Azorius Oculus
Azorius Oculus
Blue White Reanimator in Standard
Azorius Oculus Primer
Author: Zen Miyaji-Thorne
Hello everyone!
Two weekends ago, I competed in Pro Tour Aetherdrift in Chicago, where I played Azorius Oculus in the Standard portion of the tournament. This has been a pet deck of mine for the past few months, and while it’s positioning for the event wasn’t fantastic, I was happy to have played it and I finished with a 6-4 record in the constructed rounds – nothing exciting, but a solid result considering the caliber of my opponents.
In today’s article, I will be going over the decklist I played at the Pro Tour and everything you need to know to pilot the deck – hands to keep, sequencing, key card interactions, how to play around hate cards, tips and tricks, and how to sideboard and position yourself against the top decks of the format!
Four Facts about Azorious Oculus
1. The deck is essentially trying to put a creature (Abhorrent Oculus or Haughty Djinn, and Monastery Mentor post-board) into the graveyard, and then reanimate it on turn three (though you can do it as early as turn two if you’re lucky!).
This is enabled by cheap, efficient interaction spells that allow you to keep up with your opponent while you are setting up with your cantrip spells. Once you do return a creature, you will often overwhelm your opponent with the advantage you get – either by building a board with Manifest Dread triggers from Abhorrent Oculus, or a big Haughty Djinn that enables you to chain multiple spells thanks to its mana discount ability.
2. The deck thrives against the slower midrange decks, as you have the time to set up with all of your cantrips. If your opponent isn’t pressuring you, their removal is quite poor against you, as you have the time to simply hard cast your creatures, then return it with your reanimation spells once they deal with it.
3. The deck can struggle against the aggressive decks, as they don’t give you a lot of time to set up. However, this deck is consistent, and many of these creature decks will struggle to beat a turn three Abhorrent Oculus, especially if it’s backed up by some interaction spells.
4. The deck struggles the most against the decks that “GO BIG” i.e. Mono White Tokens and Zur Domain. Both of these decks have a lot of exile removal (Lay Down Arms, Leyline Binding, Sunfall), which stops you from doing the previously mentioned plan of using reanimation spells to return creatures once your opponent has dealt with them, and their ability to go over the top of you means they can do things that are more powerful than putting an Abhorrent Oculus into play.
Hands to Keep
The general play pattern is to cantrip on turn two, and then reanimate a creature on turn three.
- Your best play on turn three is to reanimate Abhorrent Oculus while holding up interaction.
- Your second-best play is to reanimate Haughty Djinn while holding up interaction.
- Your third-best play is to tap out to cast Abhorrent Oculus on turn three.
Anything else is usually too weak.
Therefore, the hands you keep is based on whether the hand can do one of these three plays with a high degree of probability. This means that most hands with a cantrip spell, a reanimation spell and at least two lands is a keep (though reanimation spell + cantrip + five lands is not). Also, hands with multiple cantrips are generally a keep, especially if you have some interaction to buy you time while you’re spinning your wheels.
If your hand only has one cantrip and no reanimation spell, then it’s a bit more questionable as the chance you miss is high. With these hands, it would depend a lot on what else it has e.g. is the interaction in hand well suited for the matchup. If you keep a hand with only one cantrip, Chart a Course is the worst one because it only digs two cards, though it does get better if you have a creature in hand already to discard to it.
In certain matchups, these rules can be bent, e.g. against any creature deck, a slightly weak hand with Temporary Lockdown or Split Up is probably a keep, as is a hand with Break the Spell against a deck with Rest in Peace. However, if your hand doesn’t function, then you can’t keep it, even if you have one of these silver bullets in it. Ultimately, this deck only functions if you’re able to set up a powerful play on turn three (or turn four at the latest).
It is very rare you would keep a hand without one of the twelve cantrip spells or Founding the Third Path in it, as without them, it’s near impossible to either be reanimating a creature or casting an Abhorrent Oculus on turn three.
