I'll analyze Azorius Familiars in Pauper since the High Tide banning, looking at overall winrate and matchup performance.
Now let me check matchup performance against top decks and analyze the different versions:
Now let me analyze the different versions by querying the deck performance:
Azorius Familiars has maintained a perfectly balanced 50.4% winrate since the High Tide unbanning on March 31, 2025, with 542 wins and 533 losses across 332 tournament entries. The deck shows polarized matchups: it crushes Jund Midrange (68.4%) and beats RDW comfortably (61.5%), but struggles significantly against Blue Terror (32.8%) and Elves (29.2%). Against the format's most popular deck, Madness, Familiars is slightly unfavored at 46.9%.
The version splits reveal a clear performance hierarchy. The Meeting of Minds build dominates with 64% adoption (172 of 269 entries) and posts a strong 54.9% winrate. In contrast, the Cryogen Relic and Modern Age variants underperform at 43.5% across 73 entries, while traditional builds without these packages sit at just 32.4% over 24 entries. Abjure appears in only 3 decks, making it statistically irrelevant. The data strongly suggests Meeting of Minds is the optimal configuration, offering both consistency and superior results compared to the artifact-based alternatives.
Sources
Data from 178 tournaments since March 31, 2025: 64.6% Melee, 35.4% MTGO.
https://www.mtgo.com/decklist/pauper-challenge-32-2026-01-2512830664
https://melee.gg/Decklist/View/b6c7cf5e-9143-461e-a0eb-b3dd00a4e943
https://melee.gg/Decklist/View/e8a15761-ccfa-4dff-acf1-b3dc0121067e