Budget Magic: 13-Rare Izzet Energy (MH3 Timeless)
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Budget Magic! This week, we begin our exploration of Modern Horizons 3 in Timeless with a wacky energy brew! While energy was pretty broken while it was in Standard, it hasn't really taken off in older formats. But this might be changing since there are some absurd energy cards in Modern Horizons 3! Our deck today is actually pretty simple: we're trying to kill our opponent with Aether Revolt. Aether Revolt looks like the traditional "janky red enchantment" of Modern Horizons 3. But the card is actually incredibly powerful in a deck full of energy cards since it converts any energy we produce into damage and potentially even adds more damage to it if we manage to trigger revolt. Since basically every card in our deck produces energy, we try to stay alive through the early game, stick an Aether Revolt, and then kill our opponent with a weird energy storm kill by casting a bunch of cheap energy producers. If we can't find Aether Revolt, we have Whirler Virtuoso as our backup payoff to turn all of our energy into Thopters. Plus, we get to play a bunch of exciting new cards like Amped Raptor, Tune the Narrative, and Aether Spike! Is energy good in Timeless now thanks to Modern Horizons 3? Can it function on a 13-rare budget? Let's get to the games and find out!
Budget Magic: Izzet Energy
Thoughts
First off, Aether Revolt was great and even better than I expected. Energy is incredibly cheap to produce, with two energy costing less than one mana on cards like Tune the Narrative and Attune with Aether, which means that Aether Revolt deals an absurd amount of damage in a deck full of energy cards. And that doesn't even include the possibility of dealing even more damage by cracking a fetch land to trigger revolt. If you look at our games, you'll see it's pretty easy to kill the opponent on the turn after Aether Revolt hits the battlefield by cracking a fetch land for revolt and then chaining together cards like Galvanic Discharge and Harnessed Lightning (for five damage each) as well as Tune the Narrative (for four damage). Even better, Aether Revolt can hit any target, so if we don't have lethal and are behind on board, we can use it to shoot down our opponent's creatures and then kill them later once we draw some more energy producers.
Whirler Virtuoso is our backup energy payoff for games when we don't draw Aether Revolt. While it's not as powerful as the enchantment, it makes up for this by being an energy producer, so it also works well with Aether Revolt. We can store up a bunch of energy and then play Whirler Virtuoso to make a massive board of Thopters and fly in for lethal. If you don't have Aether Revolt in hand, it's sometimes worth holding onto Whirler Virtuoso while building up some energy, rather than just running it out on Turn 3 into a potential removal spell. Without one of Whirler Virtuoso or Aether Revolt, our deck isn't likely to win since the rest of our cards are mostly janky energy producers, so value them highly.
Most of the rest of the cards in the deck are self-explanatory. Aether Spike is an energy counter. Galvanic Discharge and Harnessed Lightning are energy removal, and so on. However, I did want to briefly mention the other two creatures in our deck. First, Amped Raptor was great. Its baseline is that it makes two energy and casts something random (that likely makes even more energy) for free, which is very solid, but its ceiling is incredibly high. We had a game where we cast Tune the Narrative on Turn 1 into Amped Raptor on Turn 2 and spun into a free Aether Revolt, which easily won us the game. In that game, our two-drop not only drew us a card but also essentially generated four extra mana, which felt pretty broken. Sure, Amped Raptor is better in our deck than most because we have additional ways of making energy, but overall, I'm very high on the card even in non-energy decks. Meanwhile, Cyclops Superconductor is probably the weakest card in our deck. I wanted to play Aethertide Whale in the slot instead, as a big finisher with Aether Revolt. But sadly, they didn't add Aethertide Whale to Arena, so I subbed in Cyclops Superconductor. While it wasn't horrible, in general, it felt a little bit overcosted and slow. In the future, I'll probably try to replace it with something else, but I'm not sure exactly what.
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we ended with slightly above a 50% win rate with the deck, although I don't put much weight in the record since it was early-access day. More importantly, the deck felt good. Not only does Aether Revolt give energy a great payoff that doesn't require playing a bunch of 10-drops to hope to high roll with Aetherworks Marvel, but the new energy support cards like Galvanic Discharge and Aether Spike are also quite strong. The archetype is also perfect for Budget Magic since basically all the good energy cards are commons and uncommons—outside of the fetch lands in our mana base (which are important for triggering revolt), the only rare in our deck is Aether Revolt itself! If you like weird combo-ish midrange decks or are just a fan of the energy mechanic, give the deck a shot! It's super fun and plays much better than it looks!
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
