Azorius Goats is a strange and interesting mid-range modern deck focusing on big mana and utility. The deck tries to capitalize on the interaction between Springjack Shepherd and Springjack Pasture to create big mana and lifegain at a crucial moment.
The deck is resilient in the current meta and has a few strong win conditions in Elspeth, Sun's Champion and, more frequently, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. The deck also boasts a large amount of lifegain due to Auriok Champion which can help you ride into the long game. The deck also comes stock with a few deck hoser cards in Leyline of Sanctity and Auriok Champion. Poor burn players and Death's Shadow players cry when you Game 1 drop a Leyline into an Auriok Champion.
Reasons to Play Azorius Goats?
You enjoy tokens
You enjoy crushing Death's Shadow and other Black based decks
You appreciate Goats on a deep, personal, or spiritual level
You enjoy having the weirdest flexibility and deck interaction ever
You really enjoy gaining a million life as a side product of your main goal
You're looking for a challenge to test your deckbuilding and deck-piloting skills
You love the look on peoples faces when you kill them with horrifying Phyrexian goats
Reasons To Not Play Azorius Goats
You don't enjoy the color combination, in which case, we have other W/X pairs that will be posted in the future.
The Deck Core The core of the deck is actually fairly basic and all mono-white. Its also very flexible, I just chose to use Blue as my secondary color here as I feel its had the most success of all my different versions. The very core of the deck, and the only "required" cards are: Springjack Shepherd, Springjack Pasture, Auriok Champion, and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Due to the way Springjack Shepherd works, we NEED white mana symbols to stick on the board. However, how those stick is entirely up to the player. You could go for all enchantments, or for all creatures, or a happy mix of both. I've found that landing and sticking an Auriok Champion is the best card for this. The only commonly played card that hates on it is Path to Exile and then you get a land at worst. Once she's on the board she helps this deck in multiple ways: 2 Mana (From Nykthos), 2 Goats (from Shepherd), 3 Life (When Shepherd Comes in), and she blocks every black/red ground beater in the meta. She's just amazing in this deck and the current meta.
After figuring out how you'd like to stick your chroma, then you need to find a finisher. I find Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to be 100% the best win-condition in the deck. It wins the game it comes out and, with a nuts draw, you could land her on turn 4. Alternately, Elspeth, Sun's Champion is another backbreaker and can make your goats become flying monsters, plus she protects herself and helps us deal with Eldrazi Tron. Alternately you could win with a big Secure the Wastes or White Sun's Zenith to go wide. You can do what I call, "Trading Up." Which is where you sacrifice tons of goats to Springjack Pasture to get mana for Zenith or Secure the Wastes and turn those goats into proper soldiers!
Card Choices
Utility Thraben Inspector - A middling card in the deck. She represents card draw, 1 mana, and 1 goat for just 1 mana. Fairly solid. She's also a great target for Flickering in a pinch. But she's never overwhelmingly impressive and chumping with her always sucks since it removes her chroma from the board. If I had better 1 drop card draw and chroma, I'd run it instead. But shes the best we got currently.
Weathered Wayfarer - Wayfarer can be hit or miss. On the play, he's fundamentally worthless for fetching but will still represent 1 chroma, so not entirely useless. This card quickly becomes 4 stars on the draw and 5 stars against land destruction decks. All in all, this card either pulls way above its weight or feels like a dead card.
Knight of the White Orchid - Basically in the exact same boat as Wayfarer but has the advantage of being able to block some threats favorably and having 2 Chroma. On the draw he represents a ton of value and can mana ramp us on turn 3 by playing him before our land that turn.
Flickerwisp - This little elemental is just astonishingly good. It's in air beats, 2 goats, 2 mana, and can flicker for more goats. In addition, you can remove pesky Ensnaring Bridges or Phyrexian Unlife's for the win. Its an awesome card and I consider it a 1 turn answer against almost any deck.
Phantasmal Image - This card might as well read, "Auriok Champion" the way I play it. But its much more than that. 80% of the time itll be Champion but sometimes you'll get a value flicker out of it or even board wipe by copying your Elesh Norn to hit the enemies with -4/-4 for a brief moment. You could also become another Springjack Shephers if needed or a Thraben if you're that desperate for card draw. However, if you're copying Thraben, you're probably losing already.
Eldrazi Displacer - A solid card but its under review. Our deck has enough Colorless mana to make good use of it and it has a ton of synergy with the deck, but its hated on VERY hard and won't stick around long. But if it does, you'll get its value back instantly since almost everything in our deck can be flickered for value or utility.
