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Izzet Midrange on a Budget

Modern Budget Midrange Surveil UR (Izzet)

derposaurus

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Instant (20)

Creature (14)

Land (20)

Sorcery (6)

Sideboard

Instant (7)

Creature (4)

Sorcery (4)

Maybeboard

Creature (4)

Enchantment (1)

1/26/26: Update of a very old deck, Izzet midrange tempo that focuses on stuffing instants and sorceries into the graveyard by milling them and casting them to buff big fliers and large prowess monsters.

How it Works: There's some tempo involved and a little bit of beatdown. The goal is to end up with at least one more flier on the field than your opponent can handle, and to support with cheap counterspells and card draw. Ideally, turn one Dragon's Rage Channeler or Delver of Secrets  , followed by holding mana up on opponent's turn to cast either a counterspell (Mana Leak, Izzet Charm, or any instant speed card draw (Thought Scour, Consider). After loading up the graveyard and dealing with board threats (Lightning Bolt, Electrolyze), you can follow up with a hefty flier (Enigma Drake, Haughty Djinn). Late game you can cast Bedlam Reveler for 2 and both refill your hand cheaply and get a nice prowess brute onto the field.

Important Synergies

  • Dragon's Rage Channeler and Delver of Secrets   are competing to stay in the main list. Both have obvious synergy with the mass instants and sorceries in the deck, but Delver is pretty inconsistent without cards like Serum Visions to support it. Dragon's Rage Channeler is a bit more reliable late game, but the surveil can be pretty clunky with some of the other mill and surveil trips in this deck.
  • Bedlam Reveler plays off of the Instants and Sorceries used for control in the early game. Bedlam Reveler can usually be dropped by turn 4 or 5, and it's ability allows you to refresh your hand, which will have started to diminish around the midgame.
  • Enigma Drake and Haughty Djinn are basically the same card. I would say the Djinn is better in most cases. Previously, Spellheart Chimera was used in this slot. When WTC releases another */4 flier for 3 that has power based on instants and sorceries in the gaveyard, I will reassess both of their placements here. For now, a healthy mix of both seems reasonable.
  • Damage based removal comes in the form of Lightning Bolt and "shocks" from Izzet Charm and Electrolyze. Sideboarding Flame Slash, Flame of Anor, Anger of the Gods, maybe even a few Izzet Staticaster could help stabilize against more aggressive threats.
  • On the flip, against more control-focused decks cards like Spell Pierce and Dispel can be useful.

Cards that Are Awesome but Too Expensive Right Now

  • Ledger Shredder is really great. Unfortunately, tempo-wise, I think it is more important to keep mana up on T2 for a counterspell and/or card draw. I consider Slickshot Show-Off and Cori-Steel Cutter to fall under this same category as too slow for a T2 play. But then again, this really isn't that bad of a play on later turns, so when I have some money I will revisit these ideas.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Bringing this up to Spec — Jan. 27, 2026
Edit

I have not updated this in a long time, but I recently got back into this game and made some tweaks. The big ones are highlighted here: - Delver of Secrets for Dragon's Fury Channeler - Using Thought Scour and other surveil/discard mechanics to load the graveyard - Expressive Iteration is just too good to ignore - Haughty Djinn subbed in for some Enigma Drake

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Revision 11 See all

(3 weeks ago)

-2 Anger of the Gods main
+1 Bedlam Reveler main
+3 Consider main
-1 Crumble to Dust maybe
+1 Curator of Mysteries main
+2 Dragon's Rage Channeler main
-3 Electrolyze main
+4 Enigma Drake main
+4 Expressive Iteration main
+1 Faithless Looting main
-3 Flame Slash main
-1 Harvest Pyre side
+2 Haughty Djinn main
-1 Jace, Architect of Thought maybe
-1 Mana Leak main
-1 Molten Rain side
+1 Monastery Swiftspear maybe
-2 Mountain main
-1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius maybe
+1 Otherworldly Gaze main
and 30 other change(s)