I've been trying to build modern as well, but no one around here really plays it, and the FNM here is unlikely to start playing it. The player base isn't really advanced enough, and most of them would just use their standard decks. Personally, I'm a few scapeshift and prismatic omen short of valakut ramp, but I'm in no rush since i'll never get to play it.

As for EDH, I've got a Doran deck, which either runs you down in a couple turns, or loses. I've had a turn 3 win using Tree of Redemption plus animate wall, which is just sick (yay mana rocks). Lately, I've been trying to complete my Kaalia of the Vast deck, but I'm missing quite a few cards. Her and Aurelia just seems broken to me. People at FNM use proxies in their EDH decks, but I don't, so sometimes the games aren't that fair, or just not fun, like when someone plays generic 5 color good stuff with horde of notions (or whatever) and stupid cards like maelstrom wanderer into a million time walks. Luckily no one has Azusa or Zur decks.

 

Oh. I'm talking 4-player fun-time EDH, not 1v1 Singleton-legacy EDH. We have one or two players who play spike anyways, but at this point, we just don't play with them. Like you, i never proxy my EDH decks: it's one of those formats where I feel 'if you don't have it, you don't have it.'. If a player is willing to dump 5000 dollars into an EDH deck, more power to them, but I'm not okay with playing against someone who wants the power without the price.
I'm also building Fumiko the Low-blood to mess with EDH stalemates, and so that I can run Ruination. Casting ruination in a mono-red EDH deck is priceless.

 

Anarchy; Shocklands are being reprinted in Dragon's Maze. All ten of 'em, in fact. I'd get rid of my shocks right now and rebuy them when DM is being opened massively.

 

Yeah, I'm trading all mine for value before DM.

 

I know that, but that's just normals. There will be no foil reprints.

 

I just received the re-animator deck I have wanted for over a decade. Damn were entomb's expensive, and banned in tournament play, but I love this deck and idc about tourneys. It is very satisfying to have a first draw that includes a swamp, dark ritual, entomb, exhume.

 

Soooooooooooooooo....




I just drafted this monstrosity. I easily went 2-0, 2-0, split the finals (8-4). Yeah.

 

I sold my paper collection last week, which included a timetwister, time walk, mox jet, mox ruby, 7 duals (2 USea, bayou), 9 fetches (foil Tarn, 2 delta), and other stuff like 5 FoW, Jace 2.0, LoA, Mana Drain, 3 LED, 2 Gaea's Cradle.

I also sold my mtgo collection while I was at it. I had a ton of value in m13 cards, so it seemed like a good idea to drop my multiple playsets of Jace, Garruk, Thragtusks, etc, while they were still worth money. I've still got my standard and legacy decks though if I get bored.

I also have all my standard paper decks still, since I do play in FNM every week. Currently I'm running a Bant midrange deck that I named Overkill, since it has 4 angel of serenity at the top end. I've got crypt ghast ramp and epic experiment as well, which is always good for a few lulz. I'm not quitting magic, just selling all the cards that I bought to resell in the first place. I've still got a bunch of sealed product and foreign cards left that I'm not sure what I'm doing with yet.

I bought this with the proceeds. Seems fair.

I joined Perspicacity in the dlp-engineer-with-a-porsche-club. The wheels on this thing are worth twice what my old car was worth, which is kind of funny (and a bit pathetic.) Some bits of cardboard for some german performance seems like a decent trade.

Also, @Justbrowsing. Entomb isn't banned. It got unbanned in 2009

 

I mostly use a black-white Angel-Vampire deck. A lot of old Zendikar stuff in it, which most new players don't know how to handle, so that's nice.

I have Avacyn, Iona, and Platinum Angel, so I've got several avenues to an almost guaranteed win. Let's see... Sorin Markov, and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, so that's nice... A bunch of mythic vampires I slowly collected over time.

Honestly, when I come across serious metagame players, I get trashed, but for casual guys like the people at my school, I'm usually the top player.

