In another attempt to find a good home for Drake Haven, I decided a slightly more aggressive route could be a thing:

I love the idea, will try this as soon as I get home from work!

Bloodrage Brawler is a good fit for this deck. Faster than Enigma Drake and can eat an opponents' precious kill spell. Fling or two wont hurt either. Or a Heart-Piercer Manticore it cant add to the Drake power output but you can discard and recycle later as a Fling enabling, uncounterable, six costed creature.

What I don't like about the brawler is the lack of evasion and 3 toughness. You could say the Cryptic Serpents and the Bedlam Reveler have the same issue, but a 6/5 dies to way less removal than a 4/3, and attacks profitably into many boards. With Haven the brawler is kinda cool because he makes 4/3 + 2/2 flying for 3 mana, but otherwise I'm not sure wether I really like him in this deck.

The manticore doesn't help with spell count for the snakes, and if you untap with a creature in play, having a sorcery speed 6 mana fling effect whilst they can just remove the creature in response doesn't feel that hot. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE manticore in the gruul deck, just not here.

It all depends on the balance of creatures/spells you want in this deck; it's a fine line to walk. The serpents and enigma drakes want alot of spells, and each creature has to be really worth it to dilute the spell count. We have 10 dudes and the drake havens, which is a bit on the light side, but much more and the spell count will be too low for the top-end and enigma drakes to be good.

Going to 11 creatures or 12 feels like not a horrible idea, but where are the cuts ? Alternatively, I could see running 2 fling to just toss lategame drakes at people.

Once could conceivably go to 23 lands, but 24 curves more consistently in the t4 6/5.

I see your point. But you can drop Harnessed lightning for a counter spell since you only have a couple of creatures. At least that way you have something to protect them with. Reduce // Rubble might work and can stall the board for you early game.

Best home for Fateful Showdown I have seen!

Giving this a whirl now. I'll let you know how it goes.

That's cool, make sure to keep me posted. I just had time earlier to test the deck vs AI, but i'll give it a whirl myself tonight.

To say the least, I'm pretty frustrated with this new set in Duels. I've tried almost every deck on this constructed page and can't find a consistent build (I'm new....terrible at building...so its all your guys' fault!!!).

No, seriously though, this Izzet deck is good at times. I won a bunch with it and lost a bunch. The main problem is that the Drake can die to almost anything. Grasp, Push, Murder, ect all hit it.


Just can't seem to find consistency in any deck right now. Even the Exzert and Rakdos Aggro decks, two of the better ones imo, have trouble at times. Maybe this is a good thing?

Don't worry you aren't alone, I've been losing with the deck as well.... it feels like the games i'm losing that the card i'm looking for is just one deeper. I've pulled incredible wins with it and embarrassing losses. I've had modulo take a look at it and we tried some tweaks, but it's not there yet, the deck is sweet, but like other izzet lists, not GREAT.

This is a brew though, I put this post here to allow people to help tweak it, and I think there is lots of room to work with here; there are many quite consistent and powerful decks in Duels, unfortunately they are buried under a load of **** from people with no clue how to make a deck.

Goddammit I really wanted this deck to be great but I went 0-3 so had to delete it, third loss was to some crappy starter box deck that was taken over by AI on T1

I really hate how Drake Haven needs one mana per trigger so you need like 7+ lands to get good value from Fateful Showdown

So Modulo suggested to ditch the adepts for +1 harnessed lightning and 2 fling.

In theory I liked this switch since fling acts as a burn spell when your big dudes are met with removal, and the deck runs no counters, so extra spot removal is a good idea. I commend him on this since I think many people would've said to cut the lightnings, which I also think the deck isn't fast enough for.

In practice, it didn't work out. Fling was often crap in hand and I felt reluctant to discard it because of losing the board and hoping to dig for a combo finish with a drake, which only happened once.

I remember running Izzet burn in previous seasons on 22 lands. I was getting flooded very heavily often with this list, but I kept the 24 land as a base because of it semi reliably bringing the Serpent on the table t4. One could try to remove some land for some cycling instants such as censor or hieroglyphic illumination, and supplement this plan by cutting the Fevered Visions (another permanent) for more copies of such cards.
The con to cutting land is that the deck is quite color hungry, and whilst the previous iterations in AR and Kaladesh were close to monored, this one is trying to cast a 4 drop. That's quite the tension.

Anyway, just some ideas....

Updated list for those interested:





Deck's sweet if you draw haven early, kinda meh if you don't, but I think this is the tightest I can get it.

Radically minimized lands to solve the flooding, and switching to a plethora of 1 mana plays, and even playing some telling time to try and see the third land on time. Radically minimized the permanents to make the 8 main threats better.

I think I'd want to abuse the fact that removing multiple high cost, high toughness threats could be hard for my opponent with such a deck, maybe the land could be a rogue passage?

deck's mana is already stretched to absolute maximum; it's a rogue's passage or a geier reach sanitarium. 22 land is likely too high, but go nuts.

can be a better deck without drake heaven.

Yes, but not THAT much better, and this is the best home for Drake Haven. 'Can't let a sweet card like that gather dust

I got the deck to run a slightly positive % on steam ladder, which is fine by me, this one was not for the spikes

I want Drake Haven to work.
But I'm the worst at knowing when a relationship has gone sour.

Your original build was a fickle creature.... when it wins, they are almost always blow outs... but when you lose, it's like, "c'mon, man!"
I like what you've done with your revised/final build, will give it a try tonight.

4-0 so far.. R28

Wins-- grixis ctrl, monoblack zombs, izzet ctrl (similar)
Loss-- Mardu Vehicles

The loss was bad. Like. Ouch.