Budget Mizzix Storm [~$150 Competitive EDH]

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Storm UR (Izzet)

p0megranates

Instant (35)

Sorcery (22)

Enchantment (1)

1x Mystic Remora

Commander (1)

Artifact (9)

Land (32)

Budget Mizzix Storm

Storm is love, storm is life. Storm in EDH is incredibly fun, and plays very different cards than the Legacy and Modern variants (both of which I also love) despite sharing the namesake and the general strategy. Sadly, a fully-tuned Kess, Dissident Mage EDH storm list is a bit expensive, relying on mana rocks either on the RL or otherwise absurdly expensive to function. So I've budgeted storm, and this is the result.

This deck can consistently goldfish a turn 4-6 win, which is on the slow side for budgetless cEDH combo decks but awfully fast for a budget deck. (The deck can be built to goldfish closer to turns 4-5 by cutting a lot of the interaction for more wheels, but going a half a turn faster isn't worth it and I recommend against this.) Real games are a bit more unpredictable, as you often want to have Mizzix out with a mana to spare for a Swan Song or Dispel. But make no mistake, this deck holds up in real games.

This deck has been thoroughly tested in mid-power, high-power, and cEDH environments. The reason I test my decks is because I believe you deserve the best bang for your buck. I put my money where my mouth is, so that you can put your money into a good deck.

Why Mizzix?

The first reason is because it's fun as heck!

That said, this deck also has some really neat advantages for a budget deck: it has an incredibly consistent goldfish, winning the vast majority of goldfished games once you untap with Mizzix on the battlefield. In addition, it has enough interaction to defend itself from actual players playing actual Magic cards. You can't really ask for much more from a $100 budget list.

The deck works on a budget because the defining feature of most incredibly high-$ cards in Magic is that they're mana efficient, whereas mana inefficient cards that have similar effects cost pennies (think Basalt Monolith vs Grim Monolith or Mana Vault). But wait a sec... Mizzix reduces the mana cost of spells! So the fact that your budget cards all cost a little more mana is mitigated in the command zone. That's the guiding philosophy of the deck: that you don't need to own cards like Timetwister if you can just reduce away the generic mana component of cards like Diminishing Returns.

My recent interest in the deck was spurred by some new affordable additions to the card pool, namely Bonus Round and Invert / Invent, which both add considerably to the deck's consistency. I was also interested in Thousand-Year Storm as a back-up plan if Mizzix got removed too much, but I found out through testing that it's not a good card and not needed for the deck.

Budget Deck Diatribe

WotC's continual ambivalence toward secondary market price fluctuations seems to indicate that they don't care if players with thin wallets can enjoy high-power competitive Magic. While this is true of every format, the problem has gotten especially bad for EDH, where both competitive staples (e.g. Carpet of Flowers, Vampiric Tutor) and casual staples (e.g. Omnath, Locus of Rage, Cyclonic Rift, Kodama's Reach) have appreciated exceeding CPI inflation over the past year. As such, building a respectable $100 deck for many casual/mid-power groups is already tough enough; the prospects for building ultra-budget competitively viable decks are especially grim.

The traditional formula with ultra-budget cEDH is to put green mana dorks and occasionally blue countermagic in a pile. Some examples:

The best of these budget decks have to take advantage of conveniently synergistic odd-ball cards such as Lupine Prototype in Selvala, but fundamental to why the decks are viable is that they can play staples that don't break the bank.

It's often the case that budget decks try to do a bad impression of their budgetless variants instead of trying to be a force unto themselves. For example, the Blood Pod list, of no fault to its creator, is quite bad because you simply can't do that sort of thing on a super tight budget. The mana is constrained, the hate pieces don't come out fast enough, yada yada.

In my opinion, of the aforementioned lists, the Kydele & Thrasios list has the best strength-to-budget ratio, in part because it uses both green and blue, and also because its mana generation outlet in the command zone (Kydele) is playable with oddball cards. Kydele & Thrasios are not a traditionally powerful commander pair in budgetless commander, but their strength lies in their friendliness to players' wallets.

