MTG Salvation

Hey guys, just thought I would throw this up here for some discussion about a non-storm build for this cool lady. X spells basically ensure an experience counter every turn, and obviously scale throughout the game. Thoughts?

Needs more Pyromancer's Goggles.

I feel as though I should add the entire "copy spell" suite for maximum fun.

Not a big fan of Overwhelming Intellect or Essence Backlash. Not sure what to run instead, maybe Inner Fire and Meltdown.

Volt Charge + Radiate = Fun with Experience Counters and Planeswalkers if decide to use some Chandra Ablaze is really cool if you can proliferate her to Ultimate fast.

Every Time Warp effect would make the deck effective but more than likely very unfun. Still a thought to consider.

Enter the Infinite I feel is a perfect win condition for a deck like this. Basically get 8 or more counters on yourself so you can cast enter the infinite for UUUU then cast Inner fire for R and use the mana from inner fire to Comet Storm everyone. (Make sure to have some number of "free" counterspells in this deck to protect this combo, like Force of Will, Pact of Negation, Disrupting Shoal, Thwart, and Foil.)

Fanning the Flames seems very good for Mizzix. Buyback can be reduced by the experience counters. Same deal with Capsize. Unfortunately it seems there aren't a lot of playable buyback cards in UR. Capsize,Spell Burst, andFanning the Flames is about it for UR cards with colorless buyback.

Inner Fire and Meltdown sound like good additions. I agree that the 2 counter spells are too limited.

I want to add radiate, but I don't have enough spells that target only 1 thing to really justify it.

My first draft had all the extra turn spells, and it was gross. I was going upwards of 8 turns in a row a game. Not fun for others, so I took it out.

I added Fanning the flames, having a burn spell always in hand sounds good to me.

For the free counter spells, I am kinda broke so those are way out of budget for me. I might be able to add the last 2, but so far ive never been hurting for mana availible to counter things with, so they might not be necessary. I will try out enter the infinite and see how it works, thanks for the tip!

Mineswipe is ok but the card is kind of awkward. On one hand you only want to make X big enough to get the spell countered but you also want to maximize it for more damage. I feel like a Mizzix deck will usually have better things to cast.

A couple of things. In decks like these I found Young Pyromancer to be invaluable. It fits comfortably as a 2 drop and gives you a board presence while you go crazy with spells.

I also think this list focuses too much on the best case scenario; i.e., there are too many X spells and not enough ways to get to them. Unless you want to cast X spells for 2-3 early on when you have few-to-no counters. I suggest taking out some of the weaker spells such as Seething Song(not a combo/storm deck),Increasing Confusion(not gonna mill in EDH without a dedicated deck), orProsperity and put in some mana rocks to accelerate a bit. Izzet Signet, Fellwar Stone, Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, etc. Another concern is that you seem to be running 35 lands if I counted correctly. Again, this focuses a lot on assuming you get to have lots of experience counters. I'd say add in a Temple of Epiphany and an Izzet Boilerworks and beef up the manabase a bit. Oh, also Blue Sun's Zenith instead of Prosperity

Quote from jarrusatula »

Uhm I dont think, Mizzix is that great with x spells. She checks for "converted mana cost" - and those are rather low because x=0. sure they`ll get cheaper, but they won't trigger experience counters for every bigger x spell than the last one.

anyway have fun building that deck, thinking, of it too!

No, X spells count as cmc equal to whatever you paid when you play them. A Fireball x=5 is a 6 CMC card on the stack and counts as playing a card of that CMC. So, yes, X spells work wonderfully with Mizzix.

I would run some more mana generating artifacts, either in land fetch or just mana rock form. This deck needs Mizzix in order to function, and unless you are lucky enough to see one of your shroud enablers early there is a high chance of her dying to spot removal, and that is not even speaking of her being countered early. Of course I cannot speak to your group, so maybe it is not so much an issue, but in my group decks that cannot function without their general suffer to spot/mass removal or countermagic. Remember, you need to get through threeish other people's turns in order to start building experience counters, and in that time people can remove her and force you back to square one. More mana would ensure you are able to cast your general once she gets up there in price.

As was said before, this list focuses too much on the best case scenario.

And just to echo some things said by other people, Essence Backlash and Overwhelming Intellect could probably be replace by more general counterspells. Sure those spells are do cool things, but only hitting creatures can be rough. A good ol' Counterspell would be useful in more scenarios. Also, cheaper general countermagic has the added bonus of being easy to pair with a low cost Mizzix; if you can cast her for four and leave some mana up you can easily protect her til it gets back to your turn. You do not even need the spell in your hand, it is totally reasonable to suspect the blue deck with two mana up has countermagic in hand, mind games are a big deal.

Last thing. Thirty four lands seems a bit low. I know Mizzix makes your spells cheap, but you need to stick her first then start casting x spells. You said you had tested the deck before, did that many lands do the job?

Quote from CheckerKnights »

Last thing. Thirty four lands seems a bit low. I know Mizzix makes your spells cheap, but you need to stick her first then start casting x spells. You said you had tested the deck before, did that many lands do the job?

Thing is that it's not like X spells get worse with more mana. Running fewer lands in a Mizzik deck revolving around X spells doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If the deck was just a kind of "make spells cheaper in general" that ran things like Searing Wind that would make sense(though, that deck is kind of bad) but more lands just means the X spell you get are going to be better quality. You'll almost always have a dump for excess mana. I can't imagine a scenario where 34 lands here would "do the job".

How has the deck been performing?