{"ops":[{"attributes":{"underline":true,"bold":true},"insert":"Introduction"},{"insert":"\n\nThis list of"},{"insert":{"card-link":"Hylda of the Icy Crown"}},{"insert":" is a Bracket 4 Stax-based Azorius Control deck that wins by slowing the tempo of the game to a crawl before taking over the board and killing off the table with an ever-growing mass of 4/4 Elemental Creature tokens that can eventually be pumped with Hylda's own ability. While there is a combo win-con in the deck revolving around infinite turns, without consistent ways to tutor into our combo, our primary game plan revolves around surviving the early and mid-game with various "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Rule of Law"}},{"insert":" or other prison-type effects such as "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Containment Priest"}},{"insert":" , "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Drannith Magistrate"}},{"insert":" , "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Clarion Conqueror"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Harbinger of the Seas"}},{"insert":" . We break parity on these effects because almost all of our value is contained within simply generating triggers off effects that tap creatures, such as "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Citadel Siege"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Opposition"}},{"insert":" and paying for Hylda. As such, we do not need to cast spells under "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Rule of Law"}},{"insert":" after landing Hylda and a permanent that taps our opponents' creatures.\n\n"},{"attributes":{"underline":true,"bold":true},"insert":"Mulligan Strategy"},{"insert":"\n\nBroadly speaking, our cards can be broken down into the following categories (except for "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Capture of Jingzhou"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Temporal Manipulation"}},{"insert":"):\nStax"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"Interaction (Removal/Protection)"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"Value Engines (Card Draw or Token Generators)"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"Tap Engines (There can be overlap with these and Value Engines, and some Value Engines may rely on a Tap Engine)"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"Mana"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"\nWhen we mulligan, the ideal hand we should be looking for is one that has "},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"Stax, a Value Engine, a Tap Down Engine, and Mana."},{"insert":"\n\nFor example, a hand such as "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Deafening Silence"}},{"insert":", "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Elvish Mariner"}},{"insert":", "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Caretaker's Talent"}},{"insert":", "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Arcane Signet"}},{"insert":", and 2 Lands fits as we have mana from the lands and signet, a tapper off Elvish Mariner, a value engine off Caretaker's, and a stax piece off Deafening Silence. Note that there is a slight nuance to some cards - while Caretaker's Talent can be a Value Engine, it only exists as such if we can consistently make Elementals. Without the Elvish Mariner, Caretaker's is not as good a card.\n\nWhile this is an ideal hand, sometimes we have to compromise. In that case, the hierarchy of categories we should look to keep is the following: "},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"Value Engine > Tap Down Engine > Stax > Mana."},{"insert":"\nWhile mana is last on our hierarchy, as ramp is the least critical piece in lower mulligans, there should be an understanding that we must keep enough lands and/or mana rocks to actually cast our value engines, or at least hope to cast our value engines within a reasonable amount of time.\n\nThe reason for this hierarchy is simple - even on a low mulligan, as long as we can put some source of card draw into play, we can find the other parts of our deck. In scenarios where we cannot find discrete Value Engines, such as "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Rhystic Study"}},{"insert":" , we need to rely on a fallback of using our Tap-Down engines to draw cards with Hylda's trigger rather than make Elementals to find the other parts of our deck. \n\nInteraction is the lowest on the totem pole of categories, and not included in our mulligan searches because while it is nice to be able to stop our opponents, the deck is innately interactive - tapping opponents' creatures is a form of interaction that can prevent combat damage, stifle mana production, and hamper game plans. While a counterspell is nice to have - either to disrupt opponents or protect ourselves - it is not necessary, and we can hope to draw it later. Stax is more important than Interaction in most cases because it is not card-negative and affects the whole table rather than one opponent in particular. \n\nThere are nuances to this mulligan philosophy - if we know the decks in the pod have strategies that tend to lean towards very fast combos, we might need to put a higher priority on finding a Stax piece in our opener, and we might look for Stax + Value Engine over a Tapper. Remember that while the aforementioned is a good baseline, games are always contextual.\n\n"},{"attributes":{"underline":true,"bold":true},"insert":"Gameplan"},{"insert":"\n\nIn an ideal scenario, we want to establish a board that consists of:\nStax Piece"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"Value Engine"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"Tap Engine"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"Hylda"},{"attributes":{"list":"ordered"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"\nPrioritize putting the pieces down in that order. \n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"The Early Game:"},{"insert":"\nIn most games, we want to start on a Stax piece so that we can reign in the pace of the game to a tempo that more suits our slower game plan. Getting a Stax piece going on Turns 1-3 is critical towards holding players off from accruing large Mana Advantage over us. One of the biggest weaknesses of Azorius tends to be in Mana - we don't have red/black rituals, or green land ramp, and so we must either rely on other, more creative means to ramp mana, or we have to rely on slowing everyone else to our pace of play. As such, an early "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Rule of Law"}},{"insert":" is a very welcome thing for us - even if the other players Ramp, they are still fundamentally limited to 1 Spell a turn, meaning they are less able to leverage the extra mana that they create. Furthermore, they cannot have runaway turns of mana generation where ramp begets more ramp as they are limited to the 1 Spell.