Founding the Third Path into a cantrip spell is the most broken turn two play this deck can make (outside of milling a creature on turn one and getting it back on turn two). Therefore, most hands with Founding + two lands is a keep, unless it’s highly dysfunctional. Even if you don’t have a cantrip spell in hand, if you’re on the draw, or you have a surveil land on turn one, you have a few chances to try to find one to set up the broken turn two. Or if you have another card you can cast off the first chapter like a Bounce Off or Soul Partition against a creature deck, then that also makes the keep reasonable.
Don’t be scared to mulligan with this deck – it mulligans very well. Your best draws can be enabled off just four cards (cantrip + reanimation spell + two lands), so you can comfortably go down to six or even five cards. What you can’t do is keep hands that just don’t function. Always remember, in most matchups you have to have either Abhorrent Oculus, or Haughty Djinn plus spells, on turn three.
Sequencing
The deck can seem complicated to play because there are a lot of options with all the cantrip spells, but similar to Izzet Phoenix in Pioneer, it’s actually quite straightforward because it’s usually clear what you need to do (get an Abhorrent Oculus into play, with or without mana spare, or get a Haughty Djinn into play with mana spare on turn three).
How you sequence your cards to get there is usually also straightforward – you just cast your cantrips in such a way that maximizes the amount of cards you see to get there, with some concessions made along the way e.g. casting Moment of Truth because you need a third land, or casting Chart a Course to ensure you have a creature in the graveyard to reanimate.
As your main plan is the most powerful action you can be taking in almost every matchup, it is basically your sole focus every game. There are situations where you look for other things, but they generally are obvious e.g. looking for Split Up because casting that on turn three is usually better than an Abhorrent Oculus against a creature deck, or looking for a Break the Spell or Destroy Evil because your opponent has a Rest in Peace play.
Another common play is to dig for Negate – though this often comes after you’ve reanimated your creature, as you want it as protection against Gix’s Command or Sunfall on turn five.
If you have a third land in hand, usually you want to cast Free the Fae on turn two over Moment of Truth as it digs one more card. If you are looking for lands, though, cast Moment of Truth or Chart a Course.
If you have a reanimation spell + creature in hand to discard, you usually play Chart a Course on turn two to guarantee a reanimation on turn three. However, if you don’t have the creature or the reanimation spell, it’s generally better to cast Free the Fae or Moment of Truth first, as they dig for more cards, and then on turn three you can always cast Chart a Course, discard a creature, and get it back with Helping Hand.
Against attritional decks, especially post-board, you often want to hold Chart a Course because you’ll cast it later in the game after you’ve attacked (often with a Picklock Prankster) to draw two cards. In matchups where you have time to hard cast your creatures, you don’t need to discard them, and you’ll value the card advantage more.
A common play is to cast a Founding the Third Path on turn two and a cantrip spell, which puts two (or more) cards into the graveyard, and then with the mill from chapter two on turn three, you have enough cards in your graveyard to hard cast Abhorrent Oculus on turn three.
This will leave your graveyard empty before the third chapter of the Saga, but you can always put a spell into the graveyard from Oculus’ manifest dread trigger, or cast a spell during your next draw step before the trigger goes on the stack.
Turn three is generally your key turn, so think carefully at the beginning of the turn about how you want to sequence your cards. You often want to try prioritising getting Haughty Djinn into play first, so that the rest of your cards are discounted for the rest of the turn. This comes up often when you have the chance to return multiple creatures in one turn e.g. Helping Hand on Haughty Djinn, then cast a cantrip spell and then a Helping Hand or Recommission to reanimate another Djinn or Abhorrent Oculus into play.
Sometimes, it is correct to return Haughty Djinn instead of Abhorrent Oculus even if you can only get one creature back. This is usually when you think it’s walking into a removal spell. At least by returning Djinn, you get to take advantage of the mana discount to cast a few more spells.
