Orzhov Auras is a very interesting aggro-combo deck that has been floating around in Pioneer since its inception and finds itself quite strong in this finely tuned form.
Orzhov Auras (Pioneer Decklist)
The power of this deck rests squarely on the shoulders of the card drawing ability of Sram, Senior Edificer and Hateful Eidolon. Both provide repeatable card draw at a rate that can only be attained due to our unique deck construction. Favored Hoplite gives us a chance at assembling an aggressive draw even when we miss on our more powerful enchantments.
Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters are the remaining key cards that give us the power level to compete with this strategy. It’s always nice to have a redundant eight copies of the best effect in your deck.
We have a bevy of cheap auras available to enable our aforementioned all-stars. The ability to reuse Gryff’s Boon and Sentinel’s Eyes proves key in games against disruptive opponents. Even though Alseid of Life’s Bounty can often provide all the evasion we need to win a game, Gryff’s Boon really makes it quite a lot easier.
Even though the Companion rule was (rightfully) nerfed, Lurrus still adds a ton to this deck. Its inclusion comes completely for free, and it is simply an amazing creature to be able to have access to since it can let us recast any key creature or enchantment. Along with Alseid of Life’s Bounty and Hateful Eidolon we also have quite a bit of lifelink floating around which can be game winning in certain matchups.
That’s pretty much it! While we’re slightly saddened that the enchantment-based removal such as Dead Weight is not quite strong enough to include in the sideboard, it’s nice to see such a cool strategy actually be tuned enough to be a top contender in Pioneer.
