Much Abrew: 2+ Hours of Five-Color Azula Control to Fall Asleep To (Standard)

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week, we become dirty control players as we head to Standard to play a five-color control deck originally from Ali Aintrazi built around Fire Lord Azula, of all things! Azula has quickly become the most popular Avatar legend for Commander, but so far, it hasn't actually had an impact on Standard...until now! Is going control the solution to the Badgermole Cub meta? Is the mana good enough to make a five-color control deck work? Is Fire Lord Azula actually good in Standard? Let's get to the video and find out!

Much Abrew: Five-Color Azula Control

Discussion

• Record-wise, Five-Color Azula Control crushed it! We went 7-0 with the deck, and while we played some super-close matches, it felt like the deck had the tools to keep up with pretty much everything in the format. As strange as it sounds, the deck might actually be pretty good!
• Crim has been telling me on the podcast for months now that he never has an issue with Badgermole Cub because he's always playing control decks, and after playing with this deck, I can see what he means. It turns out that if you overload your deck with cheap removal, sweepers, and counters, stuff like Simic Spew becomes much less scary. 
• On one level, Five-Color Azula Control is a pretty typical control deck with all the typical control stuff—lots of card draw, cheap removal, and counters. But some of the individual choices in the deck look pretty weird at first glance, like playing zero hard wraths and instead running Commander favorite Aetherize. It turns out that these strange choices actually play really well in practice. Take Aetherize, for example. If we played Day of Judgment in that slot, we'd wrath the board but our opponent would get back all their earthbent lands, while bouncing instead means we get to deal with any earthbend shenanigans as well. I was also a little worried about having no hard removal, but in practice, we were able to piece things together pretty reasonably. 
• Oddly, Ancient Cornucopia might be the most important card in the deck. Along with giving our five-color deck mana, the life it gains is massive. Once we get it on the battlefield, it rewards us with a ton of life for doing what we wanted to do anyway—casting a bunch of removal, card draw, and counterspells—which is quite powerful. We had some games against aggro where it felt like our opponent just couldn't beat the artifact. No matter how much they attacked us, we were always at 20, 30, or even 40 life! Hilariously, we're splashing green almost solely for the mana rock—that's how important it is to the deck.
• The other super interesting part of the deck is Fire Lord Azula. My theory on Azula in this deck is that you almost never want to run it out on Turn 4. Instead, its power is that it allows us to close out the game super quickly once we take control and mostly empty our opponent's hand of answers. In the late game, if we can get in a single attack with Fire Lord Azula, we typically either win the game on the spot by casting and copying Jeskai Revelation and Lightning Helix or at least pull super-far ahead. The ability to turn the corner and win all in one turn almost makes the deck like a combo-control deck, and it's actually very powerful, especially compared to old control decks that took forever to close out the game.
• Speaking of Jeskai Revelation, the card is incredible. While it is a lot of mana, once we get to the point of casting Jeskai Revelation, it feels hard to lose. I was amazed by how much a single Jeskai Revelation could catch us back up, and if we ever manage to cast it while Fire Lord Azula is attacking, the game basically just ends on the spot!
• So, should you play Five-Color Azula Control in Standard? Assuming you don't mind playing some very long, close, grindy games, I think the answer is an easy yes! I was shocked by how well the deck played and how competitive it felt. Plus, it does seem like control lines up super well with our current Standard meta!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.