\n\nFitting our Mana package into this can sometimes be awkward. In an ideal scenario, we play our Rocks out before we put down the Rule of Law effect, but there are some scenarios where we don't have time to do so. In those scenarios, the key is to recognise that we still eventually break parity better on Rule of Law than most of our opponents can. Threat assess the game plans of your opponents to try to understand how long you can wait on a Rule of Law before you are too behind on mana advantage and time accordingly.\n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"The Middle Game:"},{"insert":"\nIdeally, we should look to establish a Value Engine or a Tap Engine once we have slowed the game down. As previously stated in the Mulligan section, there can be overlap in these two categories, as Hylda functionally turns all Tap Engines into Value Engines, or certain Value Engines only function in tandem with a Tap Engine or a Tap Engine and Hylda.\n\nTurns 3-5 in a game where we are playing to our preferred tempo will be spent finishing our setup. Unlike other commanders, Hylda, by herself, is not a particularly useful game piece unless we have the pieces ot support her. Running her out without proper setup is at your own peril, as having to redeploy a 6 mana Hylda is often a huge strain on our decks' relatively sparse mana. In general, the Rule of Thumb is that unless you are under extreme pressure to have a blocker available, Hylda should not be cast until a means to tap creatures consistently is on the board. \n\nUsing Hylda triggers in the middle game is often not as transparent as just making a 4/4. If our hand is relatively depleted, or we have either lost our Value Engine or never had one to begin with, it is often correct to spend the first few tap triggers casting "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Preordain"}},{"insert":" (taking the trigger to Scry 2, then Draw a Card) until we can find a more stable footing and have a well-stocked hand.\n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"The Late Game:"},{"insert":"\nClosing out games with Hylda is relatively straightforward. While our opponents are struggling under Rule of Law, we break parity very easily by using our mana on Hylda triggers. Creatures such as "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Court Street Denizen"}},{"insert":" , or Enchantments such as "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Opposition"}},{"insert":" let us chain Hylda triggers by making a 4/4 Elemental which then either creates a trigger or can be immediately used to tap another creature, generating Hylda triggers up until either we run out of mana or our opponents run out of creatures for us to tap. On our final trigger with these chains, we can choose to either pump our board or cast Consider one more time. Because we can tap our opponents' creatures down on their turn, our opponents will rarely have proper blockers up - and thus we can end the game simply by attacking with a pumped board of Elementals. Furthermore, we often do not need to worry about crackback damage due to our ability to continue tapping our opponents creatures down to not allow them to attack. Vallue engines such as "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Elspeth, Storm Slayer"}},{"insert":" or "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Felidar Retreat"}},{"insert":" are extra potent as they can also be quasi-overruns in the late game. \n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"The Combo Finisher and Closers:"},{"insert":"\nAs previously stated, we can leverage Hylda, Felidar Retreat, or Elspeth Storm Slayer as pseudo overrun style effects to pump our wide boards and deal lethal damage to opponents once we have a wide enough board. However, it is often the case that while 40 damage is easy to do, 80 or 120 is not. As such "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Temporal Manipulation"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Capture of Jingzhou"}},{"insert":" can function as a Blue Version of an Extra Combat style effect, to give us the reach to execute multiple enemies at the same time. When closing the game like this, prioritize the opponents who are most threatening to your game plan - those that can wrath you when you don't have interaction to stop a wrath, those that can present lethal damage out of nowhere, those that have a full grip and seem ready to combo. We want to leave the weakest player alive relative to our strategy to finish off last. A lot of the time, the weakest player against Hylda is the one most reliant on their creatures to win the game, as we can simply lock them out of attacking or using their creatures. Combo players and fellow control players are higher on our totem pole of targets marked for death.\n\nAlternatively, if we manage to assemble "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Kykar, Zephyr Awakener"}},{"insert":", "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Archaeomancer"}},{"insert":", and one of the aforementioned extra turn spells, we can create an effective loop to take endless turns that, while finicky, can work even under Rule of Law.