Replace Annihilating Fire with Lightning Strike or Skullcrack

Lightning Strike is a 2 drop that deals 3 damage to a creature or player and Skullcrack has an anti lifesteal/ damage prevention built in, and it still does the 3 damage. Also, you might want to look into Magma Jet . It is probably one of my favorite new burn cards. It is a 2 drop burn 2, scry 2. Anyways, I hope this helped a little bit at least.

@coneman93 I haven't gotten this set up for Theros yet. I'm gonna preorder a fat pack and see what i get, then update it. I'm definitely going to use Lightning Strike and Magma Jet and I'll end up replacing every Shock with Spark jolt . Thanks for the suggestions man!

@Juls317 I see, I see. I'm running my own Izzet deck based on the built in scry mechanic in a lot of the cards in Theros. My deck list is here: Izzet Flamespeaker. I posted it because I figured there might be a card or 2 I missed, but I guess since I'm new, nobody's seen it yet or something. I wanna know if people think I should swap some stuff out because I am trying to make the deck at least semi-competetive.

drop 4x Shock for 4 lands and drop 2x Spark jolt to get the deck to 60 cards.

drop 2 Chandra's Pheonix and 2 Guttersnipe in the sb for Negate and Syncopate

also drop 1 Mizzium Mortars , 1 Magma Jet , and 1 Lightning Strike for 3x Cyclonic Rift

I'm pretty comfortable running 18 lands, I really never have a problem with hitting my land drops. I'll drop the Mizzium Mortars , Magma Jet and Lightning Strike for the 3x Cyclonic Rift when I get them. I actually too the 2x Spark jolt out already, I don't know why I accidently wrote them up as being in the deck.

Love the deck.I had a similar theory in mind, except with Black.I used Guttersnipe and Young Pyromancer to leverage the red/black sorcery/instants.

My deck was a little more burn/destruction oriented with the black rather than the counter with blue. I really like your idea though! Guttersnipe is awesome and very underrated. Spellheart Chimera is beast for this deck. Good choice!

What problems does your deck typically have? How does to fair against agro, control, and midrange.

I've found my deck, Apocalypse Meow, hard to deal with midrange. I absolutely destroy agro decks and control is tough but I have a good record against them.

Flamespeaker Adept --> Nivix cyclop

I had Cyclops in the original iteration of this deck. It's just less effective without things like Artful Dodge

Nice deck! I've been building a similar one more focused on the chimera, but i like what you've done with the scry. How do you fare with 20 lands?

It's not usually too bad, but there are of course some games where you just get mana screwed. It's actually been a while since I've played a game (it's been about a month i think). I've thought about taking out Flamespeaker Adept and tossing in a couple more lands, but I'm not sure.

You should definitely up the Magma Jet count to 4 of. It turns bad hands into playable hands all by itself. Also, have you considered Izzet Charm ?

+1

I had Izzet Charm in my old deck (maybe I shouldn't have deleted those after all) but took it out due to the counterspells in Theros. I never really liked the idea of having an opponent pay their way out of a counterspell and the whole "draw-to-discard" concept never really played out well for me so the only bonus I got from them was that I could burn for 2 more, which I guess isn't too bad but ehhhh. What would you suggest I use it for and what should I take out?

Also, I was running 4x Magma Jet and have trimmed to allow for more land, but I wouldn't say no to putting them back in. Suggestions for what to remove?