I have been toying with the idea of Jori En for a while. When she was first spoiled I was very interested in her but I shyed away because Izzet usually needs to do spellslinger to work. I more recently put together a Grand Arbiter Augustin IV deck and while I really love how it plays I have gotten a LOT of complaints about the commander. Given how many times I have stumbled over the hatred for the commander and the out of nowhere removal for him I felt like I wanted to try another option for spellslinger and I like how Jori En feels a little less threatening and a little more finesse based in that her abilities are more subtle and less aggravating for opponents.
So I guess this is me trying to come up with an alternative for GAAIV. I am not going to decomission that right now but I want to see how this plays in comparison. With my GAAIV deck I focus a lot on doing 2-4 mana things because the 2 mana is the most bang for the buck when you cost reduce and cut something's cost in half. Moving to this list I went with a little lower costs and I am going for a little more draw from my commander instead of the cost reduction.
Here is my first draft of Jori En which I hope to test soon. When I first built the list I ended up with 140 cards and I had to cut a LOT of goodstuff to get it to where it is now. There are so many things I could consider like Cleaver Impersonator, Gilded Drake, and so many others but I really wanted to focus a little more on cheap spellcasting and things that would improve their performance. I went with spellslinger in part because that is some of the stronger elements that Izzet has access to and I really really love some of the newer spellslinger tools that have come out in more recent sets so it really made me want to toy deeper with what there is out there for spellslinger. You will notice that I have a distinct lack of dedicated wincons. This is a bit of my own style when building a deck as I tend to worry more about if it runs well than if it can close out games. When a deck runs well it generally finds opportunities to close out games. I think some of the token generation + extra turns could be enough so for now I want to keep the list more to functioning well than clogging it up with "wincons".
Fog Bank (Its cheap defense that can multitask easily. I only dont like that it has nothing to do with the rest of the deck but other than that, it works well with my commander and it gives cheap blocks.)
Gamble (I felt like other than like a wraths there wasn't a lot of key cards I need enough to gamble for them. Perhaps I am just being silly but we will see I guess.)
Tidespout Tyrant (the idea of chaining little spells and bouncing things sounds great, except for its 8 mana cost to drop.)
Divergent Transformations (I like the idea of transforming a token into something else at my opponents end step. This deck has a lot of good things to hit and this can also deal with pesky creatures so this seems interesting to me.)
Oblivion Stone (I really want to find room for it but I felt that a lot of the other wraths actually fit my theme better. I think this is probably important to make room for when I can given my inability to answer enchantments.)
Sigil Tracer (My commander is a wizard too so just this + Jori En could copy spells together. I held off though because I ended up cutting all of the forking effects from the deck because I needed to make room and honestly fork effects are responsive and I wanted to have more pro active cards than reactive cards for now.)
Rhystic Study (I had it in until the last few cuts. Its tempo and draw so I can totally see it making the cut but I didnt want to cut deeper into the spells for now)
Psychosis Crawler (I am a little concerned with how much this will actually do. I dont wheel or do big draw x effects so I feel like its worse than guttersnipe given the build)
Darksteel Plate (I often enjoy protection but given the more subtle nature of this commander plus low cost I dont know its needed.)
Baral's Expertise (I like the tempo of the card. I fear though that it eats up a wrath slot but it doesnt catch enough cards in it or I would need to target one player a little heavier. I still think it is promising if one player is ahead but again, its just tempo.)
Zephid's Embrace (it curves well with my commander and the idea of starting in on some commander beats sounds tempting. Some protection, buffing, and evasion all on a reasonable cost.)
Mana Crypt (I kept the moxes in instead in part because they dont eat my face off. We will see how things run for now but it was something I put some thought into.)
Bedlam Reveler (as Schutzwald pointed out it could be a good card here. It depends a little on how much I am burning my hand out though so I will test the deck first before deciding more on this.)
