u/schmuo

Hey everyone,

i play mtg since december last year. this is my first try to build a deck or upgrade a precon without any other resources. i wrote a primer that i will also copy in this thread, so you can answer on reddit. Link to Archidekt

So if you take your time to read and respond to this, thank you a lot. I really appreciate it. passages in italic are somehow my own commentary to my own primer. Sounds stupid, but that are the doubts and thoughts i get while writing the primer.

If you take your time to read everything, look through the whole deck and comment sth, thanks a lot. When not, you could still help me with following questions:
-How to protect my commander in izzet without loosing my game plan? Should I protect it?
-Any more shenanigans with treasure tokens?
-How boring do you think is this deck?

Main Theme
This deck will create value trough the commander. Pretty straight forward, cast one big spell and get a x/x Token with flying and haste.

To maximize this value i picked some "cheaper-than-mv" spells. I added a category to filter cards "cheaper-than-mv", so you can see which cards i count into this category. But not only the mana value limits my game plan, also Roothas trigger, that only normally happens once per turn. So to cheat at this front I added battle doubler and turn doubler. They are in the category finisher, because most of the time, they finish at least one player.

Subtheme
Treasures
It's my first izzet deck, so i have no experience with ramp in that colors. But I really like the idea of treasures token as ramp, but I need to explore more about treasures. At the moment I have various way to produce treasure tokens. I love [[hell to pay]]. It gives you a big body, a small removal and mana for the next round or a big removal and no mana. Value Synergies with treasure are [[Goldspan Dragon]] and [[galazith prismari]]. For combat tricks [[mirrorform]] and [[Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer]] Anybody ideas for some more shenanigans with treasure tokens?

Balancing act Rootha only cares about one spell per turn. So you also need some mana value through creatures, so you don't only have sorceries or instants in your hand. Because without the value from Rootha your spells are just mediocre high cmc spells. For now I think this deck is balanced in this hinsight.

The good Good start options:
T1: Land
T2: Land+Manarock
T3: Land+Rootha+Fury of the horde = 21 Damage with flying
Or Rootha + any cost-free spells.

More important, what happens when we don't have Cost-free or really cheaper than mv spells the turn we play Rootha.

The Bad I don't have really a solution, we have [[lightning greaves]] and [[vanishing]] as protection against removal. So we could of course insert more protection, active and passive. But both don't move our gameplan forward. So at the moment this deck is a removal check. Either they have it or we come ahead. Playing Rootha on t6 or later, and you leave open mana for a counter spell could be a way, but since we have no mana sinks or atleast cheap instants to get the mana value used in an opponents turn, I like the idea to brutforce the commander into the game.
generally speaking, I don't like card categories with less than 5 cards. At least in theory crafting it doesn't feel consistent enough to include them, so some games i have no protection and still get along. So why even include it? Remember I am newbie trying to understand deck building.

The ugly Honorably mentioned is the play, after your commander got removed and everybody has established a good board. You can play [[blasphemous act]] for 1 red pip (most of the time) and afterwards cast Rootha. You cleared the board and you have Rootha and a 9/9 body with haste. Rootha don't have to be on the field when you cast the spell to get the body.

Final What i like about the deck is, that you can play big, fancy spells, that otherwise would see no play. And it's a good "last deck of the night". It's straightforward, short turns and can have around 50 attack points on the board with flying and haste at turn 6.
-easy, straightforward gameplan
-big, fancy spells
-short turns (at least not a trigger gangbang)
-short games if nobody responds with a removal

Now to the bad side. With the easy game plan, at least I assume, the deck will became boring after some games. I think it's strong and there is not much to play around. Draw, one big spell, attack face. If that doesn't work, there is no plan b. That leads us to the next con. Big spells can and should be countered by you opponents. And since you only want to play one big spell, If that is countered, you lost a lot value. At least you still get the elemental token. Well, at this point i am on the edge, if and how many counterspells as defense I should include in the deck. Perhaps any other defenses. Because the cheap counterspells will take deck slots, hand slots and more important, mana slots. It reduces the mv of my spells by one or two cmc. What speaks against this, I will never have enough counterspells and mana to defend my spells against the whole deck, as soon as I am the archenemy.
-glass canon (at least at the actual state of the deck)
-boring gameplan