Azir Irelia is an aggressive combo deck that found fresh wind with the recent balance patch.
24 cards
16 cards
23 800
Deck Breakdown
Azir and Irelia are the perfect examples to explain this deck: Our goal is to play a Sand Soldier
generator like Azir, who summons a Sand Soldier every time we attack. We want to combo this with a Blade
Dancer like Irelia, who can start a free attack by summoning Blades.
Since it’s troublesome to always write “Sand Soldiers and Blades”, let’s refer to them as Sand Blades =)
Many argue that Azir Irelia is not playing with six champions, but nine, because of Emperor's Dais. It essentially does the same as Azir – summoning an attacking Sand Soldier whenever we attack.
Rite of Calling is a late-game spell that allows us to find another champion, bringing our effective champion count to ten! =)
Since our champions have powerful level-up effects, and we don't mind losing one mana crystal after turn 5 (since we don't run any units costing more than that), Rite of Calling is a great addition. We only run it as a one-of though, as we don't want to draw it at the beginning of the game. We can't afford to lose a mana crystal early, and don't have many units that we want to sacrifice (as well as protect those to make sure the spell can resolve).
Ribbon Dancer and Blossoming Blade are our straightforward Blade Dancers. They also give us a body that can attack and activate our Sand Soldier generators through the classic “OK, I’m out of moves, I’ll actually use the attack token for real this time”.
Defiant Dance and Lead and Follow are our reactive Blade Dancers. To use them, we want to wait for our opponent to act first, so we don’t want to keep those in our starting hand!
Defiant Dance is a great tempo play that can recall key targets like Xerath
or Viktor
. Be mindful of when your foe wants to commit an expensive unit and keep four mana open to play this card.
Lead and Follow is a defensive tool that can protect your valuable units. Since it doesn’t Blade Dance directly, but rather creates a costly Flawless Duet
, we only play this as a one-of.
Sparring Student is the MVP follower of this deck. With the countless Sand Blades we summon every turn, it's not unusual to see him grow to a 6|6 body and above. He can quickly finish the game if our foe isn't able to fabricate a blocker for him.
Greenglade Duo is the cheesy variant of Sparring Student. Her health won't grow, but for that, she comes with the Elusive keyword.
There are not many decks being played with Elusive units, though Sharpsight
is a thing. Her overall fragility means that we usually prefer Sparring Student over her (e.g. in the Mulligan phase).
The immense power potential of those two followers means that we want to protect them at all costs. If the enemy runs ping spells like Pokey Stick
or Vile Feast
, make sure you have enough mana to save them.
To be able to attack after playing Emperor's Dais on turn two and/or Azir on three, we want to have a one drop on board.
Treasure Seeker is a clutch unit that fills the one-drop slot with value. Its 2|1 statline means it trades into most one and two drops, while also creating a Waking Sands
in hand.
Dunekeeper's 1|2 body doesn't trade well unfortunately, but the summoned Sand Soldier advances our champion's level-up condition. It's also a great defensive tool to chump block an enemy attack to survive one more round to finish the game. Personally, I tend to use Dunekeeper defensively, but it can be a potent aggressive threat as well.
Shaped Stone is a solid pump spell that protects our units from ping spells, as well as pushing extra damage. Without summoning Emperor's Dais, our only landmark in the deck, it can feel underwhelming though. We run this as a three-of, since Twin Disciplines got nerfed.
Twin Disciplines is a clutch spell at keeping our units alive for a relatively cheap cost. The nerf to the attack buff means that it's not the greatest finishing tool anymore, and Shaped Stone can give the same attack buff for one mana less.
Our last card slots are left for various combat tricks. Through personal experience, this is a fairly "gut feeling" decision. We will refer to them as “flex cards” (see Mulligan section below).
Even when you look at optimization tables for each card, like from Mobalytics or Balco's website, there is no clear answer. So feel free to switch the number of copies you run of these as you prefer!
Recall effects are overall useful in our deck because a lot of our units have a Play effect, especially our Blade Dancers.
We talked about Lead and Follow above as a Blade Dancer, but it's also a solid tool for keeping a unit alive. Its relatively expensive cost makes it a clunky card in the early game, though its potential value is quite powerful.
Retreat is a better tempo play than Lead and Follow, as it also creates a Return
in hand. It's great for dodging an enemy skill shot, and then summoning one of our three-cost champions.
Nopeify! is the last spell to protect our board and Nexus. It can stop a Zenith Blade
or Blade of the Exile
from accelerating the game out of control, or stop removal spells like Single Combat
or Mystic Shot
.
Tech choices
As mentioned before, feel free to experiment with the ratio of the above combat tricks.
Replace: Flex cards
Homecoming is another Recall tool, that also Recalls an enemy unit, just like Defiant Dance. It's great for hitting your foe with tempo and recalling their big unit. It needs a little bit of planning ahead though. You need an ally or allied landmark (read: Emperor's Dais) to recall, as well as means to protect that ally from being killed because the spell won't resolve otherwise.
Deny is the big brother of Nopeify! that can protect our units from hard removal like Vengeance
or AoE spells like Avalanche
.
Depending on the meta, Nopeify! might do the exact same as Deny but for two mana less. Like currently, when playing against all these Demacia and Piltover & Zaun archetypes!
The reactive nature of these two spells, as well as not actively contributing to our game plan, means that we’ll only run them as a one-of.
Replace: one-two Shaped Stone
Our deck is really good at leveling our champs, thus The Absolver will usually be activated when we need it. It gives our deck more reach (lethal damage range), especially against archetypes with many chump blockers, like Bandle City decks.
Azir Irelia usually wants to go wide to push damage with Sand Blades, but a 10-attack Azir, or Irelia that Bladesurge
into combat multiple times a turn is worth giving Overwhelm.
