One of my favorite times of the year is Standard rotation. With the shift to a three-year rotation cycle from a two-year model, Standard now sees less drastic change each fall. Nevertheless, I still look forward to theory crafting, brewing decks, and ultimately trying to get one step ahead of the curve...or should I say three steps?

As any avid reader of my articles knows, I am a diehard Control mage. Control decks are so fun to pilot, and I embrace the puzzle that comes with how to correctly dismantle your opponent's game plan with the cards available to you. While us Control mages lose a lot of powerful cards with Standard rotation this fall, we do gain a few potential upgrades.

Bloomburrow Standard Rotation

This year's Standard rotation is pretty interesting. Some decks are completely wiped off the face of the map, like Five-Color Slogurk, yet some decks stay mostly intact, like Golgari Midrange. Azorius Control, being the premier Control deck of this year's Standard format, keeps a pretty solid base of cards, but loses some heavy-hitters.

For starters, we lose The Wandering Emperor. The Wandering Emperor was such an integral part of Azorius Control because of the pressure it puts on your opponents. I've had so many games where an opponent has hesitated to attack in fear of getting blown out by an Emperor, only for me to slam the door shut with a Memory Deluge. In retrospect, The Wandering Emperor felt almost like Settle the Wreckage, albeit much more powerful with the built-in function of just winning the game.

Memory Deluge is also a huge loss for the deck, and the main reason is longevity. Without a flashback Deluge, Azorius doesn't have a lot of mana-sink card draw effects. Silver Scrutiny stays around, sure, but it's a bit inflexible. Farsight Ritual isn't the worst option. While it may not draw up to four cards like Deluge does, you can at least get more looks at cards in the early-to-mid game by sacrificing a map or clue token. None of these options come close to the power of Memory Deluge, however.

March of Otherworldly Light is another hit to the deck. While not the worst loss, since we still have Get Lost as an option, March was at least a flexible card that also dealt very cleanly with the creature lands, like Restless Cottage.

Overall the deck takes some pretty big losses, and I'd bet going into Bloomburrow Standard we'll be fighting an uphill battle. If the format leans more aggressive though I think there's still value in playing a deck with multiple Temporary Lockdowns and Sunfalls with No More Lies as backup. The real question though, as we lose four Standard sets and gain only one, is what does Azorius Control look like post-rotation?

To answer that, we need to have a look at some new toys Bloomburrow is giving us:

Spellgyre is a perfect four-drop to fill the void of The Wandering Emperor and Memory Deluge. While not as good as those cards, Spellgyre is at least flexible, giving you a counterspell or two new cards (with a look at up to four cards). I think with rotation this will be a pretty solid staple for Azorius, although I do think Azorius Control needs more threats in the deck - we'll get to that in a bit.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this card, and ultimately while Azorius Control would be the deck for this type of card, I do think there are some problems with adding it to your deck. A big issue I have with Long River's Pull is how it relates to tempo when playing a Control deck. As a Control deck your ultimate goal in a game is to run your opponent out of cards. You want to keep pace with your opponent while gaining slight advantages. This can be in the form of a card like Deduce, which gives you two cards in one, or a card like Sunfall, which trades one card for ideally two or more creatures from your opponent (while also netting you a small threat or chump blocker down the line).

Long River's Pull does the opposite of these cards, if you give the gift to your opponent. At worst, Long River's Pull is a somewhat hard to cast Essence Capture. You do have to be wary of how you play your lands, since any Plains, Mirrex, or Demolition Field on turn two means you can't cast this card on curve. Going back to the tempo discussion, if given the gift, Long River's Pull actually nets your opponent a card in an exchange. If you counter a spell, but you gift your opponent a card, you're actually down a card! This doesn't line up with the plan Azorius Control wants to put into place. Imagine having to mulligan with this card in your deck. Being pressured to gift a card just to stay afloat sounds like a way to not keep pace with your opponent.

In a similar vein I have some mixed opinions about Starfall Invocation as well. On the surface it's easy to pinpoint that this card is just a worse Sunfall in Azorius - it doesn't exile creatures and it doesn't net you an incubate token. However, I think there are builds of Azorius Control that could make better use of this type of card than a Sunfall. For example, if you have Ezrim, Agency Chief in play but are falling behind on board, you can gift your opponent a card to reanimate your Ezrim, netting you two more clues. The same goes reanimating a Chrome Host Seedshark or a Horned Loch-Whale - the tempo advantage of a one-sided wrath effect can be pretty damning.

