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Gateway to Victory

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One of the most exciting cards to come out of Rivals of Ixalan is Azor's Gateway. Abrade aside, this is a card that dodges most removal in the format and gives you the ability to cheaply fix your draw. Eventually, it flips and gives you a burst of life and mana which you can use to turn the corner and get your opponent on the back foot. The catch is that we haven't really seen anyone find a strong way to take advantage of the card just yet. Maybe this the right home:


Azor's Gateway
This is an exciting control deck that has a great way to leverage Azor's Gateway. You have a strong spread of mana costs, including nine one-drops in your control deck. X-spells like Battle at the Bridge are particularly powerful because they count as cheap spells while you're trying to accumulate varying mana costs, but is also an enormous haymaker once you have a Sanctum of the Sun to generate a ton of mana.

The idea behind this deck is that you've got a good mix of removal spells and discard spells; even Doomfall which counts as both. This means that you've got plenty of game against aggressive and control decks alike, and Azor's Gateway to help find the cards that are more impactful in any given matchup.

All right, so we have a giant pile of removal and discard, spread across a wide range of mana costs. This helps ensure that you can resolve Azor's Gateway and have the time and means to flip it. But what do you do from there? In addition to Deserts, Hour of Promise finds Arch of Orazca, which is a great way to keep the cards flowing. In addition to that, you have Mastermind's Acquisition, which is a great way to both leverage game-swinging singletons like Lost Legacy and Never // Return across your 75, but it's also a great way to leverage your mana advantage. You can either find Battle at the Bridge as a super ritual, or Wildest Dreams to rebuy all of your haymakers and Duress effects, or even Torment of Hailfire to just get your opponent dead.

If you're looking for a control deck that can go very, very big in this Standard format, this just might be the deck you're looking for. You've got tons of flexibility thanks to the card selection afforded by Azor's Gateway, Treasure Map, and Mastermind's Acquisition, combined with an incredible lategame engine in Arch of Orazca and Sanctum of the Sun. Decks that can turn a corner like this and generate huge sums of mana are always something I'm excited to see, and I can't wait to get a chance to find out what this deck looks like in action.


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