AZ Bo1 Control

70% Winrate Ladder (Diamond), 60% Winrate Standard Event

If you want a deck that will beat the meta, this is it.  But be prepared to spend a lot of time.  I have seen a lot of the strixhaven stadium epiphany azorius deck out there.  This is a more classic control build with Iymrith, The Desert Doom as a 'finisher'.  Really he wants to come down as early as possible against aggro decks as the Ward 4 brickwalls removal.  Mono Green and Izzet Epiphany are still not easy, but you should be able to lifegain away from the dragon lists, and the tokens from sunset revelry help us to hold off on our doomskar until it really hurts mono white.

I am currently playing best of 1 because matchtimes are generally about 15 minutes.  Unfortunately you'll run into opponents who just will not scoop, no matter how obvious it is that you definitely have all 4 Saw It Coming in exile, a Test of Talents in hand, and a Devious Cover-Up ready to recycle it all.  You tend to have to play the late game conservatively, eventually swinging in with Iymrith and a Hall for 12 per turn, but it can be late.

For example, I played against an izzet epiphany deck earlier in which I Test of Talents their Galvanic Iteration and Divide by Zero fairly early.  Super lucky for us, but seemed like a clear game-over for them as they didn't have much left in their deck that could interact on the stack.  We went through topdeck wars, and I ended up winning by countering everything they played for two turns when they had 4 cards left in their deck (I beleive all lands).  It's satisfying to win those games, but hard not to think that you could have played 3 or 4 matches in the same amount of time with a faster deck.

STRATEGY

MONO GREEN

Tough deck to beat, especially if they are running Wrenn and Seven.  Devastating Mastery can really help, and you want to hold on until you can hit a few Ranger Class, Esika's Chariot, Wrenn and Seven, or tokens from Old Growth Troll.  Sunset Revelry tokens can stem the bleeding and draw out early Blizzard Brawls so you can block with Iymrith or hit them with a Fateful Absence.  The clue tokens really hurt us here.  We also want to be slamming our Faithful Mending and Sunset Revelry for the lifegain.  A 2/2 wolf token can quickly become a 6/6 beater somehow with these decks.  You want to hit Snakeskin Veil or Blizzard Brawl with Test of Talents, and keep Divide by Zero ready for the Inscription of Abundance.   You need a good draw, and since it's best of 1, I almost always try to make sure my initial draws are going to have some game against mono green.  Faithful Mending can help dump expensive counterspells or help us hit lands for our sweepers if needed.

MONO WHITE

Doomskar and Devastating Mastery should do it.  Playing a bouncey tempo game into a turn 5 Iymrith will work better against mono white and other aggressive strategies than it will against mono green.  It's harder for them to sit back and pump a single creature, so you should have an opening for a deluge or two if they try to play around sweepers.

IZZET EPIPHANY

This matchup is a counterspell arms race.  You are digging for Test of Talents and making darn sure you are hitting your land drops.  Remember that hitting a flashback spell with Divide by Zero sends it to exile.  It may be worth countering an early windfall, but be careful.  Also, you generally want to counter one of the epiphanies over the initial Galvanic Iteration if you are afraid you can't win a counter battle.  One epiphany isn't generally enough to get too far ahead, but two extra land drops and the time to put some devils or mascots on the board and turn them sideways will be game over for us.  Eventually you will just be doing everything in your power to make sure that you are drawing all the cards you can with Deluge, Iymrith, and Archaics, and recycling your counterspells with Devious Cover-Up.

IZZET DRAGONS

If you can get them to overcommit with the eggs into a doomskar you should be fine.  Smoldering Egg // Ashmouth Dragon can take you down from 20+ pretty quick if they have access to Spikefield Hazard or you give them targets for Fading Hope.  Iymrith should probably not be sideways in this matchup unless you are desperate, or closing.  Test of Talents your opponent's Memory Deluge here.  It actually is a lot scarier sitting in the graveyard ready to flip an Smoldering Egg // Ashmouth Dragon at any moment.  Once again, Epiphany is great if they're already ahead, but not critical to counter.  Two birds and a land drop might not lose us the game, but if Goldspan Dragon or Smoldering Egg // Ashmouth Dragon are on-board first then it's going to be tough to recover.

OTHER

The rest of the field is classic control magic play.  Counter game-ending threats, let smaller threats sit until you find a sweeper.  Use Faithful Mending to loot into relavent cards for your matchup.  Let Iymrith loom over the battlefield untapped until your opponent wants to dump 6 or 7 mana into a removal spell.  Then just divide him back to your hand, rinse, and repeat. 

I have been really happy with Iymrith in the format as a whole.  The 5/5 body cleanly blocks most of the popular threats and the ward plus our bounce package just forces your opponent to waste way too many resources removing him.  He also works great with our foretell package.  Sometimes I'll find I have a Saw It Coming,  Doomskar, and extra land in hand before attacking.  You can just foretell both in order to draw an extra card.  I also find that if I'm comfortable attacking with him, I can use my deluge to get two spells and rely on his extra draw for land drops.  This really lets you run away with the games quickly.  It's no Dream Trawler, but Iymrith does seem like the right finisher for the deck.

PAST VERSIONS

I always want to talk about some experiences with cards I ended up dropping.  The Iymrith slot was the most confusing to get down.  I wanted to play this deck without Epiphany as a finisher since it just doesn't work unless you also have Strixhaven Stadium or some other threat to go along with it.  That generally means you're committing 6-7 cards to finishing the game, which can be better spent on card advantage, quality, and answers. 

I tried playing with Starnheim Unleashed first.  That card is great, but it becomes hard to protect your tokens from all the Fading Hope running around in the format.  Additionally it felt wasteful to cast for any less than 3 angels, so it wasn't available early in the game to block against mono green.

The Celestus - I still debate whether I can dump some Faithful Mending for this.  Often your opponent won't play around the day/night trigger on this - but sometimes they do.  If you aren't looting frequently and gaining life, it is not really worth the ramp.  Additionally, you just don't actually have time to ramp in some aggro matchups.  It's great in control mirrors, but izzet generally plays at least one Prismari Command and will happily blow this bad boy up on you.  90% of the Faithful Mendings I cast are so that I can hit my land drops, so losing that is likely not worth the incidental looting offered by The Celestus.

Behold the Multiverse - also still debating throwing one more of these back into the deck.  If your Memory Deluge get's hit with a Test of Talents you likely are not going to win.  I have debated running a split, but it is just so necessary late in matchups to get exactly what you need out of your deck.  Looking at 7 cards feels like a tutor most of the time.  Pulling two counterspells whenever you need them is clutch.  Just gets easier as your draw pile gets smaller and we keep recycling cards with Devious Cover-Up

Emeria's Call - I used to run one, and swapped it for another Field of Ruin.  In the control matchups, you want to have more Field of Ruin than your opponent, so we run 4.  Recycle if needed.  Emeria's Call was almost always a tapland, and the aggro decks are just too fast for shocklands.  Two 4/4's flyers for 7 ain't bad, but you run into the same issues as Starnheim Unleashed.

Jwari Disruption - we may actually want one more of these, but I really hate taplands in control decks.  One feels a bit silly, though because I always lay it down if it's in my opening hand, then it's not good as a counter later.

Test of Talents - Running two would definitely help against the izzet turns strategies, but it's dead early vs mono green and dead 100% vs mono white.