Standard Izzet Control Competitive Deck Guide – Small Creatures Beware

bathroomscleaning
22/05/2022
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Hello everyone! I’m back with another competitive deck guide and this time I’m doing Izzet Control! Despite my love for proactive strategies, I constantly gravitate back to Izzet as I just find the deck to be super powerful! With a bevy of great interaction, awesome top end, and an excellent sideboard, you always feel that you have agency which is extremely nice for me in particular.

Bo1 Izzet Controlby DoggertQBones StandardControlbest of 14 mythic 22 rare 18 uncommon 16 common0 1 2 3 4 5 6+3Smoldering Egg$8.974Goldspan Dragon$179.962Hullbreaker Horror$29.984Spikefield Hazard$2.362Fading Hope$2.582Cinderclasm$0.504Jwari Disruption$3.164Dragon’s Fire$1.001Saw It Coming$0.991Prismari Command$8.992Behold the Multiverse$0.503Unexpected Windfall$2.373Expressive Iteration$20.971Crush the Weak$0.252Burn Down the House$1.581The Celestus$2.991Battle of Frost and Fire$0.253Island$0.754Mountain$1.001Field of Ruin$1.294Riverglide Pathway$23.962Hall of Storm Giants$13.984Stormcarved Coast$37.961Otawara, Soaring City$13.991Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance$3.49Izzet Controlby DoggertQBones StandardControlbest of 34 mythic 19 rare 18 uncommon 19 common0 1 2 3 4 5 6+4Goldspan Dragon$171.962Hullbreaker Horror$29.984Spikefield Hazard$1.962Fading Hope$2.581Disdainful Stroke$0.591Negate$1.291Abrade$0.692Cinderclasm$0.504Jwari Disruption$2.764Dragon’s Fire$1.001Saw It Coming$0.991Prismari Command$9.492Behold the Multiverse$0.503Unexpected Windfall$2.071Memory Deluge$8.993Expressive Iteration$19.471Crush the Weak$0.251Burn Down the House$0.791The Celestus$2.991Battle of Frost and Fire$0.253Island$0.754Mountain$1.001Field of Ruin$0.994Riverglide Pathway$21.962Hall of Storm Giants$12.984Stormcarved Coast$35.961Otawara, Soaring City$12.991Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance$3.493Smoldering Egg$8.972Malevolent Hermit$12.981Fading Hope$1.292Disdainful Stroke$1.181Negate$1.292Cinderclasm$0.502Burning Hands$0.501Test of Talents$0.591Prismari Command$9.49

Although piloting the deck itself can be quite difficult, the game plan is inherently simple: control the board, land a threat, ride it to victory. To accomplish that, we have a staggering 24 pieces of interaction and 9 more pieces of card draw. This may seem inherently overkill, but this strategy only works because of the strength of our threats. Both Goldspan Dragon and Hullbreaker Horror will win the game by themselves most of the time if you get to untap with them. With that type of card quality, dedicating the rest of your deck to interacting and finding these threats is a reasonable measure.

On top of that, considering small creature decks are surging again in popularity, this deck gets to play multiple cheap wraths main (Cinderclasm and Crush the Weak) as well as slightly bigger wraths as well (Burn Down the House and Battle of Frost and Fire) to further aide in those matchups making this a relatively well positioned option as well.

The main issues with Izzet have been the same since the deck’s inception: playing it well and having the right list. For the first issue, beyond our threats, Izzet has very few bail out mechanisms. If you use interaction on the wrong threat and now you can’t answer a different one, it’s going to be tough to win. This may feel brutal for those who are just learning the deck, but that’s the reality of playing Control without (many) hard reset buttons. Second, since we don’t have flexible answers that Black and White are afforded to, having the proper deck construction is probably more important here than anywhere else. Forget using the wrong removal on the wrong threat, you need to have the right piece of removal first!

These points may seem like I’m talking down Izzet, but I’m absolutely not. What I love about Izzet is that the interaction is much cheaper and the threats substantially better than it’s White or Black counterparts which is very appealing to those who are strong enough pilots for this deck. All in all, if you want to feel like you have the maximum amount of agency when playing, this is the deck for you.

MATCHUPS AND SIDEBOARDING

Unfortunately this is the one matchup we would really like to have the ubiquitous removal more than any others. Since most of their creatures scale, it’s not unreasonable that they scale past your removal and then you have to find a way to kill them before they kill you. We do have a decent amount of cheap interaction to help prevent this, but it’s far from a surefire thing. This boarding helps as much as we reasonably can, but if you want to make your Runes matchup even better, adding more Abrade to the sideboard would be a good way to accomplish that. Try to kill every creature you see on sight so they can’t out scale you.

For Mono White (and it’s aggregates) it’s a very simple plan: keep good threats off their board, hit land drops, play good threat. Cinderclasm and Smoldering Egg are your MVPs and can easily win these matchups if you get to play them at good times. Keep hands with a good amount of interaction and this should be an easier matchup barring they have a disgusting start.

There’s a lot of flavors of Orzhov now so you want to adjust your boarding as needed, but in general, you want to be less reliant on spot removal and more so on wraths to help clean up their small creatures then ideally ride over the top with one of your threats. If they are the removal heavy version, this will be harder to accomplish as they can answer your threats for 2 mana, but you’ll just have to be more patient with your timing to compensate.

Selesnya is probably one of our best matchups and we have a huge amount of stuff to board in as well! They can only start beating you with their more expensive threats so as long as you can manage the expensive cards you can easily take this matchup. The one thing to be wary of is attacking a Goldspan Dragon into open mana as they do play 4 The Wandering Emperor, but beyond that, your interaction should be enough to deal with their threat base.

Not only is Anvil becoming more popular as the list is becoming more refined, I would argue it’s another great matchup for Izzet. The small board wipes are exemplary against their deck as they only play small creatures so it just comes down to how fast they can drain you with Oni-Cult Anvil. Thankfully we also have a decent amount of artifact interaction to help keep it off the board so they’re going to have quite the hard time beating this when we can cover a lot of their angles.

The boarding here is easy as we take out our bad interaction and put in good interaction/threats, but playing out this matchup is anything but easy. Like any classic Control mirrors, hitting your land drops is the most important thing. You generally don’t want to be the one to “blink” first, but with Smoldering Egg and Malevolent Hermit, we can pretty safely play them on 2 and hope the opponent can’t answer them immediately. Once both players hit 4+ mana, the staring contest is going to begin. Try to make them tap out for something then absolutely punish them for their impatience if that’s an option afforded to you.