Springjack Pasture - The more you play with this card, the more and more powerful it feels. Need chump blockers? Have a ton of them. Need life? Eat goats. Need mana? Eat goats. Is someone swinging in with a 10/10 Lifelink? Block with a goat, then sacrifice the goat so they gain 0 but you gain 1. Getting attacked with tons of creatures? Block them and sacrifice the goats, negating their attack but gaining life in the process. Is someone hitting your goats with Staticaster, Maelstrom Pulse, Echoing Truth, or Detention Sphere? No problem, eat the one goat that got targeted to gain a life and save the herd! Important Note About This Card The Sacrifice use of the pasture is a mana ability. I can not emphasize enough how important this fact is. This means the sacrificing and life-gain does not use the stack. Meaning you can use it to get around split second and your opponent does not gain priority when you use it!
Hate Cards Auriok Champion - Literally the perfect card IMO (except its $ cost). This card does it all for us but it has the added advantage of literally hating out many decks on its own. She can chump Deaths Shadow for all of eternity and she can heal us enough to make it so Burn can't ever kill us. Not only that, she's extra goats!
Leyline of Sanctity or - This cards rating depends on whether or not its in your opening hand. If it is, its a gemstone cavern when paired with Nykthos and it protects us from the plethora of hand hate that dominates Modern currently. In addition, its 2 goats. The card loses value if you have to play it for real but its never a dead card due to its chroma. Playing this is better than playing nothing and does advance our boardstate by giving us extra mana and more potential goats.
Removal Path to Exile - Just a fantastic piece of removal. Its downsides are offset by having Wayfarer and Knight in our mainboard. We can hit them with path on Turn 1, then slam into a Turn 2 Knight and equalize the mana. I don't think this card needs much more discussion than that! Play it.
The Payoffs
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite - She wins when she lands and that should be enough for a 5 star rating. But, ontop of that, she can be ramped out early by eating goats or using nykthos. Plus, she turns our goats into a legitimate win-condition. She's a one-sided board-wide and an anthem. I literally can't express enough how useful she is in this deck.
Sphinx's Revelation - A fantastic payoff. If we haven't hit Norn yet or are in a pinch we can draw tons of cards and gain tons of life at the end of the opponents turn. We almost always win the turn after casting Sphinx's. The best part is, we double down with Springjack Pasture. If you eat 5 goats for the X cost, you added 5 cards and 10 life to the value of this card.
Westvale Abbey - A solid win condition. We frequently drop this card down on turn 5 after landing goats, make mana, sacrifice our Demon worshiping goats, and swing in for the kill with the flip mode. The token generation on this card is outshined by Pasture, but its a nice feature to have in a pinch.
Hybrid Cards (Ones that fit into multiple categories) Springjack Shepherd - If you watch the stream you'll hear this line a lot, "If we topdeck Springjack Shepherd, we win." And thats because its true. This card is everything in this deck. Its mana, blockers, damage, card draw, and life. Its everything when mixed with the rest of the deck. I consider this card to be the best token generating card in the game for its cost, the tokens are just kind of weak. However, this card loses value if your opponent is doing a good job stalling your board state. So make sure to not play Shep if you don't have atleast 2-3 chroma on the field to get decent value back.
Elspeth, Sun's Champion - Elspeth, like Springjack, synergizes alot with the deck. She heals us (with Champion out), kills big creatures, buffs goats, makes soldiers, and she's just all around awesome. Plus we can land her on turn 4 if things go our way. There are a lot of reasons to run Elspeth.
Important Lands Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - I'm never unhappy to see this card. And having more than 1 in your hand is never bad due to its ability. This card lets us skyrocket our mana under the right circumstances. We can frequently tap for 6 or 7 mana on turn 4 due to this, sometimes we even hit 6 mana on turn 3 but thats very VERY unlikely. I consider this as important to the deck as Springjack Pasture but it doesn't have the same utility unfortunately.
Shefet Dunes - This card has two major purposes. One, its an emergency one-off anthem. Secondly, it provides colorless mana for Eldrazi Displacer while also providing colored mana when we need it. I haven't tested this card much so I can't say for sure how its going to do just yet.
Phantasmal Image copies every aspect of a card including its mana cost, so keep that in mind when copying a target card. Copy Auriok Champion to get extra chroma on the field.
I title it goats because they are a workaround focus for the deck. Kind of like how Momument decks are called Monument decks even though they only have 4 Mouments in them. Or Death's Shadow is called Death's Shadow but only runs 4 Death's Shadow. This deck has 7 Cards that Make goats, 3 cards of those can make goats and use goats as a mana source. Every card is also hand picked with its chroma as a thought in order to make more goats when I hit Turn 4.
This is a link to a thread where the author plays online frequently and has some success with the archetype. You can post in there and I'm sure he'd be happy to help you with your list.
Welcome to the Springjack Pasture
Azorius Goats is a strange and interesting mid-range modern deck focusing on big mana and utility. The deck tries to capitalize on the interaction between Springjack Shepherd and Springjack Pasture to create big mana and lifegain at a crucial moment.
