MTG Salvation

A very first draft of a Blue/White control deck with Azor, the Lawbringer leading the way.

Why U/W?
Approach of the Second Sun is an extremely powerful, hard to interact with win condition in the new "Brawl" format and serves as serious incentive to play white. It also offers multiple wrath effects to control the board. Blue offers the card advantage needed to quickly cast the spell a second time and counter spells, for now, are the cleanest way to bring universal answers in the format. Adding black would be ideal, but there simply isn't an Esper general available at this time.

Why Azor, the Lawbringer?
The only other option, currently available is Dovin Baan. Dovin is very, very underwhelming at the head of the deck. Azor provides not only a place to dump excess mana, but is a 6/6 flyer at 6 mana. That's big enough to block a large number of the things coming your way and provide some serious clock if the Approach of the Second Sun isn't coming together. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria may be a better option when Dominaria released, but only time will tell.



I think this is a good framework, but it's far from complete. My biggest concern is defensive speed. Making sure the deck has good, high quality blockers in play to deter early attacks. A lot of turns are going to be spent churning through the deck, so the more cushion you have when you cast your first copy of Approach the better. The second concern is what happens when Approach isn't an option? Azor is a potential win condition, but far from high quality. Nezahal, Primal Tide does work, as does a copying something boss with Vizier of Many Faces, but does it actually get there? Could this be a deck for Aetherflux Reservoir or Dynavolt Tower alongside Sanguine Sacrament? Do we play Perpetual Timepiece and just try to simply deck our opponents? Curious what the rest of you are playing in the vein!

Looks good to me so far as an initial draft. Can't think of a way to immediately upgrade it.

Definitely could use a Induced Amnesia. That way you can dump your hand and get Second Sun sooner.

Induced Amnedia was in an earlier draft of the deck for that reason. I see pros and cons. When things are going to plan, it's pretty good. It draws you right in to Approach to recast. When things are going badly... let's say it's turn 10, you've just swept the board and are light on cards. In that scenario, you'd much rather this be an actual draw spell like Secrets of the Golden City. It's on the maybe list for the deck because it is, kind of, a solo windfall effect. Even better since the best wraths in white seem to blow up on-board enchantments, so you'd pick up the old cards again. I do realize now, that you don't discard what your drew, so that changes things slightly...

As always, when I talk my way through the card, it's probably better than I initially gave it credit for. I have a small, but growing maybe board for this deck I'll add to the opening post.

Which is fair, my Teferi deck is slower to empty the hand and focuses on a renewable engine. Hmm there is also Precognition Field. a more limited Future Sight that can exile unwanted cards.

Oh yeah, I plan to do a bunch of changes after Dominaria comes out, but for now it's gotta be something I can play in paper. GP Seattle is in a couple weeks and I'm really hoping they'll have some kind of support for it there.

Very fair. If they have it, good luck to you.

I personally like the concept of having Azor be the General over Planeswalkers, mainly because reliably having access to his ability seems like it has the best option of just snowballing, especially if you are trying to get a victory off Approach of the Second Sun. Below is my current brew with what has been leaked/spoiled from Dominaria.

Thank you for sharing! I think there's some cool stuff going on here and I, personally, can't wait for Dominaria. It's going to bring a LOT of play to the deck and some real crazy options.

My concern with what I see here is pretty simple. It's protecting these planeswalkers. Planeswalkers are notoriously hard to protect in multiplayer games, so I'm guess I'm nervous about theme generating the kind of value you hope. Especially since none of the U/W ones really protect themselves. Only time will tell I guess!

My experience with the format so far is that unless the deck is aggressive, turn 3 is really where your option to ensure your key plays can start to compound. It is the primary reason I am looking at so many 3 mana counterspells. Planeswalkers in this format have not been as snowbally as they often times are in Commander, mainly because they are much weaker in comparison, but also because they do not let you really access degenerative stuff. My theme was not really to roll out multiple planeswalkers and have them stick, it was really just to make sure when I was tapping out, that it was something that has some sort of density to it. Removal options in Standard are slim pickings and I opted to have more angles to work with that essentially either do their own thing with enough power to hold some sort of ground, or good enough to just keep you alive and run them out of gas so you can Approach of the Second Sun.

I have not gotten to play with Dominaria at all yet, but my current UW Approach deck for Brawl left me feeling like I needed more meat cards