Mizzix falls into a similar camp: budgetless players looking for a strong storm deck would undoubtedly prefer to play Kess, Dissident Mage or Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge at the helm of a grixis shell. But on a budget, Mizzix is superior.

We can take advantage of the fact that so much good blue interaction is easy on your wallet (e.g. Mental Misstep, Dispel, Negate), and the less efficient budget-friendly draw spells, which you're more likely to cast as you go off during a combo turn, are rendered playable by Mizzix's ability to reduce costs. A normal storm deck simply wouldn't be able to work at an average CMC of 2.81, but for this deck it feels very manageable.

Combos

Reiterate Combo

The Reiterate combo is straightforward: If you have RRR in your pool and Mizzix out with 4 experience counters, then you cast either Pyretic Ritual or Desperate Ritual, hold priority cast Reiterate with buyback targeting the ritual, and make 3 red, then before the original copy of the Ritual resolves you copy it again. This makes infinite red mana and infinite storm.

What do you do with the infinite Red mana? Well, easy, you can just cast a spell and copy it infinitely with Reiterate. Lightning Bolt is the "easy mode" card but we don't run that, and frankly we don't need to. You can cast Opt and copy that a number of times equal to the number of cards in your deck, then hit Sentinel Tower and blow people up. Want to get spicy? Cast Bonus Round an infinite number of times, then cast Careful Consideration targeting your opponents and let them draw themselves to death. Or Swan Song 1,000,000 times to make 500,000 2/2 birds and mill everyone out with Winds of Rebuke. Really you don't need a dedicated outlet, practically every spell is an outlet!

Invent Combo

Invert / Invent is a cool card with cool lines. It's tutorable with Merchant Scroll. The Invert part is mostly flavor text (that said, sometimes it can net you mana if it kick-starts your experience counters, but don't mind that). Obviously we're playing it for the tutor. It's far better than Firemind's Foresight, and the reason why is because there's a dope line that nearly always wins the game with fewer prerequisites than Firemind's Foresight.

The lines are different depending on the prerequisites, but this one requires the fewest lands, least mana and no other cards in GY:

4 lands, 1 of which taps for red.
4 experience counters.
The ability to generate UUR mana at the start of the combo (e.g. 3 out of 4 of those lands are untapped)

Here are the steps:

Cast Invert / Invent, tutoring for Frantic Search and Past in Flames. (U left in pool.)
Cast Frantic Search, untap two islands and a mountain and tap them. (UUR left in pool.)
Cast Past in Flames. (UU left in pool.)
Recast Frantic Search from GY, tapping then untapping more lands. (UUUR left in pool.)
Recast Invent from GY, this time for Mind's Desire and Reality Spasm (UU left in pool.)
Cast Reality Spasm for X=[whatever], untapping UUUR. (UUUR left in pool.)
Cast Mind's Desire; you'll generate 6 copies, plus the original for 7 total. (UR left in pool.)
This is where you need to get lucky, and hit anything that can generate another U mana for you. High Tide works too so long as you didn't tap that final island from the previous step.
Recast Past in Flames for the Flashback cost (UU mana left in pool.)
Recast Reality Spasm from GY for X=[whatever], untapping UUUR at minimum. (UUUR left in pool.)
Recast Mind's Desire from GY; you'll generate 9 storm, plus the original for 10 total Mind's Desires. (UR left in pool.)

This line becomes a lot easier if you have any other ways to generate mana in your GY, or if you have 5 lands, i.e. you don't need to "get lucky" on the first Mind's Desire with additional mana left over. Also, this is the bare minimum version of the combo. The more cards in your graveyard and hand, especially mana producing cards, the more nutty this combo becomes. In real games, often the combo has way more cards than this.

Manual Storm

Of course, you can just try to manually storm off. In fact that's what happens more often than not. Plus most turns that end up as the aforementioned combos start off manually. Usually you'll do this with Mizzix, and resolve a big ol fat X draw spell, or better yet, Mind's Desire or Enter the Infinite. If Mizzix is rendered uncastable, fear not, you can still win games with High Tide. I've done this a couple times. Don't mentally give up if your Mizzix does twice, just dig for High Tide. Have faith!

Card Choices

Cards I'm playing

I'm not going to justify why I'm playing everything here, but I'll justify a few of the odder choices, or just cards that people like to cut.