 

Just got back from the Dragon's Maze prerelease. 34 people. I made top 8 going 4-2, and lost first round to the top seed who hadn't lost a single game yet. I picked azorius, hoping to get bant colors, and ended up getting simic, so that worked.

My rares:
Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
Renegade Krasis
Gyre Sage
Supreme Verdict
Gaze of Granite
Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
Renounce the guilds (foil)

So nothing too bombtastic, but the complete deck had some nice synergies. I had 6 or 7 evolve guys total, plus 3 or 4 cards that did stuff with +1/+1 counters like that one split card and an enchantment. I had a lot of fliers and unblockable guys as well, which won me most of my games. Supreme verdict is awesome, which everyone already knew. Trostani's summoner won me a lot of games as well. It's bonkers with evolve guys, and it's sexy throwing it down after a verdict.

But, the new set itself is fairly bland. Most of the powerful decks revolved around the interactions of RtR/Gtc cards, with DGM acting as filler mostly.

 

If you wanted Bant you should've taken Simic, then you can hit both Azorious or Selesnya and have twice the chance to get Bant. Anyway I was Azorious paired with Dimir which was fine since I wanted Esper (Would've prefered orzhov obviously, but mise). Went 4-1-1 splitting the final round with a good tempo flyers deck. Then played the MOCS the same night for a 43rd place finish good for 6 packs and prm foil savannah, then played ANOTHER PR going 3-1-1 and never sleeping. TOO MUCH MAGIC.

 

My first pick was Selesnya as they had the overall highest quality pool, but apparently I wasn't the only one who got that memo, so I took azorius since they get a lot of fliers, and supreme verdict may be my personal favorite draft card. I sort of wanted orzhov, since Obzedat is a beast (even if any given card is a 1/8th chance), but that's what I took last time, and one pack of extort cards isn't a deck. I did get blown out a few times with debt to the deathless though. The absolute nuts would be picking boros and getting izzet for boros reckoner + mizzium mortars, but boros was full, and picking izzet meant a chance of getting dimir, which is a no.

Anyways, this weekend is SCG Sommerset, which is a bit over an hour from where I live, so I'll be entering with my bant hybrid build and see what happens. I do sort of want to sign up with epic experiment to randomly troll people.

 

Just finished up a profitable mtgo dgm release weekend. I made around 150 tix doing triple dgm draft. I pulled Ral Zarek in back to back drafts (and a third later that night) as well as two voice of resurgences and a foil blood baron (why are these worth so much? obzedat is better) I've got 30 packs, which will last awhile, shame they won't be worth much.

I had some very trollish drafts. Easy wins could be had just by sticking to a plan. I went 3-0 with a deck that had 6 steeple rocs in it, as well as 2 gruul war chant and 2 unflinching courage, both of which are pretty sweet in draft. And yeah, one game I actually played all 6 rocs in back to back turns.

Another draft (actually I did it a few more times after the first success), I was pure gruul. I picked up every small dude, phytoburst, and armed/dangerous that came around, which was quite a few. Very first game with the deck I went T2 krull warrior, T3: swing for 2, play battering krasis, T4: phytoburst, armed, swing for 18, GG. Guy ragequit the match. Fusing Armed/Dangerous won me many games. I'd just sandbag a few turns, use my life as a resource, then pop that (doublestrike a maze rusher and lure on another guy) and win out of nowhere. Sweet card. Some of the split cards are really good, and are 2/1's a lot of time. I've also got the turn 4 kill with Nivix Cyclops in a subsequent draft. Half the time the opponent just plays a cluestone on turn 3, so when you phytoburst a cyclops, that makes him a 9/9, and the armed makes him a 13/10 double strike, one hit KO turn 4.

Gatekeeper.dec win's pretty easily as well. Just take all of them and every gate you can find, as well as some removal, or ways to bounce your keepers back. Frustrating deck to play against though.

