An Analysis of Azorius Draft Archetypes

Azorius | Dimir | Rakdos | Gruul | Selesyna | Orzhov | Izzet | Golgari

One of my favorite parts of spoiler season is discovering the draft archetypes. As seasoned Magic players understand, each draft environment is going to be a mix of old and new. A certain number will hold to old, faithful positions for infrequent drafters to grab onto, while other color pairs will do something daring and adventurous. I had a nagging question about perceptions of the color pairs and their status: how many times has their draft archetype been built around a new set mechanic, or how often have they repeated a particular archetype. Those nagging questions built up, so I went digging. I'll be presenting my findings here in these articles, one for each color pair.

Some caveats before I begin. There was no realistic way to go back to the very beginning of Magic with this analysis. For one thing, Limited play wouldn't begin until a few years into the game. I started with Return to Ravnica. Pioneer starts there, and that was right before Theros, where the design team formalized the signpost uncommons, the most recent major shift in archetype design philosophy. I'm ending it at Bloomburrow for now, as that was the most recent set being released when I did this research. Future installments will also end at the same point for easy modes of comparison.

I included almost every premier set in my analysis as well as most of the supplemental sets released in that time. The sets excluded were usually left out due to size, lack of impact, or unclear archetypes. (Born of the Gods only has clear support for ally-colored strategies, while Journey into Nyx only had clear support for enemy-colored strategies, for instance, and were assigned accordingly.)

For sets like Strixhaven: School of Mages or Streets of New Capenna, I did not include the three-color draft archetypes in place of whichever color pairs were "missing" from the environment. You could draft Quandrix and Prismari together to make a deck that features red and green together, but that was not a red-green archetype. Similarly, although the Maestros feature blue and red, that is a blue-black-red archetype and would not be indicative of blue-red archetypes.

With my methodology established, let's get into it!

The Color Pair

White is something of a divided color, able to support both a go-wide aggro (White Weenie) strategy or a hard control strategy with board wipes and pinpoint removal. Blue is a traditionally slower color that typically relies on either small, evasive threats or a big finisher, backed up by counterspells to disrupt the opponent long enough for the gameplan to finish out. Combined, they tend closer towards blue's slower speed. Azorius Control is a frequent deck to contend with in standard play.

Their shared creature keywords are flying, flash, and vigilance. Flying has been the go-to for the longest, with flash being granted to white sometime before 2021 and vigilance being granted to blue in late 2023.

Going in, I knew this color pair was going to trend towards being control-oriented and that a popular archetype would be flying. I was kind of right on that account, but the color pair held some surprises for me! Let's get into it.

Flying Archetypes

The flying archetype is predominantly built around flying as an evasive mechanic. A flying Limited deck will usually try to play a few high-toughness creatures to gum up the ground while its one to three flying creatures peck the opponent to death. Disruption and a little bit of life-gain helps pave the way to victory. This archetype naturally leans towards control, but it can play a lot more aggressive with the right pieces.

There have been ten sets in the last twelve years with flying as the key archetype:

Magic 2015

Magic Origins

Ixalan

Rivals of Ixalan

War of the Spark

Core Set 2020

Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths

Core Set 2021

Commander Legends

Bloomburrow

As we can see, this was a frequent favorite for core sets; it's an easy choice, given its status as the one mechanic easiest to understand and use. Even in sets where the archetype is built around another mechanic, the signpost uncommon tends to have flying. In most of these sets, the archetype plays out similarly, except for Bloomburrow, which actively rewards you for controlling flying and nonflying creatures in a mix. I'm looking forward to future sets to see if they employ similar technology to ensure the archetype doesn't silo as hard.

Special note here is Rivals of Ixalan, which featured ascend as a mechanic most heavily in white, blue, and black. I found that the key uncommon cards mostly supported the flying draft archetype already a part of the original Ixalan set that this was drafted with. Tough call, but I marked it here.

Moving on!

Card Type Archetypes

Card Type themed archetypes refer to instances where the color pair actively names some card type and encourages you to stack your deck with them. In draft, creatures are most highly prized due to being the only card type innately able to end the game, so focusing on alternate card types is a fun challenge which comes with some risk. A deck with too many instants and sorceries may find itself overrun before it can set up its gameplan. Here's the list of archetypes!

Dragons of Tarkir: Noncreature spells

Dominaria: Historic (Legendary, Artifact, or Saga)

Core Set 2019: Artifact

Throne of Eldraine: "Glitter" (Artifact or Enchantment)

Theros Beyond Death: Enchantments

Modern Horizons 2: Artifacts

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty: Vehicles

Dominaria United: Instants and Sorceries

Phyrexia: All Will Be One: Artifacts

Lost Caverns of Ixalan: Artifacts

For white-blue, the most common card type to be an archetype was artifacts, with four being solely about artifacts and three more including artifacts or an artifact subtype. This is no surprise, as white and blue are both primary in "friendly to artifacts." The second most common category would be "bundles" (Historic, Glitter, Noncreature spells). Enchantment technically hits third place if you include the Glitter archetype, putting it at two.

An interesting glimpse. I might expect to see an enchantment-adjacent archetype in the upcoming Duskmourn and perhaps the return of the Noncreature Spell/Prowess style archetype when we get back to Tarkir in 2025.