Cards I'm not playing

I'm going to preempt any comments to the tune of "why not ___?" The reason why in most cases I'm not running something is because it's not good. Two big exceptions to that are Pyroblast and Long-Term Plans, which I could see myself running but am currently not. Some of the more popular choices in Mizzix:

Important Rules Interactions

There are a lot of rules interactions that you should memorize so you don't make stupid mistakes that throw the game. Here are all of the interactions of note that I'm aware of:

Mizzix

Mizzix's triggered ability does not have an intervening-if clause, which means you can get multiple experience counters you otherwise wouldn't be able to get by holding priority while Mizzix's triggered ability is on the stack. For example, if you have 0 experience counters and cast Gitaxian Probe, you can hold priority while Mizzix's ability is on the stack and cast a 1cmc instant like Opt before the trigger resolves, and you'll get another Mizzix trigger. After the stack clears, you'll have 2 experience counters, whereas if you didn't hold priority you'd have 1 experience counter. This trick looks more "cute" than important but... trust me, it's important.

For this reason, always clarify with opponents if they cast a spell in response to yours whether they're casting the spell before or after Mizzix's trigger resolves. Opponents will usually say "before it resolves" to play around things like you being able to cheat mana on a counterspell like Unwind which would cost additional mana, but sometimes the stars align and your counterspell will net you an experience counter that you otherwise wouldn't get if they cast the spell after Mizzix's trigger resolved!
Mizzix reduces the generic mana component of additional and alternate costs. Also, additional costs like "buyback" don't change the CMC of a spell. All straightforward stuff.

Interactions with Keywords (Cipher, Buyback, Escalate, Overload, Rebound)

Spell Copies

Copies of spells created by Bonus Round don't add additional storm count, and they don't trigger Sentinel Tower twice. Additionally, if you cast Mind's Desire with a Bonus Round active, and your storm count was 10, you'll create 10 copies off the storm trigger and 1 copy off Bonus Round, plus the original, for 12 total copies. In other words, Bonus Round doesn't double Mind's Desire, it only adds one additional copy. The rules text for the "storm" keyword is clear about this: storm activates when you cast the original spell; it doesn't trigger if you copy it.
Copies of spells generated by Bonus Round, Reiterate, or storm do not trigger Counterbalance or Chalice of the Void. So for example, let's say your opponent has Chalice of the Void on 2, or Counterbalance with a 2cmc card on top. You can still do the Pyretic Ritual + Reiterate combo! What you do is let your opponent's trigger go on the stack, and before it resolves, copy the spell with Reiterate. Now Reiterate will be counterbalanced, and if your opponent lets Reiterate resolve you'll get a copy of Pyretic Ritual. Crucially, the copy being created will not have a Counterbalance trigger corresponding to it. And yes, the reason I've typed this one out is because I've won a game this way, thank you for asking...
For modal cards like Collective Defiance, creating copies of it doesn't let you change the modes. This is right there in the gatherer rules text for Bonus Round, although it's also applicable for Reiterate.
For X-cost spells like Stroke of Genius, creating copies of it gives you the same X. Again, in the gatherer rules text for Bonus Round.

Misc.

Misdirection is a bit weird, but tl;dr it can be used as a Force of Will against opponents' countermagic as long as Misdirection itself is a valid target for the opponent's counterspell. Say for example you cast a spell. Your opponent targets it with a counterspell. You can respond by casting Misdirection targeting your opponent's counterspell. Then when Misdirection resolves, you can change the target of your opponent's counterspell to Misdirection itself. The key here is that the last thing that happens when a spell resolves is that the spell leaves the stack, which means while Misdirection is choosing a new target spell for your opponent's counterspell, Misdirection is still a valid target. Then Misdirection leaves the stack, and your opponent's counterspell no longer has a valid target. Note that this only works if Misdirection is a valid target, so you can't use Misdirection to counter an Envelop for example. Note that a spell cannot target itself, so Misdirection can't by itself "counter" a Mental Misstep for example because neither Misdirection nor the original copy of Mental Misstep are valid targets to redirect to.

