I'd sooner have Jace +1'ing than drawing cards, so I don't think YP is necessarily bad against Jace. Elspeth can be a tough card to deal with, I agree with that.
This is the deck i've been toying with JOU cauz i was bored of Sphinx Revelation decks and i like it a lot. Pretty classic Counter/Burn deck where Keranos shines like a true god acting as card advantage engine as well as a real win condition. Overall the deck is really solid against aggro decks, counterflux wins counterspells war against UW (and izzet charm is really good too. MonoBlack is quite good match-up too if you can manage to counter/kill desecration demon. But the deck can't beat dredge decks and has real hard time against boros burn or master of waves decks. Only solution to beat those matches is to play white :/
With four scrylands, the four Voyages, two Bolts, and four Dissolve, I have 14 cards in the deck that can scry 1, so that will smooth a lot of things out, and that's on top of Izzet Charm's looting effect. How's it look, guys?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH/Commander
UBR Sedris RG Omnath, Locus of Rage UB The Scarab God RUG Maelstrom Wanderer WU Dragonlord Ojutai
I really like the idea of manipulating the opponents top deck while keeping counter magic or burn available. I just wish we had something easier to cast than Dissolve, though it does add even more scrying to the deck. I'm also considering splashing white for Banishing Light.
Dissolve, in my experience, was always so awkward and difficult to cast. I'd rather have Dispel in all honesty, since Izzet Charm does such a solid job of keeping threats off the table early game (mainly Jace, Architect of Thought, and creatures can mostly be handled with Turn // Burn.
You know what's awesome in the deck? Spite of Mogis. Would you like to wreck a Desecration Demon for 1 mana and scry 1? Don't mind if I do sir. I tested that card a little last night and it was amazing.
I thought about trying out Hour of Need, blanking removal on Young Peezy and upgrading it to a 4/4 flyer while getting an elemental token sounds like a good deal. You get even more value with Battlefield Thaumaturge on the board. Upgrading your Token army to 4/4 fliers sounds good too if you can afford it mana wise.
Seems clunky and overcosted and pointless. Also amazingly slow. Just play a 4/4 flier. Don't do a 3-card combo that makes a 4/4 flier. That's astonishingly bad magic.
Also, young pyromancer is great in modern. In standard he's bad. Really really bad.
He never ends up doing anything. He's slow and low-impact and the tokens just chump a bit but if you're in chump mode you're already dead. That's why this deck is uncompetitive.
The reason the deck isn't competitive is because we can't deal with certain decks once they drown us in more powerful cards. R/w Burn plays a tempo game much like we do, and it beats decks we fold to because Chain to the Rocks, Boros Charm, and Warleader's Helix do more work than our blue cards.
Regardless, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on Young Pyromancer. That card offers more value than any other card in the deck in my opinion. Sure it's a slow card, but you don't play him and expect to win every game by amassing a token army and turning them sideways (though it's certainly possible). He offers options, board control, tempo, and can do work out of nowhere. He's amazing against aggro and forces them to to hold back and never attack out of fear of getting 2 for 1'd all day (and most of the time they get 2 for 1'd regardless). He's even good against control because they pretty much have to use Supreme Verdict on a single 2 drop, otherwise they get swarmed with tokens and Mutavaults. Every turn he stays on board he gains value, how many cards do we have available to us that do that?
The mana base would be a bit wonky, and you'd have to go Mutavault-less to support both the Mystic and Phoenix. It could be worth it if you can get the mana base to work, Chandra's Phoenix is amazing.
I'm giving this deck another shot after getting burned out on playing aggro during bng standard. This time I'm giving spellheart chimera another chance with keranos as an alternate wincon.
What are people's opinions on dictate of kruphix? I'm thinking it would help ensure keranos is online and between it, keranos, and dakra mystic I should be drawing an extra card or two every turn, which should help ensure the right answers. Only thing I'm worried about is the extra draw helping my opponent out too much.