Grixis. Tends to go underdrafted. R/U/B has nearly the removal though (excluding fight effects). I've had 4 haunter of nightveil in a deck, and it was awesome. Blast of Genius is underrated I think. It's done good things for me, though I wouldn't jam every one into a deck. Toil and trouble as well, if you aim both at your opponent, you can finish them off from a decent health, or you can just use trouble on them on turn 3 to do 6 or 7. I've never had a problem having enough cards for warped physique to do good work. I like pilfered plans as well, since those two cards you mill your opponent could be very relevant. There are a lot of meh cards though.

 

So, the 20th anniversary of this game is upon us (august 5th), and M14 prerelease is this weekend. It looks like a pretty decent set actually, with a lot of borderline playable cards, though some are a tad weak, or strong, but expensive to play (like garruk). Of course, there is scavenging ooze, which will see play, though I wonder how it's position will fare with deathrite shaman in the mix. Mutavault is a thing too, though I suspect too many people will be trying to jam slivers.

I guess the biggest thing in recent weeks is Modern Masters. I am lucky enough to have a store nearby that got 50 boxes of Modern Masters and is only using them to draft and nothing else. As such, I've done 8 drafts so far, and won 5 of them (4 of them were splits in the finals, and last an outright win with a guy who wouldn't split). It's a pretty sweet format, and it's possibile to get some very sweet decks. For example, the 5 I won with:

1) R/W giants. I had double cloudgoat ranger and a thundercloud shaman. That's usually enough to win on itself, but when you throw in kitchen finks, murderous redcaps, and blink effects like flickerwisp and otherworldly journey, it gets obnoxious - journey + redcap = 5 damage. Add in lightning helix and suddenshock, then fun times will be had. Oh, and ivory giant + blinding beam, and with stinkdrinker daredevil to speed out your cloudgoats, it can get crazy. Lets not forget feudkiller's verdict either

2) B/R goblins. Usually a very mediocre archetype, but all the power lies in the uncommons (most of which used to be rare but got downgraded for the set). Mad Auntie is the best probably, so if you see one like 4th pick or later, you know the archetype is open. I won with it when I had double tar pitchers, 3 warren pilfereres, 4 war marshals, empty the warrens, and a dark confidant. Just chump block and sac the guys to the tar pitcher before damage, and it's an easy win.

3) U/W artifacts. First pick was an arcbound ravager. Back in the day, I attended the Darksteel prerelease where I pulled this guy, and he was an absolute house. It's a build around me card, but usually all the arcbound guys will wheel, so picking up etherium sculptors and sanctum gargoyles is the smart move. I would have loved to get an auriok salvager with spellbombs, but that didn't happen. Instead I had to settle for the awesomeness of Adarkar Valkyrie and double myr retriever. Valkyrie + Ravager is insane. Oh, and glen elendra archmage will just lock them out sometimes.

4) W/B/G 'junk'. This actually felt like a modern deck. First pick was a maelstrom pulse. Then I pulled a Knight of the Reliquary and two kitchen finks and a eternal witness. There was a rebel subtheme as well with a couple blightspeakers and the unblockable guys. Otherwordly journeys were just the icing on top - such a good card.

5) w/u/r tempo. probably the most powerful deck I drafted. 4 vedalken dismissers, reveillark, flickerwisps, finks, cloudgoat, otherworldly journeys, meadowboon, mulldrifter, aethersnipe, riftwing cloudskate, errant ephermon. I splashed red for two stingscourgers and two lightning helix. Just a sick deck. I locked a guy out with dismissers for 6 turns straight. It's a very underestimated card, since it costs 6 mana, so it's not too hard to get the deck And this was the deck where I person refused to split. He had drafted B/U faeries, and I crushed him so hard. I never even got to use reveillark to recur anything, and the deck was superstrong without the need.

Other archtypes. B/U faeries is the one most people want to do, so it's very hard to be the only person drafting it. obviously if you first pick slam an Oona or Vendilion Clique, it's obvious. Oona is pretty much a dragon, so you don't need faeries for her. Getting multiple theiving sprites with flicker effects can be obnoxious. That being said, the artifact players want the faerie mechanists, and the dreamspoiler witches are just good with or without faeries. Honestly, the deck mostly wins because it's all flier, rather than any synergy.

