How do you spell "win" ?
The idea for this list came observing what I noticed to be the natural path followed by the vast majority of UR/Izzet commanders: it seems that they all lend themselves towards some very dedicated combo build, taking advantage of all the digging potential and control features offered by this color combination.
"Wait, but... How do you win ?"
- Izzet player, 2018
But is this the only way ? Is Izzet not meant to be all about chaining spell after spell, burning opponents while keeping a full grip of answers in hand ? Well, this is the goal we're seeking: follow our Value Queen Jori En, Ruin Diver in this mission, embracing the real midrange nature of the Commander format!
Two is better than one
First of all, as already mentioned, we got two possible Commanders to choose from:
Jori En, Ruin Diver
Without a doubt the low profile girl and my current main choice as Commander of this Izzet mad experiment, making the whole primer focus on her point of view.
She easily comes out early on a pretty reasonable body, hurts nobody directly and nets you a ton of cards. She rewards you for doing what you would be doing anyway: playing more spells in a turn, possibly not only during yours. She's not a clear threat for the table, attracting less targeted removal, and, even if she gets caught in a boardwipe, recasting her is not a huge investment.
Melek, Izzet Paragon
He is the glass cannon one between the two choices. Previously at the helm of this deck, he was put aside for being too overcosted for the meta and requiring too much setup for being at his full potential.
Huge risk and efforts to get him going, but if you can untap with him on the field, things escalate very quickly. Melek provides a pretty reliable form of card advantage casting directly from the top of your library, while being a static doubling effect with legs. Unfortunately at 6 mana to cast he'll be in the battle only in the latest stages of the game and can get hated out very easily. Nonetheless definetely powerful, definetely fun.
Strategy
Our main goal is to reach the late game, where a midrange plan really shines, with enough mana and a full grip of cards.
We will pass the very first turns trying to setup our resources, being sure to hit every land drop and refilling our hand to not lose gas. In the mid to late game we will turn on our offensive engine, getting an ever increasing on the board, while keeping our opponents in check with our better quality draws.
Summing up, even if it's possible to blast our opponents with Aetherflux Reservoir, but our main plan revolves more on a grindy game and a beatdown finshing blow, thanks to our token generators.
Ramp
Being in U/R means that we have very little ramp options at our disposal. Sure artifacts are the simplest and usual approach, but we don't want to get blown up by the inevitable Vandalblast. For this reason we have to explore each way to obtain some form of mana advantage on the table.
Land Drops
Often this will simply mean hitting each of our land drops. This can be achieved through a good amount of cantrips, that let us dig for lands early, while being potential free casting triggers later in the game.
Artifacts
Obviously we can't let down any of the best mana rocks, namely Sol Ring, Izzet Signet, Talisman of Creativity and Fellwar Stone. But from different type of artifacts we can get our little land retrieving sources: Wayfarer's Bauble and Sapphire Medallion are solid choices when it comes to ramping and fixing, with the added benefit of being low costed spells to trigger Jori En's draw.
Spells
And finally the flexible choices, those cards that can give us ramp without the need to throw away a precious slot in deckbuilding: Expansion / Explosion can act as an opponent's Cultivate, while serving a more useful role later in the game, and As Foretold. This one expecially may look too slow, but after two turns leaves our opponent with the constant threat of a counterspell and, in a deck who plays almost entirely at instant speed, can accrue us a lot of advantage.
Card Draw
If ramping in these colors made us to get tricky, eating every little crumb at our disposal, card draw is a complete different deal. This is particularly true when our very General is the main card advantage engine of the deck. We want to maximize Jori En's trigger and start drawing cards as soon as we are capable of and, when possible, even during our opponents' turn.
Aside from the usual suspects (Fact or Fiction, Pull from Tomorrow) our main source of card advantage come from the sinergy between our General and cantrips: they act as rounders, how I like to call them, essentially adding the text "Draw a card" to our first spell for the turn without costing us other than 1 or 2 mana.