Played Izzet Counterburn to 2nd place at FNM. Seems like it's the real deal. Only creatures were Young Pyromancer and Chandra's Phoenix. Probably should have been running Mutavaults as well, but I sleeved the deck in like 10 minutes so I didn't put in a whole lot of thought.
What are people's opinions on dictate of kruphix? I'm thinking it would help ensure keranos is online and between it, keranos, and dakra mystic I should be drawing an extra card or two every turn, which should help ensure the right answers. Only thing I'm worried about is the extra draw helping my opponent out too much.
1 - it's not an instant or a sorcery
2 - the objective is to answer their threats and pull ahead with steam augury or other card draw. this negates that plan
seems really bad in this build.
If your objective is to turn on Keranos, that's another deck. It's a devotion deck, and it should include frostburn weird, thassa, master of waves and things like that. Permanents.
Turning on Keranos isn't really super relevant. It's a 6/5 that gets chumped and dies to Selesyna Charm for 5 Mana.
The best reason I can think of to run Keranos, God of Storms is that it is a win condition that can't die to Hero's Downfall. It's much worse than Stormbreath against control though.
I'm going to try a more creature heavy version, a slight variant of blue devotion in the previous standard....I've had sucess with Young Pyromancer and Master Of Waves in the same deck. I'm going up to 16 creatures to start to see if I can keep them alive and quick enough for the devotion angle but still keep the counter burn tempo relevant. Izzet Charm has been under performing in this build for me along with syncopate too. Thinking about only using dissolve possibly counterflux main and side specialty counters such as gainsay, essence scatter, negate, dispel etc
So I've come back to Izzet finally after getting bored with it pre-BNG. Piloted it last week and was somewhat surprised with how well it performed all things considered. I only went 3-2, crushing a couple mono-blacks and a R/W burn, but the two losses were to Jund Midrange and G/R monsters, which proved problematic early this season and only got worse due to Courser of Kruphix. Given that the games each came to a third game, with a deciding point being a single turn I was surprised.
Some changes from the previous build:
1. Steam Augury is gone. It's a card early on I seriously wanted to be good for the deck, and just really tried to work with. Unfortunately, other than being cute with Chimera, it was generally pretty bad. Even with the Chimera, there simply isn't enough of an upside to matter. The card wants to be good, but just isn't. Went with Divination as a 2-of and upped my Charm count; never looking back.
2. Chandra's Phoenix are in, Guttersnipes are out. You will probably never attack with Snipe anyway, so really on a turn-by-turn basis the Phoenix matches up well. Given that it has evasion, it just gets there for 6 damage or so fairly easily and consistently. The snipe just pitters out hard. It's another card that wants to be good in the deck, but just is terribly inconsistent to really work. The Phoenix may not have the explosiveness, but that's alright. It's far more consistent damage and is more problematic for a lot of decks than Snipe anyway.
3. A couple Searing Bloods makes the occasional double burn you have to occasionally use on problem creatures far more palatable, but constricts the mana base a little. Still, I think it's a fine consideration.
4. Chimera, while certainly strong, is also something I loathe to draw multples of, particularly in my opening hand. I have 3 in the main right now, and am considering dropping to 2. In its place I have a Stormbreath, with another sideboard because I couldn't think of anything to change out. In hindsight, 2 stormies might be the way to go mainboard. Chimera is certainly still strong in the deck, and far less inconsistent than the others, but I really don't like seeing multiple Chimeras early on. I think 3 is a good number, but I might go to 2 and see how I like that. It's painful, as I love the Chimera.
5. Added a third Mutavault. Was running 4 at one point, saw it created rather horrendous situations with the deck's manabase, and went to 2. Now up to 3. Not a big change, but to be frank I'd run some number in most any 2-color deck, this included. It's just gives more win conditions without much of a huge downside.
