#mtg deck tech

Death Triggers

Since Teysa doubles all of our death triggers, we want to load the deck up with as many as we can. Our first set of death triggers are on creatures that replace themselves when they die. Doomed Dissenter, Hunted Witness, Imperious Oligarch, Ministrant of Obligations, Orzhov Enforcers, Seraph of the Scales, Tithe Taker, and Elenda, the Dusk Rose all create tokens when they die, which Teysa doubles. Seraph of the Scales is also a decent flier before it dies, with activated Vigilance and/or Deathtouch. Tithe Taker taxes our opponents’ spells and abilities that are used on our turn. And Elenda has two separate death triggers that Teysa can double, the first which gives her a +1/+1 counter whenever a creature dies, and the second which creates a number of tokens equal to Elenda’s power when she dies. While not a creature itself, Open the Graves gives all of our creatures a pseudo Afterlife by creating a 2/2 token whenever a nontoken creature we control dies. Other death triggers we have are Light of the Legion, which puts a +1/+1 counter on each of our white creatures when she dies, Midnight Reaper that draws us a card and has us lose a life whenever one of our nontoken creatures die, Pitiless Plunderer which creates a treasure token whenever our creatures die, and Vindictive Vampire that drains each opponent for 1 life each time a creature we control dies. Our last death trigger is Revel in Riches, which creates a treasure whenever an opponent’s creature dies, and then if we control 10 or more treasures at the beginning of our upkeep, we win the game.

Other Token Generators and Recursive Creatures

In addition to creatures that replace themselves with tokens when they die, we have other token generators. Lena, Selfless Champion creates a 1/1 token for each nontoken creature we control when she enters the battlefield and can sacrifice herself to give creatures we control with less power than her indestructible until end of turn. Regla Bloodlord and Resplendent Angel both create tokens at the end of a turn in which we gained life, Bloodlord making a 1/1 as long as we gain life, and Angel making a 4/4 with Flying and Vigilance provided we gained 5 or more life. Dawn of Hope and Ethereal Absolution both have activated abilities that make tokens, as well as Daw letting us pay 2 mana to draw a card whenever we gain life, and Absolution giving our creatures +1/+1 and opponents’ creatures -1/-1. Divine Visitation replaces any creature token that we would create with a 4/4 Angel with flying and vigilance, giving us a way to quickly close out games. And while not tokens or token generators, Reassembling Skeleton and Gutterbones are both able to return themselves from the graveyard so we can sacrifice them multiple times.

Sacrifice Outlets

The last piece of our Aristocrats strategy are sacrifice outlets, which let us control when we get our death triggers. Priest of Forgotten Gods, Ruthless Knave, and Thallid Soothsayer are all repeatable sacrifice outlets that provide us with card advantage for Priest and Soothsayer, and treasure tokens for Knave. Priest also generates two black mana, and forces our opponents to each sacrifice a creature and lose 2 life. For one-time sacrifice outlets, we have Demon of Catastrophes, which is a 6/6 with Flying and Trample, Plaguecrafter, which forces each player to sacrifice a creature or planeswalker, or discard a card if they can’t. Costly Plunder and Bankrupt in Blood both have us sacrifice creatures to draw cards.

Utility

The last few cards in the deck provide us with utility and value to support our main strategy. Twilight Prophet, once we have the city’s blessing, lets us draw an additional card in our upkeep, and drains each opponent equal to that card’s CMC. Mortify and Vraska’s Contempt provide targeted removal against our opponents’ threats, and Kaya’s Wrath is a board wipe that gains us life for each of our creatures that it kills, on top of the benefits we get from our death triggers. Gruesome Menagerie lets us return up to three creatures with CMC 1, 2, and 3 from our graveyard to the battlefield, either getting us back some important piece of our strategy or just getting us more sacrifice fodder. The last utility card in the deck is Revival/ Revenge, which on its first half reanimates a creature with CMC 3 or less, and on its other side halves an opponent’s life total and double ours.

