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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Duel Decks: Izzet vs. Golgari review

Today I want to talk a little bit about the new Duel Decks that Wizards has made. At the suggested price of $19.95, these decks are sure to not disappoint when it comes to value. Each deck has it's fair share of  sweet cards like Iscohron Scepter and Eternal Witness. Overall the individual cards in each deck make it a smart choice to snatch this up. Each deck has a unique play style that may take a bit of getting used to. Unfortunately when I tried them out, I was having horrible luck with both, so I won't be reviewing too much on the actual gameplay.




  

With the Izzet deck strategy insert they give 3 possible play-styles: aggro with cheap spells and creatures like Wee Dragonauts and Kiln Fiend, early control then late game power, and throwing a solid spell on Isochron Scepter and rolling with it. With the scepter out and a dragonaut or both, you're almost guaranteed to be swinging 3/3's over jarad's head every turn. Two great cards to imprint are fire/ice or the izzit charm, both of which give you several options every time to use it. Creatures like Galvanoth and goblin electromancer help all the higher casting cards in the deck either become a little less painful to play, or completely free. Several of the spells in the deck allows you to draw a card, which helps a lot early game and could become even more painful for your opponent with Niv-Mizzit, the Firemind in play. I would have liked to see some cards to help stack my deck so there's a better chance of pulling the card I needed, since these decks run mostly one copy of each card.    


 
The Golgari deck, on the other hand, has a straightforward play-style: dredge. The deck's main goal is to fill your graveyard asap and pull out all the good stuff with cards like Eternal Witness or get some lands back with Life From the Loam. Because of this, the deck has it's own form of scry. My favorite combo in this deck is eternal witness, golgari thug, and Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. With those three out you can continuously dredge and pull out whatever creatures you want into your hand, all while jarad punishes your opponent (that is, until they dissipate one of them). While I love it's effect, I'm not sure how well gleancrawler fits in the deck. On the one hand, it can be amazing with jarad or e.t, allowing you to kill your own creatures or attack without a care in the world. On the other hand, it shuts down your ability to dredge and fill your graveyard. Another card I feel doesn't fit the deck quite right is Dreg Mangler. The new Golgari theme from RTR seems a bit counterproductive since you want a full and happy graveyard.    




As is usual with the pre-built decks wizards puts out, each deck has a few cards that need to be swapped out for something better. First thing I would do to tweak the Izzet deck is give it a common goal instead of trying to balance 3 play-styles at one. I personally would keep a bit of the aggro and add in some cheaper draw cards, with plenty of deck stacking options like Preordain or Augury Owl. Another amazing card to add is Curiosity. Enchanting  Niv-Mizzit, the Firemind with it would lead to an instant victory, which is probably why they changed the dragon's abilities for RTR.With the Golgari deck I would throw in more cheap creatures that want to die like Sakura-Tribe Elder and add in a simple sac engine like Thoughtpicker Witch. That plus more dredge cards can help you fill your graveyard quite nicely. Also to help with the drawback of Twilight's Call giving your opponent back his stuff, throw a Bojuka Bog or two in to keep their graveyard empty (Tormod's Crypt works too). Each deck can also work well as starting "seeds" for a pair of Commander decks, which can also make the costly cards in both more useful. We actually did just that and found them to be a lot more fun to play that way then as normal 60-card decks! 



All-in-all these are pretty fun decks and I can see both of them becoming very powerful with only a few tweaks. If you're still debating on getting one I would strongly suggest it, if only for the value of the individual cards themselves. Check out the official decklists on the Wizard's site here.

Happy Playing!
-Raging Goblin

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