What about Desolate Lighthouse? Seems like it would be pretty solid here. Goblin Electromancer is absent, just feel like it wasn't pulling its weight? Also Jace's Sanctum
And Time Spiral could be sweet, I know you're trying to keep the curve extra low but that card is gas in U/R Anything. On that note, how about Bedlam Reveler
What about Desolate Lighthouse? Seems like it would be pretty solid here. Goblin Electromancer is absent, just feel like it wasn't pulling its weight? Also Jace's Sanctum
And Time Spiral could be sweet, I know you're trying to keep the curve extra low but that card is gas in U/R Anything. On that note, how about Bedlam Reveler
[/horrible run-on post]
Tower of the Magistrate - I wouldn't say its overly a problem but Sword of Fire and Ice / Darksteel Plate see some play and what I like about the tower is its a land that comes in untapped and still produces mana if its not a problem. I would say that on average a good portion of the decks in my meta do run 2 - 3 equipment so its not super relevant but its also not using up a ton of space. Its easy to use and keep up and sometimes its very important and a strong deprive occasionally. For me tower comes down to how much space is it taking up (a colorless mana land slot) vs the occasional need so I do like making room for it when I can. Forcing a creature to drop their equipment is a very strong tool.
Desolate Lighthouse - I considered it but considering how draw focused the deck is I just felt I wasn't going to want to spend 4 mana on its ability. I will think about it a bit more but when it comes to utility land I generally try to weigh how frequent I plan to use them as well as how relevant the abilities of the utility lands are and I just felt that it was more mana than I wanted to spend for its ability. It would come down to running out of gas and not having things to do before I would resort to this and I feel like if that happens, I need be considering how to add more draw instead of adding the lighthouse. I think that its probably fine for some izzet builds but considering I am going with a draw focused build I am hoping that I never have to resort to such tactics as paying 4 mana to loot 1.
Goblin Electromancer / Jace's Sanctum - I considered the Sanctum back when I was at 140 cards. I ended up cutting a LOT of cards to get down to 100 and in the end I felt that it was better to design arround a low curve at which point these cards are a little hit and miss. I tend to have a hard time with them in decks unless I am playing a lot of buyback cards or if my commander is giving me this effect (my GAAIV deck). When it comes to cost reduction its hard to build around that concept unless you are including a lot of buyback cards. Buyback cards tend to get better as your ability to actually draw new cards gets worse or if you go about cost reducing them. Since I felt that my draw capabilities were better and I didn't have any natural synergy with cost reduction other than having the ability to cast more than one spell in a turn I felt that it wasnt worth trying to find space for these effects.
Time Spiral - I could in fact try to play a tempo build with more bounce effects and situational sweeping with wheels. Its not the build I was going for but generally wheel based decks want to be moving real fast with lots of fast mana and bounce effects. The new Baral's Expertise could for instance allow you to cast a Windfall afterwards which would be a great tempo wheel effect. Its not the direction I was going to be honest. When it comes to blue I tend to avoid playing wheels unless you are moving very very quickly and trying to tempo play your opponents. I have never had much luck with tempo wheel strategies but I also have a harder time justifying them when playing blue as it really involves having a very good start and disrupting your opponents. I think personally its a strategy that works better with a commander who can serve as a threat themselves such as possibly Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest.
Bedlam Reveler - the only reason I refrained on this card is because it requires you to discard your hand and draw to three. It really depends a little on how well I can chain draw I guess but its possible. It does have good synergy with spellslinging but its also a card where you want to burn your hand out and then play after you have an empty hand. I will try to assess it a little more perhaps after I get a chance to playtest this as if you have a full hand its bad but if you have an empty hand its great. If I find myself constantly at a low hand count it should be a great card so I guess I will think about it for now.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Okay wow first off you finally gave me the confidence to play UR as I always kept avoiding the combination for personal reasons. Regardless I feel your on the right path of focusing on token generation, perhaps Descent of the Dragons might be of use to push for greater damage output despite being a rather gimmicky card.
Also in the vein of spellslinger might I suggest Curious Homunculus as its flip Voracious Reader a decent body that makes your spells cheaper?
Okay wow first off you finally gave me the confidence to play UR as I always kept avoiding the combination for personal reasons. Regardless I feel your on the right path of focusing on token generation, perhaps Descent of the Dragons might be of use to push for greater damage output despite being a rather gimmicky card.
Also in the vein of spellslinger might I suggest Curious Homunculus as its flip Voracious Reader a decent body that makes your spells cheaper?
I am glad my list inspired you. I am running it myself and I have my good days and my bad days with it. Its a really cool deck as a whole. I made some adjustments to mine a few weeks back but I forget what it was so I will have to sit down and try to update it at some point.