Even against a sorcery-speed removal like Maelstrom Pulse, returning Djinn and chaining a few cantrips may be better than returning Oculus and getting one manifest dread creature out of it. But against instant-speed removal, returning Djinn is definitely better in these spots.
Think carefully about what spells you want to cast before you go to combat. This may let you grow Haughty Djinn and change the combat maths dynamic. It also may give you more information before deciding whether you want to attack or not. Note, specifically with Free the Fae, your opponent will also have more information about how they want to block/use their removal if you cast it pre-combat. Just be careful and think carefully before you proceed.
Remember to dig for lands. This deck is more mana hungry than it looks – it really needs to hit its first four or five land drops. While the reanimation part of the deck doesn’t cost a lot of mana, you do fall behind on board setting it up, and so to catch up you need to be able to cast multiple spells on turns four and five. In addition, having access to more mana is how you can “chain” spells with Haughty Djinn and overwhelm your opponent with card advantage. Post-board, when you bring in Monastery Mentor, it’s even more important to hit your fifth land on time, as you want to cast Mentor with Negate up in many matchups.
Hitting land drops is also important for flipping your manifest dread creatures, plus casting spells. You generally want to hit all of your land drops unless you want to hold back a land for Hopeless Nightmare or Chart a Course.
Having multiple blue lands is important so you can chain multiple spells in one turn, especially if you have Haughty Djinn in play.
However, it’s also important to have two white sources (and sometimes three) so you can cast two reanimation spells or Split Up. It’s also not uncommon to have a turn where you cast Helping Hand for Djinn, then need multiple other white lands to cast Soul Partition, another reanimation spell etc.
Key Individual Card Interactions
Always be aware of how big Haughty Djinn is, and always be calculating how big you can make it with the cards you have in hand.
Sometimes you can set up an unexpected lethal attack as your cantrips may put other spells into the graveyard along the way while simultaneously finding more spells. If you have a Djinn in play with a few lands, it’s not inconceivable that a single Free the Fae or a Moment of Truth in hand can convert into four to six additional power.
If you are planning to attack with the Djinn, play Meticulous Archive pre-combat as if you mill a spell, you will get to deal an additional point of damage.
Against decks with Cut Down, don’t cast the Djinn with only one spell in the graveyard (unless you have a spell in hand to fizzle the Cut Down).
It’s a great blocker, especially against decks like Dimir Bounce and Esper Pixie, where you need to stop them from snowballing you with Kaito, Bane of Nightmares.
It’s good for activating Chart a Course in grindy matchups where you value the card advantage more than putting a creature into the graveyard.
In games where you’re flooded out, you can Bounce Off or Soul Partition the Picklock Prankster from play, then cast the Free the Fae side later on (followed by Picklock Prankster from the adventure zone).
When you’re exiling cards from your graveyard to cast Abhorrent Oculus, it’s generally one of the first cards to exile as it’s not a spell for Djinn/Founding, and you’re almost never looking to reanimate it back. However, sometimes you may have to Recommission it back just to have an extra blocker.
It is often THE cantrip you want to hold the most because it digs the least and gives you the opportunity to discard a creature if you draw into one later. However, in matchups where they have Faerie Mastermind or you want to hold counterspells later on, you’ll end up casting it first while you still have a window to do so.
When you cast the Saga, think carefully about which chapter you want to put it on.
Early in the game, you’ll usually put it on chapter one to cast another spell. However, if you don’t have a spell to cast off it, you may want to put it on chapter two so that you can use the third chapter the following turn. You need to be careful though, as if you cast it on chapter two on turn two and mill a creature, you may have a target for the Recommission in your hand on turn three, but then you won’t be able to utilize its third chapter to flashback a spell.
In this scenario, it is better to cast the Saga on turn two on its first chapter and cast nothing, then the next turn the second chapter will still mill a creature, and you can return it with Recommission on turn three, and then on turn four when you have access to mana again you can take advantage of its third chapter.