Land

The deck runs a total of 24 Lands. Godless Shrine, Orzhov Guildgate, Isolated Chapel, and Forsaken Sanctuary are our dual lands, with Evolving Wilds for extra fixing. Arch of Orazca lets us draw extra cards, Memorial to Folly lets us get back a creature from our graveyard, and Memorial to Glory lets us create two tokens. We round out the mana base with 8 Swamps and 8 Plains.

Wrap Up I hope everyone enjoyed this week’s deck tech. As always, if you have suggestions for this deck or future deck techs, I’d love to hear them. And here is a link to the decklist on tappedout for anyone who is interested.

+1/+1 Counter Synergy Adapt

Most of the deck revolves around +1/+1 counters, giving us strong synergy. We have eight creatures, besides Zegana, with the Adapt ability: Aeromunculus, Benthic Biomancer, Incubation Druid, Pteramander, Sharktocrab, Skatewing Spy, Skitter Eel, and Trollbred Guardian. Benthic Biomancer lets us loot whenever it gets a counter, Incubation Druid can tap for three mana as long as it has a counter, Sharktocrab can tap down creatures when a counter is placed on it, Skatewing Spy gives our creatures with counters flying, and Trollbred Guardian gives them trample. Biomancer’s Familiar, while it doesn’t have adapt itself, makes our activated abilities, including adapt, cost 2 mana less, and can let a creature adapt even if it has a counter on it already.

More +1/+1 Counters

In addition to our Adapt creatures, we have a bunch more ways to put counters on creatures. Biogenic Ooze makes ooze tokens and puts a counter on each Ooze we control at the end of our turn. Combine Guildmage has two abilities, the first lets us have any creature we control enter the battlefield with an additional counter that turn and the second lets us move counters from one creature to another. Herald of Secret Streams makes all our creatures with counters on them unblockable. Galloping Lizrog, Hungering Hydra, and Hydroid Krasis all can get huge with a lot of counters, and the Krasis even draws us cards and gains us life when we cast it. Jadelight Ranger and Merfolk Branchwalker both have the explore ability which can either draw us lands off the top of our deck or give them counters. Marwyn, the Nurturer gets a counter whenever another elf enters the battlefield under our control, and then can tap for green mana equal to her power, and while we do have a few other elves in the deck, we can also just put counters on her in other ways while still getting the mana ramp. Pelt Collector gets counters whenever a creature bigger than it enters our side of the field or dies. Skyrider Patrol lets us put a counter on one of our creatures every turn, and then give that creature flying until end of turn. Untamed Kavu has Vigilance and Trample, and if we pay its kicker cost, it comes in with three counters. Shapers of Nature has two abilities, either letting us put a counter on one of our creatures, or remove a counter from one of our creatures to draw a card. We also have some spells and enchantments that deal with counters. Strength of the Pack puts two counters on each of our creatures, while Biogenic Upgrade lets us distribute three counters among up to three creatures, and then doubles the number of counters on those creatures. Hadana’s Climb lets us put a counter on a creature at the beginning of our combat step, and then if that creature has three or more counters, it transforms into a land that can double a creature’s power and give it flying. Our last counter synergy card is Simic Ascendancy, which lets us pay three mana to put a counter on a creature we control, and every time we out a counter on a creature, we put a growth counter on Ascendancy, and then we win if the Ascendancy has twenty or more counters on it at the beginning of our upkeep.

