Izzet creatureless mill

4 x fiery impulse

4 x twin bolt
4 x telling time
2 x disperse

3 x anchor to the aether
2 x calculated dismissal
2 x sphinx's tutelage
1 x claustrophobia

4 x bone to ash
4 x countermand
4 x inspiration
26 x lands


I came up with this deck because I really wanted to see blue instants shine. I have no idea how this deck will perform against the general field, I think it will dominate other control decks pretty reliably though. Only 2 copies of calculated dismissal because mill is a slow ass win condition and it becomes a dead card once your opponent gets enough land. Disperse is there primarily to deal with non-creature permanents.

If the deck has a hard time vs aggro I would add some perilous myrs, maybe drop 2 inspirations and 2 anchors to the aether.

Imo Izzet is indeed the most promising mill option, because the burn cards are quite strong against aggro. I went for more draw and a lower curve, which makes it mill faster at the cost of some lategame control. I also run 9 creatures, because the etb bounce has immediate value, the Thief is just a very good blocker with possible card draw/mill, Jace is Jace and Scryfish is just amazing at improving your draws while your opponent might be reluctant to use removal and waste a turn on a 0/3. I see the appeal to go completely creatureless, though.

Telling Time is a fun card, but I don't like that it doesn't trigger Tutelage. I think you're better off playing Alchemist's Vial instead, so you can replace Inspiration with the cheaper Artificer's Epiphany. Oh and I would totally go with 3 Tutelages, it's your only win condition. Going down to 25 lands should be fine with that much scry and draw. I even went with 22 because my curve is very low and I have multiple 2-drops to draw and scry.

I'm really interested in trying the creatureless mill version. From the looks of the posted decks so far, most decks run a lot of clunky spells whose only purpose is to remove creatures, and red burn spells in this set often can't hit the face. Having no creatures is going to be quite strong.

I'd probably add some Foundry of the Consuls when you add your lands since it's a 2 colour deck with really low requirements in red. It gives you something besides looting to do with your extra lands, and another way to deal with random little creatures that split through for free.

Anchor to the Aether in an uncommon that caps out at 3.

You could probably use a couple Claustrophobia in the deck so you have some way to deal with a resolved fatty besides bouncing and countering it.

Gegliosch -
Your version has a lot more draw than mine with all those flasks and 3x copies of tutelage. You have a faster mill deck. You could also throw in the artifact bears that draw both players a card when they die, that will mill for 3 with a tutelage out.

I am not trying to outrace anyone with my deck. I chose mill as a win condition because it fit the deck, not the other way around. The scryfish and thief are both good cards but I want to at least try going creatureless in order to blank removal completely.

I can tweak the deck a little, but I am not interested in making the best mill deck possible, this is intended to be the most inevitable control deck possible that can easily beat other control decks. Whether it is good or not truly depends on the meta. I am sure there are better options for the vs. aggro matchup.

As far as telling time + inspiration vs vial + epiphany - I just dig the digging power of telling time, I am leaning heavily on burn spells to survive the early game and I like the power of telling time to grab them. Telling time is instant speed, so I can hold mana open for my other instant burn spells or a bounce spell. I don't think 4 artifacts is enough to make epiphany worthwhile. Last but not least telling time turns on spell mastery ASAP, I like my fiery impulses to do 3 damage on turn 3, thank you very much.

Spencer - thanks for the point on Anchor. I have been totally spoiled by Mr. T's deckbuilder. Claustrophobia is my replacement right now, it just barely didn't make the cut originally - I am a little concerned with the UU cost making it impossible to leave counter mana open.

I could see adding one foundry, but if I added more than one I would have to start adding extra taplands to make up for it. Cracking it at instant speed during the declare attacker phase should be worthwhile.

I am not seeing any dedicated thopter decks, and I wonder why. Since I feel that it can be really exploited with the current card pool.
So here's my theory-craft UR thopter deck:

2x claustrophobia
3x disperse
3x esperzoa
3x inspiration
2x soulblade djinn
4x telling time
2x thopter spy network
3x whirler rogue
4x fiery impulse
2x ghirapur gearcrafter
2x pia and kiran nalaar
2x ravaging blaze
3x thopter engineer
3x chief of the foundry
2x sulfur falls
2x foundry of the consuls
3x izzet guildgate
9x Island
6x Mountain

The main strategy is to go wide with tiny fliers and pump them all up with the Djinn. I also have some traditional blue card draw and red burn in there to refuel you and finish off the opponent. The only change is possibly more foundry of the consuls, but that seems too clunky in my opinion.

Brony here is some advice for posting your decks on the forum.

Type this but replace the parentheses () with square brackets []
(deck)
38 relentless rats
22 swamp
(/deck)

It should look like this:
38 x relentless rats
22 x swamp


Second, if you sort your cards by mana cost it makes it easier for you and for other players to see what your mana curve is like. It is really hard to read your decklist in the way you currently posted it.

Give me a minute to read it with the cards linked. Then I'll edit this.

Edit:

I'm looking at, sorted by mana cost and alphabet:

4 Fiery Impulse

3 Disperse
4 Telling Time
2 Ravaging Blaze

2 Claustrophobia
3 Esperzoa
2 Ghirapur Gearcrafter
3 Thopter Engineer
3 Chief of the Foundry

2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3 Whirler Rogue
2 Thopter Spy Network
3 Inspiration

2 Soulblade Djinn

2 Sulfur Falls
2 Foundry of the Consuls
3 Izzet Guildgate
9 Island
6 Mountain

My initial reaction is that you have no creatures below 3 mana. That, right there, is bad. Especially since your deck has a very high number of 4 and 5 drops. This means you can't compete for the board until you have 3 mana.

Speaking of, you only have 22 lands in a deck with a lot of 4 and 5 drops. <- That is bad.

On top of that, some of your inclusions such as Esperzoa make no sense to me, while other things that are missing like perilous myr also make less sense to me.

Finally..... your entire offensive plan, assuming it gets going, is to put down 1/1 tokens and try to boost their attack with some lords. With the sheer number of things aggro can do in this meta, combined with the number of goblin arsonist effects has, you are going to have trouble against aggro due to your deck's speed and ...... the fact that without a lord you are pumping out a lot of 1/1's on turn 3 or later. You also almost completely auto lose to languish, displacement wave, and chandra's igntiion, which are 3 cards I guarantee you you will see a lot of.

I agree with everything Mjack said here. Except the last sentence. There are going to be a lot of decks out there that auto lose to board wipes. Board wipes will usually be 2 per deck, and if you are smart and don't overextend you can limit their impact (they will still hurt). "Everything dies to sweepers" is not really a good criticism since there are a total of 2 rare creatures between U and R that survive languish. Blue doesn't even have negate in this set.

One other thing brony - don't run inspiration. If you want the same effect run Artificer's Epiphany. It is almost completely better in artifact.deck.

First off, thank you so much for this. I wanted to start getting involved here since I plan on playing Magic Duels nonstop. I guess I just forgot to look for a post that explained that to me before I posted.
Also, the reason I didn't post it in CMC/alphabetical order was partially not knowing, but mostly me scouring through card lists and adding cards as I went along.




The thing about having no cards less than 3 CMC , it really came down to wanting to push the thopter theme. I thought about a lot of under 2 CMC card like Dragon Fodder and Mage-Ring Bully, but when it came down to it I originally valued thopters over other cards. Runed Servitor I dislike because of it giving your opponent a card, and I feel Perilous Myr is too weak stat-wise for it's mana cost (though the shock-like effect sort of makes up for it). When it comes to Esperzoa, I really don't know with it. I like it since this is an aggro deck (with some utilities), but I can understand how it sometimes won't work given the fact the main artifacts I would get would be tokens. The land count being low is due to me thinking of this as an aggro deck more than the tempo/midrange build I should have originally gone with. I always have considered that at MOST a deck should have 24 lands, but that just may be me not really looking into these things. When it comes to Artificer's Epiphany my original list didn't have enough standalone artifacts that I could discard. So I went with Inspiration since I needed more card draw.

With all of that in mind, I still feel that the idea of a thopter deck will be viable once Magic Duels comes out (steam for me). So with all the criticism in mind, here's an edited version of my UR thopter tempo deck:

4 Fiery Impulse

4 Disperse
4 Telling Time
2 Ravaging Blaze
4 Mage-Ring Bully
3 Perilous Myr

3 Artificer's Epiphany
3 Thopter Engineer
3 Chief of the Foundry

3 Whirler Rogue
2 Thopter Spy Network

1 Soulblade Djinn

2 Sulfur Falls
1 Foundry of the Consuls
4 Izzet Guildgate
9 Island
8 Mountain


Can I get some more feedback if that is possible? Cause I am still unsure if Foundry of the Consuls would be worth running 2-3 of (probably not but wanted to ask).
Also, sorry for the SUPER long post. I felt I needed to answer all of people's criticism's in one go. I don't know if there's a rule about how long a post should be, so if I broke it...then I guess I'm sorry.

Just posted a Deck Tech for an artifact build:

4x Fiery Impulse

4x Twin Bolt
4x Runed Servitor

4x Ghirapur Gearcrafter
3x Thopter Engineer
3x Chief of the Foundry
2x Artificer's Epiphany

2x Thopter Spy Network
3x Whirler Rogue
2x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3x Reclusive Artificer

2x Willbreaker

4x Izzet Guildgate
2x Sulfur Falls
9x Mountain
9x Island

Willbreaker seems very strong in this archetype, with a lot of ways to ping (multiple) creatures and steal them.
Especially in combination with Whirler Rogue it is very easy to steal all the opponent's creatures for free.
Also thought about including Rogue's Passage to combo with it, but the manabase is not good enough to suport a colorless land.

Forgot Runed Servitor is an Uncommon in Origins:

-1 Runed Servitor
+1 Disperse

Edit

-1 Runed Servitor
+1 Perilous Myr

That's pretty much the Thopter deck I theorycrafted myself. I may replace the Runed Servitors with Myrs and I may replace Willbreaker with Djinns, but the core of the deck is the same.

I don't like Ghirapur Gearcrafter all that much, because Thopter Engineer does the same job better. If it turns out that I don't need them both, I might replace the Gearcrafters with some counters to mass removal or Ghirapur Aether Grids.

Somehow misread Perilous Myr as only dealing damage to players.

Servitor and Myr have both they advantages and disadvantages, but 4 copies total seem appropriate.

Yeah I been running a similar list but with Perilous over runed servitor and -2 gearcrafter +2 Artificer's Epiphany -2 willbreaker +2 flying pump dude.. Gonna try tweaking him out for willbreaker

Dodge and Burn:

2 x Molten Vortex
1 x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2 x Displacement Wave
3 x Ravaging Blaze
4 x Twin Bolt
4 x Telling Time
1 x Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh
2 x Exquisite Firecraft
3 x Sphinx's Tutelage
4 x Bone to Ash
4 x Inspiration
4 x Countermand
2 x Embermaw Hellion

4 creatures / 32 non creature cards / 24 land cards
22 Red Sources / 36 blue sources
2-14-6-12-2 mana curve

4 x Izzet Guildgate
2 x Sulfur Falls

11 x Island
7 x Mountain

The reason I am attempting to make this deck is izzet creature light control was super fun for me last year with 2 x charmbreaker devils as the only creatures last year in the deck. This year the pool is less supportive of this venture but here goes.

The main 2 win cons are burn and mill. All the red cards enhance the burn condition where as every card for blue enhances mill. I doubt this deck would hold up against aggro, but with 8 removal options turn 3 including the enchant it might do decent. What I can't see it doing is holding off wave after wave of weenies. The deck would probably do well vs a slower deck due to its 8 x counterspells. I considered taking calculated dismissal but the other counter spells let me draw a card which combos with tutelage or they mill in themselves. In addition, games will last extremely long as burning and milling are very slow win cons. I am essentially relying on big hits to the face with [card]Ravaging Blaze[card] which I know requires a creature and spell mastery to pull off and [card]sphinx's tutelage[card] to mill them to death. The planeswalkers are there to enhance their respect win conditions as is the hellion. If you have any tips, suggestions, criticisms please let me know. I would love to see a control deck work this year and this is about as close to pure control as I could get.

Edit: a thought I had was getting rid of the hellions for 2 more land as the 4 mana slot is quite packed, let me know what you guys think.

I like Izzet Mill and I like Izzet Burn as win conditions. However, I don't think you should mix them. Faceburn and Mill require a lot of focus - it's a rather slow process as you mentioned and having your cards work towards two different win conditions makes it even longer and less likely to happen.

Btw: Not every blue card supports the mill theme. Telling Time doesn't actually draw

Binderato I think you are stretching that deck a bit too much in different directions. You have 5 total enchantments that do nothing the turn they are played, and molten vortex is at crosspurposes with ravaging blaze. If you discard lands to vortex you won't have enough mana to get off a good blaze. I don't think you want 3x blaze anyway... 4 mana to deal 2 damage is not very good. You should mostly be untapped so that you can use countermagic.

