Fire Lord Azula Commander Deck: A Bracket 3 Build That Copies Every Spell in Combat

Fire Lord Azula costs for a 4/4 with firebending 2 (whenever she attacks, add , and that mana lasts until end of combat) and the line the whole deck is built on: whenever you cast a spell while she is attacking, copy that spell. Any spell, creatures and artifacts included, and a copied permanent spell becomes a token. This Fire Lord Azula commander deck is our bracket 3 build (bracket 3 is the Upgraded tier of the five Commander brackets), and it has one rule: cast as little as possible before combat and as much as possible during it.

The list is live at Fire Lord Azula Bracket 3. The bracket audit puts it at bracket 3 with one Game Changer, Jeska's Will (Game Changers are the cards on Wizards' list of especially powerful staples, and bracket 3 allows up to three). The audit also lists three combos, each a loop through Azula's copy trigger: Azula plus Narset's Reversal with Storm-Kiln Artist or Frantic Search, and Azula plus Snap with Dualcaster Mage. A combo that wins with two pieces is one of the things that put a deck at bracket 3 rather than 2, and all three are explained below so your pod (your regular playgroup) hears about them from you and not from the game.

Turn four, say, with Azula on the battlefield since turn three, Guttersnipe beside her and four lands up. You declare her as an attacker and firebending adds . With that mana you cast Pyretic Ritual, and Azula's trigger copies it: twice, six red mana. Seething Song off that is copied as well, and you are holding thirteen. Comet Storm for X of ten at one player, copied, is twenty damage to that player, and Guttersnipe has dealt 2 to each opponent for each of the three instants you cast. Azula's own four combat damage lands afterwards. No card in that sequence has a mana value above three.

Two rules make it work. First, the firebending mana lasts until end of combat, but mana from a ritual empties at the end of the step it was made in, so chain the rituals and the payoff in the same step: declare attackers, then cast everything with the stack otherwise empty. Second, a copy is not cast. Guttersnipe, Electro, Assaulting Battery and Birgi, God of Storytelling trigger when you cast a spell and ignore the copies; magecraft, on Archmage Emeritus, Storm-Kiln Artist, Veyran, Voice of Duality and Ashling, Flame Dancer, says "cast or copy" and triggers on both, so Storm-Kiln makes two Treasures (artifacts you sacrifice for one mana of any color) per instant or sorcery and Archmage draws two cards per instant or sorcery.

Veyran, Voice of Duality is the multiplier. If casting an instant or sorcery causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, it triggers an additional time, and Azula's copy trigger is exactly that, so every instant or sorcery is copied twice. Twinning Staff adds one more copy each time you would copy a spell, so each of Azula's triggers makes two copies: with both out, one Seething Song is five Songs and twenty-five red mana. Being blocked changes none of this. A blocked creature is still an attacking creature, so the copies keep coming through the blockers step and the damage step.

Thirty-five lands, six mana rocks and five ritual-style mana spells (Dark Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Seething Song, Mana Geyser and Jeska's Will) carry a deck whose commander wants to be attacking on turn four and whose payoffs are X spells. Twenty-four of the sixty-four nonland cards are instants, which is the point: an instant needs no help to be cast during combat. Goblin Electromancer makes instants and sorceries cheaper and Nightscape Familiar does the same for every blue or red spell, which is the difference between two spells in a combat and three. Copy the list from the deck page into your own account and run it through the audit after any changes; it sits at bracket 3 with room for two more Game Changers.

The weakness of a firebending commander is that the mana is combat mana. The things you want to cast in a second main phase, Crackle with Power, Chandra's Ignition and Mana Geyser, are sorceries, so without a flash enabler they wait for the second main phase, and by then the red mana is gone. So this list runs four cards that keep it, and a fifth that makes more. Ashling, Flame Dancer and Electro, Assaulting Battery both say you don't lose unspent red mana as steps and phases end, and Electro adds for each instant or sorcery you cast on top. The Last Agni Kai is a two-mana fight spell (your creature and theirs deal damage to each other) that also keeps your red mana until end of turn, and if Azula deals excess damage in the fight you get that much as well. Ozai, the Phoenix King does it for every color: if you would lose unspent mana, it becomes red instead, and he has flying and indestructible while you have six or more unspent mana floating, which, with him out, you usually do. Birgi, God of Storytelling is the fifth card: she adds whenever you cast any spell, creatures included, and that lasts until end of turn, though she does nothing for the firebending or ritual mana itself.

