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Over the Rainbow

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Azor's Gateway is a really interesting card in Standard. Yesterday's deck showed that it's a powerful midrange tool that can be used to leverage expensive value engines to go way over the top after you've ground out the midgame. That's not the only way this card can be utilized though. In addition to providing a burst of life and mana, it also provides fixing, which means that decks can splash off-color, expensive cards if you can regulalry flip Azor's Gateway. Check out this for an example of that:


Sanctum of the Sun
There are a lot of things that I really like about this deck, which should be no surprise given my proclivity for greedy control decks. That said, this seems like a good time to be greedy. With the format devolving into aggro decks and midrange decks looking for small edges, playing a giant pile of sweepers and card advantage seems like a great place to be.

This deck starts off with a suite of colorless card advantage and selection. Treasure Map is incredible in this deck because it serves as ramp, fixing, card selection, and card advantage, all from a card that's easy to cast on the second turn. Your second engine is Azor's Gateway, which provide cheap card selection throughout the midgame, as well as a burst of life and an easy way to start casting multiple expensive spells in a single turn, such as the second half of Spring // Mind and a sweeper. Lastly, there's Thaumatic Compass. Fixing, card advantage, and a Maze of Ith are all things that this deck is in the market for. Spires of Orazca is particularly powerful in this deck because it forces your opponent to play into Settle the Wreckage if they want to make any progress in reducing your life total.

As for your gameplan, you want to lead off with cheap ramp spells, follow up with a sweeper or two, and then take over the game with your expensive value engines. Sunbird's Invocation plays very well with Spring // Mind in ensuring that you never run out of gas. You've got Hour of Promise to stall out the board and tutor up Arch of Orazca so you can get super grindy in attrition-based matchups, as well as a singleton Cascading Cataracts to help cast Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh.

One of the most exciting things about this deck is the possibility of a combo finish. Cut // Ribbons is a great removal spell early on to ensure that you don't fall behind, but it's also an easy way to just kill your opponent out of nowhere if you can flip Azor's Gateway while your life totals are relatively close to one another.

If you're looking for a splashy control deck packed with sweepers, haymakers, and a combo finish, this seems like a blast to play. You'll get absolutely smashed sometimes when the pieces don't come together promptly. But there will be other times where you get to flip an Azor's Gateway and just go off with Sunbird's Invocation and huge spells, and that's the kind of Magic I want to be playing.


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