When it is going to chapter three, always announce a stop in your draw step, so that you have the opportunity to cast a spell before you go to your main phase and choose a card to flashback. In this window, you may cast a cantrip spell to try to find a creature to reanimate back if you have a Helping Hand or Recommission already in the graveyard, or you may simply cast a spell that you want to flashback again on the same turn e.g. Bounce Off to return two creatures.
Later on in the game, you’ll often cast it directly on chapter two to mill yourself to find a target for a reanimation spell and/or try to grow your Haughty Djinn, or on chapter three to flashback a spell straight away e.g. returning a Split Up for five mana.
If you have two Founding the Third Path in play, with one going to chapter two and one going to chapter three, put the chapter three trigger on the stack first, so chapter two resolves first, and then you can find a reanimation target/a better reanimation target for when you flashback a reanimation spell on chapter three. However, if you are playing against Ghost Vacuum, you want to do it the opposite way, so it forces your opponent to activate it first if they don’t want you to flashback the spell, and then you mill yourself and this may give you a reanimation target that they now can’t exile.
Founding works well with Monastery Mentor, as the first chapter can give you two triggers if you have a spell to cast off it, and the third chapter will give you an additional trigger if you flashback a spell. Later in the game, you can play the Saga on the third chapter straight away and flashback a spell for two Mentor triggers.
For tracking the number of cards in the graveyard for casting Abhorrent Oculus, remember that the third chapter exiles the card even if you don’t cast it, but the Saga itself goes into the graveyard once it hits the third chapter, so the number of cards in your graveyard will remain unchanged.
If you have a Soul Partition, when the Saga hits the third chapter, you can exile it and re-cast it later for more value (while still getting the flashback trigger). With Break the Spell, you can draw a card by destroying your own Saga. Note, this only works if the spell is in your hand.
You can mill your opponent. This comes up very seldom, but if they reveal a key spell to a map token activation, you may want to mill them so they don’t draw it.
Recommission returning the creature with a +1+1 counter is crucial against red decks where they have Lithomantic Barrage and Witchstalker Frenzy (Abhorrent Oculus comes back as a 6/6).
You can reanimate Ghost Vacuum with Recommission.
The reason to play Bounce Off over Into the Floodmaw is because you can bounce your own creatures. This is important against decks like Zur Domain and Mono White Tokens, where you can use it as a pseudo-protection spell by bouncing your creatures in response to their removal spells. It also lets you bounce your manifest dread creatures, which is a good way to get a key spell by bouncing it to your hand, e.g. Split Up against creatures or Negate against Sunfall.
You can chump block with a manifest dread creature, bounce it to your hand with Bounce Off, then cast the spell (e.g. Soul Partition) on another creature before damage.
Similar to Bounce Off, you can use this as a pseudo-protection spell, or as a way to “bounce” a key manifest dread creature and cast it as a spell later. Note, if you exile your own card this way, you don’t have to pay the additional tax. You can also exile lands that were manifest dread and play them later on.
Unlike Bounce Off, because the card you target is exiled instead of returned to hand, it is safe from Hopeless Nightmare or Duress.
Against Sheltered by Ghosts, if you can’t pay ward, you do have the option of exiling the aura in combat, returning a creature, and ambushing theirs in combat. However, they will still be able to cast it later for four mana.
Against hate cards like Ghost Vacuum or Rest in Peace, you can exile it at their end step, then cast a few cantrip spells and hope to find a target to return on your turn before they have a chance to re-cast their cards.
If you exile a Mockingbird, they can re-cast it for three mana and copy an Abhorrent Oculus or Haughty Djinn because of how their card is worded.
Soul Partition can only hit non-land permanents, so it cannot exile creature lands. Be careful of this, as Risen Reef and Soulstone Sanctuary (especially with Manifold Mouse) can be a problem.