Thallids are an okay deck. Obviously, if you slam down a doubling season, it's an insane deck. Well, in theory. I've lost to the deck a few times, but the one time I tried it, I got stomped. Probably because I didn't have the sac thallid out to combat echoing truth.

Domain can be very hit or miss. Tromp the domains is a superbomb, and just casting massive sunburst mantas can get there. All the tools are there, but it's very hard to actually get them all.

Dredge. Don't play this. I don't care if you got two life from the loams and two bridge from below, it's not going to work in limited.

Arcane/ Storm. Two archtypes in the same colors, and they usually end up being the same deck. I've tried it twice and had moderate success, but it can be very hit or miss. I had more luck with the dampen thought deck (lots of splice and arcane spells will get there) than hoping to get there with grapeshot and empty the warrens, even if you time your suspends and have grinning ignus. I haven't managed to get a pyrmancers swath, but I suppose that might be fun.

B/W rebels. The second most obvious one behind faeries. Expect someone to draft them every time. A deck with nothing but blightspeekers and amrou seekers will get there.

There might be a few others I've forgotten, but sometimes your deck will be a mix. I've done kithkins and giants in the same deck, since cloudgoat and greathearts will bridge themtogether.

My mvp is either kitchen finks or cloudgoat ranger. That should not surprise anyone, since they are both insane cards. Pair either with an otherworldly journey, and you'll bury your opponent in virtual card advantage. The same goes for murderous redcap and thundercloud shaman (and really many other cards. My favorite play of all has to be Kiki-Jiki + woodfall primus. It's possible to get the pestermite combo, but when I pulled Kiki I didn't see any, so I had to settle for murderous redcap, eternal witness, and the primus. It was a good deck, but it didn't go the distance.

As for my best pull, it wasn't dark confidant. I pulled a foil sword of light and shadow. It's going for more than a tarmogoyf, which is astonishing. Shame I lost first round with that deck.

 

I'm glad I got out of magic. Looking at just the white cards, nothing here is even fun to play with, or very good. Hexproof to b/r first strike knight? Why not just play the Mirrodin Crusader, which is pro b/r for the same cost with double strike? Conditional enchantment with +4 life=4/4 angel token, but nothing to turn it on reliably in the whole set. Okay, Devout Incarnation is splashy as fuck (seriously 6W) but better played in any non-white deck that can throw a white source into it because there are about 0 token generators in the set for white**. The best card in the lot** is a rare Seraph of the Sword, because it gets "lolnodamage" for free as a 3/3 with flying for 4. Some day when white comes back to the weenie color (especially with soldiers, my pet tribe) I may come back to magic, but this set pushed me farther away with how lame white is continuing to become while all the other colors get cool things (black anti-equip enchantment was fantastic, primeval bounty period, blues strong -and useful- flying theme, etc) and white gets life gain as a mechanic. Life gain is almost always completely useless unless it is a win con, because once you start losing life, it means you're already losing, and making the game last longer very rarely works in your favor because you need to invest resources to gain life instead of build board presence.

Color break down for m14

White: Gain Life

Blue: Fly!

Black: Kill that!

Red: Kill that! With damage.

Green: Buff that with +1/+1 counters!


**Barring sliver nonsense, which will basically never be played as mono white. Slivers, by the way, render every other non-merfolk weenie deck pointless. And merfolks is why I left magic, because the weenie color -white- can't outweenie them.

P.s. Which idiot brought slivers back?

 

Monocolored hasn't been the best strategy for a long time. Monored words pretty well though, since Hellrider just wins games, as does Thundermaw Hellkite. Monogreen can be pretty tough to beat, since they got some very strong creatures.