Descent of the Dragons - its something that fits the concept of the deck. Overall though its a little expensive to cast though and if I have a bunch of tokens I feel like I am doing fairly well already. I could see it working out but I have some concerns with how expensive it is to cast. The spell is a sorcery and the new tokens have summoning sickness which this is not really a hast focused deck so I felt it might be a little slow given that. I think it could do some good and its nice that it can serve as removal as well but I also question if its needed if my token production plan is going smooth enough to try for a dragon upgrade.
Curious Homunculus it could be good but its a little fragile and its a little narrow in what it cost reduces as well. My above list has 25 spells it cost reduces which isn't bad. Back when I was running Grand Arbiter Augustin IV I built more around the cost reduction though. I could see it being more important if you incorporated some buyback spells which I did in my GAAIV deck but I usually turn over enough draw in here that I didn't bother with the buyback stuff.
I'm not an Izzet kind of guy but this deck looks fun! If you ever want to go deeper with the token theme, here are some cards that are fun albeit a lower power-level than I think you're aiming for:
Actually, screw it, I'm building Izzet Tokens now. Maybe with Locust god... hmm...
*quietly backs away*
Lol I am glad I have inspired you. My goal originally when I was building Jori En, Ruin Diver here was to capitalize on drawing extra cards off of the commander plus making the cheap spells that I was casting to draw off of Jori En do a little more. When you cast two cantrip cheap spells to draw an extra card its not bad but when you suddenly make a token as well it gets a lot more interesting real quick.
I don't play this list anymore but it was fun when I did play it. Since this deck I did pick up Kefnet the Mindful which is a little different spin but I play it as kind of a draw / go control deck with more of an emphasis on attack and defense with my commander. One of the issues I had with Jori En is that it felt like it was kind of challanging to defend myself at times and most of my cards that did anything took a while to spin up as well so getting removed potentially put me back to square one too much.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Yeah, sounds fair. Especially in a cutthroat playgroup.
Thanks for the thoughts on Jori En. I'm leaning toward Locust God for an Izzet Token deck right now, just because it's hard to get rid of, but it's so easy to just fall into the "let's wheel and suddenly win" trap of a standard Locust God deck. That's why I'm curious about Jori En and Melek. I guess Nin, the Pain Artist is pretty solid too come to think about it. Draw tons of your measly tokens seems nice.
Yea Izzet is challanging because in a lot of cases its a color combination that is hard to win without combo in. The commanders who are not subtle are either bad or scream for opponents to deal with them. I have always had an issue with Izzet / mono blue in that regard that its very chllanging to build a "fair" non combo deck with them.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I had an idea about Izzet that you could run cards like Trail of Evidence, Inspiring Statuary, Thopter Spy Network, Spell Swindle, etc., along with Metallurgic Summonings that you already run.
You'd produce a bunch of artifact tokens (thopters, clues and treasures). You could use them for mana with Statuary and treasures, draw cards with Spy Network and Trail of Evidence, and like that you would gain board state and snowball.
Other interactions include running Winter Orb, Static Orb, Trinisphere to lock down the board, then using Improvise to tap them at EOT before your turn, so that you break parity and untap with everything while they remain crippled.
My commander is Mizzix, which makes casting cards like Reshape, Trash for Treasure, Scrap Mastery, etc. a total piece of cake, plus I'm using mana rocks + Paradox Engine and Aetherflux Reservoir anyway, so additional artifact synergy wouldn't be totally random.
EDIT: This style of play is also potentially powerful because you have the upcoming Storm the Vault as a ludicrously strong slot made for this deck, while nobody else will probably be able to use it.
Another idea is to add white and go Jeskai (probably Bruse Kraum or Ishai Kraum), with Monastery Mentor, Myth Realized, all the Elspeths, and totally dominate with tokens.
So I guess this is me trying to come up with an alternative for GAAIV. I am not going to decomission that right now but I want to see how this plays in comparison. With my GAAIV deck I focus a lot on doing 2-4 mana things because the 2 mana is the most bang for the buck when you cost reduce and cut something's cost in half. Moving to this list I went with a little lower costs and I am going for a little more draw from my commander instead of the cost reduction.