This is actually a more interesting tempo-conversation to have compared to Long River's Pull, because in this case while you may be gifting your opponent a card, you're doing so in situations where you're keeping a very powerful creature on your side of the battlefield, one that either snowballs an advantage or that has some sort of evasion. Constructing a deck that relies on more powerful one-off creatures like Horned Loch-Whale and Chrome Host Seedshark (or even Tishana's Tidebinder) also gives you more equity value for your Three Steps Ahead, giving you more targets to make creature tokens.

Speaking of more targets for Three Steps Ahead...let's take a look at Thundertrap Trainer. Augur of Bolas this is not - it's better (I think). Thundertrap Trainer is kind of a weird card to evaluate. I think with this card you'll pretty much always find a spell, and I do like that it digs you towards wraths. It even plays nicely with Starfall Invocation and Three Steps Ahead, and at six mana it puts some blockers in play while you snowball more cards than your opponent. While this card might be an upgraded Impulse at times, it can't find you a land or one of your few creature threats.

The real question here is if this card is just worse than Deduce, which I think is probably true. You also can't play too many creatures in your deck with this card, and while I'm not sure on the exact numbers, I wonder how many creatures you can play before you run the risk of whiffing on this guy. I'd like to try a build of Azorius with four copies of Thundertrap Trainer, one or two Ezrims, and one or two Horned Loch-Whales - I think that's where I'd start. Ultimately it's interesting to theorize where Azorius goes post-rotation. You can just slot in some Farsight Rituals and Spellgyres in the wake of the loss of The Wandering Emperor and Memory Deluge and pretty much call it a day. Or you could try something entirely different based on the new cards in Bloomburrow - I think there's a lot of testing to be had.

Ultimately I'm not super convinced on any of the new cards from Bloomburrow, aside from Spellgyre. This does give me some worries about Azorius' contention in the new format, but having Slogurk and Worldsoul's Rage decks out of the picture is a nice benefit. Golgari Midrange is still pretty terrifying, and while I do think that match is very winnable, not having access to Emperor or March of Otherworldly Light will make things a lot more difficult.

There are a couple of considerations from past sets we need to take into account too. Urza, Lord Protector and The Mightstone and Weakstone could definitely make a comeback, although I don't like giving my opponents easy fodder for their spot removal. With Meticulous Archive being a Plains and C making a return to Standard, there could be a more White-heavy version of the deck sporting some Lay Down Arms. I've even seen some funky builds with Flow of Knowledge and Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim...

If I were to play a tournament day one of the format, I think this is what I would show up with:

Azorius Control | Bloomburrow Standard | Roman Fusco

• Creatures (4)
• 2 Ezrim, Agency Chief
• 2 Horned Loch-Whale

• Spells (22)
• 4 Three Steps Ahead
• 4 Spellgyre
• 1 Destroy Evil
• 4 No More Lies
• 4 Deduce
• 2 Get Lost
• 3 Sunfall

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Temporary Lockdown

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 2 Jace, the Perfected Mind
• 1 The Eternal Wanderer

• Lands (27)
• 2 Meticulous Archive
• 4 Adarkar Wastes
• 2 Seachrome Coast
• 4 Restless Anchorage
• 3 Demolition Field
• 4 Island
• 4 Plains
• 2 Mirrex
• 2 Sunken Citadel

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Dust Animus
• 1 Tishana's Tidebinder
• 1 Negate
• 1 Elspeth's Smite
• 1 Destroy Evil
• 1 Disdainful Stroke
• 1 Jace, the Perfected Mind
• 1 Chrome Host Seedshark
• 1 Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim
• 1 Boon-Bringer Valkyrie
• 1 Alquis Proft, Master Sleuth
• 1 Realmbreaker, the Invasion Tree
• 1 Kutzil's Flanker
• 1 Rest in Peace
• 1 See Double

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I'll be keeping a close watch on Standard once Bloomburrow releases on MTG Arena. While there aren't many tournaments to play in paper-wise, I hope the new format is fresh and exciting for players.

Best of luck with your Bloomburrow Standard deck-building and as always, thanks for reading.

-Roman Fusco