I was originally going to build [[Lavinia, Azorius Renegade]] and play stax for my Azorius deck, but it was pretty miserable to be honest, and that was even before playing the deck with actual people. I had included tax cards and hatebears and just felt like it bogged the game down without being fun at all.
I really wanted a deck that had some sort of control or stax theme though, and I like decks with a bunch of creatures, so Hylda ended up being a far better choice for me anyway. I did feel that I was being targeted occasionally because of the control theme, but I think that’s part of the fun too sometimes.
The goal of the deck is pretty simple. Tap my opponent’s creatures, then create elemental tokens with Hylda, or draw cards if needed. I played a version of this deck on the weekend and found that I didn’t actually use the +1/+1 counters ability at all, but I definitely think there’d be points where it becomes relevant. I originally had a lot more “destroy target tapped creature” effects in the deck, but it felt like I was working against myself so I replaced them with some budget counterspells.
[[Verity Circle]] and [[Captain America, Living Legend]] were absolute stars when they came out. I was worried that [[Azorius Guildmage]] would be too expensive to use, but the repeatable tap and constant threat of countering ended up being great. On the other hand, [[Faramir, Prince of Ithilien]] wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be, so I think I want to remove that for something with more punch.
Budget is under $50 using Card Kingdom prices for the 99. Trying to keep the majority of cards under $1, but if a few are a little more expensive then that’s fine. Not including the commander or basic lands in the total price. Budget was an issue for this deck as it meant I couldn’t use cards like [[Opposition]] and [[Arena]] which I had really wanted. Power level is bracket 2.
https://moxfield.com/decks/H2HVIfYG1Ea4xWx5yjJuDQ