Utility

The rest of the cards in the deck are here to support our main strategy through card draw, protection, or removal. Incubation Druid and Marwyn, the Nurturer both can provide large amounts of mana to help us ramp into our big creatures, or play a very large Hungering Hydra or Hydroid Krasis. Beast Whisperer and Guardian Project both let us draw cards whenever we cast a creature, or have a nontoken creature with a unique name enter our side of the field, which in singleton is all of our creatures. Benthic Biomancer, Shapers of Nature, and Hydroid Krasis mentioned above, all also draw us cards. Tishana, Voice of Thunder draws us a card for each creature we control when she enters the battlefield, removes our hand size limit, and on top of all that, has power and toughness equal to the number of cards in our hand, so she can be another win condition too. Incubation/Incongruity on its first half, let us look at the top five cards of our library and choose a creature from among them to put in our hand, and on its second half can exile a creature and replace it with a 3/3 token. For counterspells, we have Frilled Mystic, which is also a creature, Wizard’s Retort, and Repudiate/Replicate, which can counter an ability on its first half, or create a copy of one of our creature on its second half. The last two nonland cards in the deck are Vivien of the Arkbow and Vivien Reid. Arkbow’s +2 lets us put two counters on a creature, her -3 lets a creature we control deal damage equal to its power to another creature, and her -9 gives all our creatures +4/+4 and trample until end of turn. Vivien Reid’s +1 lets us look at the top four cards of our library for a creature or land, her -3 destroys an artifact, enchantment, or creature with flying, and her -8 creates an emblem which gives all our creatures +2/+2 Vigilance, Trample, and Indestructible.

Lands

Our mana base consists of 24 lands. Breeding Pool, Hinterland Harbor, Simic Guildgate, and Woodland Stream for dual lands, Evolving Wilds for extra mana fixing, and Guildmage’s Forum which can produce mana of any color, and if it is spent to cast a multicolored creature, that creature enters with an additional counter. We round out the mana base with 9 Islands and 9 Forests.

Wrap Up I hope everyone enjoyed this week’s deck tech. As always, if you have a suggestion for this deck or future deck techs, I’d love to hear them. And here is the link to the deck on tappedout for anyone who is interested.

Card Advantage

One of the most important things in Magic, for any strategy, is to keep your hand full of cards and especially in multiplayer formats. Beast Whisperer is the best draw engine in the deck, letting us draw a card every time we cast a creature spell, which combined with our double mana from Nikya lets us chain creature spell into creature spell. Ripjaw Raptor and Runic Armasaur also can let us draw multiple cards, Raptor when it takes damage and Armasaur when an opponent activated a non-mana land or creature ability. While they don’t provide repeated draws, Jadelight Ranger lets us explore twice when it enters the battlefield, either drawing us lands or filtering our next draws, and Pelakka Wurm draws us a card when it dies, in addition to gaining us 7 life on ETB. For the sake of card advantage, we are running a couple of noncreature spells: Domri, Chaos Bringer and Vivien Reid. Domri’s +1 gives us one red or green mana and if it is spent on a creature it gains Riot, his -3 lets us look at the top four cards of our library and put two creatures into our hand, and his -8 creates an emblem that creates a 4/4 beast token at each end step. Vivien Reid’s +1 lets us look at the top four cards of our library for a creature or land and put it into our hand, her -3 destroys an artifact, enchantment, or creature with flying, and her -8 creates an emblem that gives all of our creature +2/+2, Vigilance, Trample, and Indestructible. While both of these Planeswalkers are very good for the deck, we need to keep in mind that if Nikya is on the field, we can’t cast them, and either cast them before Nikya or once Nikya leaves the field.

Removal

In addition to drawing cards and playing our own threats, we need ways to remove our opponent’s permanents. Burning Sun’s Avatar deals 3 damage to a player and a creature on ETB. Ravager Wurm and Territorial Allosaurus can fight other creatures when they ETB, with the Wurm also being able to destroy a land on top of having Riot. Raging Swordtooth deals 1 damage to every other creature on ETB, and Skarrgan Hellkite, as long as it has a +1/+1 counter (which it can give itself through Riot), can deal 2 damage divided among up to two targets, both giving us good removal for small creatures and a solid mana sink for us to use all of our mana. In addition to creature removal, we have Reclamation Sage and Thrashing Brontodon that can destroy artifacts and enchantments.