Similarly to the aforementioned cantrips, Sensei's Divining Top is a cheap spell that replaces itself, but it plays more like a steroid-pumped version of them. It grants constant library manipulation and enables Miracles pretty easily, but these are the features everyone can access to. In conjunction with Jori, Top can act as a well rounded card draw engine: just activate its draw ability on the end step before your turn and re-draw it at the beginning of your turn to have a 1 CMC spell to cast each time and continue drawing cards.
In addition to cantrips, all those spells that grant us a following cast offer a particular sinergy here, being essentially free: Torrential Gearhulk, Turnabout and Frantic Search.
Tokens & Payoff
Being the U/R deck at the table means that we will likely not have a great presence on the board. Our only leverage in this term will be the constant threat of an answer: counterspells, targeted removals, boardwipes.
All this until we won't decide to build our very own army with one of the token generators at disposal:
- Young Peezy, Talrand and Saheeli
They come down early and act as an increasing layer of defense from early aggression.
- Docent of Perfection
and Metallurgic Summonings
Even if a bit slower than their colleagues, they represent a win condition in their own right.
An important note about their "usage": in this case more than ever it is crucial not to overestend. Those token generators are a key piece of our strategy and often only one on the field is more than enough.
A slightly different approach to the strategy involves our best damage dealers Guttersnipe and Niv-Mizzet, Parun: if we manage to protect them for a turn cycle things can get bad very quickly for our opponents.
Control
Even if we have the possibility to flood the board with tokens, it would be foolish from us not to embrace what our colors can do best: controlling the game state through instants and sorceries. We can do this thanks to:
Counter magic
Counters are our main source of interaction, but not being one of those counterspell tribal decks we have to use them with caution and stop only what hurts us the most. For this reason I prefer the catch-all ones (Commit, Venser, Shaper Savant) or the ones that can replace themselves (Mystic Confluence, Dream Fracture).
Targeted removal
When we have to answer something that is already in play our choiches are much more limited. We have the classics Pongify and Rapid Hybridization to keep creatures at bay and the efficient Vandalblast and Abrade for artifacts. For other permanents things get tricky and our only options are using an inefficient bounce + counterspell combination or revolve on the rest of the table, maybe involving some politics.
Boardwipes
Our big reset buttons. Could be seen both as a global answer to some degenerate boardstates or a simple tempo positive play, to catch up with our opponents. Some of our choices are Cyclonic Rift and Evacuation for instant speed answers, or Blasphemous Act and Chain Reaction for classic creature boardwipes.
Synergies
Obtaining powerful synergies and engines with card you would play anyway is one of the best thing you could do in this format: not only it pushes further the absolute value of those key components, but often makes a simple card a threat the table need to answer.
One of my favourite card has to be the one incurring between Spellseeker and Familiar's Ruse: casting this tutoring wizard gives us a free counterspell, as the additional cost on it resets the ETB and bounce the creature to our hand for another use. Bring Archaeomancer into the mix to obtain a soft-lock, having a free counterspell for rotation of the table.
Similiar thing happens with Torrential Gearhulk, which gives us much more flexibility with a vast plethora of instants to replay from our graveyard that have the added benefit of bouncing our creature: Mystic Confluence and Evacuation.
Another important piece of tech of ours is Riptide Laboratory: keep bouncing key Wizards like the aforementioned Spellseeker and Archaeomancer can get us very far in the game. Combine it with Venser, Shaper Savant to gain an obnoxious control on the field and stack.
With Throne of Eldraine came a very important synergy for the control shell of the deck: Mystic Sanctuary combined with Ghostly Flicker. Being the former an easily tutorable land, we can pretty much put this little combination online at any point of the game. From that point we can keep flickering one of our value ETB wizards or save a creature from removal per turn, while resetting the Sanctuary to put Flicker back on top, ready to be drawn with our Commander's triggered ability.