Testing

This isn't a full list of the games I've played, just the first 4 before I gave up on documenting these games. I've played this deck a couple dozen times so far and it's sweet.

For posterity's sake I'll keep the games I've documented here.

Game 1 (75% meta)

Opponents: Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest, Daretti, Scrap Savant, Ruric Thar, the Unbowed

Just wanted to test whether this deck could even handle a 75% meta. I Mental Misstep'd the Ruric Thar's Carpet of Flowers turn 1. I cast a Collective Defiance on turn 3 to wheel away 5 bad cards from my hand (one was a Mystic Retrieval). Turn 4 I played two rocks, which both died to a By Force from the Ruric Thar. I started taking some chip damage from Shu Yun around this time too. Turn 5 I passed; turn 6 I cast Mizzix into Ponder and saw my out: High Tide, Swan Song, and Mind's Desire were on top, so I passed holding open Swan Song mana. Ruric Thar goes, doesn't do anything productive. Shu Yun does a bit more damage to me. Daretti goes, casts Chaos Warp on Mizzix and I counter it. (Unfortunately Shu Yun could have changed the game here if he had cast Path to Exile on my Mizzix after I tapped out, but he held it up for my turn for some reason, which cost him the game.) I start with High Tide, then Mystic Retrieval on my High Tide, and he Path to Exiles Mizzix in response, but I had a Commit / Memory open-- oops. I continue generating mana, cantrip a Blink of an Eye into that Mind's Desire and eventually just win. At that point I decided this deck might be a wee bit on the strong side for a 75% meta, so I decided I wouldn't be bringing this list there anymore. Time for cEDH!

Game 2

Opponents: Zur the Enchanter (reanimator), Estrid, the Masked

Good `ol game of 3-player EDH. I went on the play, got a turn 1 Sol Ring, but turn 2 Mizzix didn't look too hot so I kept off it until turn 3 (so I could hold open a counterspell after it was out). Unfortunately this game was lost to an opponent's Mystic Remora, a deckbuilding mistake (since fixed), and a subtle misplay. Let's go over my turn 4 and turn 5 (after Mizzix was out), which were incredibly explosive.

Turn 4 was lost to two deckbuilding errors. I cast two spells, and then Invert / Invent. Note I had Mind's Desire in hand. Zur player taps out for Intuition, begging the other player to give them Force of Will. Sadly, I had a Memory Lapse in my hand, which feels terrible to use into a remora onto a Force of Will. Yikes. After I clarified the rules confusion that "no, you can't recast Force on my Invent because you can't redraw into FoW," I looked at my experience counters (a lousy 3) and mana remaining, and figured out the correct line is Tezerret's Gambit and Unwind. (Note: in the future I'd go for Hidden Strings as my sorcery of choice; not having a blue sorcery that untaps lands was a huge deckbuilding oversight that cost me the game here). I cast Tezz's gambit, draw 2 and go to 5 experience counters. Then Mind's Desire for 7, and failed to hit anything to get me out of 0 mana hell. :( My opponent was effectively tapped out and any Mind's Desire flip that had a counterspell + mana generation was a win, but shit happens I guess. A Reforge the Soul (now no longer in the deck at least kept the Remora player from having too much card advantage over the rest of us. Then my last spell that turn was a Merchant Scroll off the Mind's Desire (not bad!) for Misdirection. One of my pulls from the wheel was a Past in Flames-- neat.

Turn 5 was a slight mechanical error. After resculpting with the wheel and merch scroll, I tried to go off again. I cast one spell then I tried to cast a Past in Flames into the Remora and 3 open mana on the Zur's side (3 open mana on my side too-- all Islands though). They cast Mystical Tutor before Remora trigger. I responded (big mistake!) with Reality Spasm, leaving me with 1 more mana. They respond with Vampiric Tutor, with one more mana. The real mistake here now was I forgot that Flusterstorm is a card, and that's what they ended up getting. See, I had an Unsubstantiate in my hand, right? So if I had just unsub'd the Vampiric Tutor, they'd have to recast for Pact of Negation, and it would be a blowout when I misdirect it into the Mystical Tutor. Even better, I should have just let Mystical happen, let them fluster it and I could like, Reality Spasm after the Flusterstorm.