Be careful around the timing of when you play Mentor. It is quite vulnerable, so ideally you want to play it with some protection (a Negate or a reanimation spell if they kill it). On the other hand, it can also be a bit slow, so you sometimes have to just jam it aggressively, especially against decks without a lot of answers and untapping with it is game-winning e.g. against Jeskai Convoke or Selesnya Tokens.
Playing Around Hate
To beat an early Rest in Peace, unless you go down the Monastery Mentor route (which is often tough as most Rest in Peace decks have a lot of removal except Jeskai Convoke), you have to find an answer for it because your deck can’t really function if they have it in play.
Against decks that have other enchantments other than Rest in Peace, look for an answer proactively, so that you can deal with Rest in Peace straight away if it hits play, and if they don’t draw it, you can use it on something else e.g. Sheltered by Ghosts or Up the Beanstalk.
Depending on the matchup and how much mana you have access to, you generally are looking to deal with Rest in Peace on their end step, and then untap and set up + reanimate on your turn. Or if you have five or six lands in play, you can do all of this in one turn.
Soul Partition on an early Rest in Peace is good, as it will take them a turn or two to re-cast it (while also bottlenecking their mana), which gives you a window to get an Abhorrent Oculus into play.
Against decks with This Town Ain’t Big Enough, they can bounce their Rest in Peace in response to your removal. You will still have a window to get a creature into play. However, that will lose to one removal spell (and if they go Rest in Peace into removal then you can’t reanimate it back later), so if possible, you want to try to sneak two creatures into play while you have this window.
A late Rest in Peace, especially if you have some board already, is much easier to beat. If your board is Haughty Djinns, you will still have to find an answer for the Rest in Peace, but the mana discount from the Djinn makes it easier to chain cantrips to find an answer. If you have Abhorrent Oculus in play, it’s probably not too difficult to beat the Rest in Peace and you probably want to prioritize finding a Negate so you have a protection spell for if they draw a removal spell.
Another way to beat a late Rest in Peace is with Monastery Mentor – once you have enough lands in play, you can often beat a Rest in Peace with Mentor as you have the mana to chain multiple spells or cast it with Negate backup to win through their removal spells.
If they have an early Rest in Peace and you don’t have an answer or a path to find it, you often have to jam Monastery Mentor aggressively and hope for the best. Sometimes your opponent keeps a weak hand because it has a Rest in Peace in it, and therefore doesn’t have the removal spell.
If you answer a Rest in Peace, the card you answered it with (Break the Spell, Destroy Evil etc.) will go to the graveyard.
A turn one Ghost Vacuum is difficult to beat, but with enough cantrip spells (and often with a Founding the Third Path) you can mill enough to power through an Abhorrent Oculus.
A Ghost Vacuum later on in the game is usually much easier to beat, as hardcasting an Oculus through it is much more trivial. Note, against decks with Ghost Vacuum, hardcasting an Oculus is your main plan, so don’t discard them to Chart a Course.
Against decks with Ghost Vacuum, don’t sideboard out any Founding the Third Path, as it is crucial for milling enough to power through a Ghost Vacuum.
You can try to “bait” your opponent into exiling the wrong card e.g. you target a card with the third chapter of Founding the Third Path and incentivize them to exile the spell then reanimate a creature, or if you have multiple reanimation spells and multiple creatures in the graveyard, cast the first one on Haughty Djinn, have them exile it in response, then cast a reanimation spell on Abhorrent Oculus.
If you have two Founding the Third Path, with one going to chapter two and one going to chapter three, put the chapter two trigger on the stack first, so the chapter three trigger resolves first, forcing your opponent to activate Ghost Vacuum if they don’t want you to flashback the spell, and then you mill and this may give you a reanimation target that they now can’t stop.
The six mana ability on Ghost Vacuum can be difficult to beat if they exile enough creatures. Note, this does put the creature itself into play, so if you Bounce Off or Soul Partition a creature of yours they exiled, it will go back to your hand, and you can then re-cast it later on. Or if Split Up their board, those creatures will go to your graveyard, and then you can reanimate them back.