With one of the four out, the turn changes shape. Attack, make the mana, spend some of it on draw (Big Score, Unexpected Windfall and Demand Answers are all instants, and each copy draws two more cards without the discard), and carry the rest into your second main phase for Crackle with Power at X of three: fifteen damage to each of three targets. Mana Geyser belongs in that main phase too. It adds for each tapped land your opponents control, and the lands an opponent tapped on their own turn stay tapped until their next untap step, so it is biggest right after the player before you has tapped out.

The trap in this section is Sozin's Comet. It gives each creature you control firebending 5 until end of turn, and firebending triggers when the creature attacks, so the Comet has to resolve before you declare attackers: cast it in your first main phase, or foretell it for on an earlier turn and cast it for later. Casting it during combat so Azula copies it feels clever and does nothing until the next combat. The same goes for Fire Nation Palace, whose firebending 4 activation is a precombat play, and for Firebender Ascension, which only adds a quest counter when an attacking creature's own attack trigger fires; at four counters it copies that trigger, so Azula's firebending becomes .

An instant gets copied for free. A sorcery or a creature only gets copied if you can cast it during combat, which is why this list runs five cards that let you: Leyline of Anticipation (on the battlefield for free if it is in your opening hand), High Fae Trickster, Vedalken Orrery, Borne Upon a Wind (an instant that draws a card and gives everything flash for the turn, so it is also a copied cantrip, a cheap spell that replaces itself), and Winding Canyons, a land that gives your creature spells flash for the turn for . The average list had three of the five.

Creature spells are the reason to care. A copied creature spell becomes a token copy of the creature, and the token's enter trigger happens. Torrential Gearhulk has flash on its own: cast it during the attack and you get two Gearhulks, each casting an instant from your graveyard for free, and because those instants are cast while Azula is attacking, she copies them too. Dualcaster Mage becomes two Mages, each copying an instant or sorcery on the stack. Snapcaster Mage becomes two flashbacks. Spellseeker becomes two searches for an instant or sorcery with mana value 2 or less, such as Pyretic Ritual, Dark Ritual, Bulk Up, Counterspell, Borne Upon a Wind, the X spells (Comet Storm, Electrodominance and Crackle with Power all have mana value 2 in your library, because X is zero there), and the loop pieces Narset's Reversal and Snap, which makes Spellseeker a combo tutor your pod should know about. The split card Expansion // Explosion has mana value 6 in your library, so it cannot find that one. A second Guttersnipe is 4 damage per instant or sorcery cast; a second Archmage Emeritus is four cards per instant or sorcery once Azula's copy is counted.

Legendary creatures get a token too, and the token resolves first, so it enters alone and its enter trigger happens before the original spell even resolves. The legend rule (two legendary permanents with the same name, you keep one) only applies once the original lands, and you choose which to keep. Azula, Cunning Usurper, the other Azula, is the one to cast during the attack for exactly that reason: when she enters, an opponent exiles a nontoken creature they control and a nonland card from their graveyard, and during your turn you may cast the cards exiled with her as though they had flash, with mana of any type. Those cards are tied to the Azula that exiled them, so cast what the token took while the original is still on the stack (Fire Lord Azula copies those casts too), then let the original resolve, keep it, and have a second opponent exile for it. Ozai, the Phoenix King gains nothing from a token, so he is the one creature to cast at the end of an opponent's turn through Winding Canyons instead.

Bulk Up. Two mana, double target creature's power. Cast on an attacking Azula it is copied: 4 becomes 8 becomes 16. With Veyran out the trigger goes twice and she is a 32/4. It has flashback for (cast it again from your graveyard for that cost, after which it is exiled), and the flashback cast is copied as well, so if the firebending mana and a ritual leave you six mana in combat she goes from 16 to 64. Twenty-one commander damage ends a player, so one Bulk Up with Veyran, or the card plus its flashback without, is a kill through an unblocked Azula, and Rogue's Passage makes her unblockable for . Put Swiftfoot Boots on her for that turn rather than Lightning Greaves: Greaves gives shroud, which stops your own Bulk Up from targeting her.

