The purpose of this deck is to ramp into high amounts of mana with the artifacts in the deck, then copy high costing spells to affect the board state.
Mana Ramp Package:
Sol Ring
,
Gilded Lotus
,
Commander's Sphere
,
Izzet Signet
,
Mana Vault
,
Thran Dynamo
,
Coalition Relic
.
Izzet is not a color set with natural ramp effects, therefore the only way to play permanents ahead of curve is to use artifact ramp. These are the best artifacts for this mindset in these colors.
Cost Reduction Package:
Goblin Electromancer
,
Baral, Chief of Compliance
,
Primal Amulet
,
Arcane Melee
,
Jace's Sanctum
.
A majority of the deck will consist of spells, in combination with the artifact ramp shown above, these cards will allow cards to be played for less mana, which can heavily affect the combos that can consistently be accomplished turn by turn.
Creatures:
Bloodwater Entity
- This creature gains +1/+1 for every instant or sorcery you play (until end of turn). Because the goal of the deck is to copy various spells and recur those spells from the graveyard, this creature can go from a simple 2/2 flying creature to one-shotting an opponent in a single turn based on the amount of spells played.
Guttersnipe
- This creature does damage to the entire table for every instant or sorcery spell played. This card can slowly grind down an opponents life total until you are ready to unleash a large combo of spells to burst the table.
Hypersonic Dragon
- This basically turns your sorceries into instants, allowing you to play more options at instant speed and interact with the stack more often. It also has haste and a decent body for damage and blocking.
Charmbreaker Devils
- Even though this card returns a spell at random to your hand every upkeep (so you do not get to choose) it is still extremely powerful because it allows you to interact with your graveyard every turn, thus guaranteeing you always have an option of a spell to play, and therefore the creature is basically always an 8/4 on your turn. Alternatively, it is a great blocker for killing larger threats as you can always turn it into an 8/4 or higher as you go to declare blockers, making it a lethal card in and out of combat.
Galvanoth
- This card synergizes with the commander, because you are playing the top card of your library, you get to copy it for free with Melek also on the field. With Galvanoth, you get to cast it for free, so they synergize extremely well with one another.
Niv-Mizzet, Parun
- Niv is great in this deck as every spell you cast will net you cards, so you continuously have more spells to play. Every time you draw, you also get to ping an opponent or creature for 1 damage. This can allow you to slowly weaken an opponents board state by using a series of spells on a turn to draw a large amount of cards and kill threats. Alternatively, you can use the ping damage to kill smaller utility cards such as
Eternal Witness
or almost any mana dork. Despite the hard casting cost of Niv, it is always a powerful threat on a board.
Curious Homunculus
/
Voracious Reader
- Early in this game, this is a ramp creature that allows you to get instants and sorceries out faster. When it flips, it is a cost reducer that synergizes with its prowess ability, allowing it to hit hard while benefiting the main game plan.
Izzet Chemister
- This creature doesn't do much at first, but steadily gains more and more value as the turns pass. After 3 or 4 large spells are under the card, you can use it's other ability to cast them all for free.
Archaeomancer
- Allows you to recur a spell in your graveyard. Basic synergy with the deck, never a bad utility creature.
Keranos, God of Storms
- Allows you to dig through your deck faster with its ability, or bolt something every single turn. Also a fantastic body for closing out games.
Enigma Drake
- A lot of cards in this deck will end up being exiled, however this creature will be hitting very hard until those effects happen. It is also a good early game body for blocking.
Cracking Drake - Enigma Drake but it doesn't lose power as cards are exiled, and it also draws one card. Good for its mana cost.
Djinn Illuminatus
- One of the ways you can win with infinite mana in the deck as long as you have any spell that does damage to a player.
Burnished Hart
- Mana fixing on a budget.
All the creatures in this deck are designed to interact with spells that are played, or copy those spells as they happen in some way.
Copy Effects:
Swarm Intelligence
Increasing Vengeance
Bonus Round
Reverberate
Thousand-Year Storm
Pyromancer's Goggles
Mirari
The Mirari Conjecture
Most of the copy effects in this deck are permanents so that they gain value over the course of multiple turns. However, a few are spell effects to allow you to play on the stack where creature-based decks (which typically contain removal for a majority of the copy effects in this list) can't really interact. Yes, if you have multiple copy effects out from this list, you get to copy the spell for each effect on the field. (Example: Using Pyromancer's Goggles to cast a spell while Swarm Intelligence is on the field allows you to cast that spell three times. No, copied spells do not count towards Thousand-Year Storm's counters, only the original, because you are not casting the copies.)