You generally want to put instants and sorceries into the graveyard, so that they can fuel Haughty Djinn or be a flashback target for the third chapter of Founding the Third Path.
If you have a Bounce Off or Soul Partition in hand, you may want to put a key spell face-down, as you can Bounce Off/Soul Partition your creature and then cast the spell. You can also do this with lands. Key spells for this are cards like Split Up, Helping Hand, Negate or Destroy Evil.
If you are deciding over two spells, put face-down the one that you’re more likely to want to potentially bounce back later, or you simply can’t flashback with Founding the Third Path e.g. Negate. This gives you more options later on, and Haughty Djinn doesn’t care which spell is in the graveyard.
If you are deciding between Founding the Third Path or a land, always put the Saga face-down, so you have an option to Bounce Off/Soul Partition it back later on.
You usually want to put a creature face-down so you can flip it. However, sometimes you may want to put it into the graveyard so that you can reanimate it back. For example, if you hit Abhorrent Oculus and you have a Recommission in hand, against a deck with a lot of removal spells, you may want to put it face down, as if you flip it, and they kill it, you can get it back later on.
However, against a deck like Gruul Prowess, you may want to put it into the graveyard, as next turn you can return it for two mana and have a 6/6 and a 2/2 in play with one more untapped land as opposed to just a 5/5 if you had flipped it face up in play.
Picklock Prankster is often good to put face-down as it can serve as a flying attacker and blocker, and you can return it with Bounce Off/Soul Partition later for more value.
Tips and Tricks
You can afford to be patient if your opponent isn’t pressuring you. The deck plays the long game well because you are full of cantrips, and you can chain them. Just make sure you’re hitting your land drops, so that you can find windows to chain multiple spells together.
As mentioned previously, that is also how you often beat graveyard hate, where with five or six lands in play you set up a turn where you go answer for their hate piece -> Chart a Course/other cantrip spell -> reanimate. Casting Picklock Pranksters is also a good way to slow down the game.
Against decks with removal spells, if you have time and/or don’t need to hold up interaction, you want to hard cast your creatures and then get them back with a reanimation spell once they kill it instead of discarding it to a Chart a Course. You want to try to maximize the number of creatures you can present to make them run out of removal spells, especially with Abhorrent Oculus.
Against the aggressive red decks, Recommission is better than Helping Hand. It gives you an untapped blocker, and if you return an Abhorrent Oculus, the +1+1 counter puts it out of range of Lithomantic Barrage and Witchstalker Frenzy.
In matchups where they have sweepers, once you have board presence, do everything you can to hold up Negate. You don’t want to lose to a Gix’s Command or Sunfall.
If you have a Founding the Third Path in play, you often want to take a counterspell over a reanimation spell with Moment of Truth/Free the Fae, as the latter can be flashbacked with the Saga later on.
Matchup Guide
Matchup: Zur Domain
This matchup is similar to Mono White Tokens, but they have the ability to set up Zur, Eternal Schemer + Overlords/Leyline Binding. Once they do, it’s very difficult to win, as the enchantments have hexproof and lifelink.
In games where they have Zur, Eternal Schemer, you want to go very wide, then set up a turn where they either attack and you chump block and bounce your creature so they don’t gain any life and set up a big lethal attack back, or you set up a big lethal attack, then bounce your creatures that get blocked to stop them from gaining life. However, going wide this way does expose you to their sweepers, so either look for a Negate or cross your fingers and hope for the best.
In pre-board games, you have to be very aggressive and take risks, as otherwise you will just lose to the card advantage generated from Up the Beanstalk as they have enough interaction to slow you down until they set up Zur, Eternal Schemer.
In post-board games, you want to answer Up the Beanstalk straight away. Kill it on sight, as if you stop their cards from flowing, they are more likely to stumble as their mana and spells can both be clunky. A turn-two Up the Beanstalk is actually more threatening than a Rest in Peace, as the former allows them to find more interaction and possibly a Rest in Peace.