Here is my first draft of Jori En which I hope to test soon. When I first built the list I ended up with 140 cards and I had to cut a LOT of goodstuff to get it to where it is now. There are so many things I could consider like Cleaver Impersonator, Gilded Drake, and so many others but I really wanted to focus a little more on cheap spellcasting and things that would improve their performance. I went with spellslinger in part because that is some of the stronger elements that Izzet has access to and I really really love some of the newer spellslinger tools that have come out in more recent sets so it really made me want to toy deeper with what there is out there for spellslinger. You will notice that I have a distinct lack of dedicated wincons. This is a bit of my own style when building a deck as I tend to worry more about if it runs well than if it can close out games. When a deck runs well it generally finds opportunities to close out games. I think some of the token generation + extra turns could be enough so for now I want to keep the list more to functioning well than clogging it up with "wincons".
1 Jori En, Ruin Diver
CREATURES (15)
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Thing in the Ice
1 Young Pyromancer
1 Guttersnipe
1 Trinket Mage
1 Niblis of Frost
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
1 Disciple of the Ring
1 Docent of Perfection
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Melek, Izzet Paragon
1 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Djinn Illuminatus
ARTIFACT (7)
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Sword of the Animist
ENCHANTMENT (4)
1 Mystic Remora
1 Future Sight
1 Metallurgic Summonings
1 Treachery
INSTANT (21)
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Pongify
1 Thought Scour
1 Visions of Beyond
1 Anticipate
1 Arcane Denial
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Impulse
1 Izzet Charm
1 Mana Drain
1 Reality Shift
1 Shattering Pulse
1 Starstorm
1 Think Twice
1 Chaos Warp
1 Cryptic Command
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Force of Will
1 Mystic Confluence
1 Dig Through Time
1 Faithless Looting
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Serum Visions
1 Shattering Spree
1 Curse of the Swine
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Fiery Confluence
1 Mizzix's Mastery
1 Past in Flames
1 Capture of Jingzhou
1 Temporal Manipulation
1 Time Warp
PLANESWALKER (2)
1 Dack Fayden
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
LAND (36)
1 Academy Ruins
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Command Tower
1 Flooded Strand
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 High Market
7 Island
1 Kher Keep
1 Misty Rainforest
6 Mountain
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Polluted Delta
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
1 Strip Mine
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Volcanic Island
1 Winding Canyons
1 Wooded Foothills
CONSIDERATIONS
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
What about Desolate Lighthouse? Seems like it would be pretty solid here.
Goblin Electromancer is absent, just feel like it wasn't pulling its weight? Also Jace's Sanctum
And Time Spiral could be sweet, I know you're trying to keep the curve extra low but that card is gas in U/R Anything. On that note, how about Bedlam Reveler
[/horrible run-on post]
BGGRock
Modern
BRGJund
BBGRock
Tower of the Magistrate - I wouldn't say its overly a problem but Sword of Fire and Ice / Darksteel Plate see some play and what I like about the tower is its a land that comes in untapped and still produces mana if its not a problem. I would say that on average a good portion of the decks in my meta do run 2 - 3 equipment so its not super relevant but its also not using up a ton of space. Its easy to use and keep up and sometimes its very important and a strong deprive occasionally. For me tower comes down to how much space is it taking up (a colorless mana land slot) vs the occasional need so I do like making room for it when I can. Forcing a creature to drop their equipment is a very strong tool.
Desolate Lighthouse - I considered it but considering how draw focused the deck is I just felt I wasn't going to want to spend 4 mana on its ability. I will think about it a bit more but when it comes to utility land I generally try to weigh how frequent I plan to use them as well as how relevant the abilities of the utility lands are and I just felt that it was more mana than I wanted to spend for its ability. It would come down to running out of gas and not having things to do before I would resort to this and I feel like if that happens, I need be considering how to add more draw instead of adding the lighthouse. I think that its probably fine for some izzet builds but considering I am going with a draw focused build I am hoping that I never have to resort to such tactics as paying 4 mana to loot 1.
Goblin Electromancer / Jace's Sanctum - I considered the Sanctum back when I was at 140 cards. I ended up cutting a LOT of cards to get down to 100 and in the end I felt that it was better to design arround a low curve at which point these cards are a little hit and miss. I tend to have a hard time with them in decks unless I am playing a lot of buyback cards or if my commander is giving me this effect (my GAAIV deck). When it comes to cost reduction its hard to build around that concept unless you are including a lot of buyback cards. Buyback cards tend to get better as your ability to actually draw new cards gets worse or if you go about cost reducing them. Since I felt that my draw capabilities were better and I didn't have any natural synergy with cost reduction other than having the ability to cast more than one spell in a turn I felt that it wasnt worth trying to find space for these effects.