Counterspell Package:
Counterspell
- Most counterspells cost 3+ mana. Although the mana cost is double blue, it is a legitimate counterspell for 2 mana. One of the best counterspells in the game.
Dissolve
- Counter and scry. Sets up future answers.
Disallow
- One of the best 3 mana counterspells in the deck. It not only counters a spell, but can also interact with abilities as well.
Counterflux
- This card is only ever used when necessary or to end a large instant speed interaction happening on the board. Unless the threat is serious, save this for its overload cost and an instant speed stack war.
Draw Effects:
Brainstorm
- Three cards for one mana is hard to beat.
Ponder
- Same as Brainstorm except you only draw one. However, if you dislike all three options in your current situation, it allows you to shuffle those cards away for a different card.
Serum Visions
- Draws a card and sets up your draws for the next two turns.
Frantic Search
- This card basically reads draw two, discard two for zero mana.
Board Clear:
Cyclonic Rift
- Best Blue spell in EDH. Should be banned, but it's not so use it.
Blasphemous Act
- This deck plays hardly any creatures compared to most, blow up their creatures.
Devastation Tide
- Same as Blasphemous Act, this card will sometimes not affect you in any way whatsoever.
Mizzium Mortars
- Do not be afraid to also play this card for its non-overloaded cost. Single Target removal is better than people give it credit for in EDH.
Tutors:
Mystical Tutor
- Should go into any spell based deck because of its ability to find exactly the answer you need.
Muddle the Mixture
- A tutor that can also be a counterspell.
Merchant Scroll
- Great for finding an answer such as Cyclonic Rift or to begin a combo.
Fabricate
- Tutors out Aetherflux Reservoir or Sphinx-Bone Wand.
Tutors aren't very common cards, and are almost exclusively used to find cards that win games or stop opponents from winning games.
Extra Turns:
Temporal Mastery
- If you're able to cast this for its miracle cost, its a Time Walk, which is worth $3,000. Its pretty good.
Time Warp
- Five mana to take an extra turn later in the game is worth it. Being able to technically double your current mana and effects on board is game winning.
These cards win games. Imagine scenarios such as casting a Miracle Temporal Mastery then playing Cyclonic Rift overloaded. Now you get to untap and take an extra turn while nobody else has any permanents on the field. Don't have the ability to cast Temporal Mastery for its Miracle cost? Use Brainstorm to put it on top of your deck, manipulate your deck so that you guarantee the Miracle cost. These cards have to be answered or you will win on the spot.
Win-Conditions:
Aetherflux Reservoir
- The Nuke Button. Be America. Take Whatever, Do Whatever. If they disagree, blow them up with this.
Mizzix's Mastery
- The overload ability of this card basically reads "do everything you've done this entire game again, right now," or basically "if you cast this for its overload cost and do not win the game that turn, you're not using this card correctly."
Eye of the Storm
- The turn this comes out you should win the game. Do not cast this unless you have infinite mana from a combo explained in the next section of this deck description (Isochron + Dramatic Reversal). Basically if this enchantment resolves, you get to play every spell in your deck over and over again until you kill your opponents with damage from other sources. Do not play this and pass the turn. Your opponents will abuse it way better since they did not have to pay the mana investment to cast the card.
Sphinx-Bone Wand
- Similar effect to Aetherflux Reservoir however it deals direct damage rather than gaining life and using that life to do damage.
Laboratory Maniac
- There are a lot of ways to draw your entire deck in this deck, Labman allows you to win from doing so.
Blue Sun's Zenith
- This card lets you draw out your entire deck, you can also use
Blue Sun's Zenith
to force your opponent to draw their entire deck and lose the game if you have infinite mana.
Epic Experiment
- Look at your entire deck, and play your entire deck.
Expansion / Explosion
- Blow up the person who said that mean thing to you that one time.
Banefire
- Burn that one person who said that mean thing to you that one time.
A lot of the win conditions in this list require infinite mana to operate effectively. However, it is easy to create infinite mana in this deck, which is explained below.