Those are the major changes I made, I like that overall. That said, somethings I'm considering in release after spending the weekend playtesting with friends:
1. Spite of Mogis shores up midrange matches pretty well. I don't think I can justify a 4-of as you *really* don't want multiples in your opening hand, and I've had a few 3-of openers which are practically unkeepable. Moved it down to 3-of, and am generally happy. Might put a 2-1 split, as it's fine in most matches but better against midrange (It's a sideboard out card for aggro generally, excepting G/W methinks which has plenty of 4-5 toughness creatures).
2. A full set of Temple of Epiphany is obvious, but can't be overstated. They are solid in the deck.
3. Tried changing out Divination for Font of Fortunes. It's actually not bad, and it gives you something else to do on turn 2. The problem I've always experienced with Divination is that being 3-mana puts it at an awkward spot at times, where you don't want to cast so you can leave mana up to counter/burn etc. problematic creatures or spells. This being a generally "safe" turn play on turn 2 means you can crack it at end of turn whenever you want. 2-mana casting cost also helps you leave up Dissolve/Syncopate mana. It lacks synergy with Chimera, but frankly I'm not worried about that. I've lost more games due to awkward mana issues than I have to not having 1-2 point of Chimera damage. It's still not amazing, but I have it as a 2-of currently and like the results generally speaking.
4. Keranos. Good god, Keranos is great in the deck. He's just damn good at what he does. He keeps you on a clock, turn all of your useless 2-3 damage spells into 5-6 damage removal, an draws you cards when you normally would be drawing dead all in one card. I tried him for testing purposes as a 1-of and found myself wanting him as the turn 5 play of choice in many matches. I will certainly be making him at least a 2-of, and frankly possibly 3 depending on what removal people end up running for the Gods. He lacks the initial punch of Stormbreath, but makes up for it in pure difficult to remove advantage. Given that he'll likely end up a 2-of in the build's mainboard, it's quite possible that many decks have no good way to interact with him. I love him in the deck, and not just because of all the scry you have available.
I'm still tweaking the decklist, so I won't post my current build, but these are the general thoughts I have on Izzet moving forward with the current card pool. I think there is a viable build out there, and while Journey doesn't change the game a great deal, it adds a few components that the deck was sorely needing.
Our great overlord zemanjaski, the best red mage to ever grace this forum with his presence has a whole section about why Young Peezy is overpowered. You guys should read it.
I read that article. And not to take anything away from Zemanjaski, but some people give way too much credit to a single person for deck ideas. A _lot_ of people were testing and playing Boros Burn for a long time. Sometimes people with a larger platform to speak from get most of the credit when in reality it was an entire communities effort. Whether it's intended by these writers or not (which most of the time seems not), readers are very quick to credit a single person fully. People were developing Boros Burn, both similar and more varying deck lists, before Zemanjaski, after, along with, and separately. It's like a lot of articles on Channel Fireball where one of the authors has a whole article on using Lifebane Zombie main deck instead of Pack Rat in Monoblack Devotion (that being the only change), and act as though _they_ discovered some kind of new deck or "tech" or whatever.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
3 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Aetherling
4 Jace, Architect of Thought
2 Ral Zarek
4 Counterflux
4 Izzet Charm
2 Syncopate
3 Magma Jet
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Steam Augury
4 Anger of the Gods
2 Mizzium Mortars
6 Island
7 Mountains
2 Izzet Guildgate
4 Steam Vents
4 Temple of Epiphany
2 Mutavault
3 Stormbreath Dragon
2 Mutavault
3 Fated Conflagration
2 Turn/Burn
1 Mizzium Mortars
3 Annul
1 Cyclonic Rift
This is the deck i've been toying with JOU cauz i was bored of Sphinx Revelation decks and i like it a lot. Pretty classic Counter/Burn deck where Keranos shines like a true god acting as card advantage engine as well as a real win condition. Overall the deck is really solid against aggro decks, counterflux wins counterspells war against UW (and izzet charm is really good too. MonoBlack is quite good match-up too if you can manage to counter/kill desecration demon. But the deck can't beat dredge decks and has real hard time against boros burn or master of waves decks. Only solution to beat those matches is to play white :/
2 Temple of Malice
2 Temple of Deceit
2 Izzet Guildgate
7 Island
7 Mountain
4 Guttersnipe
3 Lightning Strike
2 Bolt of Keranos
2 Essence Scatter
4 Dissolve
4 Izzet Charm
4 Voyage's End
4 Steam Augury
2 Inspiration
2 Mizzium Skin
With four scrylands, the four Voyages, two Bolts, and four Dissolve, I have 14 cards in the deck that can scry 1, so that will smooth a lot of things out, and that's on top of Izzet Charm's looting effect. How's it look, guys?
