This weekend, the Pioneer format saw a multitude of unique strategies arise and put up excellent results. While many people are likely focused on the cool combo deck that started with nine wins and zero losses at the Athens Regional Championship, Izzet Drakes, an Arclight Phoenix-style deck that instead utilizes Crackling Drake, put up a dominant performance in Friday’s Magic Online Super Qualifier. With two players making top eight with nearly identical decklists, this deck deserves a shout-out.
Primary Gameplan
The core of the deck is very reminiscent of Izzet Phoenix decks in Pioneer. It plays lots of cheap spells ranging from cantrips like
Consider
Consider
Surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.)
Draw a card.
to efficient removal spells such as
Fiery Impulse
Fiery Impulse
Fiery Impulse deals 2 damage to target creature.
Spell mastery — If there are two or more instant and/or sorcery cards in your graveyard, Fiery Impulse deals 3 damage instead.
to advance its gameplan. By filling the graveyard with all these cheap spells, the deck also gets to make use of one of the most powerful cards legal in the format: Treasure Cruise. Treasure Cruise is an amazing card, hence it remaining banned in Modern and Legacy. However, without Fetchlands in Pioneer, it takes a bit more work to abuse this elite card-drawing spell. Izzet Phoenix also got to make use of this card, so what differs between these two decks?
The main difference is the win condition. Izzet Phoenix is focused on landing copies of
Arclight Phoenix
Arclight Phoenix
Flying, haste
At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you've cast three or more instant and sorcery spells this turn, return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
into the graveyard, then using cheap spells to trigger their return to the battlefield. Izzet Drakes, however, plays zero copies of Phoenix. Instead, its only Creatures are
Ledger Shredder
Ledger Shredder
Flying
Whenever a player casts their second spell each turn, this creature connives. (Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discarded a nonland card, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.)
and
Crackling Drake
Crackling Drake
Flying
Crackling Drake's power is equal to the total number of instant and sorcery cards you own in exile and in your graveyard.
When this creature enters, draw a card.
, both of which pair nicely with cheap spells. Ledger Shredder is a great card on its own, but also helps fuel Treasure Cruise and Crackling Drake with its Connive ability. Crackling Drake provides the deck with a massive threat to close games with. For only four mana, Crackling Drake is often capable of killing the opponent in one shot, and even draws a card when it enters the battlefield. It’s common to see Phoenix decks with some copies of this card in their sideboard, but this deck takes full advantage of their power by playing four copies in the maindeck!
Need for Speed
Eschewing the Arclight Phoenix plan may seem strange, but there are a lot of benefits to fully committing to the Crackling Drake gameplan. First, Arclight Phoenix, while resilient as a recurring threat, is a relatively slow clock at only three power. Crackling Drake provides a much faster clock, which is extremely important given the rise in combo decks and fast linear strategies in Pioneer. Izzet Phoenix has historically struggled with fast combo decks like Lotus Field combo where the deck’s plethora of removal spells have few targets, and its clock is fairly slow. Crackling Drake not only kills quicker, but it isn’t reliant on cards like
Lightning Axe
Lightning Axe
As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card or pay {5}.
Lightning Axe deals 5 damage to target creature.
and other discard outlets to enable its gameplan.
This brings us to the second benefit the deck has over Izzet Phoenix. Izzet Phoenix was forced to run a lot of clunky cards like
Pieces of the Puzzle
Pieces of the Puzzle
Reveal the top five cards of your library. Put up to two instant and/or sorcery cards from among them into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.
and
Chart a Course
Chart a Course
Draw two cards. Then discard a card unless you attacked this turn.
to guarantee that copies of Arclight Phoenix would end up in the graveyard and not get stranded in hand. Pieces was also necessary in providing access to three spells consistently to bring the Phoenixes back from the graveyard. This left minimal room for flex slots, which Izzet Drakes makes full use of. Instead of running Pieces, Izzet Drakes gets to play a playset of
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter.)
I — Create a 2/2 red Goblin Shaman creature token with "Whenever this token attacks, create a Treasure token."
II — You may discard up to two cards. If you do, draw that many cards.
III — Exile this Saga, then return it to the battlefield transformed under your control.
, which is great on its own and as a discard outlet to fuel Treasure Cruise. The deck also gets to play a full four copies of
Spell Pierce
Spell Pierce
Counter target noncreature spell unless its controller pays {2}.
to both help push through Crackling Drake as well as protect against opposing combos from the opponent.
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Graveyard Hate is Less Effective
The third benefit this deck has, and perhaps the most important, is that it is less vulnerable to graveyard hate. While cards like Rest in Peace still help versus Treasure Cruise, they are inneffective against Crackling Drake itself, because it counts cards in exile. With the popularity of graveyard-centric combo decks like Abzan Greasefang, being able to dodge everyone’s splash hate is super important, which was a major weakness with Izzet Phoenix in the current metagame.
This decklist strikes a good balance between removal, cantrips, efficient Creatures, and ways to pull ahead. Another nice bonus this deck has is that, by playing four copies of Ledger Shredder, it is easy to pitch excess copies of potentially dead cards like Spell Pierce or Fiery Impulse, depending on the matchup. This deck’s gameplan is efficient and cohesive. It makes sense why it had a great weekend.
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Issues with Resiliency
If this deck has any clear weakness, it is the lack of resiliency that a deck like Izzet Phoenix has more of. This deck does not play a ton of threats. While it isn’t as vulnerable to the rise of graveyard hate in Pioneer, players are well-prepared for decks like Greasefang with an abundance of Rending Volleys across lots of people’s sideboards. This deck definitely gets hurt by cards like that, especially because Rending Volley can’t be countered by Spell Pierce. Cards like
Mystical Dispute
Mystical Dispute
This spell costs {2} less to cast if it targets a blue spell.
Counter target spell unless its controller pays {3}.
are also quite effective against Crackling Drake. Without access to recursive threats, playing efficient ways to deal with this deck’s win conditions and draw spells like Treasure Cruise can be an effective gameplan.
That being said, Izzet Drakes has the tools to adapt. It wouldn’t surprise me if Izzet Drakes players started adding some additional threats like Young Pyromancer to the sideboard to try to have a better shot fighting through removal. Players over the weekend were already playing copies of Mazemind Tome in the sideboard as additional ways to out-grind their opponents. Expect to see more of this deck in the coming weeks and be ready for Izzet Drakes players to come prepared!
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