Eventually Mizzix got removed to Elesh Norn too, and game was basically over for me. But hot damn I put up a fight. The deck felt very good, packed a ton of heat and a ton of lines.

Game 3

Opponents: Animar, Soul of Elements, Zur the Enchanter (reanimator), Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

Got the Sol Ring again. Jammed Mizzix on turn 2, but the Zur player had Zur out on turn 2. Zur put Elesh Norn into the GY, swung, and I lost there basically. It was unfortunate, since my hand was a solid turn 3 win. Oh well! While I was effectively out of the game, Animar won.

Not much to say about this game other than that it feels really bad to lose to Pyroclasm effects on a spell-based combo deck, but tis the non-monetary cost of a $100 storm list.

Game 4 (75% meta)

Opponents: Brago, King Eternal, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

OK, I'm not gonna lie, I played another 75% game. I warned them, one of the players saw my deck in action the first time, I asked them if it was OK, and said I'd play my Omnath deck. They said they didn't care what I chose... so I said, alright if you're sure about not caring, then I'll play Mizzix once tonight. (Not gonna lie, it's too fun.)

I'm a bit hazy on the details but this is what I remember to the best of my recollection: I had a disgusting, rock-powered start with turn 2 Mizzix with a mana open. Brago played Detention Sphere on my Mizzix, oh no! Then Brago played Brago himself, which I had to Snap because Brago was probably going to flicker DSphere onto my Sol Ring which I needed to recast Mizzix for 6. I played Mystic Remora, and eventually there was a Parallax Wave out that I had to Winds of Rebuke the same turn that I cast Mizzix, since it's basically impossible for me to go off through that. I think that was a turn 5 or 6 win for me, with a good chunk of interaction being thrown at me by Brago onto my Mizzix. (I don't remember anything coming from the Mikaeus player that I had to worry about.) Again, pretty sure this deck is too efficient for non-competitive EDH. After that game I went back to playing Omnath for the rest of the night.

As a note, while I'm reporting on non-competitive EDH games: please don't build this deck solely for the purpose of stomping a battlecruiser EDH group. I built this mainly for competitive EDH, and I wouldn't even bother asking to play it in my more casual group if I knew the deck would just be effectively goldfishing. But my casual group does run some amount of low CMC removal and interaction, their decks are generally more expensive than Mizzix, and I also explicitly asked them if I could play the deck with the warning that it's efficient, and they gave me the OK both times. With great power comes great responsibility: stomping $30 budget, 7-drop tribal decks that run zero interaction isn't playing Magic, it's just goldfishing with an audience. Now that I've firmly established the deck is stronger than "75% decks" that cost twice as much, and that it can handle some amount of interaction thrown at it, I don't really feel like it's necessary to continue playing at a 75% group.

Upgrades & Downgrades

Upgrades

The deck is pretty good as-is, but there is definitely room for improvement. These deck improvements aren't listed in any particular order of priority.

I would suggest just adding in whatever else you have from your collection in the below list. Don't feel pressured into buying anything you can't afford; the list is designed to work perfectly well without these things, and I'm only listing it out for people who have a little more room in their budgets or for people who already own these cards. :)

Lands

- Any landbase improvements should be for untapped lands that produce both colors. Izzet Guildgate is worse than a basic mountain. And don't even think about putting in Izzet Boilerworks.

Lands should be swapped into the deck at a 3-to-1 ratio of mountains to islands. (So if you add 4 lands that tap for both colors, cut 3 mountains and 1 island to make room for those cards.) The reason why is because this deck is primarily blue, and it wants as many islands as possible for High Tide.
Steam Vents is one of the best lands to add, since it's a UR land that works under High Tide. Once you add that, the fetch lands become so much better and can properly be considered multi-color land slots: Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta, Bloodstained Mire, and Wooded Foothills are the cheapest fetches since they were printed to death in a 2015 standard set (Khans of Tarkir). Scalding Tarn, Misty Rainforest, and Arid Mesa are more expensive but still good. Fetch lands make it so that Brainstorm and Ponder become truly busted cards, and Dig Through Time and Treasure Crusie become easier to cast.
Other lands to add if you have them: City of Brass, Tarnished Citadel, Mana Confluence, Sulfur Falls, Spirebluff Canal, and of course Volcanic Island.
As the deck currently stands, you're going to lose some games that you could have won because the color fixing isn't perfect. (That said, you'll lose more games because of ETB tapped lands, so don't fall for that trap.) The reason why most of the color fixing isn't in the deck is because the fixing costs so much damn money, and doesn't add much marginal value: as long as you hit 2-3 islands and a mountain, you'll usually be fine in most games regardless of whatever else you hit.