Ramp and Other Utility

Beyond card advantage and removal, we have some more utility creatures. Llanowar Elves, Ranging Raptors, Grand Warlord Radha, and Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma each provide ramp, letting us get more mana in the case of the first three, and reducing the casting cost of our big creatures with Goreclaw. Goreclaw also gives a +1/+1 boost and Trample to all our creature with power 4 or greater when she attacks. Biogenic Ooze gives us a very strong mana sink by creating tokens, and pumping each Ooze we control with a +1/+1 counter at the end of our turns. Deathgorge Scavenger provides us with graveyard hate and can gain us life or get bigger while doing so. Gruul Spellbreaker has hexproof during our turns, and gives us hexproof on our turns, protecting us from things like Settle the Wreckage. Verdant Sun’s Avatar gains us life whenever a creature ETBs on our side, equal to that creature’s toughness. Our last utility piece, and the last noncreature spell in the deck is Rhythm of the Wild, which prevents our creature spells from being countered, and gives our nontoken creatures Riot. The same stipulation goes for Rhythm as our Planeswalkers, to make sure to play it before Nikya if we draw it early.

Beaters

No Gruul deck would be complete without some big creatures to beat our opponents down with. Multani, Yavimaya’s Avatar has power and toughness equal to the number of lands we control plus the ones in our graveyard, in addition to Trample and Reach, and an ability that lets us return him from our graveyard to our hand. Aggressive Mammoth lives up to its name, being an 8/8 with Trample for six mana and giving all our other creatures trample. Carnage Tyrant can’t be countered and has hexproof, making it super hard to deal with, on top of being a 7/6 with trample. Ghalta, Primal Hunger is a 12/12 with trample that we can very easily cast for 5 mana or less depending on our board state. Hungering Hydra is another late game mana sink that ETBs with a +1/+1 counter for each mana we put into its X cost, can’t be blocked by more than one creature, and gets bigger every time it takes damage and survives. Nullhide Ferox is a 6/6 with hexproof for 4 mana, with the “downside” that we can’t cast noncreature spells, but since we already built our deck around that for Nikya, it doesn’t hurt us much. Pelt Collector comes in as a 1/1, but every time a creature bigger than it ETBs or dies on our side, it gets a +1/+1 counter and once it has three or more it gets trample. Regisaur Alpha creates a 3/3 dinosaur token on ETB and gives all our other dinos haste. Rekindling Phoenix is a 4/3 with flying that when it dies creates a token that we can sac at our upkeep to bring back the Phoenix. Thorn Lieutenant creates a 1/1 token whenever it becomes the target of an opponent’s spell or ability, and has a mana sink ability that pumps itself up. Verix Bladewing is a 4/4 with flying, and if we pay its kicker cost, it creates a 4/4 dragon token. And our last beater is Vine Mare, a 5/3 with hexproof that can’t be blocked by black creatures.

Lands

The deck runs a total of 24 lands. We have Stomping Ground, Rootbound Crag, Gruul Guildgate, and Timber Gorge for dual lands, plus Evolving Wilds for additional fixing. Field of Ruin lets us destroy lands, Arch of Orazca lets us draw extra cards, and Memorial to Unity lets us look at the top five cards of our library for a creature and put it into our hand. We round out the mana base with 8 Mountains and 8 Forests.

Wrap Up I hope everyone enjoyed this week’s deck tech. As always, if you have suggestions for this deck or future deck techs, I’d love to hear them. And here is a link to the decklist on tappedout for anyone who is interested.