As for white in M14, Archangel of Thune is one of the strongest white cards to come in a long time - there are several infinite combos with it. Lifegain has it's time and place, and it's fine when it comes with value. I would never lay hero's reunion, but Thragtusk is a huge pain in the ass because it's all value. Add in Restoration Angel, and it get's dumb. Add in further with Rhox Faithmender, and watch your opponents squirm. Let's not forget Sphinx's revelation which is one of the strongest cards available right now. And there's this guy called Huntmaster of the Fells. They're all value cards.

Most of the good mono white cards are rotating out. Champion of the Parish, Thalia, Silverblade Paladin, Lingering Souls, Intangible Virtue, Sublime Archangel. But those cards all go better when you add in a second color. The one color that is close to being viable is black, since corrupt is now back, but mutilate isn't, which seems like a missed opportunity.

 

M14 prerelease went well last weekend. My pool sucked, but it's not to hard to just outplay all the 12 year olds who show up for this thing. I manage to build a synergistic deck what I did have, which was xathrid necromancer and a few recursive guys. I managed 3-1-1 but lost out on tiebreakers for to 8... it happens. There was a kid at my table who pulled both Jace and Archangel of thune, and only won one match. Jace is by far the biggest bomb in the format, so something must have went terribly wrong.

Anyways, I just wanted to mention the san diego comic con... They announce that Jace (the mind sculptor) is going to be in the next from the vault product, which is insane. He's got a $120 price tag right now, so sticking him in a limited run product with a $40 msrp is asking for nothing but resellers to just horde them. I think I might unload the 3 I have before it's released.

 

Won the m14 gameday today, which is sweet. Only reason I wanted to play it was to win the playmat, so I played my hardest even though my deck rebelled at every turn. Mulliganed every game in 3 straight matches, even once down to 4 on the play, and still won.

My deck.
4 godless shrine
4 isolated chapel
4 blood crypt
4 dragonskull summit
4 clifftop retreat
3 sacred foundry
2 cavern of souls
2 liliana of the veil
1 warleader's helix
1 tragic slip
3 unburial rites
3 faithless looting
3 doom blade
4 bonfire of the damned
4 lingering souls
4 boros reckoner
4 blood baron of vizkopa
2 obzedat, ghost council
2 olivia voldaren
1 aurelia, the warleader
1 griselbrand

Sideboard
3 blasphemous act
3 cremate
3 slaughter games
2 sorin, lorid of innistrad
2 assemble the legion
2 wear//tear

The original version of the deck was a more of a silver bullet strategy, which was fun. I switched out an angel of serenity for another obzedat, which I should switch out for another aurelia. The deck is all about value. Boros Reckoner shuts down agro decks pretty quickly, with lingering soul backup to gum the board up. Faithless looting sets up reanimation, while filtering for lands. Liliana is just a strong card. I used to run 3, and may got back up to that. Hexproof is gaining in popularity, and it is a hard matchup. Blood Baron of Vizkopa may be the strongest creature in standard. It's very hard to lose when you have one in play. Aurelia with it is dirty. Auriela + griselbrand is an instant kill if they're at 20. I've reanimated griselbrand on 4 and auriela on 5 for a win a few times, but that's not the main point of the deck.

Sideboarding is fairly straightforward thing. Blasphemous act comes in for aggro matches and hexproof, so it comes in a lot. I may just maindeck them since they've been friends with boros reckoner from the start. Wear//Tear comes in for hexproof decks and anydeck that I suspect is running burning earth. Sorin and Assemble the legion come in for midrange and control, so they don't come in that often nowadays. Cremate and Slaughter games come in for reanimator, since I can't run rest in peace. The deck does well against Junk reanimator, but loses to Humanimator. I can't kill quick enough against non-interactive decks, and if I don't draw slaugher games, I lose.

The deck pretty much just wins by playing better creatures.

 

So I got into Magic around september. I asked one of my close RL friends who games with me what he thought of Hearthstone and after taking a look he said it looked fine but incredibly simple. Why play it when he could get back into magic instead.

That kind of led him into dragging me into Magic. Till now I've been doing weekly or biweekly drafts with friends as well as sealed events to build a small collection and get into it. I avoided taking the full plunge into it because I saw it as 10$ for 3-4 hours of entertainment with a possible refund on my money should I win and get the good cards.

