We are a couple weeks into the new Standard environment with Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, and we’ve seen some very fun and powerful decks come up in the format. While things are still developing, there’s one deck that has come up and is so strong, it feels like the old Wilderness Reclamation decks.
Izzet Turns
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This deck is Izzet Turns. This deck’s aim is to take all the turns, akin to the old Wilderness Reclamation decks, featuring Nexus of Fate. How to we accomplish this? The deck plays a hard control deck, utilizing a bunch of counter magic and removal to maintain control of the game. Let’s take a look at some of the key spells for this deck.
Counter Magic
The deck sports a variety of counter spells to help keep the game clean of any threatening spells. Divide by Zero makes an appearance here as a way to deal with uncounterable threats like Toski, Bearer of Secrets, and can dig up a couple great Lessons in Mascot Exhibition and Environmental Sciences.
Removal Spells
Our removal suite comes in the form of Cathartic Pyre, which does 3 damage but can also help us rummage through our deck for more spells, Cinderclasm to deal with wider boards, and Battle of Frost and Fire as a more midrange boardwipe. Battle can also help set up our draws for future turns.
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Draw Spells
Our two main draw engines are
Expressive Iteration
Expressive Iteration
Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand, put one of them on the bottom of your library, and exile one of them. You may play the exiled card this turn.
and
Memory Deluge
Memory Deluge
Look at the top X cards of your library, where X is the amount of mana spent to cast this spell. Put two of them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Flashback {5}{U}{U} (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)
. These two powerful spells dig incredibly deep into our deck to find answers to specific situations. Having access to Memory Deluge not only once, but twice, makes the deck feel like it never runs out of gas.
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How Do We Win?
Wizards of the Coast
Our primary win conditions are Hall of Storm Giants and a combination of Galvanic Iteration and
Alrund’s Epiphany
Alrund’s Epiphany
Create two 1/1 blue Bird creature tokens with flying. Take an extra turn after this one. Exile Alrund's Epiphany.
Foretell {4}{U}{U} (During your turn, you may pay {2} and exile this card from your hand face down. Cast it on a later turn for its foretell cost.)
. Galvanic Iteration and Epiphany nets us 2 turns and 4 tokens. On our first extra turn, we get to attack with the birds, as well as Hall of the Storm Giants if we can win the game on our 2nd. If not, we can dig to find another Epiphany to get 2 more turns, and close out the game.
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This deck feels incredible to play. While the game plan seems straight forward, there’s a lot of ways to get there and decisions to be made. Playing against this deck almost feels impossible if you’re not prepared to deal with it. Non-blue decks have gone as far as dedicating a sideboard slot or two to tech Test of Talents. Sounds crazy right? Well, many have tested “fair” strategies against this deck and all have failed, so drastic measures had to be taken.
Give this one a try and let us know what you think in the comments!