by Johnny Cycles, July 25th, 2025

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Dragons in Pioneer! This month I’m dipping into a color combination I’ve yet to try Dragons in – Azorius! narrows our choice of finishers considerably, while also eliminating all hasty threats. Sigh. But what it does bring to the table in our choice of Dragon is card advantage attached to difficult to deal with threats. And that’s not even considering the counter magic we can now play.

Here’s the decklist:

Decklist – Azorius Dragons

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Pioneer

Creatures (20)

4 Clarion Conqueror
4 Dragon Turtle
4 Dragonologist
3 Dragonlord Ojutai
3 Iymrith, Desert Doom
2 Dirgur Island Dragon

Spells (6)

2 Three Steps Ahead
4 March of Otherworldly Light

Enchantments (10)

3 High Noon
4 Roiling Dragonstorm
3 Temporary Lockdown

Lands (23)

1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
4 Floodfarm Verge
3 Hallowed Fountain
2 Hengegate Pathway
4 Island
2 Maelstrom of the Spirit Dragon
3 Meticulous Archive
1 Otawara, Soaring City
4 Plains

Sideboard (15)

2 Three Steps Ahead
2 Dovin’s Veto
2 Get Lost
3 Rest in Peace
4 Knockout Blow
2 Supreme Verdict

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

We are a fair Midrange (semi-Control) deck looking to slow our opponent down long enough to stick one of our 5-drop Dragons and begin attacking. I say we’re semi-Control because we aren’t all in on counter magic and removal, nor are we interested in sticking a threat with the mana up to protect it.

Rather, we’re looking to leverage High Noon, Temporary Lockdown, and Dragon Turtle to stall our opponent out long enough that one of our difficult-to-deal with Dragons can close out the game. Along the way, we have a ton of card draw to help us find answers and/or threats. Roiling Dragonstorm is our best card advantage engine, but we have Dragonologist and the omen side of Dirgur Island Dragon to help keep our hand full.

Clarion Conqueror has respectable stats for its mana cost, while also sometimes just hosing our opponent’s strategy (Aetherworks Marvel, for example). Being in the 3-drop slot means we have a total of eight Dragons that we can cast the turn after resolving a Roiling Dragonstorm to return it to our hand.

March of Otherworldly Light gives us a maindeck answer to creatures, artifacts, and enchantments that we can cast on our opponent’s turn to take full advantage of High Noon‘s one-spell-a-turn restriction.

Three Steps Ahead feels right in the deck. Being in means we ought to consider playing a little counter magic, and I think this is our best option, given its flexibility. I do sorely miss Counterspell…

Never thought I’d say that.

Mana Base

One of my favorite things about Pioneer is the utility lands. Modern is so hyper efficient, both with fetchlands, shocklands, and removal, that creature lands may as well be illegal. But not in Pioneer. We get to play card advantage and removal, not to mention a threat, all in our mana base! It’s very exciting.

That being said, I feel like this is the place I need the most experience in to get right. Especially when I go to the Jeskai build of this deck…stay tuned!

Tweaks to the Deck

You may have already noticed that I reference Cave of the Frost Dragon and it’s not in the list I’ve included above. Over the course of my first few matches, I made a few changes, the inclusion of the abovementioned land being one of them.

The biggest change, though, was swapping in Ao, the Dawn Sky for Iymrith, Desert Doom. Both have their own benefits, but I found that the card advantage Iymrith, Desert Doom was supposed to give us was less than impressive. We always had at least three cards in hand (often more) when we did damage with the 5/5 Dragon. Drawing a single card just didn’t seem that important, which led me to look at the other possible finishers we have access to.

Ao, the Dawn Sky gives us a great attacker and blocker, while also providing us with some value upon death. It’s true that we often won’t get more than one permanent on its death trigger, but there will be times when we get a High Noon and a Roiling Dragonstorm, for instance.

Or a Dragonologist, which will then dig us deeper for more action (I cut the card at some point in my matches, but more on that in a minute). All in all, I’ve been very impressed with the change. Ao, the Dawn Sky makes its first appearance in our match against Golgari Food, where it really showed its worth!

I’ve played against The Wandering Emperor several times and have always been impressed with its power and flexibility. Wouldn’t snagging this 4-mana Planeswalker off of an Ao death trigger be maximum value? I cut Dragonologist for three copies of it and the fourth copy of High Noon.

