On Theme: Azorius Prison

One of my favorite decks that I have played recently was a pillow fort deck that punished people for attacking me.  Today, we are going to take that a step farther, and build a nice deck full of tax and prison effects.  Looking at the guilds we have left, Azorius fits perfect in both color options and flavour for a Prison Tax styled deck.

Leading the Azorius Senate is Grand Arbiter Augustin IV.  He is a 2/3 for 2, a blue, and a white.  He makes all your white spells cost one colorless less, and does the same for your blue spells; for your opponents, everything costs one more.  Pretty cool start to a tax deck - tax and cost reduction in one card.

Azorius military tactics, like their legal tactics, capitalize on delay and nullification.

Let’s look at some of the tax effects first:

Feroz’s Ban - This makes all creature spells more expensive.

Thorn of Amethyst, Glowrider, and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben - These tax on the noncreature spells

Sphere of Resistance - All spells cost one more when the Sphere is out.

There are a number of other Tax effects in the deck - ones that up the cost of artifacts, or enchantments, and ones that only hit a certain color.  There isn’t a reason to go into all of them, just know they are there, and check them out in the full deck list.

Now, all these cost increases hit you as well, and that just won’t do.  Here are a few of the cards that help make things cheaper for us.

Cloud Stone, Semblance Anvil - Variable cost reduction is good.

Mana Matrix - Instants and Enchantments are made cheaper by this guy.

Planar Gate - Make your critters cheaper

Stone Calendar - Everything costs 1 less.

Etherium Sculptor - More cost reduction for artifacts, which is nice since a lot of our deck is built with them.

Mistform Warchief - Variable cost reduction for our creatures, that can be changed turn by turn.

Stormscape Familiar, Sunscape Familiar - These guys help up cast our blue and white spells.
Those are some of the highlights for the tax part of the deck, now it is time to visit the prison.  These cards punish our opponents for attacking us, or make it where they can’t attack at all.  

These cards, especially Ghostly Prison and it’s clones, are really good at stopping token swarms, since the effects scale with the amount of attackers.

Ghostly Prison, Collective Restraint, Propaganda, Windborn Muse, and Norn’s Annex - These guys are the backbone of any prison, charging 2 colorless per creature to attack you.

Ensnaring Bridge - This will stop those huge creatures from attacking, and if you have no hand, it will stop everything.

Blazing Archon, and Peacekeeper - These guys just say ‘No’ to attacking.

Chronomantic Escape - A repeating effect that keeps creatures from hitting you.  Paired with Paradox Haze, this happens every other turn.

Reverence - Little creatures can’t attack you.

Teferi’s Moat - ‘Cause I can’t afford a real moat.

Web of Inertia - Stops people, or makes them pay to attack you.
The rest of the deck is a control/steal shell that I like.  It is built around limiting your opponents, and letting you do what you want.

Vedalken Orrery, and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir - Lets you play things when you shouldn’t be able to.

Grand Abolisher - Makes other players unable to play spells during our turn.  

Aven Mindcensor - Stop those tutors from doing as much good.

Hokori, Dust Drinker - Not only do things cost more, but now you limit the mana people have. 
 The mana rocks, and cost reduction stuff we have helps this not hurt us as much, as well as cards like Grand Architect to turn your creatures into mana.

Iona, Shield of Emeria, and Linvala, Keeper of Silence - These make it hard for some decks to function, and let you deal with a problem before it starts, if you need to.

For stealing, things like Blatant Thievery and Bribery are great, but so are the Vedalken Shackles.  Body Double, and some clone effects, lets you get the most of what others have.
Replenish, and Open the Vaults - These help us recover from a wipe of some sort, and set our lock back up.

Here is the rest of the decklist, lets see what else I found to put in this deck.  It is kind of mean, but sometimes you just have to lay down the LAW.

Commander

1x Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Creature (27)

1x Academy Rector
1x Archon of Justice
1x Aven Mindcensor
1x Blazing Archon
1x Body Double
1x Consecrated Sphinx
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Etherium Sculptor
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
1x Glowrider
1x Grand Abolisher
1x Grand Architect
1x Hokori, Dust Drinker
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Lodestone Golem
1x Magus of the Disk
1x Mistform Warchief
1x Peacekeeper
1x Phantasmal Image
1x Phyrexian Metamorph
1x Stormscape Familiar
1x Sunscape Familiar
1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Weathered Wayfarer
1x Windborn Muse

Sorcery (6)

1x Blatant Thievery
1x Bribery
1x Chronomantic Escape
1x Open the Vaults
1x Replenish
1x Rite of Replication

Artifact (17)

1x Cloud Key
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Feroz's Ban
1x Mana Matrix
1x Marble Diamond
1x Norn's Annex
1x Pearl Medallion
1x Planar Gate
1x Sapphire Medallion
1x Semblance Anvil
1x Sky Diamond
1x Sol Ring
1x Sphere of Resistance
1x Stone Calendar
1x Thorn of Amethyst
1x Vedalken Orrery
1x Vedalken Shackles

Enchantment (14)

1x Aura of Silence
1x Chill
1x Collective Restraint
1x Ghostly Prison
1x High Seas
1x Land Tax
1x Paradox Haze
1x Propaganda
1x Reverence
1x Spiritual Asylum
1x Squeeze
1x Suppression Field
1x Teferi's Moat
1x Web of Inertia

Land (35)

1x Adarkar Wastes
1x Azorius Chancery
1x Calciform Pools
1x Celestial Colonnade
1x Evolving Wilds
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Glacial Fortress
1x Halimar Depths
9x Island
1x Mistveil Plains
1x Mystic Gate
9x Plains
1x Prahv, Spires of Order
1x Sejiri Refuge
1x Strip Mine
1x Tectonic Edge
1x Terramorphic Expanse
1x Tolaria West
1x Vesuva
There is the deck. It might include a few more so called staples but they fit the deck so they went in. Can you think of any more Tax or Prison type effects to add, I am sure I missed some. Let me know.

As always, if you got any ideas for the deck, or any other strange themes you would like to see built, shoot me an email at jmfelber@gmail.com, or hit my twitter @RealFelber.  I am also on the Salvation boards as HatterofMad all the time, and if you wanna check out my experiment in MTG Trading check out The One Red Mountain Project, it is starting to get exciting up to over 40 bucks from trading starting with a single foil mountain.


Jon Felber