Combos:
Infinite Mana -
Isochron Scepter
+
Dramatic Reversal
+
Izzet Signet
+
Sol Ring
. This combination of cards creates infinite mana. Tap Sol Ring to Tap Signet. This leaves you with 1 colorless mana and UR mana. Use two of the mana (one colorless and one of either color) to activate the isochron scepter effect, which will untap all of your permanents. Doing this nets you +1 colored mana of your choice every rotation, and can be done infinitely to create infinite colored mana.
Eye of the Storm
+
Aetherflux Reservoir
. If you have Eye of the Storm resolved with Aetherflux on the field, every spell you play will begin to generate you insane amounts of life gain and can easily result in killing the entire table.
Thousand-Year Storm
+
Bonus Round
+
Mizzix's Mastery
or
Past in Flames
. This will result in every spell being played multiple times and can easily get out of hand. Using this combo I've cast 40 copies of a single spell before.
Any set of copied spells +
Guttersnipe
. This can quickly kill an entire table.
Non-Basic Land Choice:
Reliquary Tower
- It is common to have more than seven cards in hand with this deck, this card allows for that.
Izzet Boilerworks
- Losing one land for one turn in order to constantly be able to tap for two mana the rest of the game is worth it on a budget.
Temple of Epiphany
- Dual land that sets up your next draw.
Ancient Tomb
- Combo based spell decks have to play fast and and need a lot of mana to do so. Ancient Tomb allows you to do this by using your life as a resource. Because of Aetherflux Reservoir, the life loss isn't game-ending.
Temple of the False God
- This card is good when it comes online, but Ancient Tomb can be used from turn one, whereas this card needs 4 other lands in play in order to be usable. Because Izzet does not have the ability to ramp, this means that you have to wait until turn 5 to use this card. However, it is definitely worth using from turn 5 onwards.
Wandering Fumarole
- This land can also be a creature, and can be used as a beatdown option against other spell based decks. Because it's a land, it is not able to be countered, and therefore can get past the defenses of most control decks.
Command Tower
- This land should be played in every EDH deck, always.
Evolving Wilds
and
Terramorphic Expanse
- These cards allow you to tutor for basics, helping to provide access to whatever mana you need.
Arcane Lighthouse
- This land is important for dealing with defensive decks that focus on building up an untargetable line of creatures. Making all creatures lose Hexproof and Shroud is game changing.
Having too many lands that enter tapped makes a deck play slow, since this deck is a combo deck, the rest of the land base is basic lands so that they enter untapped.
How to Play the Deck:
Early game you should be focused on getting cost reduction and ramping via your artifacts and cards such as
Goblin Electromancer
. Answer threats with counterspells only if completely necessary (an example would be a player who can ramp into extra lands extremely fast plays their commander early, like a
Zacama, Primal Calamity
deck. Counter these large threats while slowly building a board. Focus on trying to get Melek out before beginning to cast a lot of spells.
Around the mid game you should have Melek out along with a cost reduction effect and some effect that copies spells ready. Start slowly clearing threats on the board as needed while you dig for your infinite mana combo. Tutor as necessary. Do not be afraid to take damage in order to maintain your board presence, your life total is a resource in Magic, it is not to be protected all the time.
When the later stages of the game begin, prepare for board wipes and have counter magic ready. Disallow is important here to stop combos that rely on activated abilities (such as creature based combo decks). Once you have your infinite mana ready, you can find one of your main win conditions (in a multiplayer game, this should probably be
Epic Experiment
to play everything in your deck.) and win from this. Comboing off with
Bonus Round
and
Thousand-Year Storm
plus a
Guttersnipe
,
Aetherflux Reservoir
, or Shinx-Bone Wand will win games due to the amount of copied spells you are casting (in a 4 player match, a single proc of Guttersnipe does 6 damage across the table...).
Niv-Mizzet, Parun
is extremely good at closing out games. With Niv out, cards like
Brainstorm
can do ridiculous things (for example, with Niv out, Brainstorm draws four cards, does 4 damage, and puts two cards on top of your library for one blue mana).
Understand that your smallest spells can be the most beneficial, and that you do not need to play more than one line of combo at a time to win a game. Multiple win conditions are created in a deck to have multiple outs if one is shut down. Do not over-commit to the board if its not necessary, and do not be afraid to destroy your own board state with
Blasphemous Act
or
Devastation Tide
if it means getting rid of something that threatens to win the game. Your creatures are nothing more than resources, and none of them are completely necessary to win the game.