Time Spiral - I could in fact try to play a tempo build with more bounce effects and situational sweeping with wheels. Its not the build I was going for but generally wheel based decks want to be moving real fast with lots of fast mana and bounce effects. The new Baral's Expertise could for instance allow you to cast a Windfall afterwards which would be a great tempo wheel effect. Its not the direction I was going to be honest. When it comes to blue I tend to avoid playing wheels unless you are moving very very quickly and trying to tempo play your opponents. I have never had much luck with tempo wheel strategies but I also have a harder time justifying them when playing blue as it really involves having a very good start and disrupting your opponents. I think personally its a strategy that works better with a commander who can serve as a threat themselves such as possibly Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest.
Bedlam Reveler - the only reason I refrained on this card is because it requires you to discard your hand and draw to three. It really depends a little on how well I can chain draw I guess but its possible. It does have good synergy with spellslinging but its also a card where you want to burn your hand out and then play after you have an empty hand. I will try to assess it a little more perhaps after I get a chance to playtest this as if you have a full hand its bad but if you have an empty hand its great. If I find myself constantly at a low hand count it should be a great card so I guess I will think about it for now.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Also in the vein of spellslinger might I suggest Curious Homunculus as its flip Voracious Reader a decent body that makes your spells cheaper?
I am glad my list inspired you. I am running it myself and I have my good days and my bad days with it. Its a really cool deck as a whole. I made some adjustments to mine a few weeks back but I forget what it was so I will have to sit down and try to update it at some point.
Descent of the Dragons - its something that fits the concept of the deck. Overall though its a little expensive to cast though and if I have a bunch of tokens I feel like I am doing fairly well already. I could see it working out but I have some concerns with how expensive it is to cast. The spell is a sorcery and the new tokens have summoning sickness which this is not really a hast focused deck so I felt it might be a little slow given that. I think it could do some good and its nice that it can serve as removal as well but I also question if its needed if my token production plan is going smooth enough to try for a dragon upgrade.
Curious Homunculus it could be good but its a little fragile and its a little narrow in what it cost reduces as well. My above list has 25 spells it cost reduces which isn't bad. Back when I was running Grand Arbiter Augustin IV I built more around the cost reduction though. I could see it being more important if you incorporated some buyback spells which I did in my GAAIV deck but I usually turn over enough draw in here that I didn't bother with the buyback stuff.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Lol I am glad I have inspired you. My goal originally when I was building Jori En, Ruin Diver here was to capitalize on drawing extra cards off of the commander plus making the cheap spells that I was casting to draw off of Jori En do a little more. When you cast two cantrip cheap spells to draw an extra card its not bad but when you suddenly make a token as well it gets a lot more interesting real quick.
I don't play this list anymore but it was fun when I did play it. Since this deck I did pick up Kefnet the Mindful which is a little different spin but I play it as kind of a draw / go control deck with more of an emphasis on attack and defense with my commander. One of the issues I had with Jori En is that it felt like it was kind of challanging to defend myself at times and most of my cards that did anything took a while to spin up as well so getting removed potentially put me back to square one too much.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Yea Izzet is challanging because in a lot of cases its a color combination that is hard to win without combo in. The commanders who are not subtle are either bad or scream for opponents to deal with them. I have always had an issue with Izzet / mono blue in that regard that its very chllanging to build a "fair" non combo deck with them.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
You'd produce a bunch of artifact tokens (thopters, clues and treasures). You could use them for mana with Statuary and treasures, draw cards with Spy Network and Trail of Evidence, and like that you would gain board state and snowball.
Other interactions include running Winter Orb, Static Orb, Trinisphere to lock down the board, then using Improvise to tap them at EOT before your turn, so that you break parity and untap with everything while they remain crippled.
My commander is Mizzix, which makes casting cards like Reshape, Trash for Treasure, Scrap Mastery, etc. a total piece of cake, plus I'm using mana rocks + Paradox Engine and Aetherflux Reservoir anyway, so additional artifact synergy wouldn't be totally random.
EDIT: This style of play is also potentially powerful because you have the upcoming Storm the Vault as a ludicrously strong slot made for this deck, while nobody else will probably be able to use it.
Another idea is to add white and go Jeskai (probably Bruse Kraum or Ishai Kraum), with Monastery Mentor, Myth Realized, all the Elspeths, and totally dominate with tokens.