My first stab at an Izzet deck built around the Flashback mechanic.
-
Burning Vengeance
and Guttersnipe are the main engines here. Cast instants and sorceries left and right to deal damage with Guttersnipe, cast things with Flashback from the graveyard for
Burning Vengeance
, or even better, have both on the battlefield and burn things down twice as fast.
-
Nivix Cyclops
and
Augur of Bolas
help form a decent defensive line. Under certain circumstances,
Nivix Cyclops
could go on the offensive if there're enough eligible spells cast in a given turn, and Rogue's Passage can direct that damage straight to the player. It's something of a "Hail Mary" tactic, though, and I don't expect it to apply very often. Artful Dodge is more likely to be used as a boost for Nivix.
-Mana Leak,
Silent Departure
, and Skyline Cascade can deal with threats or at least stall them.
-
Augur of Bolas
, Think Twice,
Desperate Ravings
, Faithless Looting, and Desolate Lighthouse help with card draw.
Looking for feedback on this! I'm looking for reasonable ways to upgrade this because while I like building cheap decks, this feels like it's underpowered.
Regarding the Sideboard/Maybeboard:
-
Rolling Temblor
looks useful except it would blow up the Guttersnipes (or possibly Goblin Electromancers and unflipped Delver of Secrets
s if I added them) and not deal with any fliers.
-
Secrets of the Dead
works with the flashback mechanic but I feel like I've already got enough card draw in this deck.
-Goblin Electromancer would help lower the casting costs but I don't think, all things considered, they'd be more valuable than the other creatures I've already got.
-
Spite of Mogis
would be perfect if the damage could be directed towards the player. The fact that it's creature-only makes it decidedly less useful.
-Magma Jet: I love this card, but I think I'm already good on controlling my card draw. The direct damage would be nice but that's not the crux of this deck.
-
Izzet Charm
: I went back and forth on this a lot. It helps serve some of the functions of Mana Leak, Magma Jet, and Faithless Looting, but ultimately I took it out because the lower "unless" cost and the non-creature counter functionality made it less useful than Mana Leak, the burn function by itself didn't seem useful, and I've already got enough card draw. The closer-to-"hard" counter functionality of Mana Leak won out.
UPDATE: After playtesting this a bunch and researching I decided that the Burning Vengeance mechanic, though a fun idea, just doesn't hold up against more recent decks. So I scrapped it and started over! My new U/R deck is deck:ur-chainspell-directing-traffic.