All in all, I was very impressed with The Wandering Emperor. It gives us something to do on our opponent’s turn when we have High Noon out, can answer problematic threats without killing them, can gain us some life along the way, and can pressure our opponent’s life total. Pretty sweet!

What’s not sweet is the nonbo of Clarion Conqueror and The Wandering Emperor. I learned this the hard way, but it only took one time! More testing may prove the two are simply too incompatible to occupy the same 60-card space, but so far I’ve found it to be manageable. In the games we really want Clarion Conqueror, either our opponent is very invested in killing it themselves or we are happy to hold on to our The Wandering Emperor while our 3-drop Dragon holds down the fort.

However, this is the second of two nonbos in our deck, the other being Temporary Lockdown with Roiling Dragonstorm and High Noon. Again, the reality for me has been that the cards play fine together. We have so many ways to bounce Roiling Dragonstorm to our hand that we can play avoid losing it to our own Temporary Lockdown pretty easily.

Meanwhile, High Noon is best in the early game. If we cast it on turn 2 and need to play Temporary Lockdown on turns 5 or 6 to stabilize, we’re okay with that.

Phew, that was a lot! Let’s get to the matches!

Match 1 vs. Aetherworks Marvel

Match 2 vs. Dredge

Match 3 vs. Dimir Control

Match 4 vs. Mono Red Prowess

Match 5 vs. Golgari Food

Match 6 vs. Vivi Prowess

Match 7 vs. Mono Black Midrange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky_941InXTI

Match 8 vs. Orzhov Clerics

Match 9 vs. Abzan Midrange

Match 10 vs. Reanimate

Overall Record: 5-5

Reactions to Game Play

The deck was a lot of fun to play, especially when we were able to hose our opponent’s strategy, either with a Clarion Conqueror or timely Temporary Lockdown. Dragon Turtle continued to impress, despite it making me laugh just about every time I cast it. Our game plan of slowing down our opponent is essential to our success, and this hybrid does a great job of doing just that.

Furthermore, and maybe even more importantly, it gave us ways to interact with creatures we didn’t want to kill, but needed to stop from attacking. Ashen Rider was maybe the best example of this, even if we ultimately lost that match. Dragon Turtle gave us hope.

Finally, Dragon Turtle and The Wandering Emperor play very well together.

I was also impressed with High Noon and, of course, Roiling Dragonstorm. Overall, our strategy of stalling our opponent out long enough for us to win worked well.

Except when it didn’t.

We had a few matches where we durdled and durdled. We drew a ton of cards, but our answers didn’t line up or we couldn’t find threats. I think this is the nature of playing a Control-style deck with limited card draw. If we can’t find the right answers at the right time, we can get run over.

Other Midrange Control-ish strategies also gave us more problems than I thought they would. Any deck with in it was too well prepared for our threats, while many of our maindeck hate cards (Temporary Lockdown and High Noon, in particular) were largely unimpactful.

Is it Control, Midrange, or Taxes?

I think Azorius Dragons straddles these three archetypes. In our various matches, we see us forced to play the Control deck, while in others (and sometimes in the same match), we end up playing either Midrange or Taxes. Our match-up against Orzhov Clerics is a great example of this.

Since we aren’t all in on any of these strategies, our deck is susceptible to clunkiness.

Moving Forward

Of all the cards in the main, this is the one that feels the most cuttable. Perhaps we go down both copies to add a 25th land and a third copy of Three Steps Ahead.

The Wandering Emperor, while impressive, is also a flex spot. Would playing something like Settle the Wreckage be strictly better?

Both of these changes would push us much closer to Control/Taxes, but that’s okay.

Finally, there are some 1-mana answers we could include, but most are very narrow. Above are two recently printed cards that could slot into our deck in place of the 6-mana Dragon.

Conclusion

Azorius Dragons is like no other Dragon deck I’ve played in Pioneer. What it lacks in hasty threats it makes up for in interaction and hate for our opponent’s game plan. And while I still prefer Gruul Dragons, I definitely enjoyed this different style of play. And, honestly, any time I cast a Dragon Turtle, I’m happy.

So if you’re looking to play a Control-style deck that uses Dragons as both its hate and finisher, then look no further! There is plenty of room for customization, pushing the deck more in the direction of U/W Control or Midrange, depending on your preference.

Thanks for reading and watching!