Evasive Creatures

The early game plan for the deck is to get out a bunch of cheap, evasive creatures, and then once we have a critical mass of them, play Dovin, and use his +1 to get enough loyalty to use hsi -7 on the next turn and try to find win conditions. Starting off with our one drop creatures, we have Artificer’s Assistant, Duskborne Skymarcher, Healer’s Hawk, Mist-Cloaked Herald, Pteramander, Rustwing Falcon, and Siren Stormtamer. Most of these are just french vanilla fliers/unblockables, but Artificer’s Assistant can sometimes let us Scry 1, Pteramander can get bigger in the late game, and Siren Stormtamer can counter a spell or ability if we necessary. In the two drop slot, we have Departed Deckhand, Nightveil Sprite, Remorseful Cleric, River Sneak, Storm Fleet Aerialist, Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, and Warkite Marauder. Deckhand can guarantee one of our other creatures is unblockable, Nightveil Sprite Surveils when it attacks, Remorseful Cleric provides graveyard hate, Tetsuko provides additional evasion, and Warkite Marauder can get blockers out of the way, or make it easier to remove creatures. At the three drop slot, we have Kinjalli’s Sunwing, which has our opponents’ creatures come into play tapped, clearing out blockers, and our last evasive creature is Slippery Scoundrel, which once we have the city’s blessing, becomes unblockable and gains hexproof.

Win Conditions

Once we have built up a board of evasive creatures and start Dovin up, we can try to dig for our bigger creature that help us close out games. Angel of Grace is a 5/4 flier that can stop us from dying, and if we exile her from our graveyard, we can reset our life total to 10. Azor, the Lawbringer, the original Parun of the Azorius Guild, when he enters the battlefield stops our opponents from casting instants or sorceries for a turn, and when he attacks, we can pay X, a white mana, and two blue mana to draw X cards and gain X life. Light of the Legion is a 5/5 with flying and mentor, so she can make our small creatures bigger, and when she dies, she puts a +1/+1 counter on each of our white creatures. Lyra, Dawnbringer is a 5/5 with flying, first strike, and lifelink that gives other angels we control +1/+1 and lifelink, so she can help us stabilize in the mid to late game while buffing some of our other creatures. Resplendent Angel, while not big itself, can create 4/4 Angel tokens with flying and vigilance at the end of each turn if we gained 5 or more life that turn. Sphinx of Foresight lets us Scry at the beginning of our upkeep, and if it’s in our opening hand we can Scry 3 at the beginning of our first upkeep. Sphinx of New Prahv is a 4/3 with Flying and Vigilance that makes spells and abilities controlled by our opponents which target it cost 2 more mana. Our last big creature is Windreader Sphinx, a 3/7 with Flying that lets us draw a card every time a creature with flying that we control attacks. In addition to these big creatures, we have support for flying “tribal” since all but five of our creatures have flying: Favorable Winds gives all of our creature with flying +1/+1, Spirit of the Spires gives our other flying creatures +0/+1, and Windstorm Drake gives our other creatures with flying +1/+0.

Support

The rest of the deck is made up of cards which help us draw cards or protect our board while we look for finishers. Chart a Course and Precognitive Perception each draw us cards, and Perception has the Addendum that if we play it during our main phase we get to Scry 3 before drawing. Depose/Deploy on its first half taps a creature and cantrips, but the side we care more about is Deploy, which creates two 1/1 thopter tokens and then lets us gain a point of life for each creature we control. Negate, Absorb, and Sinister Sabotage are our counterspells, mainly for use against board wipes or to prevent opponents from winning. And also included to protect against board wipes, we have Make a Stand and Unbreakable Formation, each of which comes with added bonus of buffing our team for extra damage or to close out a game.

Lands

For its mana base, the deck runs 24 lands. Azorius Guildgate, Hallowed Fountain, Meandering River, and Glacial Fortress are our dual lands, along with Evolving Wilds for mana fixing. For utility lands, Arch of Orazca and Memorial to Genius provide additional card draw, Field of Ruin provides land destruction, Memorial to Glory can create soldier tokens, and Reliquary Tower removes our hand size limit. We round out the mana base with 7 Islands and 7 Plains.

