Loot and Scoot|Rielle Budget League|

Commander / EDH UR (Izzet)

NivStormfront

Card Draw (19)

• 1x Bag of Holding
• 1x Breakthrough
• 1x Burning Inquiry
• 1x Careful Study
• 1x Cathartic Reunion
• 1x Channeled Force
• 1x Dangerous Wager
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Fateful Showdown
• 1x Flux
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Izzet Charm
• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Magus of the Bazaar
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Merfolk Looter
• 1x Thrill of Possibility
• 1x Tolarian Winds
• 1x Windfall

Removal (12)

• 1x Beacon Bolt
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Circular Logic
• 1x Collective Defiance
• 1x Forbid
• 1x Incendiary Command
• 1x Nahiri's Wrath
• 1x Negate
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Stubborn Denial
• 1x Sweltering Suns
• 1x Turbulent Dreams

Card Draw/Discard Synergy (19)

• 1x Brallin, Skyshark Rider  ^Flip
• 1x Crackling Drake
• 1x Curiosity
• 1x Drake Haven
• 1x Enigma Drake
• 1x Fists of Flame
• 1x Forgotten Creation
• 1x Glint-Horn Buccaneer
• 1x Nadir Kraken
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Niv-Mizzet, Parun
• 1x Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
• 1x Ominous Seas
• 1x Psychic Corrosion
• 1x Psychosis Crawler
• 1x Rites of Initiation
• 1x Runechanter's Pike
• 1x Surly Badgersaur
• 1x Wonder

Ramp (9)

• 1x Commander's Sphere
• 1x Goblin Electromancer
• 1x Izzet Cluestone
• 1x Izzet Keyrune
• 1x Izzet Locket
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Jace's Sanctum
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity

Recursion (2)

• 1x Mystic Retrieval
• 1x Past in Flames

Commander (1)

Lands (35)

• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Desolate Lighthouse
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Forgotten Cave
• 11x Island
• 1x Izzet Boilerworks
• 1x Lonely Sandbar
• 11x Mountain
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Remote Isle
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Smoldering Crater

Protection (3)

• 1x Aqueous Form
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

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The name of the game is simple. We loot, drawing cards and discarding cards. Rielle makes us draw more cards because of how old and wise she is. Then, we scoot our dummy thicc Rielle, who now has +21/+0 from all the cards we discarded, into our opponents faces, killing them.

In all seriousness, this deck is a 60$ budget deck, using TCGplayer market value for pricing, made for an online budget league. I've chosen Rielle, the Everwise as the commander for this deck for two reasons. 1. She's an Izzet commander, and my strongest color pairing when brewing is Izzet. 2. Mizzix of the Izmagnus, my first choice and best friend in the pair, is above the price limit for commanders (5$).

Categories

This deck has 6 custom categories, which are as follows:

1. Card Draw: This category includes some cards that actually discard more than draw on their own, but through Rielle the end up giving us card advantage

2. Removal: Single target, some mass bounce, and a suite of counterspells

3. Card Draw/Discard Synergy: This section is full of cards that do extra stuff when we draw and discard cards. Most of them deal damage when we do those things, some get bigger the more stuff we have in grave, and one very special Dinosaur gives us value for discards.

4. Ramp: some less than optimal picks are here due to the budget restriction.

5. Protection: A small suite of cards that give Rielle or another important piece like a Niv Mizzet or Brallin protection, and unblockable if needed. It’s pretty easy to get Rielle to 2 or even 1 shot players with Commander damage.

6. Recursion: Although we want cards in our grave, it’s often advantageous to get an important wheel or removal card back to our hand.

Deck Strengths

This deck has a lot of strengths in a budget environment, so I’ll go through them one by one

First, this deck draws a TON of cards. Rielle herself allows us to out draw our opponents 9 times out of 10. In any game of magic, that usually means you’re in a good spot, but especially in budget, where many colors outside of blue have limited, costly card draw options, having this much advantage on a commander is very strong

Second, due to the nature of Rielle’s ability, our graveyard gets full fast, and Rielle gets a lot of power. It is very easy for Rielle to get into two-hit or even one-hit commander damage range very quickly, and as such this deck fields cards that allow her to bypass blockers, whether it be through flying, trample, or unblockable.

Finally, Rielle may be the commander, but the deck includes cards that can be just as threatening to a game when played. I call them substitutes, and cards like Brallin, Skyshark Rider  , Niv-Mizzet, Parun, and Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind can all helm the deck well, if not as optimally as Rielle. This means that if we lose Rielle, it’s not always the end of the line.

Deck Weaknesses

This deck is strong, both in and out of the budget environment, but it does have some weaknesses.

First, despite the substitute commanders, Rielle herself is very fragile, and often times the deck will flop without her help. Being a 3-toughness creature means she is susceptible to a good amount of common removal spells, and with no real way to increase her toughness it can be difficult to keep her on the table if your opponent knows what’s up. We can mitigate this by holding back on casting her until we have enough mana to protect her with countermagic or cast a spell that benefits from her ability right away.

Secondly, this deck does somewhat drop in power in the face of graveyard hate. Though it’s less common in budget spheres, having cards in grave to buff Rielle’s power is a potent way to close out games, and denying us that resource can delay our strategy quickly.

Third, it is very common for us to discard our entire hand without choice as part of a spell, and while it is very often worth it with the extra value we get, we can easily end up having to discard one of our powerful synergies like Psychosis Crawler. Discarding is a dangerous game, but we can mitigate the danger by running some recursion.

