Izzet Mizchief?

Commander / EDH*

Achija

Instant (37)

• 1x AEtherize
• 1x Aetherspouts
• 1x Capsize
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Chemister's Insight
• 1x Clockspinning
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Electrodominance
• 1x Familiar's Ruse
• 1x Firemind's Foresight
• 1x Foil
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Lightning Bolt
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mana Short
• 1x Mind Games
• 1x Mindbreak Trap
• 1x Mission Briefing
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Nexus of Fate *list*
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Power Sink
• 1x Precognitive Perception
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Reiterate
• 1x Reset
• 1x Rewind
• 1x Scour from Existence
• 1x Shattering Pulse
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Time Stop
• 1x Trickbind
• 1x Turnabout
• 1x Unwind
• 1x Whispers of the Muse

Land (35)

• 1x Cascade Bluffs
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Halimar Depths
• 1x Homeward Path
• 10x Island
• 1x Izzet Boilerworks
• 8x Mountain
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Riptide Laboratory
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Spirebluff Canal
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Tolaria West
• 1x Wandering Fumarole

Creature (9)

• 1x Archaeomancer
• 1x Baral, Chief of Compliance
• 1x Blistercoil Weird
• 1x Electrostatic Field
• 1x Goblin Electromancer
• 1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Thermo-Alchemist

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Dack Fayden

Commander (1)

Sorcery (12)

• 1x Ancestral Vision
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Curse of the Swine
• 1x Day's Undoing
• 1x Exhaustion
• 1x Mana Vapors
• 1x Mystic Retrieval
• 1x Mystic Speculation
• 1x Stone Rain
• 1x Tidings
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Wheel of Fortune

Artifact (3)

• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Paradise Mantle
• 1x Sol Ring

Enchantment (2)

• 1x As Foretold
• 1x Rhystic Study

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Maybeboard

Creature (1)

• 1x Mizzix of the Izmagnus

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So the local store has started doing a regular two-headed giant commander competition which means that Izzet Mizchief needed to be tuned and streamlined for competition. Sadly very little of the old Tibor and Lumia deck is left, but what I do have is a powerful Izzet control/combo deck. One of these days I'll remake Tibor and Lumia as a Spellslinger/Tim deck but today let's go over this Monster of a Mizzix control deck.

Key cards:

Time Stop , Mana Short , Exhaustion , Turnabout , Mana Vapors , Power Sink : After playing for some time with this deck I found one of my favorite moves was to Time Stop the most threatening player during their upkeep. Unfortunately Time Stop then exiles itself so my spell recursion is useless at making this effect redundant. So, of course, I went looking for ways to replicate this effect and came across Mana Short and Exhaustion. Mana Short is essentially a Silence in blue. You can mana short someone during their upkeep to prevent them from playing any spells for an entire round of the table, or Mana Short another blue player right before trying to combo off. As for Exhaustion, it turns out people like to tap all their lands and many if not most of their creatures each turn (the lands is what makes Mana Geyser so good in our format). When they inevitably do this I can Exhaustion them on my turn to essentially prevent them from having a turn at all, which essentially replicates Orim's Chant . While both of these spells are less powerful than Time Stop on the surface--the opponent still gets a draw and land drop on their turn--they are both half its CMC, they cut the player out for an entire round of the table instead of just one turn, and they can be repeatedly recurred using Archaeomancer , Mission Briefing etc. I have also included Mind Games , Stone Rain and Power Sink to mess with my opponents' mana in other ways. All in all these tempo plays have shown themselves to be extremely powerful despite all the handwaving about how "tempo isn't good in Commander."

Firemind's Foresight : This tutors for all three pieces of the most powerful combo in the deck Reiterate + Reset + Whispers of the Muse . I have built in all sorts of redundancy for this combo since the last iteration of the deck, adding Reset to the original Seething Song for the Mana production and to make sure all three pieces can be retrieved with Firemind's Foresight, and all sorts of outlets for the infinite mana after drawing the whole deck such as Burst Lightning , Capsize , Nexus of Fate and Scour from Existence .

Clockspinning + Dack Fayden : This is the secondary combo win for the deck. Dack Fayden is only 3 CMC and with some spell reducers such as Mizzix herself can be bumped into ultimate range with Clockspinning for only 6 mana. At that point I can literally take all of my opponent's permanents with Dack's emblem because Clockspinning can target any permanent at any time regardless of whether that permanent had any counters on it. Mind Games can also be used to take permanents if my opponents manage to counter Clockspinning through my counter wall. Clockspinning can also be used to make my spells free by ticking up As Foretold and also combos with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy   for a mill win rather than a steal everything win. Dack can also just be played for value: bolting the bird by stealing a Sol Ring or other valuable mana rock or digging you to your important combo or control pieces.

Archaeomancer + Familiar's Ruse : This is a cute little combo which essentially guarantees one counter spell per round of the table for 2UUUU. I think of it as a delayed buyback cost of 2UU for a UU counterspell. It can also be done for cheaper and more short term by using Snapcaster Mage as the bounce target and it can be used to rescue Mizzix from a hostile board state.

Trickbind : in a world of Teferi/Chainveil, Aminatou/Oath of Teferi, and other oppressive planeswalkers and planeswalker commanders the humble Trickbind is a powerful magic card. It counters both activated and triggered abilities, can be reduced to 1 CMC, has Split second and thus can't be responded to, and shuts off activated abilities for an entire turn. It can also counter ANY activated ability; it does not have that pesky "Except mana abilities" rider and can therefore be used to shut off repeatable mana combos such as Grim Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth . Also, notably, it can respond to triggered abilities on the stack such as Storm, Commander Storm, and Eldrazi cast triggers. It is a powerful, flexible, and supremely useful little counterspell.

Paradise Mantle : This little 0 drop mana rock has many functions in the deck. Since I rarely attack this equipment turns all my utility creatures into mana dorks. Also since it produces 1 mana and costs 1 generic mana to equip it can essentially filter your mana the turn you equip it. It is also the key piece to the deck's tertiary win combo Blistercoil Weird + Mystic Speculation + Paradise Mantle . With a 2 CMC reduction it allows you to literally stack your deck using Mystic Speculation . Scry 3 Ad Infinitum allows you to continue scrying until you have the top 3 you want, then bottom those and repeat the process until you have your deck stacked in any way you want. On the other hand with enough spell reduction this combo can be used to simply draw your whole deck for free with Whispers of the Muse . This also gives you infinite spell count so it can be used with Grapeshot or Thermo-Alchemist to straight up win the game.

Scour from Existence It turns out in a deck devoted to reducing mana costs of instants or sorceries, a 7 CMC spell with no color requirements can easily become free. This allows me to remove threats I otherwise wouldn't be able to i.e. enchantments or indestructible permanents, and can be Reiterated using the Firemind's Foresight Combo to leave my opponents with nothing. You get NOTHING! Good day sir!

So that's the deck! I hope you enjoyed my little primer. If you want a powerful, tempo-based control deck with resilient combos my Mizzix list may be exactly what you're looking for. So my friends remember, be passionate! Be ingenious! Go forth and cause some Izzet Mizchief!

Date added	7 years
Last updated	5 years
Key combos	Archaeomancer + Familiar's Ruse Clockspinning + Dack Fayden Reiterate + Reset + Whispers of the Muse Blistercoil Weird + Mystic Speculation + Paradise Mantle
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 36 - 0 Rares 21 - 0 Uncommons 16 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.86
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Boar 2/2 G, Emblem Dack Fayden, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Experience Token, Manifest 2/2 C
Folders	Reading, EDH, Favorite EDH, Izzet