Chandra's Ignition. A creature you control deals damage equal to its power to each other creature and each opponent. In the second main phase after a Bulk Up combat her pump is still on, so a 16-power Azula is 16 to every opponent and 16 to every other creature on the table, your own included. Treat it as the finisher: it kills your Guttersnipe too. Fated Firepower adds its fire counters to every damage event aimed at an opponent or an opponent's permanent, and it has flash, so it can come down during the attack and be copied.

The loops the audit lists. Narset's Reversal copies a spell and returns it to its owner's hand. With Azula attacking, cast any instant, then cast Reversal targeting it. Azula copies Reversal, and the copy can target the original Reversal: when it resolves it makes another Reversal copy, which copies your instant and returns the instant to your hand, and it returns the Reversal card to your hand as well. Every pass costs the instant plus , resolves the instant twice as copies, and leaves both cards in hand. Storm-Kiln Artist turns that into six Treasures a pass (two casts, four copies), which is more than a pass costs, so it is infinite Treasures and infinite copies of Lightning Bolt. Frantic Search as the instant untaps six lands a pass and loots (draws and discards) through the library. The third loop is Snap: cast it, and in response cast Dualcaster Mage, which Azula copies. Both Mages' enter triggers copy Snap; one Snap copy returns the Mage to your hand, each untaps two lands, and you recast the Mage while the original Snap is still on the stack. Each pass bounces another creature and nets a land. If loops are new to your table, combo packages explained has the vocabulary.

Relentless Assault. Cast in your second main phase it untaps Azula and gives you another combat: another , another window where every spell is copied. It only works from a main phase, because "after this main phase" has nothing to attach to if it resolves during combat, so cast it in your second main phase, where she is not attacking and it is not copied. Like Sozin's Comet, it is a sorcery you never flash into combat. Bonus Round is the other big sorcery: until end of turn, whenever a player casts an instant or sorcery, that player copies it. Cast it during the attack through a flash enabler and Azula copies it. For the rest of that combat every instant or sorcery you cast is copied three times, once by Azula and once by each Bonus Round effect, then twice until end of turn. It applies to your opponents' instants for that turn as well, so cast it when they are tapped out.

Azula has to attack every turn, usually into a board with something that can block and kill a 4/4, and every time she dies her next cast from the command zone costs more (the commander tax). The cheapest answer is Dolmen Gate, a two-mana artifact that prevents all combat damage that would be dealt to attacking creatures you control. With it out she attacks the player with the biggest blockers and takes nothing, and blocked, she still copies everything. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots give her haste, so she attacks the turn she lands, plus shroud or hexproof against removal (shroud stops every targeted spell, hexproof only your opponents'). Deflecting Swat is free while she is on the battlefield and moves a removal spell onto someone else's creature; Deadly Rollick is a free exile for the same reason, and both stop being free when she is in the command zone. Counterspell and An Offer You Can't Refuse are for the board wipe (a spell that kills every creature) you see coming on someone else's turn, and Mystic Remora draws you into them early.

What she cannot survive is a wipe on an opponent's turn with no counter in hand, and that is the first loss to plan for. The second is tempo (falling behind on mana and board): a hand that casts a four-mana sorcery on turn four with Azula in the command zone has wasted the turn. The deck's turn-three Azula comes from a turn-one Sol Ring, a two-mana rock on turn two, or Dark Ritual on turn three with three lands.

Keep a hand with three lands, one mana rock or ritual, and two cheap instants. Keep any hand with Leyline of Anticipation in it and three lands. Mulligan a hand of two sorceries and a six-drop however pretty it looks, because the deck does nothing outside combat without an enabler. The first turns are the same every game: land, rock, Azula on three, and on her first attack cast whatever is cheap and useful, even just Demand Answers, which copied is four cards for the firebending and one discard, because the mana is free and the copies are the deck's draw engine. Waterlogged Teachings finds an instant or any card with flash, so it is the way to find High Fae Trickster or Torrential Gearhulk, and it is a tapped land when you are short.

The turn not to attack is the one where every opponent has mana open and you have nothing to cast. Firebending mana you cannot spend is not worth a 4/4 walking into a blocker, and without Dolmen Gate out the right play is to hold her back, cast Faerie Mastermind or High Fae Trickster at the end of someone's turn, and attack next turn with a hand. Everything the deck does well, it does with two or more spells in one combat.

If this list goes to your pod, record the games. Your copy gets its own deck rating, so after a dozen games you will know whether the copies are winning or only making the turns longer. For a bracket 3 spellslinger built on a different engine, see our Vivi Ornitier build.