Izoni's Toolshed [Primer]

Commander / EDH Aristocrats BG (Golgari) Reanimator Toolbox

mirrorwork

Land (37)

• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Command Tower
• 8x Forest
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Sanctum of Eternity
• 1x Strip Mine
• 11x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Wood
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Undergrowth Stadium
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Westvale Abbey  ^Flip
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Removal (9)

• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Butcher of Malakir
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Cavalier of Night
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Elvish Lyrist
• 1x Ravenous Chupacabra
• 1x Scavenger Folk
• 1x Vengeant Vampire

Izoni's Toolshed (11)

• 1x Bitter Ordeal
• 1x Conjurer's Closet
• 1x Decimator of the Provinces
• 1x Hatchery Spider
• 1x Loaming Shaman
• 1x Lotleth Giant
• 1x Mortal Combat
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Riftsweeper
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Ramp (9)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Dawntreader Elk
• 1x Far Wanderings
• 1x Pitiless Plunderer
• 1x Primal Growth
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum

Card Advantage (7)

• 1x Catacomb Sifter
• 1x Deathreap Ritual
• 1x Harvester of Souls
• 1x Moldervine Reclamation
• 1x Smothering Abomination
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Woe Strider

Tutor (6)

• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Corpse Connoisseur
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Fiend Artisan
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier

Commander (1)

Recursion (10)

• 1x Acolyte of Affliction
• 1x Doomed Necromancer
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Hag Hedge-Mage
• 1x Journey to Eternity  ^Flip
• 1x Phyrexian Delver
• 1x Stitch Together
• 1x Victimize
• 1x Whisper, Blood Liturgist

Stocking the Graveyard (6)

• 1x Commune with the Gods
• 1x Grisly Salvage
• 1x Hermit Druid
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Satyr Wayfinder
• 1x Underrealm Lich

Token Engines (4)

• 1x Chittering Witch
• 1x Creakwood Liege
• 1x Ogre Slumlord
• 1x Spider Spawning

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Welcome to the overview of my Izoni, Thousand-Eyed EDH decklist and strategy. Izoni has two abilities for building around, which are as follows:

• Undergrowth — When Izoni, Thousand-Eyed enters the battlefield, create a 1/1 black and green Insect creature token for each creature card in your graveyard.
• , Sacrifice another creature: You gain 1 life and draw a card.

This deck attempts to maximize the strength of Izoni's Undergrowth ability by both filling the graveyard with creatures and creating ways to recur Izoni, allowing for more triggers of the ability. From this initial strategy, the deck hopes to win by just overwhelming our opponents with insects and out-tempo-ing them. However, if that plan fails, this deck comes equipped with a few backup plans as well.

Main Strategies and Themes Show

Izoni is a graveyard-based tempo deck with a powerful tutoring-engine featuring Pod and SOTF-type effects. Being able to draw on our graveyard, hand, and library for threats and answers hopefully puts us ahead of other decks on card advantage and tempo. Our main tactics include:

• Stock the Graveyard: This is the most straightforward strategy of the deck besides just turning creatures sideways. The more creatures in our graveyard, the better. This can be achieved by sacrificing creatures (ideally for multiple additional effects), milling ourselves with cards like Hermit Druid or Grisly Salvage, discarding with cards like Survival of the Fittest and Fauna Shaman, and/or by letting incidental creatures die in combat without worry. Remember, they're not dead forever!
• Reanimate Powerful Threats: This deck also features a reanimator strategy, which works well in any graveyard-based deck to put out big threats for cheap. However, having all your dead creatures leave the graveyard runs counter to what we need to do to optimize Izoni's ability. So, any and all reanimating should either put more cards in the graveyard or be attached to a creature which can end up in the graveyard later through saccing. For this reason, I do not run things like Reanimate which, despite their cheapness and efficiency, do not contribute to the deck's main strategy.
• Sacrafice Creatures For Value: The most game-breaking element of this deck besides its smattering of combos is our ability to squeeze as much value as possible out of our sacrificed creatures. We run lots of cards that care about things dying, and we want to stock our graveyard a lot. Many creatures come equipped with their own sacrifice engine, like Scavenger Folk. Others are optimized to be sacrificed, like Cavalier of Night. Izoni also comes equipped with a cheap card-draw/sac engine that we can take advantage of to send creatures that have done their job to the graveyard, like an Acolyte of Affliction after it's ETB'd. However, there are plenty of other sac outlets in this deck.
• Make Tokens: Izoni is obviously our main engine for token's to go wide with, but cards like Creakwood Liege and Sifter of Skulls can also generate lots of tokens for this strategy.
• Tutoring: Cards like Birthing Pod or Survival of the Fittest give us the power to have exactly what we need when we need it.
• Combos: This deck features a few combos that can become alternate strategies in a pinch. The tutoring power of the deck aides in assembling these combos.

Win Conditions/Routes Show

Izoni features a number of different win conditions. The following is a list of the main strategies, how to best execute them, and when to avoid trying certain strategies.

Conjurer's Closet

One way to win is to utilize Conjurer's Closet to get numerous Izoni ETB triggers and overwhelm your opponents with sheer numbers. This route works best with a graveyard full of creatures and your opponents having an empty board, which makes it a good way to quickly rebuild and win after a board wipe. Ideally, you will have more than 10 creatures in your yard, so that you are outputting 10+ power with each end step. If you're below 10 creatures in the yard, Creakwood Liege can fill in the gaps in power output. The main weakness of this strategy is further mass removal effects, specifically small creature or token hosers like Illness in the Ranks or Pyroclasm. Soul of New Phyrexia can give you some protection against damage-based or destroy wrath effects though if needed, so if its available leave the mana up for its ability just in case.