Finally, Rielle has a serious chance of milling ourselves out. Including a Labman or an Orcale can solve this problem, but without a reliable way to draw the deck out they aren’t worth their price in this deck ($3.65 and $4.67). If we lose some of our ways to damage our opponents from our draws, we can end up with too few cards to draw.

Strategy

The main strategy of this deck is about as simple as the above. We want to abuse the hell out of Rielle's second ability in order to draw a ton more cards than our opponent. Cards like Windfall, Jace's Archivist, and Magus of the Wheel probably come to the front of your mind when you think of budget options for this, but some sleeper cards that I didn't even know existed before this deck are Breakthrough, Dangerous Wager, and Flux are also excellent choices here. Next, we are trying to squeeze every inch of value out of our discards and draws. Psychosis Crawler, Glint-Horn Buccaneer, and Brallin, Skyshark Rider   all add damage to our draws and discards, along with two of the Niv Mizzets, and Surly Badgersaur gives us extra value outside of damage for discarding. Plus, he's a badgersaur, so why wouldn't we run him? Finally, we're trying to make sure the cards in our grave don't go to waste once they're there. Part of how we do that is Rielle's first ability, which after a few wheel-like effects can easily get her above 21 power. Now we can slap on something like Aqueous Form or Whispersilk Cloak and kill someone right then and there, or bounce/remove someones creatures with our removal package. We also run cards like Crackling Drake which have similar effects to Rielle's, and some cards that add fuel to the fire like Runechanter's Pike, Rites of Initiation, and Fists of Flame.

Card Analysis by Category

Card Draw

-Bag of Holding: This card may seem like a counter-productive addition at first. It does stop Rielle from benefiting from our instants and sorceries in grave. However, I’ve included it for its potential recursion benefits. In essence, it allows us to redraw every card we discard from our wheels and such, while still allowing Rielle to trigger and draw us more. Often times, the second ability of the bag reads pay 4 and sac to draw 10+ cards, which is an amazing rate.

-Breakthrough: This is one of those cards that would only ever work well in Rielle. When Rielle is in play, this is the best 1 mana card I could cast. Say I’m at 6 cards in hand. I cast Breakthrough for 1, drawing up to 9 cards, then discard them all and draw 9 more cards. That alone is 13 trigggers for a card draw synergy and 18 for a discard synergy, all for 1 mana.

-Burning Inquiry: Usually, symmetric card draw is bad. Sure, you’re giving yourself answers, but you’re also fueling your opponents. Not, however, in this card. Random discarding is never something you want to do, but with Rielle on my side I end up net positive on cards in hand while my opponents potentially lose their bomb or combo piece.

-Careful Study: One of the simpler cards in the deck. We like to loot, and Rielle gives us a reward for jumping through that hoop.

-Cathartic Reunion: In normal magic, paying 2 and discarding 2 extra cards to draw three isn’t great value. In Rielle, however, this is instead pay 2, discard 2, draw 5, which is a much more potent trade.

-Channeled Force: One of the best cards in the deck for pure discard synergy. Channeled force allows us to choose and discard cards in our hands, meaning we can hold onto a Niv Mizzet and pitch the rest of our hand, and then we double our hand size while also removing a creature. It’s insane value for only 4 mana.

-Dangerous Wager: Simple red spell that can get us out of a pinch if it’s the last card in hand or win us the game outright with a large enough hand and Rielle.

-Faithless Looting: Looting is the name of the game, and faithless does it best.

-Fateful Showdown: This card can end someone’s life with a big enough hand, and with Brallin, Skyshark Rider   or Psychosis Crawler in play the game can end with this spell. If it doesn’t, however, we draw double the size of the hand we had before, so it’s very likely over soon.

-Flux: Although Flux does benefit our opponents, with Rielle in play the odds are in our favor. We will draw two cards for each card we choose to discard, and we draw an additional card as part of the spell.

-Frantic Search: Essentially a free card draw spell, this card is already good in many Izzet and blue decks. It draws us an extra two cards with Rielle in play and allows us to

-Izzet Charm: This has become one of my favorite modular spells in Izzet. I’ve always been a fan of modular instants because they allow you to hold up mana for an answer, and you can choose to cast the spell on the end step for value if no worth threat presents itself.

-Jace's Archivist: The first synergistic tapping creature, a repeatable Windfall can end games quick with Rielle, and Jace’s Archivist is just that.

-Magus of the Bazaar: This tapper is potent, as it allows us to draw five cards with Rielle in play and trigger our discard synergies.

-Magus of the Wheel: Even though it only occurs once, a Wheel of Fortune can be very helpful for our game plan.

-Merfolk Looter: Just a simple loot, but very useful if we’re out of our bigger gas cards

-Thrill of Possibility: For 2 less mana, this does almost as much work as Catharitc Renuion early game, and at instant speed this can be cast on an opponent’s turn for extra value.

-Tolarian Winds: For only 2 mana, we can get a ton of value and double our hand size. We can easily get 10+ cards off of this spell, and with bigger hands the triggers we can get are very easily lethal.

-Windfall: Like our other wheels, Windfall is just straight gas with Rielle in play, and it combos with Narset, Parter of Veils to all but lock our opponents out of the game.

Removal

Card Draw/Discard Synergy

Ramp

Protection

Recursion

Top Ranked	Achieved #4 position overall 4 years ago Achieved #3 position in Commander / EDH 4 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH UR (Izzet) 4 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 24 - 0 Rares 28 - 0 Uncommons 22 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.74
Tokens	Drake 2/2 U, Kraken 8/8 U, Manifest 2/2 C, Tentacle 1/1 U, Treasure