Later in the game, you generally want to hold Negate just for their sweepers. Everything else you want to try to beat by simply grinding through it.
When holding up Negate for a Sunfall, it’s best you hold up two mana even if you have Haughty Djinn, as otherwise it can be devastating if they Get Lost your Djinn at your end step and then untap into Sunfall and you can no longer counter it.
Matchup: Esper Pixie
The easiest way to lose is to their aggressive draws. Therefore, interact with their board where you can (especially with Optimistic Scavenger and Stormchaser’s Talent) and try to keep your life total reasonably high.
Be careful of Sheltered by Ghosts and This Town Ain’t Big Enough. The latter on your end step can be devastating, and an Abhorrent Oculus sent back to hand is often worse than one in the graveyard, as you can’t reanimate it/you may not have six cards to exile to re-cast it.
If you’re not under a lot of pressure, it’s often right to cast Picklock Prankster instead of getting Abhorrent Oculus into play, especially as the former blocks quite well and can buy you more time before you deploy an Oculus (either with Negate back up, or try to set up a turn where you get two Oculi into play, and it’s difficult for them to deal with both in one turn).
You can lose to the Stormchaser’s Talent + This Town Ain’t Big Enough loop in the late game. It’s important to find a Negate to break the loop.
In post-board games, it can be tough as they usually have three copies of Rest in Peace, and they can “protect” it by bouncing it with This Town Ain’t Big Enough. Try to answer the enchantment once they’re tapped out or once they’ve spent all their cards.
If you have a way to reanimate Abhorrent Oculus on the same turn (e.g. you have Chart a Course + Abhorrent Oculus + reanimation spell in hand), then you can try to answer Rest in Peace on their end step, as even if they bounce it with This Town Ain’t Big Enough, you have a window to get an Oculus into play.
You want to keep your life total above eight so you don’t die to a couple of Hopeless Nightmares triggers. Good Esper opponents will opt not to play Hopeless Nightmares early and prioritize on being aggressive with their creatures, then once Oculus has stabilized the board, they’ll then play and loop Nightmares to deal the last points of damage without having to attack.
Matchup: Gruul Prowess / Gruul Leyline
The matchup is close, and you generally feel like you are one Monstrous Rage away from losing, but the matchup is overall about even and usually the person on the play has a big advantage.
You need to try to assemble an Abhorrent Oculus as quickly as possible and present blockers. Therefore, you have to mulligan aggressively in this matchup. You need a hand that can get an Oculus into play on turn three and can interact in the first few turns. An Oculus on its own, especially on the draw and/or post-board is not enough.
You generally want to use your manifest dread tokens to block and slow them down, but don’t block with Abhorrent Oculus or Haughty Djinn unless you have two as you don’t want to walk into Monstrous Rage. This also means that you often want to be attacking with your flying creatures, as if you’re not going to block with them, you may as well attack.
However, if you have Bounce Off or Soul Partition against Monstrous Rage, you can block with your flying creatures as well. Generally, you win this matchup by stabilizing the board, and then try to set up one massive lethal attack or a lethal attack over two turns to close the game out quickly, because as mentioned before, you’re often just one Monstrous Rage topdeck away from losing at any given moment.
It’s really important to think carefully about how you use your Bounce Off and Soul Partition in this matchup. On one hand, you often want to use them aggressively as a way to keep your life total high and not let them get ahead on the board before you reanimate a creature and stabilize the board.
On the other hand, Monstrous Rage is their best card against you, and having one of these up for when they go for it is often the difference between winning and losing. Think carefully about whether you need to throw them off early to buy yourself time, or whether you can afford to hold it to try to get them when they go for the kill later on.
Be careful of Screaming Nemesis – it’s a massive pain to deal with, as if we block it with a big creature it’s generally very painful, but our removal doesn’t deal with it well. Bounce Off and Ephara’s Dispersal are both awkward against it – your best bet is often to Soul Partition it and hope they don’t hit five lands, or it’s too slow by then.