The deck is resilient in the current meta and has a few strong win conditions in Elspeth, Sun's Champion and, more frequently, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. The deck also boasts a large amount of lifegain due to Auriok Champion which can help you ride into the long game. The deck also comes stock with a few deck hoser cards in Leyline of Sanctity and Auriok Champion. Poor burn players and Death's Shadow players cry when you Game 1 drop a Leyline into an Auriok Champion.
Reasons to Play Azorius Goats?
Reasons To Not Play Azorius Goats
4 Thraben Inspector
1 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Auriok champion
2 Knight of the White Orchid
3 Phantasmal Image
2 Eldrazi Displacer
3 Flickerwisp
4 Springjack Shepherd
2 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Planeswalkers (1)
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
Spells (7)
4 Path to Exile
3 Sphinx's Revelation
3 Leyline of Sanctity
Lands (24)
2 Flooded Strand
2 Glacial Fortress
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2 Shefet Dunes
3 Springjack Pasture
1 Westvale Abbey
5 Plains
2 Island
1 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Pithing Needle
1 Echoing Truth
2 Rest In Peace
2 Spreading Seas
2 Stony Silence
2 Detention Sphere
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Sphinx of the Final Word
1 Dusk // Dawn
The Deck Core
The core of the deck is actually fairly basic and all mono-white. Its also very flexible, I just chose to use Blue as my secondary color here as I feel its had the most success of all my different versions. The very core of the deck, and the only "required" cards are: Springjack Shepherd, Springjack Pasture, Auriok Champion, and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Due to the way Springjack Shepherd works, we NEED white mana symbols to stick on the board. However, how those stick is entirely up to the player. You could go for all enchantments, or for all creatures, or a happy mix of both. I've found that landing and sticking an Auriok Champion is the best card for this. The only commonly played card that hates on it is Path to Exile and then you get a land at worst. Once she's on the board she helps this deck in multiple ways: 2 Mana (From Nykthos), 2 Goats (from Shepherd), 3 Life (When Shepherd Comes in), and she blocks every black/red ground beater in the meta. She's just amazing in this deck and the current meta.
After figuring out how you'd like to stick your chroma, then you need to find a finisher. I find Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to be 100% the best win-condition in the deck. It wins the game it comes out and, with a nuts draw, you could land her on turn 4. Alternately, Elspeth, Sun's Champion is another backbreaker and can make your goats become flying monsters, plus she protects herself and helps us deal with Eldrazi Tron. Alternately you could win with a big Secure the Wastes or White Sun's Zenith to go wide. You can do what I call, "Trading Up." Which is where you sacrifice tons of goats to Springjack Pasture to get mana for Zenith or Secure the Wastes and turn those goats into proper soldiers!
Utility
Thraben Inspector - A middling card in the deck. She represents card draw, 1 mana, and 1 goat for just 1 mana. Fairly solid. She's also a great target for Flickering in a pinch. But she's never overwhelmingly impressive and chumping with her always sucks since it removes her chroma from the board. If I had better 1 drop card draw and chroma, I'd run it instead. But shes the best we got currently.
Weathered Wayfarer - Wayfarer can be hit or miss. On the play, he's fundamentally worthless for fetching but will still represent 1 chroma, so not entirely useless. This card quickly becomes 4 stars on the draw and 5 stars against land destruction decks. All in all, this card either pulls way above its weight or feels like a dead card.
Knight of the White Orchid - Basically in the exact same boat as Wayfarer but has the advantage of being able to block some threats favorably and having 2 Chroma. On the draw he represents a ton of value and can mana ramp us on turn 3 by playing him before our land that turn.
Flickerwisp - This little elemental is just astonishingly good. It's in air beats, 2 goats, 2 mana, and can flicker for more goats. In addition, you can remove pesky Ensnaring Bridges or Phyrexian Unlife's for the win. Its an awesome card and I consider it a 1 turn answer against almost any deck.
Phantasmal Image - This card might as well read, "Auriok Champion" the way I play it. But its much more than that. 80% of the time itll be Champion but sometimes you'll get a value flicker out of it or even board wipe by copying your Elesh Norn to hit the enemies with -4/-4 for a brief moment. You could also become another Springjack Shephers if needed or a Thraben if you're that desperate for card draw. However, if you're copying Thraben, you're probably losing already.
Eldrazi Displacer - A solid card but its under review. Our deck has enough Colorless mana to make good use of it and it has a ton of synergy with the deck, but its hated on VERY hard and won't stick around long. But if it does, you'll get its value back instantly since almost everything in our deck can be flickered for value or utility.