UBR Sedris
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage
UB The Scarab God
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer
WU Dragonlord Ojutai
Oh right, I meant to change that to Magma Jet. I assembled the list from cards in my collection but I intend to get two Jets instead.
UBR Sedris
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage
UB The Scarab God
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer
WU Dragonlord Ojutai
4x Dakra Mystic
4x Young Pyromancer
3x Spellheart Chimera
Instants and Sorceries: 26
4x Magma Jet
4x Lightning Strike
4x Turn // Burn
4x Steam Augury
4x Dissolve
2x Syncopate
2x Izzet Charm
2x Spite of Mogis
4x Steam Vents
4x Temple of Epiphany
2x Izzet Guildgate
8x Island
3x Mountain
2x Mutavault
I really like the idea of manipulating the opponents top deck while keeping counter magic or burn available. I just wish we had something easier to cast than Dissolve, though it does add even more scrying to the deck. I'm also considering splashing white for Banishing Light.
I really love Dakra Mystic.
I also really love Hour of Need in this deck.
I thought about trying out Hour of Need, blanking removal on Young Peezy and upgrading it to a 4/4 flyer while getting an elemental token sounds like a good deal. You get even more value with Battlefield Thaumaturge on the board. Upgrading your Token army to 4/4 fliers sounds good too if you can afford it mana wise.
Also, young pyromancer is great in modern. In standard he's bad. Really really bad.
Regardless, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on Young Pyromancer. That card offers more value than any other card in the deck in my opinion. Sure it's a slow card, but you don't play him and expect to win every game by amassing a token army and turning them sideways (though it's certainly possible). He offers options, board control, tempo, and can do work out of nowhere. He's amazing against aggro and forces them to to hold back and never attack out of fear of getting 2 for 1'd all day (and most of the time they get 2 for 1'd regardless). He's even good against control because they pretty much have to use Supreme Verdict on a single 2 drop, otherwise they get swarmed with tokens and Mutavaults. Every turn he stays on board he gains value, how many cards do we have available to us that do that?
What are people's opinions on dictate of kruphix? I'm thinking it would help ensure keranos is online and between it, keranos, and dakra mystic I should be drawing an extra card or two every turn, which should help ensure the right answers. Only thing I'm worried about is the extra draw helping my opponent out too much.
1 - it's not an instant or a sorcery
2 - the objective is to answer their threats and pull ahead with steam augury or other card draw. this negates that plan
seems really bad in this build.
If your objective is to turn on Keranos, that's another deck. It's a devotion deck, and it should include frostburn weird, thassa, master of waves and things like that. Permanents.
The best reason I can think of to run Keranos, God of Storms is that it is a win condition that can't die to Hero's Downfall. It's much worse than Stormbreath against control though.
Some changes from the previous build:
1. Steam Augury is gone. It's a card early on I seriously wanted to be good for the deck, and just really tried to work with. Unfortunately, other than being cute with Chimera, it was generally pretty bad. Even with the Chimera, there simply isn't enough of an upside to matter. The card wants to be good, but just isn't. Went with Divination as a 2-of and upped my Charm count; never looking back.
2. Chandra's Phoenix are in, Guttersnipes are out. You will probably never attack with Snipe anyway, so really on a turn-by-turn basis the Phoenix matches up well. Given that it has evasion, it just gets there for 6 damage or so fairly easily and consistently. The snipe just pitters out hard. It's another card that wants to be good in the deck, but just is terribly inconsistent to really work. The Phoenix may not have the explosiveness, but that's alright. It's far more consistent damage and is more problematic for a lot of decks than Snipe anyway.
