The Izzet, the red/blue guild of the Ravnican plane, deals in wizardry, replication, and Weirds. This guild is fascinated by creation, but once succeeding, looses interest in what it has just accomplished. Led by the dragon wizard Niv-Mizzet, the Izzet League is a potent guild to take advantage of, and when played correctly, can spell doom for your opponents.

New to the Ravnica block, the Izzet were one of the three guilds released in Guildpact, and in my opinion, the best one. As I did with the Orzhov, this guild is fairly new so I will give a back story about them just to clarify some stuff with all the readers.

First, there’s Niv-Mizzet, the brilliant but ill-tempered dragon wizard. He loves to create, and names everything after himself; his hall Nivix, his artifact creation Mizzium, and the guild itself. Niv-Mizzet sketched the entire Guildpact writing on a raindrop, and then moved onto writing it on the shell of an insect. If you look at his flavor text, then turn your head 90° to the left, the text reads Niv-Miz(zet?) = 1. Of course, this references his abilities in which you turn the card 90° and draw a card while dealing damage.

The brilliant dragon wizard in all his glory.

Of course, this guild has many other wizards, faeries, and goblins to do the bidding of its master. The guild specializes in Replicate, a mechanic that enables duplication of spells. The Izzet use this to swarm creativity and ideas, while making their creations able to spawn repetitively. So we’re going to look into the colors of the Izzet and examine this mechanic. Let’s dive.

Blue is the color of the Izzet that deal in permanent replacement, card drawing, and creature playing. Replicate can be used very efficiently in the mid-game, because playing blue/red, and using some Kamigawa cards such as Desperate Ritual, enable you to accelerate mana and use these cards much more potently. The replicate cost is the same as the cost as the spell.

There are some pretty nice cards there, and I especially like Gigadrowse. It’s cheap, and gets rid of some of the bigger creatures your opponent is plotting to use against you. At any situation in the game, this card can help, and it helps big.

Train of Thought is alright for what it does, and the replicate cost just enables you to use it more potently. Normally, I would choose Serum Visions over this card because it’s a “U: draw a card.” Still, replicate probably makes it easier to draw more than the Visions does.

Mimeofacture! Oh man, I love this card. I don’t know why, but I do. The only downside is that you have to either know or hope that an opponent has copies of the selected card in his library. It’s not the best choice to draft this card unless you know how many of each card a person is playing, but I still love and recommend it.

Red is the color that deals in creature/artifact devastation and land animation, it’s a very “ation” color in this situation (heh…). There are only three cards with replicate that are red, but they are all pretty damned decent.

Of the three, Pyromatics may be the last one to pick, but it’s still alright. It’s a simple spell, one damage to a target, and can be vastly overused. How much simpler does it need to be?

When I first saw Shattering Spree, my jaw dropped (no kidding!) and I was in awe. It’s a Shatter, but cheaper, and you can do a whole lot of destruction in one turn with this baby right here. The artwork is mad colorful, the effect is mad great, I’m sure even the flavor text would be extraordinary if it had any. This is the card to choose IMO.

The last red card of the three, Siege Of Towers animates land. Until end of turn you say? I think not! Permanently, my dear friend! Just pretend you have a bunch of Genju of the Spires on your mountains (with -3/-0 mind you) in one turn. It’s not too bad when you play it correctly. The Sorcery part is the only downside to it (Instant would be chaotic.”)

Oh no! WotC only made one replicate card that is multicolor, but it’s still wicked good. I’ll probably throw in the other legend to talk about and something else. Let’s see…

A quick explanation on Leap Of Flame: it’s good. Not great, not terrible, just good. It costs one of each guild color and gives a creature a huge boost. That’s always nice now isn’t it? It gives them wings and a powerful halberd to take down their foes with.

Tibor and Lumia is the other guild legend for the Izzet and it works, and it works well. With the previous card, you can give two creatures flying each time you replicate Leap of Flame and further weaken the ground-stricken creatures.

The reason I threw Goblin Flectomancer in there is because HE ROCKS. It’s a Fork in creature form. Is your opponent looking you down with a Searing Wind, only to have you laugh in their face and throw it back at them? Oh yeah, and he only costs three mana. Broken you say? I wouldn’t go so far, but great, yes, great.

Oh yes! Hybrid! The color(?) that needs no explanation, let’s just get to it then eh?

I suppose that Djinn Illuminatus can be counted as a replicate-oriented spell, but he grants it whereas other spells already have it. I probably wouldn’t choose this card to play though, ever. It costs way too much for a 3/5 flier and by the time you can play it, I’m sure that there would be much better choices to play when dealing with the Izzet. Final opinion: play only if desperate.

Here’s the meat of the guild, the guildmage itself. I’m sure that most of you have heard of the Izzet Guildmage-Desperate Ritual-Lava Spike combo and if not, I’m sure Streetz is going to post it down below in the Combos section. In short, this card helps, a lot.

I don’t think Petrahydrox deserves an explanation because it kind of sucks. I don’t know why you would want to spend four mana, only to have your opponent Pyromatics it and it goes back to your hand. Please don’t play it (though it is a Weird!)

Hoo-ra for lands, they’re pretty helpful you know? You need them to play spells, and you need them to assist spells. Who can resist?

Of course, the dual land is excellent, but you don’t need me to tell you that. It’s easy for dual-colored decks because of the two color mana production. Again, you are probably smart and can figure that out eh?

Nivix…well…simply, Nivix is…it’s not great. If it had been how it originally been speculated as “,: Remove the top card of your library from the game. You may play that card if it is an instant or sorcery without paying its mana cost.” It would’ve been phenomenal. But alas, it is not, and it is not great.

Here are some quick combos I retrieved from the Guildpact Combo Page (Streetz):

Curiosity - Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
This is simple.  Enchant Niv-Mizzet with Curiosity. 

Now, tap Niv-Mizzet to draw a card.   Niv-Mizzet deals 1 damage to target creature or player (preferably an opponent). Curiosity activates again, drawing you a card and thus dealing another point of damage - dealing up to infinite damage to an opponent.  Well, infinite in terms of as many cards are in your library infinite. 
 

Desperate Ritual - Lava Spike - Izzet Guildmage
I can't believe WotC printed an infinite combo as easy as this in Standard. How does it work? Simple. Play Lava Spike. Splice Desperate Ritual onto it for 1R (adding 3 mana to your mana pool). Now, activate Izzet Guildmage's ability with the three mana that Desperate Ritual produced to copy Lava Spike with Desperate Ritual Spiced onto it. Keep using the 3 mana from Desperate Ritual to use the Guildmage... and you've done infinite damage to your opponent's head. Good deal. There are already many decks in the works to exploit this threesome of cards.

Shattering Spree - Mycosynth Lattice
This is easy.  Cast the Lattice (or Show and tell it into play) and then go crazy with the Spree... destroying as many of your opponent's permanents as you can afford.  The Spree is quite a powerful spell if you consider all of the Moxen running around in Legacy.  I think it would have been much better as an instant... I guess it's a good thing it isn't.

Now... back to Ghurhgs article... ~Streetz~

I hope that reading this article will make you ponder on how awesome the Izzet League is. The mechanic is really good when used properly and there are a ton of other, non-guild related cards to fool around with while testing this guild.

You may already have a deck around the Izzet and that’s fine, I do too. Of course, there are other ways to win with the Izzet but everyone just loves that guildmage combo. Oh well, what are you going to do about it? We just have to wait until the “Peanut Butter Jelly” block to come out for it to cycle out of T2.

Until next time,

~Ghurhgs~

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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