In post-board games, they bring in a lot of removal spells (Lithomantic Barrage, Pawpatch Formation), and morph more into a midrange deck with the plan to proactively deal with your creatures and rely on the incremental advantage from Innkeeper’s Talent and Questing Druid to pull ahead. This can be difficult to beat, as it also makes your bounce spells worse, as they have more time to re-cast their creatures. You can play around Lithomantic Barrage by returning Abhorrent Oculus with Recommission, as it is a 6/6.
Remember that Soulstone Sanctuary can be given double strike or trample by Manifold Mouse, and you cannot deal with the creature-land via Soul Partition.
If you are playing against the Leyline version, always be thinking about whether they can kill you with Burn Together (Callous Sell-Sword). Think very carefully about combat and how you want to block. Note, six of their pump spells give trample, and six also give hexproof, so you need to think more carefully about how you want to use your interaction spells as you don’t want to get blown out by Snakeskin Veil or Overprotect giving their creature hexproof (and a pump) in combat.
Matchup: Jeskai Convoke
Always be aware of how much damage they can deal with Imodane’s Recruiter (and you often have to think about one drop into Imodane’s Recruiter if they have four lands). Also, watch out for Resolute Reinforcements on your end step into Imodane’s Recruiter on their turn.
Neither Bounce Off or Soul Partition are particularly good in this matchup as all of their cards are cheap to re-cast, but you can use them to fizzle their Gleeful Demolition or stop them from convoking out Knight-Errant of Eos on a certain turn, which are both a major tempo swing.
Post-board, the matchup gets a lot harder, as they have Rest in Peace and some counter-spells, which combined with pressure, can be devastating as you often spend your first few turns spinning your wheels and then the counter-spell can prevent you from recovering – whether it be stopping you from getting an Abhorrent Oculus into play or resolving a Split Up.
Post-board, Monastery Mentor is a good plan as it can create a lot of blockers so they can’t beat you by going wide, and it plays around Destroy Evil better than the two blue creatures.
Matchup: Golgari Midrange
Be careful of the main deck graveyard hate they may have. They usually have some combination of Scavenging Ooze/Tranquil Frillback in the main, as well as four Restless Cottage. To play around Tranquil Frillback and Restless Cottage, hold your instant-speed cantrips to cast on their end step.
Try to diversify your threats so you don’t get blown out by Maelstrom Pulse. Note, Maelstrom Pulse can only kill one manifest dread creature, as each manifest dread creature has a different name.
You need to play around Gix’s Command, as it can deal with an Abhorrent Oculus and all the manifest dread creatures, as well as Monastery Mentor and its tokens in post-board games. You usually beat it by finding a Negate, or by presenting multiple big creatures, of which the Command can only deal with one.
Alternatively, if you have Monastery Mentor in play, you can hold multiple instant speed spells to buff the Mentor + the tokens out of range, or just stock up on reanimation spells in hand to cast once they Command you so you can build back a board.
Conclusion
That’s all for today – I hope you enjoyed this article as I covered in detail everything you need to know to pick up Azorius Oculus and how to play it against the top decks in the format! I absolutely love this deck, and I think that some version of it – whether it be straight Azorius or Jeskai, will continue to be a player in the format going forward.
Till next time!
Zen Miyaji-Thorne
@mtgzen on X
About the Author
Zen Miyaji-Thorne is a seasoned writer and mainstay on the Three for One Trading writing team. He is an avid Eternal player from Auckland, New Zealand and enjoys competing in local Legacy events and playing Old School over webcam with friends.
Previously, he was a Silver Pro for multiple years and his results included five Grand Prix Top 8s, a 27th place at Pro Tour Amonkhet, three consecutive online Regional PTQ wins, and he co-created the Modern Dredge deck.
Nowadays though, he primarily plays Legacy, his favorite format, but he also branches out into Pioneer and Modern.
More Articles by Zen Miyaji-Thorne
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