Okay, this is my attempt at an Izzet standard deck. It aims to control the game with a lot of burn/returning opponent's permanents to their hands. The control hopefully brings me to the late game where I can fly/trample over with Spellheart Chimera, or unblockable kill with AEtherling.
An important aspect of the deck is dumping lots of instants and sorceries into the graveyard to make Spellheart Chimera big.
Steam Augury
and
Glimpse the Future
are great at doing this. I considered Epic Experiment for this as well, but often times it was dumping critical cards like Keranos, God of Storms,
Jace, Memory Adept
, or AEtherling into the graveyard.
Sometimes
Steam Augury
can even be played after blocks have been declared as a pseudo "pump" combat trick (hence the deck name, haha), forcing your opponent to give you huge card advantage, or a permanent buff to Spellheart Chimera.
The
Mizzium Skin
is nice to keep my chimeras, pyromancers, and tokens alive.
Drawing cards is pretty important in this deck; it is control after all, and its important to be hitting your removal cards and land drops. To do this, I have Jace, Keranos,
Steam Augury
,
Glimpse the Future
, and Opportunity. This deck consistently has a pretty fat hand which is nice. I considered running
Divination
over
Glimpse the Future
, but I'm not sure which is better. In the end I chose
Glimpse the Future
because it thins the deck a bit more, and the graveyard dump is nice.
When I first made this deck, I was having a lot of trouble against aggro strategies, as I essentially had no blockers in the early game. I'm hoping the addition of Young Pyromancer fixes this issue somewhat. I try to keep the board empty during the early turns, but sometimes this is hard to do when creatures start getting more than 2 or 3 toughness. The board clears AEtherize and Cyclonic Rift are essential keeping the board clear. With 4 copies of Cyclonic Rift main deck, I can often afford to waste one or two to bounce a single creature. I was running Whelming Wave At one point, but I took it out when I put the Pyromancers in. I also was running Nivix Cyclops for a while; he's a nice blocker, and can hit pretty hard too, but in the end I took him out to put some juicier cards in, such as Keranos. Any tips to help against aggro would be greatly appreciated.
Okay... my removal package... I'm not really sure what's going on with it. You're probably noticing my lack of any main board counter spells. I'm not entirely sure if this is good or bad. Running no counter spells leaves a lot more spots for burn, which in itself is pretty good removal, and can significantly speed up the Chimera death-clock. However, this can really screw me over game 1 against decks running things that don't die to burn, or do all their work when they come into play (Gruul Monsters... Master of Waves, Gray Merchant of Asphodel... AHH!). I'd like your guys' help finding a good balance between burn and counters.
I also would like your guys' help throwing together a good sideboard. Not even going to bother posting it right now, it's pretty makeshift.
This is the first deck I've posted on the site. Be gentle. :P Let me know what you guys think!