Aristocrats Strategy Sacrifice Outlets and Payoffs

The main strategy of the deck is to sacrifice creatures in order to gain value from Judith and our other payoffs. Starting with sacrifice outlets, we have Dark-Dweller Oracle, Fireblade Artist, Goblin Trashmaster, Priest of Forgotten Gods, Ruthless Knave, Siege-Gang Commander, Skirk Prospector, and Thallid Soothsayer. Oracle, Priest, Soothsayer, Costly Plunder, and Bankrupt in Blood each provide us card advantage in exchange for a creature or two. Fireblade Artist, Siege-Gang Commander, and Makeshift Munitions give us extra damage. Ruthless Knave and Skirk Prospector provide mana ramp, and Goblin Trashmaster can destroy artifacts. We also have Plaguecrafter as a one-time sac outlet that also forces our opponents to sac or discard. For death trigger payoffs, in addition to Judith, we have Midnight Reaper, Pitiless Plunderer, and Vindictive Vampire to give us added benefits for our sacrifices. Midnight Reaper draws us cards when our nontoken creatures die, Pitiless Plunderer creates treasure tokens, even off of token creatures, and Vindictive Vampire drains each opponent whenever our creatures die.

Recursion

Since we want to be sacrificing a lot of creatures, having recursion and creatures that can bring themselves back helps us to avoid running out of resources. Gutterbones, Reassembling Skeleton, Rekindling Phoenix, and Squee, the Immortal all can recur themselves when after dying. Isareth the Awakener can reanimate a creature whenever she attacks. Garna, the Bloodflame lets us return all creatures that died that turn to our hand when she enters the battlefield. Gruesome Menagerie can return up to three creatures from the graveyard straight to the battlefield.

Aggression

In addition to our sacrifice strategy, we also take advantage of Judith’s anthem effect to support our creatures in combat, and if our creatures die in combat, then we still get Judith triggers anyway. Goblin Chainwhirler is a solid attacker being a 3/3 with First Strike that also can kill our opponents' tokens and other x/1s. Goblin Instigator, Legion Warboss, and Siege-Gang Commander each make tokens, giving us additional attackers. Then to close out the game, we have some big fliers, Rakdos, the Showstopper, Skarrgan Hellkite, and Spawn of Mayhem. Rakdos is a 6/6 with Flying and Trample that has a random board wipe attached when he enters the battlefield, which as long as we have Judith or another death trigger out, we don’t really mind losing our own creatures so it’s only upside for us. Skarrgan Hellkite has Riot, so it either comes in with Haste or a +1/+1 counter and as long as it has a counter on it, it can do damage every turn through its mana sink ability. Spawn of Mayhem is a 4/4 with Flying and Trample and deals damage to each player at the beginning of our upkeep, and can get bigger if we have less than 10 life.

Utility

The remaining cards in the deck are there to provide added utility. Goblin Cartermaker can sacrifice itself to destroy an artifact or deal 2 damage to a creature, while also triggering Judith or other abilities. Rix Maadi Reveler, Ruin Raider, Theater of Horrors, and Light Up the Stage provide additional card draw to keep us from running out of gas in the late game. Bedevil provides us with flexible removal. And the spell in the deck is Fraying Omnipotence, which makes each player lose half their life, discard half the cards in their hand, and sacrifice half of their creatures, which will set our opponents back, while not affecting us as negatively since we should have played most of our hand by that point and want our creatures to die anyway.

Lands

The deck’s mana base consists of 24 lands. For dual lands, we have Blood Crypt, Cinder Barrens, Dragonskull Summit, and Rakdos Guildgate, plus Evolving Wilds for added mana fixing. Field of Ruin lets us destroy troublesome lands, and Memorial to Folly lets us recur a creature from our graveyard. We round out the mana base with 9 Mountains and 8 Swamps.

Wrap Up I hope everyone enjoyed this week’s deck tech. As always, if you have suggestions for this deck or future deck techs I’d love to hear them. And here is a link to the deck on tappedout for anyone who is interested.