Springjack Pasture - The more you play with this card, the more and more powerful it feels. Need chump blockers? Have a ton of them. Need life? Eat goats. Need mana? Eat goats. Is someone swinging in with a 10/10 Lifelink? Block with a goat, then sacrifice the goat so they gain 0 but you gain 1. Getting attacked with tons of creatures? Block them and sacrifice the goats, negating their attack but gaining life in the process. Is someone hitting your goats with Staticaster, Maelstrom Pulse, Echoing Truth, or Detention Sphere? No problem, eat the one goat that got targeted to gain a life and save the herd! Important Note About This Card The Sacrifice use of the pasture is a mana ability. I can not emphasize enough how important this fact is. This means the sacrificing and life-gain does not use the stack. Meaning you can use it to get around split second and your opponent does not gain priority when you use it!
Hate Cards
Auriok Champion - Literally the perfect card IMO (except its $ cost). This card does it all for us but it has the added advantage of literally hating out many decks on its own. She can chump Deaths Shadow for all of eternity and she can heal us enough to make it so Burn can't ever kill us. Not only that, she's extra goats!
Leyline of Sanctity or - This cards rating depends on whether or not its in your opening hand. If it is, its a gemstone cavern when paired with Nykthos and it protects us from the plethora of hand hate that dominates Modern currently. In addition, its 2 goats. The card loses value if you have to play it for real but its never a dead card due to its chroma. Playing this is better than playing nothing and does advance our boardstate by giving us extra mana and more potential goats.
Removal
Path to Exile - Just a fantastic piece of removal. Its downsides are offset by having Wayfarer and Knight in our mainboard. We can hit them with path on Turn 1, then slam into a Turn 2 Knight and equalize the mana. I don't think this card needs much more discussion than that! Play it.
The Payoffs
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite - She wins when she lands and that should be enough for a 5 star rating. But, ontop of that, she can be ramped out early by eating goats or using nykthos. Plus, she turns our goats into a legitimate win-condition. She's a one-sided board-wide and an anthem. I literally can't express enough how useful she is in this deck.
Sphinx's Revelation - A fantastic payoff. If we haven't hit Norn yet or are in a pinch we can draw tons of cards and gain tons of life at the end of the opponents turn. We almost always win the turn after casting Sphinx's. The best part is, we double down with Springjack Pasture. If you eat 5 goats for the X cost, you added 5 cards and 10 life to the value of this card.
Westvale Abbey - A solid win condition. We frequently drop this card down on turn 5 after landing goats, make mana, sacrifice our Demon worshiping goats, and swing in for the kill with the flip mode. The token generation on this card is outshined by Pasture, but its a nice feature to have in a pinch.
Hybrid Cards (Ones that fit into multiple categories)
Springjack Shepherd - If you watch the stream you'll hear this line a lot, "If we topdeck Springjack Shepherd, we win." And thats because its true. This card is everything in this deck. Its mana, blockers, damage, card draw, and life. Its everything when mixed with the rest of the deck. I consider this card to be the best token generating card in the game for its cost, the tokens are just kind of weak. However, this card loses value if your opponent is doing a good job stalling your board state. So make sure to not play Shep if you don't have atleast 2-3 chroma on the field to get decent value back.
Elspeth, Sun's Champion - Elspeth, like Springjack, synergizes alot with the deck. She heals us (with Champion out), kills big creatures, buffs goats, makes soldiers, and she's just all around awesome. Plus we can land her on turn 4 if things go our way. There are a lot of reasons to run Elspeth.
Important Lands
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - I'm never unhappy to see this card. And having more than 1 in your hand is never bad due to its ability. This card lets us skyrocket our mana under the right circumstances. We can frequently tap for 6 or 7 mana on turn 4 due to this, sometimes we even hit 6 mana on turn 3 but thats very VERY unlikely. I consider this as important to the deck as Springjack Pasture but it doesn't have the same utility unfortunately.
Shefet Dunes - This card has two major purposes. One, its an emergency one-off anthem. Secondly, it provides colorless mana for Eldrazi Displacer while also providing colored mana when we need it. I haven't tested this card much so I can't say for sure how its going to do just yet.
Springjack Shepherd and Springjack Pasture to create big mana and gain a ton of life.
Flickerwisp and Eldrazi Displacer interact with:
Phantasmal Image copies every aspect of a card including its mana cost, so keep that in mind when copying a target card. Copy Auriok Champion to get extra chroma on the field.
Springjack Pasture, Springjack Shepherd and Sphinx's Revelation to draw tons of cards and gain tons of life.
WIP
More coming soon
Pasture mayb 2, but atill 5% of da Deck seems to care bout Goats.
This is a link to a thread where the author plays online frequently and has some success with the archetype. You can post in there and I'm sure he'd be happy to help you with your list.