Over the last few months I collected quite a few cards and also got a lot more interested in playing more often. I did 3 sealed events in 3 weeks when BNG released and wanted to do more but interest in sealed died down so my LGS stopped running the events. I went to an FNM and played a friend's rakdos deck and decided yea, FNM is something I wanted to get into.

So I traded in some of my rares to put together a deck of mostly commons, uncommons, and junk rares. The cheapest as usual were mono red burn and white weenie, but I found a really cheap deck in izzet, which looked like a lot of fun and met the requirement of being cheap.

I traded a brimaz for 4 steam vents, and the rest of the deck I got for less than my 25$ of store credit from FNM. I'm just looking for feedback from more experienced players if possible, or I'd like to hear about other budget decks you know of.

http://www.mtgvault.com/churchey/decks/izzet-burntempo/

The sideboard on the decklist is all of the stuff I'm considering. Spellheart Chim works really well with the izzet cycling and heavy instant nature of the deck. When I played it it wasn't rare for the chim to have the potential to swing in for 12-13 on turn 8. The issue I ran into was the weakness of the chim itself and the lack of haste, which led to it being removed before any damage got through too often or removed before I could get the winning damage with it. I had to cast it late to leave mana open to save it or keep it alive, and I don't have room for 4 mizzium skins and 4 negates to have protection available for the chim to get it to swing in. I've seen some interesting answers to the issue like a boros charm splash to get a huge swing in with double strike and to gain indestructible as another answer to removal as well as anger/mizzium mortars/verdict. Still leaves it open to bile blight though.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/america-tempo-19-10-13-1/

I have Master of Waves and Purphoros in there because I had them and it seemed with weirds out as well as the young pyro tokens getting the +1/+1, the combo could work. In playtesting, I got double purph too often, weak casts of Master too often, and never got the master+purph combo I wanted for a quick 10 damage on summon.

Phoenixes are there because I borrowed them from a friend. Hasty 2 drop that isn't too concerned by removal seemed good, but in practice I threw too many spells at the creatures and not enough at the player to really get them back most of the time. I don't have any chandras but together that might be a more formidable combo as well as letting me run less card draw.

I tried out RZ but he's a bit too clunky. His +1 is all but useless and while his -3 is decent and his -7 is super jank (which was the goal of the deck, really), he didn't really feel all that effective. If it was tap or untap and tap or untap like hidden strings, I'd give him more consideration. I just really wanted to run him because he seems like a really cool planeswalker (I really like the art/concept/idea behind izzet cards).

Guttersnipes had the same issue as tramplehearts, 3 mana for such a weak creature when I'm running on light mana at 21 lands left him open to too many removal spells while he also wasn't a good blocker. He won me a game when I was able to blank RG monsters swings with tokens and whittle down my opponent with burns to the face, but without a young pyro to chump with he became a very sad chumper too often. Vs aggro he doesn't get out fast enough or have a body worthy of a 3 drop to blank them.

Hypersonic dragon is there as a poor man's stormbreath, but I don't have the spot for a 5 drop. If I did run it I'd run it with Oracle/Thoughtflare/blast of genius as a way to raise the overall curve and make burst of genius/oracle of bones super janky combos with a 3/1 haster+card draw+5 damage to the face on turn 4. Seemed a bit too janky and also reliant on the opponent to make the decision to actually run.

Goblin electromancer is something I want to side in but I'm not sure what to get rid of for it. Either izzet charm or nivix guildmage.

Sideboard I'm actually running is countermagic (including counterflux) against control, anger of the gods+searing blood+izzet staticaster vs aggro, and guttersnipes to get around rg monsters and mid range stuff.

Current build is based around the cyclops swinging in for massive amounts unexpectedly as a poor man's chimera. Swinging in for 10 when your opponent expects 4 should bring them into burn range. Cast something to remove a creature, swing in with clops. They opt to take the 4 and you strike/jet to the face and suddenly 4 becomes 9/10 on turn 4 or they opt to take 4 and strike+jet turns to 15 on turn 6. Weirds and Clops blank a lot more aggro decks more easily and survive removal more easily while also surviving anger of the gods if you need to sideboard it in.