Sacrifice Matters and Support

We start our sacrifice theme with sacrifice outlets. In addition to Vraska, we have Demon of Catastrophes, Izoni, Thousand-Eyed, Plaguecrafter, Fungal Plots, and Blood Divination. Demon of Catastrophes, Plaguecrafter, and Blood Divination are each one-time sacrifice effects that come with upside, the Demon being a 6/6 with Flying and Trample, Plaguecrafter forcing each opponent to also sacrifice a creature or planeswalker, or discard a card if they cannot, and Blood Divination draws us three cards. Fungal Plots lets us repeatedly sacrifice Saproling tokens to gain 2 life and draw a card, in addition to making saproling tokens by exiling cards from our graveyard. Izoni creates a lot of tokens on ETB with her undergrowth trigger and then lets us sacrifice creatures to draw cards and gain life.

In addition to our Sacrifice outlets, we have cards which either support sacrificing or benefit us for having creatures die. Bone Dragon, Doomed Dissenter, Jungle Creeper, and Reassembling Skeleton each either replace themselves when they die or allow us to bring them back to sacrifice more than once. Open the Graves fills a similar role by creating a 2/2 zombie token every time one of our nontoken creatures dies. Tendershoot Dryad, Verdant Force, Fungal Plots, Saproling Migration, and Slimefoot the Stowaway all produce saproling tokens for us to sacrifice, and Slimefoot even gives us the benefit of draining each opponent for 1 life each time a saproling we control dies. Midnight Reaper, Pelt Collector, Pitiless Plunderer, and Poison-Tip Archer each benefit us for having creatures die, with Reaper drawing us cards, Collector getting bigger, Plunderer making treasure tokens, and Archer making our opponents lose a life.

Graveyard Matters

In addition to our sacrifice theme, we have a minor Graveyard matters subtheme. Charnel Troll gets larger by exiling a creature from our graveyard every turn and lets us discard creature cards to make itself bigger. Golgari Findbroker gets us back any permanent card from our graveyard. Izoni has an undergrowth trigger that creates a token for each creature card in our graveyard. Lotleth Giant also has an undergrowth trigger, dealing damage to an opponent equal to the number of creatures in our graveyard. Hatchery Spider is another undergrowth card that lets us reveal X cards from the top of our library and play a green permanent with CMC X or less, where X is the number of creatures in our Graveyard. Journey to Eternity, once it transforms, lets us reanimate a creature each turn. Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering also lets us reanimate a creature or planeswalker from any graveyard, in addition to destroying a creature or planeswalker.

Utility

The rest of the deck is made up of utility and support cards. For mana ramp, we have Golgari Locket and Llanowar Elves. Doom Whisperer is a 6/6 with Flying and Trample that lets us pay 2 life to Surveil 2. Twilight Prophet, as long as we have the City’s Blessing, lets us draw an additional card in our upkeep, and drain each opponent for that card’s CMC. Underrealm Lich lets us replace any card we would draw with looking at the top three cards of our library, putting one into our hand and the rest in the graveyard. Ravenous Chupacabra, Assassin’s Trophy, Status/Statue, and Vraska’s Contempt provide removal. Find/Finality lets us either return two creatures from our graveyard to our hand or put two +1/+1 counters on a creature and then give all creature -4/-4 until end of turn. Our last utility card is Vraska, Relic Seeker, who has a +2 that creates a 2/2 pirate token with menace, a -3 that destroys a creature, artifact, or enchantment while creating a treasure token, and a -10 that sets a player’s life total to 1.

Lands

The mana base for the deck includes Overgrown Tomb, Woodland Cemetery, Foul Orchard, and Golgari Guildgate for dual lands, Arch of Orazca for extra card draw, Memorial to Folly to get back a creature from our graveyard, and then 9 Forests and 9 Swamps.