Note that Overwhelm also activates Nexus Strike effects — namely the extra one damage from a Sand Soldier.
Replace: one Blossoming Blade, one Treasure Seeker
Field Musicians is great for giving us longevity. We're usually summoning at least three units a turn, so activating his ability poses no problem.
He can be tricky to utilize though, as he only refills our spell mana, meaning we usually want to play a spell before activating him. Don’t let this get in your head though – better keep your reactive spells in hand, don’t gain the spell mana, and draw a card, than to play your Lead and Follow first, just for your opponent to Mystic Shot the target and the spell not resolving, losing you a card (and unit)!
Mulligan
We always keep Emperor's Dais and Azir. In my opinion, keeping up to two of them is fine. More than that, and we won’t have cards to safely utilize our Sand Soldier generators!
After we find at least one of either Emperor's Dais or Azir, it’s okay to keep Blade Dancers. From this point onward, we will be able to summon many Sand Blades and level our champions quickly.
Here’s my philosophy for keeping Sparring Student:
If the opponent runs cheap removal, like Mystic Shot or Vile Feast, we don’t keep it. Otherwise, we do.
The card works too well with our Sand Blades and can threaten lethal damage on turn four or five if our foe can’t produce chump blockers.
We will only keep Greenglade Duo in select matchups where we have to rely on Elusive damage to explode the Nexus, e.g. against Bandle Tree. The follower is quite fragile and demands protection spells that we almost never want to keep in the Mulligan.
Matchups
Sun Disc - favored
Mulligan: Sparring Student/Greenglade Duo, Azir, Emperor's Dais
They have cheap, low-attack, high-health units who are a pain in the butt to deal with, since they can block countless Sand Soldiers and Blades.
Since they are mono-Shurima, they don’t have access to ping spells, meaning our Sparring Duo is good to go. Be aware of the fact they run Quicksand though!
Early on, it can be worth to open-attack and play around Dunekeeper.
Besides that, there’s not so much to say here. If you draw your engines and then your Blader Dancers, you usually win. Sun Disc’s popularity is the reason we don’t run Field Musicians, as it is too slow and allows them to Ascend.
Ezreal Caitlyn - unfavored
Mulligan: Azir, Emperor's Dais
They have lots of removal for our frail units like Sparring Student and Greenglade Duo. They can also remove Emperor's Dais with Scorched Earth, and Azir with Thermogenic Beam
or later with Tri-beam Improbulator.
Caitlyn is also a troublesome threat – she can plant many Flashbomb Trap
in your deck through her blocks of our Sand Blades. Don’t hesitate to use your pump spells to kill her – worst case they remove the Sand Blade and lack the removal for your important units.
Our best shot of winning this matchup is drawing multiple Dais and Azirs, hoping they can’t remove all of them.
One important tip is to never play your key units without having extra mana open to protect them. You can dodge enemy spells with Retreat and Lead and Follow, while Twin Disciplines and even Shaped Stone can buff your unit’s health.
Aphelios Viktor - even
Mulligan: Sparring Student, Emperor's Dais, Azir
The biggest difficulty against Aphelios Viktor comes with not knowing their deck list. There are countless versions out there, making it worthless to play around every single card.
For that reason, we don’t play around Thermogenic Beam. If you play Sparring Student on one, and they happen to have a Thermogenic Beam, which maybe only a third of the lists run, as a two-of, then it was still the correct play in my opinion.
Mountain Goat is a real killer, as it allows them to block numerous Sand Blades basically for free while leveling Viktor. Don’t hesitate to try killing it with a Shaped Stone or Discipline of Force
!
Aphelios
is a fairly slow play for them, but if they can play him on turn three when we play Azir, he might become a problem, especially since he can create Severum
. Don’t hesitate to Defiant Dance (or Homecoming) him before he can create another Moon Weapon!
Unfortunately, due to the popularity of Sun Disc, almost every deck is running Aftershock, which can also target our Emperor's Dais. Dais is still worth it though since they usually run Aftershock only as a two of. And even if they find it, they lose tempo for it (two mana vs four mana play).
Riven Viktor - slightly unfavored
Mulligan: one drops, Emperor's Dais, Azir
We follow a similar game plan of aggressively combo-ing the opponent down. The problem with this – they are faster than us.
We want to follow our own game plan of killing them as fast as possible, but delay them at key points, e.g. play Defiant Dance on Viktor.
They’ll do the same – their burn, Mystic Shot and Get Excited!
, is also able to target our units, so we’ll want to keep some mana open to protect them.
Overall, this is a big skill matchup that is slightly skewed in their favor. With experience, we should be able to increase our winrate against this archetype!
Tristana DE - slightly unfavored
Mulligan: Sparring Student, Emperor's Dais, Azir
Tristana DE is running enough removal and Elusive units to stop our Greenglade Duo, despite their swarm ability to block all our Sand Blades.
They are also great at filling the board with a plethora of units, meaning we will have a hard time pushing meaningful Nexus damage.
If we can find our Sand Blade combo pieces and our champions, this matchup is definitely winnable though.
Make sure to protect your champions against Buster Shot!
Conclusion
Azir Irelia is an intriguing combo deck that has found its way back into the meta, mostly thanks to the popularity of control decks like Sun Disc, and the low playrate of hardcore aggro decks like Spider aggro.
While the deck works well on the ladder, it will shine even more in a Bo3 format like the Gauntlet, where you can ban Ezreal Caitlyn or aggro decks.
You could pair Azir Irelia for example with Riven Viktor and Pantheon Yuumi to be great against control and midrange decks.
If you have any questions about any explanation or a word you don't understand — please reach out to me! You can either write/ping me on Discord (Leer#2026) or DM me on Twitter (@Leer97).