I haven't gotten the chance to playtest it yet but I feel pretty confident vs everything but RG monsters/green devotion.

That ended up being longer than I expected.

 

It seems most budget decks are always red based, for whatever reason. I started going to a new store for FNM recently, and 75% of the people there were playing mono red, devotion, or burn, or some variant of those three. The problem is, that while they beat whatever random homebrew someone comes up with, they pretty much just lose to every real deck.

"Izzet Blitz" was a very fringe deck during the last standard, using a bunch of cantrips to kill on turn 4 or 5 with a nivix cyclops. The problem was, that it was very gimmicky. Your deck is much the same thing. All because it's for FNM doesn't mean you're not going to face the top tier decks - R/G, MonoU, MonoB, U/W control, and whatever hybrids happen to be popular this week (like W/B).

Izzet is the weakest color combination, that's just a fact. Simic is not far behind. How do you beat master of waves? You have to turn, and then use a second spell to kill it, and if you're holding mana up to do that, you're probably already dead. How do you beat any deck that gains life? Anything with scavenging ooze is going to give you a bad time, and any deck that can throw a Domri Rade out on Turn2 is going to probably just roll you over. U/W control will probably be your hardest matchup. How do you beat supreme verdict and Sphinx's Revelation? Even dedicated burn decks with 24+ burn spells struggle, even with skullcracks. Mono Black will just give you fits as none of your creatures will live for long. How do you kill a pack rat? How do you kill a desecration demon?

Then you have to worry about all the good cards that don't really have a home: voice of resurgence - what's your plan against it? Boros reckoner - it seems like it just walls you. Blood Baron of Vizkopa - maybe your worst nightmare? Obzedat - once he comes down, it seems like you just lose. Elspeth - I think you just lose.

Personally, I'd be working on a control based build. Izzet decks are a beginners trap. You might be able to be your unknowing friends with it, maybe do alright at an FNM sometimes, and that's fine.

The problem is that half the cards that made the deck even fringe playable back in the day, are no longer standard legal. Cards like Faithless Looting, Thoughtscour, Artful Dodge, and yes, Snapcaster Mage. Cheap cantrips and incremimental card advantage are what made the deck work, and without that, the deck is pretty much just a gimp version of a 'heroic' deck, which itself isn't even a good deck.

I don't mean to be critical of your deck, but I'm just telling you what you're up against. For your deck specifically, i'll try to give some pointers. Firsty, any deck running red that isn't strictly a swarm strategy, needs to be running Mizzium Mortars. It kills Stormbreath Dragon, Blood Baron, Loxodon Smiter, Brimaz, and late game, it's a one sided sweeper. It kills most things short of Desecration Demon, and speaking of the demon, short of having as bunch of tokens to sacrifice to it, it is a casual and serious all star, so you will probably be going up against it at some point.

As for hypersonic dragon, it's fine, but even as a budget version of XYZ, I'd rather just be playing more burn. It really needs to be compared to Thundermaw Hellkite, which was the reason Hypersonic never saw play in the first place. Stormbreath is both better and worse than Thundermaw, but that protection from white really makes the card good.

Card draw. Like I said before, cantrips are what made a deck like this work back in the day, though it was more of Delver of Secrets than anything else. Thoughtflare isn't that good - go with opportunity. Divination and Steam Augery are sort of meh, but they are the next best. Of course, the best is Sphinx's Revelation, but they are expensive and not in your colors (though splashing W is fine, though not on a budget).

Your deck also needs more land. 21 is not enough, especially not with turn/burn, steam augery, and wild ricochet in your deck. Your also not always going to have goblin electromancer in play either (and honestly, you don't need him).

Personally, if I were to do a deck like this, I would make it R/W primary, and do stuff like Assemble the Legion and Purphoros.