Life Update and More Izzet Blitz

For those of you wondering whether or not I have fallen off the face of the earth, I have in fact finally relocated to Indiana to start my new position. Unfortunately, we are living out of boxes in a house almost two hours from my new job while we wait for our old house to close and for the chance to move into our new one. While I do have Internet access, my free time is very limited, and it's made it increasingly difficult to do anything other than what is absolutely necessary. Fortunately, this is a short term situation, and things should be getting better soon. I might even play MPDC this Monday, assuming my work laptop gets out of customs...

But enough about that. As I promised last time, here is a full decklist for Izzet Blitz, a Standard Pauper deck based upon one assembled by Travis Woo of Channel Fireball fame.

Izzet Blitz

A Standard Pauper deck by gwyned

Creatures 4 Delver of Secrets 3 Frostburn Weird 3 Goblin Electromancer 4 Nivix Cyclops 14 cards Other Spells 4 Artful Dodge 4 Faithless Looting 4 Negate 4 Pillar of Flame 4 Think Twice 4 Searing Spear 2 Dispel 26 cards

Lands 6 Island 2 Evolving Wilds 4 Haunted Fengraf 4 Izzet Guildgate 4 Mountain 20 cards Sideboard 4 Essence Scatter 3 Curse of the Pierced Heart 3 Electrickery 3 Mizzium Skin 2 Thunderbolt 15 cards

Here's how I tweaked the deck since last time:

1. I went ahead and increased the total number of creatures from 12 to 14. I really wanted access to both Frostburn Weird and Goblin Electromancer (which I neglected last post entirely!), but decided to only include 3 copies of each to maximize the space for spells.
2. I cut Thought Scour entirely from the list, essentially replacing it with four copies of Think Twice. Without a Snapcaster Mage, the deck has very little way of gaining advantage off getting cards into the Graveyard. Think Twice should prove to be vastly superior, especially with Flashback.
3. I ended up including 6 permission spells (which still might be too few) in order to protect the relatively small number of creatures. Removal is far more dominant in Standard Pauper than in Standard, and having the means to sidestep removal is going to be key to this deck's success.
4. I decided to try out the full playset of Haunted Fengraf. Returning creatures from the Graveyard will be pretty important, and should outweigh the disadvantages of having four colorless sources in a deck with only 20 lands.
5. For the Sideboard, I wanted to give the deck the ability to shift into a more controlling build as well as the ability to better protect its own creatures. Thunderbolt helps against the myriad of Flyers in the metagame, while Electrickery can be quite potent against other more aggressive strategies.

So that's the list. And unless something dramatic happens, this is the list I will be running this coming Monday for MPDC. Hope to see many of you there. Thanks for reading!