, and you can upgrade to the best possible version of the deck for less than $100 (and significantly less if you already have some of the more expensive dual lands). The first Regional Championships took place in November 2022. Rampaging Ferocidon is very useful in preventing your opponents from gaining life while setting a clock, and also punishes decks that manages to play or create various creatures, such as Bant Spirits or Rakdos Pyromancer. Blast Zone is a great land to tutor with Sylvan Scrying, and can handle problematic permanents of all kinds, or clear the opponent's small creatures, as in the case of Boros Burn, which has several creatures costing one or two. Outside of needing a few more dual lands, the Challenger Deck actually is surprisinglyclose to the optimal build of the deck. Banned and Restricted Update, May 29, 2023: Fable, Invoke, Bankbuster Banned, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Spoilers May 30 | Gandalf the White, Aragorn, the Uniter, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Spoilers June 1 | Copy the Stack, Against the Odds: The Saltiest Deck Possible (Historic Brawl), Much Abrew: Abzan Angels at Mythic in Standard. Even though Burn is an iconic budget archetype, the Mono-Red Burn Challenger Deck very likely is the worst of the Pioneer Challenger Deck series. Orzhov Auras Grow and protect your creatures, then raise them from the grave. Lurrus works as an eighth card in your hand, which you can access at any time, and can turn the game in your favor when you cast it at the right time, which will usually be when your opponent has already spent his resources against your creatures in the early game and have already taken enough damage to always be on the verge of losing the game with a more explosive streak. 39.91 tix 1 Mythic, 27 Rare, 20 Uncommon, 27 Common. What is Azorius Spirits in Modern? If you're curious about the format, these decks seem like the perfect gateway for you to be part of the local community, or they also seem like the best opportunity to grow your community as well. Legends of Runeterra and its respective properties are copyright Riot Games. While the current mana isn't bad, it's a bit light on dual lands. Boros Burn has several consistent results and is even one of the decks I used the most on Pioneer Royale, to the point that I created a deck guide and a sideboard guide which, although a little dated (they were written in January) can help you understand how it works and how to behave in games, since few cards have changed from the list since then, despite the Metagame having gone through some relevant changes. All rights reserved. A few choices have been changed up both in the main deck and in the sideboard (you'll notice the copies of Selfless Spirit and Spectral Sailor here, unlike the Azorius list) but by and large it's pretty comparable. The good news is that the precon build of Orzhov Auras is extremely close to the optimal build of the deck, perhaps the closest out of all the Pioneer Challenger Decks. If you are a resident of California, you have the right under the CCPA to opt out of the sale of personal information to third parties. It is essentially a Combo that abuses Lotus Field along with untap effects such as Hidden Strings or Pore Over the Pages to generate a bountiful amount of mana and then use Fae of Wishes to cast extremely explosive spells from the Sideboard, or cast Peer Into the Abyss to draw half of your own deck and continue looping until you win the game with some combination of cards commonly coming from the Sideboard, cast for free with Omniscience. How to upgrade Azorius spirits Pioneer challenger deck Surface. Fully upgraded, Azorius Spirits is a competitive deck that you could certainly have success with in tournaments. As such, this makes upgrading this list much pricier than the Lotus Field list, though still oftentimes more affordable than many Standard lists and certainly costs less than the majority of Modern decks. Pioneer Challenger Decks 2021 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING You also won't get to take advantage of either of the dual lands in the Challenger Deck if you go the Bant direction. The 2022-23 Pro Tour season is the twenty-eighth Pro Tour season for Magic: The Gathering. Available: 10. Magic The Gathering Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 - Azorius Spirits These decks are intended to be playable and competitive at a local level, ready to challenge friends and foes alike. Initially, I will focus on the Azorius version, as the proposed strategy straight out-of-the-box lies in this combination and manabase. List Price: $36.92 $36.92. Now, if you want to invest even more and go for its most competitive version, Boros Burn is one of the three best decks in Pioneer today! 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 176 ratings-5% $34.99 $ 34. Other Challenger Decks we've seen in the past have had much more archetypal diversity, though I think here a large part of that was how costly many decks get once you start factoring in the land base of, say . 1 Posted by u/Rearrangedas 6 months ago Upgrading the Azorius Spirits Pioneer challenger deck! Hallowed Fountain can enter untapped at any stage of the game while interacting very well with Glacial Fortress. The inclusion of Godless Shrine and Brightclimb Pathway allow the archetype to always have access to the mana it needs at the time it needs. In addition, the list also has some reach and impactful plays for later turns, such as Bonecrusher Giant, which can be an early-game removal while also a threat from turn 3 onwards, while Bomat Courier and Light up the Stage allows it to keep the cards running after the first few turns. We've been getting Challenger Decks for Standard for a few years now, and they generally have been good options for players who are looking for a semi-competitive options right out of the box, with further upgrade potential to a top-tier list. Mono Red BurnAssemble an army and scorch your opponent directly. Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021: Azorius Spirits - TCGplayer Showcasing offbeat brews from around the internet. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com. The idea here is that Pioneer as a format is much cheaper and closer to Standard than something like Modern, so it's easier to make something like a Challenger Deck for. Pioneer Challenger Deck 2021 - Azorius Spirits - Card Kingdom This isn't a big deal if you're not really interested in upgrading to the optimal tier builds of the decksthe budget mana in the precons is good enough to play with and, while somewhat inconsistent, to win with. See our privacy policy. August 30, 2022 at 12:52 pm. Azorius Spirits Challenger Deck Upgrade by MTG Ectoplasm This could easily have been removed in favor of another Spell Queller - which has too few inclusions - or some better lands. I make you aware of the investment cost to upgrade the deck to mono blue snow, Azorius, or Bant plus cards to add or remove from the Challenger Deck. As many cards from the original deck's sideboard go to the Maindeck, several new options come in. 155, Sec. Single Scoop: This Deck Sucks (Standard Vampires). To me, it looks like whoever built the decks did their best to make the non-land cards be as close to possible to the optimal tier build of the deck and then cut lands as necessary to get in under the budget (which is something I've done a lot of times when building Budget Magic decks). The strength of the series is that you'll get playable decks right out of the box, and this remains true for the Pioneer Challenger Decks. Let us know which one in the comments! Let's look at an actual tournament list for comparison: The non-land part of the main deck is strikingly close to the precon, which is great. It felt like a really cool and different way to play Magic for a while, and then we got the double whammy of problems with the format. Illegal cards Mana curve 1 2 3 5 0 10 20 30 Mana cost Color pie For our first deck, we have Azorius Spirits. The problem there was that even then, many Modern staples were already pricey due to lower printings and higher desirability with Legacy. For as much as Temples get frequently derided in precons, here they actually serve a purpose, filtering your cards to get you that much closer to your combo pieces. The big problem here is that the land base is just horrid and is a pretty far cry from what you'd want in a deck like this. Last week, during its huge 2022 product announcement stream, Wizards revealed that we'll be getting four Pioneer Challenger Decks in October. #Azorius #Spirits #Azoriusspirits #Youtube #Video #Pioneer #mtg #Magic #magicthegathering #Pioneerchallengerdeck #challengerdeck #challenger #upgrade #howto . An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Prize Money. With the structure of variety Challenger Decks provide as well, this opened the doors for what Wizards could do and allow people to get into the format a bit more. Spirits offers a high-tier option with close to optimal creatures, but it hasby farthe worst mana of any of the decks, and the fact that many of the best builds of Spirits in Pioneer splash into green for Collected Company means that it's the most expensive Challenger Deck to upgrade into optimal form. The only drawback of the Lotus Field Combo Challenger Deck is that Lotus Field Combo itself is really weird. Format: Pioneer 3 Shacklegeist. All OEC Group tournaments benefit the public by offering free admission. Pioneer Challenger Deck: Azorius Spirits Unboxing - YouTube Mystical Dispute works well against Control decks, allowing you to have ways to respond to their counters or deal with specific cards on these lists. Azorius Spirits - Pioneer Challenger Decks 2021 Pioneer Challenger Deck The tournaments not only encourage Taiwanese Tennis players to level up, but they also create a stage for international players to . Challenger Decks 2021 Feature Feb 12, 2021 Wizards of the Coast Note: Due to production issues, Challenger Decks 2021 release date has been moved to April 2. Build awesome Commander decks on a 20 tix budget. This week the Pioneer Challenger Decks were released, and these are four decks built essentially so you can sleeve them up and play them right away at your local store events, much like the Standard Challenger Decks that are released annually. This is why Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is such a critical piece to the deck and is normally the way you will end up winning. The Faceless Havens and Snow-Covered Islands take up the majority of the list's price tag at a whopping 3/8ths, but even then it's likely that you'll have a bunch of Snow-Covered Islands floating around. Here's what an actual Azorius Spirits lists looks like: Lands aside, the precon is fairly accurate, but still has issues. Because of how much Lotus Field Combo tends to sift through its deck, it's not difficult to end up drawing to the bottom of your deck. Also, the list comes with its Companion: Lurrus of the Dream-Den, which fits this strategy perfectly. To upgrade the mana, you'll need a playset of Hallowed Fountain (just under $40) and a playset of Hengegate Pathway (about $20). With the pandemic slowly starting to wind down a bit, people are more willing to get out and play at their local game stores again, and Wizards clearly wants to help jolt some life back into the format again. Thanks for the shout out (DrKatz11 is my MTGO Tag). Deck Discussion Video link below ofc In today's video, we do a deep dive into upgrading the Azorius Spirits Challenger deck. Other aspects of the precon sideboard are generally fairly generic solutions that can work one way or the other, such as with Sweltering Suns over Anger of the Gods. Segment II - WotC screwed up and fixed the mistake before it hit the printers. These decklists are not card-for-card product displays but rather interactive lists of the cards included in each deck.). Currently, Spirits is a solid second-tier option in Pioneer, coming in just outside the 10 most played decks in the format, making up about 3.2% of the meta, which is good news. Looking at the deck lists, it seems like someone at Wizards was given the job of making $100 budget versions of four top-tier decks in Pioneer, and while they generally did a great job, as we've seen on Budget Magic, lands are expensive, and there simply isn't a way to play an optimal mana base in a non-Standard format on a $100 budget. Bala Ged Recovery is the best version of Regrowth we have in the format and, in addition to serving as a land drop, it can be played in different ways: You can cast it to recover a discarded spell, or you can play it to return to your hand a card you need in the middle of the combo to cast it again, or to recover a countered or destroyed wincondition, among other options. Sun Shen Enterprise Co., Ltd : 3F., No.13, Ln. Use the options below to exercise this right, and please review our privacy policy for complete information on how your data is used and stored. 1Mythic, 27Rare, 20Uncommon, 27Common. It's a valid plan, but it seems under-optimized compared to how the most competitive lists plays. All told, the Lotus Field Combo precon is one of the best values for a deck that you could hope for. Check out the decklists below to see what's in store. Mono-Red Burn might be the easiest to win with out of the box but has limited upgrade potential since the best version of Burn in Pioneer is Boros, and the cost of the lands needed to upgrade is high enough that if you want Pioneer Boros Burn, buying the Challenger deck as a base probably isn't worth it. This isn't to say that Orzhov Auras is unplayable. Orzhov Auras needs the least amount of upgrading to get to its optimal form but is also the lowest tier of the four decks. I'm guessing it was included as a way to push through control matches more easily, but even then, it's just a dumb beater that might ultimately not get you there. Azorius SpiritsSummon spirits and a flock of fliers to bring your opponent down. But the budget mana is going to be a problem if your goal is to upgrade to the best possible build of the deck, mostly because dual lands are some of the most expensive cards in all of Magic, so the upgrade process will get pretty expensive. It's like this deck was built so you need to buy two of them to start playing. Take a look at the Azorius Spirits list that Traft recently used to finish Top 16 in an MTGO Challenge: The creature bases of the two decks are actually pretty similar. As for the box list, the winning plan is to use Approach of the Second Sun from the Sideboard and then use it again in the same turn to win the game. A high singularity means that the deck is running cards that are less common in that archetype. The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Spoilers June 2 | An Actual Modern Card?! All in all, this means that the Challenger Deck is a solid deal if you're interested in playing Azorius Spirits in Pioneer. Learn about the most powerful format that spans Magic's entire history. Cards you do not posses in your collection, ORZHOV AURAS | PIONEER CHALLENGER DECKS 2021, MONO-RED BURN | PIONEER CHALLENGER DECKS 2021, LOTUS FIELD COMBO | PIONEER CHALLENGER DECKS 2021, AZORIUS SPIRITS | PIONEER CHALLENGER DECKS 2021, Spoiler Highlight: Orcish Bowmaster on Modern, Please, confirm clicking more one time in the button. In May 2021, the Magic Esports website . 1995-2023 Wizards. MTGGoldfish, Inc. is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast LLC. Players who lived through the days of Standard's Ramunap Red know what I'm talking about: Chandra is card advantage, mana ramp, removal and wincondition all in one card and offers all the reach an aggressive red deck could need to stay in the game and /or play over the "Burn" versions, which tend to play with a greater focus on direct damage. Chained to the Rocks will essentially deal with any creature that your traditional removals don't, and can be replayed with Lurrus if it's countered or destroyed by your opponent. Upgrading Pioneer Challenge Decks: Orzhov Auras and Mono-Red Burn Starting with the most expensive card on the list, and one that the deck has absolutely no copies of, Eidolon of the Great Revel is a staple of pretty much all the Pioneer, Modern, or Legacy Burn archetypes, and though it seems counterintuitive for a new player (which I believe contributed to its absence in the product), it makes a huge difference in setting the clock against opponents who cast multiple spells in a turn while also working to attack the opponent. When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. And this doesn't include the $20 Omniscience you'll end up with thanks to the Challenger Deck. Arriving April 2, the latest Challenger Decks release brings updated approaches to start playing Standard with strategies ready to succeed. When Lurrus is in play, every turn your opponent doesn't respond to means one more threat he has to deal with on the board, and it gets even worse when they have immediate impact, like Monastery Swiftspear or Viashino Pyromancer. In this review, we go over why one would play Spirits, the actual contents of the Challenger deck, how to choose between one of FOUR versions of Spirits to upgrade this deck to, and then we play through a five-match League with the Challenger deck right out of the box! Unpacking a Magic: The Gathering Azorius Spirits Pioneer Challenger Deck. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Anger of the Gods works better than Sweltering Suns these days, as it handles Arclight Phoenix, Scrapheap Scrounger and any other creature that returns from the graveyard, the same goes for Shadows' Verdict, although this one is more directed towards Rakdos Pyromancer.