Instants and Sorceries

Thankfully, there aren't that many spells that don't make the deck for budget reasons. That's part of the reason why I built the deck in the first place: frankly most of the best spells for the deck are already pretty cheap. That said, these would be some sweet additions, budget permitting:

Preordain
Serum Visions (not that ~$3 is a lot, but its a bit of a marginal cantrip to begin with.)
Cyclonic Rift
Gamble
Mindbreak Trap (meta dependent)
Mizzix's Mastery (note: I'd only consider this after the manabase is improved.)
Flusterstorm

Big money cards that would ideally be in the deck:

Intuition (insane with Past in Flames)
Mana Drain (even this is sort of marginal, believe it or not-- in many cases it's actually worse than Negate, and its only truly amazing when it counters a 2cmc spell on turn 2, and the 2 generic mana powers out a turn 3 mizzix while holding open a land for like Spell Pierce mana.)
Force of Will (free counterspells are very, very important for those turns you cast Mizzix and pass.)
Wheel of Fortune
Time Spiral
Timetwister (lol)

Rocks

There are a few rocks I'd like in the deck but couldn't justify on the budget. They either fuel a turn 2-3 Mizzix, or nets colored mana. Any rock that doesn't do either of those things isn't worth playing.

The Best (high-budget) Upgrade

The best upgrade you can make to this deck, if you have the money, is to add a third color and drop Mizzix entirely, playing grixis storm with Kess, Dissident Mage or Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, with all the mana fixing and mana-netting rocks like Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, and so on that make grixis storm a playable archetype.

I know I mentioned this before, but it's just worth keeping things in perspective that you're playing this deck only because this is the probably best storm deck available for $100. Mizzix is an incredible budget strategy and a mediocre budgetless strategy, and you should keep that in mind before you drop some Hamiltons on a Mizzix's Mastery or anything else that you'd play in Mizzix but not in Kess/Jeleva. In the very long-term, the best way to spend money upgrading this deck are on things that let you eventually move over to grixis, like the mana base and Force of Will and stuff like that.

Downgrades

Is $100 too much? Don't worry, the deck can be made playable on less money! Now I wouldn't recommend you go too deep on the downgrades, but even after downgrading the deck is still better than most other budget decks. Please note that these downgrades were not playtested or goldfished, so tread at your own peril with these changes. If you dare to make these changes, you'll cumulatively reduce the price of the deck by about $20, making it so at current TCG Mid prices the deck would be around $75.

Reiterate

As of writing, Reiterate is $8.49 at TCG Mid and it's also the most expensive card in the deck, so it's quite tempting to cut it. Do note that because Reiterate is one of the deck's kill conditions, you'd need to substitute Reiterate for another kill condition (for consistency of hitting your kills, and also in case something gets exiled off Diminishing Returns). In my opinion, the proper substitute for Reiterate is Aetherflux Reservoir. This means that you'd save a total of about $6.50 making this swap.

Is it worth it? That's another question entirely that will depend on your wallet. I'd note that Reiterate is not just a kill, it's also a counterspell-for-counterspells, it's a value card, and it's even tutorable with Mystical Tutor and Invert / Invent. So be careful making this swap.

Tutors

Merchant Scroll ($3.30) and Mystical Tutor ($5.96) make up $9.26 of the deck's budget as of writing. They're really great cards, but maybe you don't have the money for that or you want to power down the deck a bit for casual.

The whole point of tutors is to add consistency, and in place of just going straight for the card you want, you can also just try to draw a bajillion cards into it. So what I'm saying is that the proper replacement for a tutor is an efficient draw spell, perhaps with card selection. Compulsive Research, Hieroglyphic Illumination, and Anticipate are all candidates for that.

