MTG Salvation

Just having got back from my first day prerelease, I can honestly say that Izzet is really not as good as it looks - I opened up Niv-Mizzet and Tibor and Lunia as well as a lot of other really strong cards (eventually going RUG - though I could have nearly as easily went GBW or URB or something) and the deck just rolled to a lot of the other decks. Especially Orzhov and Selesnya. Though I did come away with a bonus for the day - traded those two rares for a foil birds of paradise and some other nice stuff.

Is it just me, or does this deck completely fold over if your opponent is playing Enduring Ideal?

You can't really add the NoSB unless you take out the shades, and that leaves my deck extremely short of decent win conditions. I was thinking of leaving 1 Soul Burn in there just against Cranial Extraction taking out the Consume Spirits, and possibly replacing it with a 1 of Sensei's Divining Top just to help draw what I need once an Arena is on the table or a Mirari just for oldschoolness.

Notes about this deck:
I am playing only 2 Kokushos and 3 Shades main, simply because I couldn't come across any Genju of the Fens or more Kokushos(I haven't played much for a while so some of the newer stuff isn't available). As such the NoSB is moved to the sideboard. This combination has worked better for me anyway, as the turn 2 Shade hurts a lot of the more combo/control decks and just speeds up my deck a lot, whilst the 2 kokushos only generally hit play against a Solitary Confinement lock where they can still win me the game if I can get my opponent down to 10 (usually fairly easily in CAL with the number of pain and fetchlands they run) and either draw or tutor them up.

The 2x Soul Burn I am not sure on, and am thinking about scrapping them and replacing them with the two underworld dreams in my sideboard. If I do that, I might get rid of either the NoSB or the two Beacon of Unrests and adding in 3-4 either Addles or Chainer's Edicts to my SB.

Anyone have any critique to help improve my deck?

So I have been wrong in thinking that Megrim could be an average sideboard card against the thousands of Loamwhoring decks as everyone is trying to break it for each and every archetype possible?

I haven't been playing Visara's main since they rotated out of T2. The single card that it will interfere with in my deck is the O-stone, and its probably a better idea to move that to sideboard and make it a 2-3 of.

I have been looking at this deck for a while - but is there any reason NOT to try and fit Damping Matrixes in the MD?

Out of the current genre of consoles, I am a PS2 man - the sheer number and diversity of their games far outweighs the slightly prettier graphics you get with some of the other systems.

To be perfectly honest though - my heart has never left the SNES and Genesis era, I am yet to see a game that rivals the sheer amount of enjoyment you would get out of sitting down to a game of Lufia 2, battling through all 99 levels of the Ancient Dungeon, wandering around levelling like mad so you could beat down Gades and the other Sinistrals, and then go through the game on Replay and Gift modes. The sheer level of gameplay in the elder generation of console games is simply amazing when compared to what we are forced to accept these days.

I am an old 'tinger from Adelaide, South Australia who for a long time gave up magic, but recently (a week or two before States and now properly) started the game up again. Visited Misetings to see what the current state of everything was, heard about the exodus, investigated, signed up and lurked for a couple of days and decided that this forum was a infinitely better than anything I had remembered from the old days so decided to stay.

Chances are here I will mostly lurk and randomly post - it took me two years to hit 500 posts on 'tings because im normally not that overly talkative. I think that covers all the main things, so if you see me post you will now know who it is.