3. A couple Searing Bloods makes the occasional double burn you have to occasionally use on problem creatures far more palatable, but constricts the mana base a little. Still, I think it's a fine consideration.
4. Chimera, while certainly strong, is also something I loathe to draw multples of, particularly in my opening hand. I have 3 in the main right now, and am considering dropping to 2. In its place I have a Stormbreath, with another sideboard because I couldn't think of anything to change out. In hindsight, 2 stormies might be the way to go mainboard. Chimera is certainly still strong in the deck, and far less inconsistent than the others, but I really don't like seeing multiple Chimeras early on. I think 3 is a good number, but I might go to 2 and see how I like that. It's painful, as I love the Chimera.
5. Added a third Mutavault. Was running 4 at one point, saw it created rather horrendous situations with the deck's manabase, and went to 2. Now up to 3. Not a big change, but to be frank I'd run some number in most any 2-color deck, this included. It's just gives more win conditions without much of a huge downside.
Those are the major changes I made, I like that overall. That said, somethings I'm considering in release after spending the weekend playtesting with friends:
1. Spite of Mogis shores up midrange matches pretty well. I don't think I can justify a 4-of as you *really* don't want multiples in your opening hand, and I've had a few 3-of openers which are practically unkeepable. Moved it down to 3-of, and am generally happy. Might put a 2-1 split, as it's fine in most matches but better against midrange (It's a sideboard out card for aggro generally, excepting G/W methinks which has plenty of 4-5 toughness creatures).
2. A full set of Temple of Epiphany is obvious, but can't be overstated. They are solid in the deck.
3. Tried changing out Divination for Font of Fortunes. It's actually not bad, and it gives you something else to do on turn 2. The problem I've always experienced with Divination is that being 3-mana puts it at an awkward spot at times, where you don't want to cast so you can leave mana up to counter/burn etc. problematic creatures or spells. This being a generally "safe" turn play on turn 2 means you can crack it at end of turn whenever you want. 2-mana casting cost also helps you leave up Dissolve/Syncopate mana. It lacks synergy with Chimera, but frankly I'm not worried about that. I've lost more games due to awkward mana issues than I have to not having 1-2 point of Chimera damage. It's still not amazing, but I have it as a 2-of currently and like the results generally speaking.
4. Keranos. Good god, Keranos is great in the deck. He's just damn good at what he does. He keeps you on a clock, turn all of your useless 2-3 damage spells into 5-6 damage removal, an draws you cards when you normally would be drawing dead all in one card. I tried him for testing purposes as a 1-of and found myself wanting him as the turn 5 play of choice in many matches. I will certainly be making him at least a 2-of, and frankly possibly 3 depending on what removal people end up running for the Gods. He lacks the initial punch of Stormbreath, but makes up for it in pure difficult to remove advantage. Given that he'll likely end up a 2-of in the build's mainboard, it's quite possible that many decks have no good way to interact with him. I love him in the deck, and not just because of all the scry you have available.
I'm still tweaking the decklist, so I won't post my current build, but these are the general thoughts I have on Izzet moving forward with the current card pool. I think there is a viable build out there, and while Journey doesn't change the game a great deal, it adds a few components that the deck was sorely needing.
I read that article. And not to take anything away from Zemanjaski, but some people give way too much credit to a single person for deck ideas. A _lot_ of people were testing and playing Boros Burn for a long time. Sometimes people with a larger platform to speak from get most of the credit when in reality it was an entire communities effort. Whether it's intended by these writers or not (which most of the time seems not), readers are very quick to credit a single person fully. People were developing Boros Burn, both similar and more varying deck lists, before Zemanjaski, after, along with, and separately. It's like a lot of articles on Channel Fireball where one of the authors has a whole article on using Lifebane Zombie main deck instead of Pack Rat in Monoblack Devotion (that being the only change), and act as though _they_ discovered some kind of new deck or "tech" or whatever.