Control

We begin the deck with the suite of Control cards, which are what allow us to make it to the late game and take over matches. We run nine different counterspells: Cancel, Disdainful Stroke, Essence Scatter, Ionize, Negate, Sinister Sabotage, Spell Swindle, Syncopate, and Wizard’s Retort. Some of them are unconditional, others are more narrow, but they do a solid job of keeping our opponents from playing their biggest threats, and once we have Niv-Mizzet out they replace themselves. We also run some targeted removal for if our opponents manage to get something onto the field: Lightning Strike, Wizard’s Lightning, Beacon Bolt, and Lava Coil which can deal with any small to medium sized creatures that need removing. We also run a few board wipes: Fiery Cannonade, River’s Rebuke, and Star of Extinction. Cannonade can deal with tokens and other strategies that flood the board with small creatures, while Star can destroy practically any creature that is not indestructible. River’s Rebuke is a Cyclonic Rift that only hits one opponent, but since we have ways to copy our spells, we can potentially use this against multiple opponents.

Utility

In addition to our Control cards, we run some utility and support to help us draw cards, fix our mana, or otherwise get ahead. Chromatic Lantern, Izzet Locket, and Gilded Lotus each help us to ramp, and in the case of Lantern, fix our mana so that we can more easily cast Niv-Mizzet and do so sooner. Goblin Electromancer also helps us to “ramp” by reducing the cost of our instants and sorceries by 1. Chemister’s Insight and Opt each let us draw additional cards, with Insight being recastable with Jump-start. Mission Briefing is a swiss army knife that lets us Surveil 2, fixing our draws, and then recast an instant or sorcery from our graveyard. Invert/Inven lets us tutor for an instant and/or sorcery card from our library, or if we need to use its first half it is an interesting combat trick. Firemind’s Research provides us with added value each time we cast an instant or sorcery by gaining charge counters, which we can use to either draw cards or deal 5 damage to a target. Jaya Ballard is our last utility card, giving us three very good abilities: her first +1 adds 3 Red mana to your mana pool, which can only be used to cast instants and sorceries, but since those comprise most of the deck that isn’t really a downside. Her second +1 lets us discard up to three cards to draw that same amount, letting us pitch extra lands or less useful spells in the mid to late game to draw potentially better cards. Her -8, if we can get to it, lets us cast instant and sorcery cards from our graveyard, providing a ton of extra value.

Win Conditions

Saving the most exciting part of the deck for last, we get to the cards that, in addition to Niv-Mizzet himself, can win us the game. Guttersnipe and Murmuring Mystic each provide us extra value when we cast instant and sorcery spells, with Guttersnipe dealing 2 damage to each opponent, and the Mystic creating tokens. Ral, Izzet Viceroy has three abilities that play very well with the deck: his +1 lets us look at the top two cards of our library, put one into our hand and the other in the graveyard, his -3 deals damage to a creature equal to the number of instants and sorceries in our graveyard or exile, and his -8 creates an emblem that deals 4 damage to any target and draws us two cards every time we cast an instant or sorcery. The two main win conditions for the deck are two similar enchantments, The Mirari Conjecture, and Thousand-Year Storm. Mirari Conjecture on its first and second chapters returns an instant and a sorcery card from our graveyard to our hand, and on its third chapter copies each instant or sorcery we play that turn. Thousand-Year Storm gives each instant and sorcery we cast “Storm”, copying it for each other instant or sorcery that we had cast prior to it on that turn. Once we have either of these enchantments in play, we win by casting and copying either Banefire, Jaya’s Immolating Inferno, or the Explosion half of Expansion/Explosion to deal lethal damage to each of our opponents.

Lands

The mana base for the deck consists of Steam Vents, Sulfur Falls, Izzet Guildgate, and Highland Lake for dual lands, and then 10 Islands and 10 Mountains. Since we need to get to 3 Blue and 3 Red mana by turn six, we shouldn’t run any lands that cannot produce blue or red mana, but Memorial to Genius is included for extra card draw in the late game.