As long as you are reverting to old versions of magic rules, make sure you reinstate interrupts and damage batches.
Seriously though, having your standard magic player try to change the rules is about as safe as letting an airline passenger modify a jet engine. They will probably break something and it won't even be obvious how or why things are going to fall apart.
I've never even thought about it like this. My deck isn't designed to handle problems. It's designed to make opponents lose the game. Decks handle players by providing threats that others have to react to.
In general if there is one specific thing that relatively common and a potential auto loss then I either resolve to loser to it or make sure there are one or two answers. But what that is will differ from deck to deck. My Skullbriar deck hates crackdown and my Edric deck doesn't care one bit.
Oh, how much time I've wasted believing that this is true.
It's true though. That doesn't mean you should never play it. But once you understand why it's bad, you can figure out when you need to play it despite it being bad.
Keep in mind that Kalia decks are often excuses to play big fliers that you like. I wouldn't play any of those cards listed, but that's just the tip of the iceberg for useless fat creatures to include in the deck. Whenever I see something like that, I assume the deck builder just happened to like the card, and that's why they're doing something suboptimal.
I only play CIPT lands that offer genuine card advantage-- guild bounce lands, hideaway, and utility lands like Oran-rief (in the right deck). But CIPT mana fixing? No thanks.
So I have Edric and Patron of the Orochi, which can obviously do this. My Experiment Kraj deck has really strong resilience because it's not built around a single combo, but a very high concentration of synergies, so it really pulls off single turn wins without anyone seeing it coming, sometimes including me. My Kresh deck wins basically every game where Living Plane resolves, and also plays a number of very strong hate cards that Kresh ignores: Titania's Song, Damping Matrix, and Null Rod. And last, one had surprisingly good success with Skullbriar and a bunch of swords, of you kill people with global removal first and targeted removal last.
Other decks I dismantled included Animar, Gaddock Teeg, Grand Arbiter, and Reaper King. Basically every deck I've built, I assume the game will be 3v1, and of its not, my deck isn't performing well enough because I haven't convinced people my deck is a threat.
I also have a Kaalia deck, but her success is based more on a lack of spot removal or drawing just the right troll enchantment like moat or chains.
Now I'm really confused. Azusa is one of the few commanders that can 1v3 the table? I currently have 7 decks, and six of them can do that. None of them are Azusa. And the last three decks I retired were retired because they were too good at beating the entire table at once, so I built decks at a lower power level to make the games more fun.
Maybe what's really going on is that it's easy to build a strong Azusa deck but harder to build a good deck around say, Gaddock Teeg. But the best versions of these decks are similarly powerful. So lots of people think Azusa is some unbeatable powerhouse when she's just one of thirty decks in a higher power bracket. The problem is people haven't seen most of the other thirty.
I run maybe five to ten total cards that deal with opposing cards and trust that player removal will deal with most problems. Playing a lot of one for one spot removal is a good way to make sure that you and one other person don't win the game.
My experience had been that she is vastly overrated and not that hard to beat. And that analysis is after telling people with Azusa decks this, having them say something like "well you probably just played bad versions but mine is great," and then crushing them.
On the other hand, she is very good at beating undertuned decks. People have suggested good tactical solutions, and I think cards like acid rain and death grip have a place, but the real problem is strategic. Azusa isn't good because of the mana ramp. She's good because she uses the first four turns of the game to develop board position. If you have trouble against her, I'm certain your deck is wasting it's early turns on something other than board development. Your deck is losing because it's wasting the most valuable resource: time.
Now that said, the major strategic weakness of Azusa is that she requires a major investment in cards that don't directly impact other players. The deck is more than half land and needs other support cards as well. So there isn't as much room for threats and control cards, though the one she runs tend to be higher end and higher impact. The best counters to this are stopping her card draw and playing general board wipes, so she can't do anything with all that mana. If Azusa untaps with no cards in hand and nothing in play but 15 lands, she simply isn't that scary.
Incidentally, this is the main reason Azusa is a worse general than Omnath, Vorinclex, and Patron. All those general are more threatening on an empty board, provide better ramp, and let you play with more non-lands in your deck. Azusa is at best the fourth best mono-green general, which is why the deck just isn't that good.
It's easy to find narrow answers to problems. The real question is if you can find generally useful cards that happen to be silver bullets for these situations. Treachery is a good general option for example. Moat is also really good. For the most part I just recommend some straight forward player removal though. Find whatever deck does to kill someone and then do that.
Seriously though, having your standard magic player try to change the rules is about as safe as letting an airline passenger modify a jet engine. They will probably break something and it won't even be obvious how or why things are going to fall apart.
In general if there is one specific thing that relatively common and a potential auto loss then I either resolve to loser to it or make sure there are one or two answers. But what that is will differ from deck to deck. My Skullbriar deck hates crackdown and my Edric deck doesn't care one bit.
It's true though. That doesn't mean you should never play it. But once you understand why it's bad, you can figure out when you need to play it despite it being bad.
Other decks I dismantled included Animar, Gaddock Teeg, Grand Arbiter, and Reaper King. Basically every deck I've built, I assume the game will be 3v1, and of its not, my deck isn't performing well enough because I haven't convinced people my deck is a threat.
I also have a Kaalia deck, but her success is based more on a lack of spot removal or drawing just the right troll enchantment like moat or chains.
Maybe what's really going on is that it's easy to build a strong Azusa deck but harder to build a good deck around say, Gaddock Teeg. But the best versions of these decks are similarly powerful. So lots of people think Azusa is some unbeatable powerhouse when she's just one of thirty decks in a higher power bracket. The problem is people haven't seen most of the other thirty.
On the other hand, she is very good at beating undertuned decks. People have suggested good tactical solutions, and I think cards like acid rain and death grip have a place, but the real problem is strategic. Azusa isn't good because of the mana ramp. She's good because she uses the first four turns of the game to develop board position. If you have trouble against her, I'm certain your deck is wasting it's early turns on something other than board development. Your deck is losing because it's wasting the most valuable resource: time.
Now that said, the major strategic weakness of Azusa is that she requires a major investment in cards that don't directly impact other players. The deck is more than half land and needs other support cards as well. So there isn't as much room for threats and control cards, though the one she runs tend to be higher end and higher impact. The best counters to this are stopping her card draw and playing general board wipes, so she can't do anything with all that mana. If Azusa untaps with no cards in hand and nothing in play but 15 lands, she simply isn't that scary.
Incidentally, this is the main reason Azusa is a worse general than Omnath, Vorinclex, and Patron. All those general are more threatening on an empty board, provide better ramp, and let you play with more non-lands in your deck. Azusa is at best the fourth best mono-green general, which is why the deck just isn't that good.