If you're just going to cut one, I would easily suggest cutting Mystical Tutor before cutting Merchant Scroll, since Merchant Scroll actually hits quite a few things you want on a consistenty basis (Invert / Invent, Misdirection, Frantic Search) and puts it into your hand immediately, and that's even before considering that Merchant Scroll is nearly half the price.

Rocks

The best rock to cut is Coldsteel Heart. You can replace them with other 2cmc rocks like Mind Stone or simply for basic lands. As of writing, this will save you about $3.

I'd strongly advise against 3cmc rocks; the whole point of 2cmc rocks, even the ones that enter tapped, is to power out a turn 3 Mizzix. Honestly, basic lands are probably better than 3cmc rocks.

Special Thanks

ShaperSavant gave a dozen suggestions for cards that made the list go from good to great, including a handful I'd have never even considered had he not mentioned them (Careful Consideration, Submerge, Diminishing Returns) and a few I feel stupid for forgetting exist (Peer Through Depths, Mana Leak).
A few other people on the cEDH discord, who also gave some input on the list.
The players at my 75% group who withered in pain as I countered both the Chaos Warp and the Path to Exile thrown at my boy Mizzix. Sorry guys, I promise to never play it again :< I just needed to see if the list could handle a little interaction thrown at it before taking it to my cEDH group.
My local cEDH group, you guys rule!

Suggestions

Updates Add

Updates — Aug. 27, 2021

Edit

I don't play as much magic as I used to, but I still like to keep up with things.

It's exhausting of trying to make the deck work on a super tight budget; at one point the deck was at $100, but cardboard inflation keeps rearing its ugly head.

These changes end up cutting the overall cost from about $160 to under $150.

Cuts:

Pieces of the Puzzle: Eh. It was either this or Peer Through Depths. Instant speed makes Peer a bit better in general, although Pieces of the Puzzle is obviously much better on combo turns.
Narset's Reversal: This card feels too expensive money wise. Sorry, but it's gotta go to keep things manageable.
Submerge: Also too expensive.
Coldsteel Heart: Too expensive; better rock exists.

Adds:

Preordain: Price has come down for some reason. Fine by me!
Serum Visions: Same as Preordain.
Solve the Equation: At three whole dollars for an uncommon 3 mana tutor, it feels a little bad, but this card is basically Grim Tutor in this deck, and with one experience counter it becomes Demonic Tutor. For a budget card.

It looks like the EDH community is starting to realize what some of the sleepers are.... very upsetting for competitive budget players. It looks like over the past 2 years (in order of biggest to smallest increase):

Submerge went from $1 to $8.
Mystic Remora went from $5 to $10 (...from under $1 three years ago).
Narset's Reversal went from $2 to $6.
Mental Misstep went from under $1 to $5.
Stroke of Genius went from $1 to $4.
High Tide went from $1 to $3.
Snap went from $2 to $3.

Yikes! Submerge and Narset's Reversal are both no longer worth it. Stroke of Genius is borderline, but that sort of effect usually comes on UU cards and Stroke being 1 pip is a really big deal, with it being a kill condition being also a very nice touch. Everything else is still "worth it" in my opinion, despite the price increases.

Readjustment for price inflation — July 11, 2020

Edit

Narset's Reversal — Dec. 20, 2019

Edit

WAR - No changes — April 30, 2019

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WotC, please do something about cardboard prices! — April 6, 2019

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Revision 13 See all

(3 years ago)

+1	Arcane Signet	main
-1	Coldsteel Heart	main
-1	Narset's Reversal	main
+1	Preordain	main
+1	Serum Visions	main
-1	Submerge	main

Top Ranked	Achieved #4 position overall 5 years ago Achieved #2 position in Commander / EDH 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Combo 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Competitive 5 years ago
Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Mythic Rares 13 - 0 Rares 24 - 0 Uncommons 31 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.74
Tokens	Experience Token, Treasure
Folders	research, Others, Commander, saved decks, liked, deckinhos shows, Decks, Cool EDH Decks, to learn from, Consider Building
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