\n\nThe basic requirement is to have Kykar in play with access to "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Archaeomancer"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Temporal Manipulation"}},{"insert":" or "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Capture of Jingzhou"}},{"insert":". We cast Archaeomancer, returning anything; it can just be a counterspell, or even nothing at all. We simply need to have it in play. We then cast our extra turn spell, creating a Kykar trigger, which we will use to blink Archaeomancer until the end of turn. When it returns on our end step, we pick back up the extra turn spell we used, and repeat this on the next turn, taking infinite turns. During the infinite turns, it should be trivially easy to just tap all of our opponents' creatures down and kill them with combat damage, or barring some sort of impediment to this, we can just draw our deck until we find "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Cyclonic Rift"}},{"insert":" or "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Winds of Abandon"}},{"insert":"to remove the board that way and win with combat damage.\n\nThis loop also functions under Rule of Law, the only difference is that we must have the Archaeomancer in play already, as we would not be able to cast our extra turn spell and Archaeomancer on the same turn. \n\nThere can be niche scenarios where this loop will not function to win the game - maybe an opponent has a Hexproof/Shroud creature that blocks our Elementals, everybody else's creatures are all tapped down, and we cannot cast both Cyclonic Rift/Winds of Abandon on the same turn as an extra turn spell to remove those things due to having a Rule of Law in play that we cannot get rid of. In those scenarios, it is best to just take out the opponents you can take out before sculpting a perfect hand of 7 cards and ending on an Overloaded Cyclonic Rift.\n\nAlso, while it is not a chain of endless turns, we can also take 2 extra turns back to back with "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Mystic Sanctuary"}},{"insert":" returning an extra turn spell to the top of the library. In a board state with many Elementals, this can often also be sufficient by itself to win.\n\nThe reason I include this combo and no others is that I think Kykar, Archaeomancer, and the extra turn spells are all baseline playable cards within the deck by themselves. Kykar can make evasive flying bodies that we can pump with Hylda, while incidentally providing blink value when we need it. The extra turn spells function well for reach, and Archaeomancer can rebuy a counterspell or a board wipe.\n\nWhile there are other infinite combos with"},{"insert":{"card-link":"Intruder Alarm"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Ashnod's Altar"}},{"insert":", I opted out of the inclusion of these as I think Intruder Alarm is actively working against what we want to be doing most of the time, and Ashnod's is not particularly good for us, as we'd rather keep our creatures, and we don't have very good use of the mana when under Rule of Law. \n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"Establishing a Lock:"},{"insert":"\nOne of the most vicious lockouts this deck can produce is "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Clarion Conqueror"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Opposition"}},{"insert":" alongside"},{"insert":{"card-link":"Harbinger of the Seas"}},{"insert":", and as we can simply stop our opponents from producing anything but Blue Mana either with the static ability from Clarion Conqueror or by tapping their non-blue sources with Opposition on their upkeep. In tandem with Rule of Law and our ability to hold up countermagic, it often becomes impossible for any non-Blue deck to function. \n\n"},{"attributes":{"underline":true,"bold":true},"insert":"Notes on Deck Construction"},{"insert":"\n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"Why Stax?"},{"insert":"\nMy experience with Bracket 4 games may be different from other players. In general, I find the inclusion of Stax necessary to properly play out the game plan of Hylda, as the Commander is inherently quite slow and requires a large amount of setup. Stax lets us equalize with the pod and buys us time to put out this setup. If you play in lower power, feel free to cut the Stax for other combo lines or more Tap Engines\n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"Why don't you run creatures like "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Gideon's Lawkeeper"}},{"insert":" ?\nI find that the mana in our deck is very constrained. Any type of trigger that requires us to pay mana to tap something adds tax to our Hylda trigger, and we are already a deck that has a hard time finding mana. A 2 mana 4/4 is much worse than a 1 mana 4/4. As such, I mostly only include Tap Engines that do not require mana to activate to get the best value out of the 1 mandatory mana that has to be spent on Hylda's trigger. \n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"Why no "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Junk Winder"}},{"insert":" ?\nI find this card to be a win more. It only costs a reasonable amount of mana when we already have an established board of Elementals, most of the time (unless we have a resolved "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Smothering Tithe"}},{"insert":" but that's also quite a strong position), and while it does chain triggers for Hylda, I don't personally think the juice is worth the squeeze here. Funnily enough, it also can be anti-synergistic as the stun effect means we can't buy more Hylda triggers on our opponents' next untap (though I do admit this is a bit of a nitpick as stunning things is often quite good). You can include it if you want. I think it is perfectly fine in a Hylda list, I just never found it to be very castable in the games I played with it unless I was already in a very commanding position.\n\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"How would I build this as Bracket 3?"},{"insert":"\nFor game changers, I would probably run "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Smothering Tithe"}},{"insert":" , "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Fierce Guardianship"}},{"insert":" , and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Cyclonic Rift"}},{"insert":", I would likely run fewer or no Rule of Law style effects because the pace of the game should be slower and let you run splashier cards or more tap engines. And no "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Harbinger of the Seas"}},{"insert":" as it counts as mass land denial.\n"}]}