With Riftbound’s second set, Spiritforged, now in the hands of eager fans, we’ve had a little while to check out what the effect has been on game nights since launch. Something that’s become apparent is that one Champion Legend, Azir, has been proving very popular, and has dominated local play worldwide. Let’s take a look at why that is!
What Does Azir Bring to the Table?
The big draw when it comes to using Azir, Emperor of the Sands as your Champion Legend is the fact that you can flood the play area with Sand Soldier unit tokens, as long as you’re playing Equipment cards. So you’ll want to build your deck with plenty of Equipment to use, so you can fully take advantage of Azir’s ability!
Azir’s Champion Units: Ascendant and Sovereign
Azir has two Champion Units: Azir, Ascendant and Azir, Sovereign. Let’s look at both of these too. Azir, Sovereign is currently commanding the highest prices of both cards, but let’s check out Ascendant first.
Azir, Ascendant allows you to switch its position with another unit you control at another location. You can also remove equipment from the other unit and attach it to Azir, Ascendant in the process. With all of the Sand Soldier unit tokens you’ll likely be creating with Azir, Emperor of the Sands as your Champion Legend, this can be an incredibly useful card to have in your deck. Don’t forget that you can have one Champion Unit face up and ready to play on the table when you begin the game too!
Next up, we have Azir, Sovereign. As mentioned, this card is commanding the highest prices of the two Azir Champion Unit cards, and you can see why from its rules text. Not only can you pay an extra cost to have it enter play readied, but its ability allows you to move any number of unit tokens to its battlefield when Azir, Sovereign attacks. When you think about how easy it is to flood the play area with Sand Soldier unit tokens if you have Azir, Emperor of the Sands as your Champion Legend, you can see why this card is so highly sought after.
Azir’s Signature Spell: Arise!
The final piece of the puzzle when it comes to the cards you can have heading up your deck is Azir’s Signature Spell: Arise! This pulls off a similar trick as Azir himself, as it allows you to take advsantage of all the Equipment you have in play to create new Sand Soldier unit tokens. You can play a Sand Soldier for each Equipment you control when you use Arise!, and can even ready two of them immediately. Though of course this is a one of effect, with Azir being utilized properly, it should result in a further deluge of Sand Soldiers to overwhelm your opponent(s) with!
Other Notable Cards for Azir Players to Consider
The gallery above shows five cards which we’d highly recommend using if you’re building an Azir deck. Each of them will give you the ability to create or move unit tokens, and synergize very well with Azir’s abilities. We’ve also included a handy link in the button above, so you can check out all cards from Spiritforged which use Azir’s Calm and Order Runes. In particular, you’ll want to take a look at Equipment cards in either of these Rune colors.
Take a look at our full gallery of cards in Riftbound: Spiritforged, along with our guide to all of the new mechanics and keywords in Spiritforged.