Set Mechanics

Nearly every premier set features some number of nonevergreen keywords and/or mechanics, which it will focus in at least one draft archetype. The new mechanic will always play in a way that makes sense to the color, but it may nudge it in a new way that can help it feel fresh and interesting. Here's my list of set mechanic-oriented draft archetypes:

Return to Ravnica: Detain

Theros: Heroic

Born of the Gods: Heroic

Battle for Zendikar: Awaken

Aether Revolt: Revolt

Amonkhet: Embalm

Hour of Devastation: Eternalize

Ravnica Allegiance: Addendum

Kaldheim: Foretell

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms: Dungeons

Modern Horizons 3: Energy

Return to Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance both play into white and blue as a control strategy by holding down opposing creatures or allowing you more spells that you can hold up as interaction if needed or deploy on your turn if you need the upside. Embalm and eternalize are an interesting moment of a graveyard-oriented strategy for the color pair, allowing for a steady resilience common to the pair. Kaldheim's archetype created Vega, the Watcher, the first ever card which specifically rewarded you for casting spells from anywhere other than your hand.

Creature Type Archetypes

Another straightforward category name: archetypes centered around picking cards if they have the right creature type. Historically, the reward for playing multiples of the same type involves making the creatures collectively stronger to end the game faster, which skews these more aggressive. Let's take a look at which types have shown up in white-blue:

Shadows Over Innistrad: Spirits

Eldritch Moon: Spirits

Zendikar Rising: Party (Warrior, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric)

Midnight Hunt: Spirits

Crimson Vow: Spirits

Brother's War: Soldiers

March of the Machine: Knights

Murders at Karlov Manor: Detectives

Spirits win by a landslide here, at half of the kindred archetypes. Those were all from Innistrad sets, a setting which remains popular, so we can expect the type to continue to be popular in the feature.

Soldiers and Knights were interesting deviations, which I hope to see more of in the future. I think it was odd having two class types traditionally associated with red-white move into blue-white in the same year, but hey, mix things up.

Detectives and the party batch feel very unlikely to return. Both of them were made under very specific circumstances, ones which didn't excite enough of the playerbase to be worth the hassle of bringing them back in a premier set. Can't all be winners.

Other Archetypes

These are the oddballs, the ones which don't fit neatly into the other categories and which don't have a significant enough number to group up itself.

Oath of the Gatewatch: Tempo

Kaladesh: Enters the Battlefield

Modern Horizons 1: Blink

Streets of New Capenna: Counters

Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate: Flicker

Wilds of Eldraine: Tapping Creatures

Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth: Draw Second Card

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: No Spells

Flicker and flicker-adjacent archetypes are another one of the subtle standbys in white-blue. Like flying, these effects show up even in sets where they're not the focus; it's just good value. Special consideration to Wilds of Eldraine: white and blue have also been the only colors that get to tap down the opposing creatures, but it was never a full archetype until this set brought us Sharae of Numbing Depths and friends. They made sure it leaned more aggressive because a control tap-down deck can be miserable to go against.

Similarly, drawing two cards or not casting a spell on your turn are leaning moreso into white and blue as control colors. Accrue value over time or hold up interaction. Nice, flexible archetypes that work nicely with the other colors and archetypes.

Aside from sets using other parts of the color pair, there were two sets that developed a new archetype based on the needs of the surrounding archetypes. Streets of New Capenna had shards. The Esper faction, Obscura, had a mechanic that used +1/+1 counters, while the Bant faction, Brokers, used shield counters as their faction mechanic. The overlapping color pair here, white-blue, chose to care about any kind of counter on creatures in order to synergize with both factions.

Seeing how and why these develop are interesting insights into the archetypes and why they exist. Every set wants some familiar amidst the new, and the standbys serve that function well, but sometimes it's important to build synergy, and that's where we get new and unique ways to play the same color pairs even thirty years into the game.

Breakdown

Alright, so how do these archetypes shake out? Let's talk percentages and rates!

Set Mechanic: 23.4%

Card Type: 21.3%

Flying: 21.3%

Creature Type: 17.0%

Other: 17.0%

Flying is a significantly common archetype within the color pair, to no one's surprise, tied for second with card type archetypes, only being beaten by set mechanic archetypes. There are some interesting ways to look over, revise, and possibly re-divide them, very much beyond the scope of this quick peek. Some further investigations might ask how the numbers shake out if Spirit Archetypes get counted with the Flying category as well, being that the creature type mostly flies in those sets, or how many of these could be counted as being purely control with some light set-theming.

A really good question that I hope to one day dig into would be things like the speed of the archetypes: how fast do they play? How often is white-blue a control color versus midrange? Theros Beyond Death had the fastest of the three Constellation archetypes, being more on the aggro side. Are there other sets where white-blue would try to push into the red zone faster?

This kind of research could keep me busy for months, so I'll have to cut it here.

Conclusion

White and blue, as a color pair, actually seem fairly balanced in terms of variety. The "standby" options are some form of flying or control, in order to allow for a slower deck in the formats.

They hit a brief spot in 2019-2021 where the flying archetype was really popular, but that honestly seemed like it was done for cross-set synergy purposes (likely for the same reason we had two artifact themes in one year), and we haven't hit a glut like that since. I'd predict another flying archetype next year and probably a Vehicles archetype in the unnamed Death Race Set. Looking forward to it!

What's been your favorite white-blue draft archetype? Were you surprised by any of the percentage shake-outs? What would you like to see more of in the future?

Let me know in the comments below, and I'll catch you next time with blue-black archetypes.