Decimator of the Provinces//Finale of Devastation

Another way to overwhelm your opponents in combat, but with less creatures on board, is to utilize one of the two mass-buff effects in the deck, which are Decimator of the Provinces and Finale of Devastation. Decimator being a creature means that it's reanimate-able, so you can sacrifice it to Izoni or another sac outlet and recur it turn after turn. However, with this strategy, you should give your opponents as few turns as possible. The longer you spend reanimating and beating down, the longer you spend vulnerable to all sorts of disruption with a huge target on your head. 10+ Izoni tokens and a couple other creatures on board (maybe liege as well for further buffs) should be enough to secure your victory. For tighter time frames, Finale of Devastation gives you a much larger buff and the added benefit of haste to allow for sudden victories. The tutor effect ideally fetches Decimator, which then gives trample and further buffs, making 10 creatures onboard probably enough for a single-turn victory. However, the high mana cost makes this route hard to pay for and vulnerable to counterspells. Ashnod's Altar can help you easily reach 10 mana, but it won't stop counterspells, so if your opponent is playing blue with mana up, be wary.

Nim Deathmantle + Ashnod's Altar Combo

If combat victories seem impossible, then going the combo route is your best bet. Our main combo is utilizing Nim Deathmantle, Ashnod's Altar, something with a death trigger like Zulaport Cutthroat, and Izoni to either get infinite mana, tokens, and/or death triggers. The interaction is very simple. If there are 1 or more creatures in our graveyard, sacrifice Izoni and another creature to the altar, then use the to activate deathmantle's ability, targeting Izoni. She returns to play with at least 1 insect token. Both Izoni and the token are sacced again, and we repeat the process indefinitely, getting infinite death triggers. If there are 2 or more creatures in the graveyard, then we get extra tokens each time, and can either use those to sac to Ashnod's Altar for infinite colorless mana, or just to have infinite tokens. With the mana, we can cast Finale of Devastation, or just play out our hand (which can be huge if we have something like Moldervine Reclamation out). It's very simple, and can also be done at instant speed, so if you have Winding Canyons out you can flash out Izoni or Zulaport Cutthroat on your opponent's turn to combo off.

Mortal Combat

Another last-resort option for victory is to dump as much of our deck as possible into the graveyard so as to reach 20 creatures in the grave, then cast Mortal Combat and hopefully secure a victory that way. However, this is vulnerable to enchantment removal for the turn after you cast it before it makes it back to your upkeep.

Notable Synergies Show

Gravebreaker Lamia and Magus of the Will: although we play lamia for being an Entomb strapped to a creature, it's second ability is also useful as a means of making magus's ability much more powerful, as we save 1 mana on each card we cast from the graveyard. Ogre Slumlord + either Ashnod's Altar or Woe Strider + Dictate of Erebos or Butcher of Malakir: sacrifice a creature, trigger either Dictate of Erebos or Butcher of Malakir which causes your opponents to likely sac at least 1 non-token creature, then repeat the process to make short work of your opponents creatures. Has the added benefit with the altar of making you lots of mana as well.

Weaknesses Show

As any deck does, this deck has some grave (lol) weaknesses that would really shut us down. In an attempt to try and avoid being completely helpless in the face of them, I have included a couple of cards that are meant to act as solutions to some of the worst problems we could face.

Graveyard Hate

Since we rely on our graveyard heavily for almost all of our main strategies, we are incredibly vulnerable to cards like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void. Additionally, cards like Soul-Guide Lantern or Bojuka Bog are fairly common, as they hose decks like ours and can easily fit into the 99 without ever being dead in your hand. Thus, we have to expect that a few of these cards are a regular occurrence. Our main way to not get maximally hosed by this is to be careful in not making our graveyard too enticing. A yard with 10+ creatures and some flashback spells, etc is just as big a target as having a huge board state or a stacked hand. For this reason, try and keep the yard reasonable. One way to do this is with Loaming Shaman, which can reduce our graveyard's size as much as we want. If we have out Winding Canyons, Loaming Shaman can also be an instant-speed way to salvage our graveyard's contents in the event that someone plays a Rest in Peace. Additionally, if we do get our yard exiled and there's something we need in exile, we can use Riftsweeper to get things back. But the best strategy is always prevention, not retaliation. For this reason, we run Bitter Ordeal, which we can cast early on after we have sacced a few creatures to ideally take all the graveyard hate out of the picture.

Wraths

Since we often go wide, we are vulnerable to Wrath of God-type effects. Particularly the cheaper options that hose tokens and smaller creatures, which we have lots of. Now, having lots of creatures go to the graveyard isn't the worst thing for us, but it's still a major setback when we're not the ones choosing what lives and what dies. Our main way of dealing with this is to reanimate Izoni a soon as possible and try and overwhelm with tokens, but we also run Soul of New Phyrexia, which can be used to protect our board even in the graveyard.

Decking Ourself

Between cards like Hermit Druid and Life from the Loam, combined with the number of cards we can draw off of just a Harvester of Souls or a Moldervine Reclamation, we could deck ourselves. Our main defense against this is Loaming Shaman, but if that's not available then we simply have to manage how much we're milling and drawing, especially if we are playing against somebody milling us. In these cases, it's best to just draw and activate druid less.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Exclude colors	WUR
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.52
Tokens	Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Goat 0/1 W, Human Cleric 1/1 BW, Insect 1/1 BG, Rat 1/1 B, Spider 1/2 G, Treasure, Worm 1/1 BG