Chandra is bad here. Best case scenario she does damage to your opponent's face and a shock or two on enemy creatures. The problem is you gotta flip her, and she is a sitting duck on the board since your enemy will target her with removal.

The card you want is fiery impulse. It should be easy to turn on spellcraft with this deck and it is a lightning bolt vs a creature.

Then you should decide if you want to go mill or face burn. 3x ravaging blaze should be doing 90% of your face damage, 4 damage from exquisite firecraft is not going to do very much. Getting enough mana to cast 2 ravaging blazes for lethal damage is 12 land, which will mean you drew half of your deck... in other words a LOONG game. I think mill will generally be faster. Ravaging blaze and chandra are only justifiable if you are going for burn as a win condition.

Not sure about the land question, I ran the same 4 drops because we have no other options, 26 might be right. On the other hand, telling time should make it be pretty easy to hit land drops if we are mana starved. Needs testing.

I skipped creatures completely but if you want to toss 2 creatures in as finishers I would go for Alhammarett. 5/5 for 7 is not a great deal but his ability should offer enough protection to keep him alive in most games. I thought about tossing him into my deck but I wanted to focus on a game plan that was viable against aggro, without wipes it is harder to fit threats into your deck.

I agree that burn/mill probably don't work that well together but I ran out of burn cards or blue cards that enhance the draw engine. I can see myself placing in at least 2 fiery impulses in place of molten vortex. Chandra is probably the hardest planes walker to flip, but once flipped she puts the enemy player on a 10 turn clock by herself. As burn is a slow win con every little bit helps. I do see the problems with a creature light deck facing an opponent that still has all his removal cards up his sleeve simply becauste he hasn't had a target yet, once he sees her he can just take her out right away.

If I had to choose I would rather go faceburn over mill as burn cards can be used defensively vs creatures. The only problem we have is a lack of powerful burn. Last year we had resounding thunder and banefire. This year Ravaging Blaze is all we have and it is what I would call conditional burn. If I were to draw this vs a creatureless burn or mill deck it would be a dead draw. However with the game being focused heavily on creatures this time around I can see it paying off quite nicely vs a lot of different decks. For burn I was also thinking about perilous myr replacing sphinx's tutelage. This would add 3 more burn cards to my disposal further increasing my win con I could then replaces the vortexes with an additional myr and goblin arsonist.

The reason I was considering embermaw hellion was he makes every burn spell I use hit for an additional 1 damage. The thought behind it was he was a "Very" poor man's fire servant. As far as finishers I can see the value in Alhammerret, High Arbiter A 5/5 flier is deadly in this format especially with the ability to protect itself. Getting to 7 mana shouldn't be a problem as this deck shouldn't really win before 10ish mana anyways.

Thanks for the suggestions. I respect your input a great deal henwen as I have played vs your control decks in 2015 and it was a chore and a half just to keep up. Let me know if you guys have any other suggestions or if you think dropping early game creatures like the myr and arsonist might be better for the burn to the face thing.

Edit: what do you guys think about grixis being a better control based deck using cards like languish over [/card]displacement wave[/card] and reave soul over fiery impulse then using kothophed as a finisher. Perhaps even trading a counter spell or two for some rez cards to use on my opponents gy. The rez cards might be stretching things a bit but I can sort of see a grixis control shell with a burn focus being a thing.

Thanks Binderato - but I seem to remember those games a little differently. You would usually play your Temur deck, ramp up, and cast a big banefire to my face while I sat on a handful of counterspells. Banefire gave me conniptions in 2015 - there really was no way to defend against it except suffer the past, which was very unreliable.

I posted my own decklist above. The countermagic options at our disposal in this game are pretty limited. I was just trying to figure out the best creatureless control deck I could make. I have no idea whether it is workable. I may include some myrs if I need more against aggro.

It looks like Gaea's Revenge is the new banefire of this meta. The deck I posted has no solution, you would do better by having your embermaw hellions as a potential blocker. White and black would add some good removal options but I am wary of adding a 3rd color before being able to play the manabase.

Gaea's Revenge is very good against controlish blue decks without board presence. It's only half as scary if you're trying to play the mill race with a few chump blockers. At least they need ways to make it trample then.