Izzet Still the Best Archetype in Standard?
Welcome, Magic lovers!
With the sudden, unexpected banning last week of not one, not two, or even three, but seven cards from Standard, the community is witnessing the largest number of cards artificially removed from the format since Disciple of the Vault and friends were forcibly ejected exactly twenty years ago. Normally, this would throw a format into total flux; however, that's not the case this time around. This is mostly due to the fact that there was no 'tier 0' deck plaguing the format. None of the tier 1 decks' overall win rates during the Regional Championship Qualifier season, which just culminated in Pro Tour Final Fantasy last month, surpassed 55%, the typical high-water mark for a dangerously oppressive deck. This has created a bizarre and untamed landscape where many players are happily testing wild, new decks, while others have returned to the finely-tuned, established archetypes that already possess a long and storied Standard format resume. Yuna, Hope of Spira reanimator lists clash with the tried-and-true Dimir Midrange decks that haven't added a single new card in months. Considering rotation is coming in a few short weeks, and with the majority of the competitive crowd currently engaged in the Modern format, testing and tuning those decks for the various RCQ's and eventual Regional Championships that they'll have to play, not much attention is being paid to Standard, and for good reason.
However, there are some interesting developments occurring on Magic Online, where the weekly MTGO Challenges have been producing some spicy lists. One such deck is a sleek, twenty-one-land Izzet spells deck that recently took down a sixty-player event:
