Much Abrew: Izzet Sharks (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week, we're heading to Standard to discard our own cards for fun and value! One of the most exciting parts of Aetherdrift is the self-discard theme. While there are a few ways to build around it, today, we're playing an aggro Izzet Shark self-discard deck looking to grow massive Marauding Makos, draw tons of cards with Captain Howler, Sea Scourge, and maybe drain our opponent out of the game with the endless value of Monument to Endurance! The best part of Izzet Sharks is that we don't have to play a bunch of bad cards to discard; instead, we can rely on things like Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, Fear of Missing Out, and Rona, Herald of Invasion to get the job done! How good is self-discard in Aetherdrift Standard? Is Izzet Sharks for real? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Izzet Sharks
Discussion
- Record-wise, with the normal early-access day asterisk, the deck was great, winning close to 70% of the time (although again, take this with a huge grain of salt).
- More importantly, the deck felt really solid. Izzet Shark can be very aggressive, but it's also super consistent since we're constantly drawing and discarding cards. While not especially important on early-access day because we're playing best-of-one, it also has the upside of being in blue so we can play counters like Spell Pierce or Negate in the sideboard for extra answers to sweepers and removal. While we'll have to test the deck more once the set is fully out, my first impression of Izzet Sharks is that it could be a real deck.
- There are three key new cards in the deck. Here's a quick rundown.
- Marauding Mako was great. I was a bit worried it would just die too often to make an impact, and while it does die sometimes, when it sticks around, it pretty quickly becomes a 5/5 or even 10/10 as we discard cards, which is insane for a one-drop.
- Captain Howler, Sea Scourge looks a bit expensive as a four-drop that doesn't have an enters trigger, although having multiple wards helps it stick on the battlefield. It is by far the scariest card in our deck when it does its thing, often adding six or eight power to the battlefield and, hopefully, drawing us a ton of cards when we connect for combat damage.
- Finally, we have Monument to Endurance, which was incredibly impressive. Along with incidentally generating value as we discard by drawing us cards and making Treasures, its real power is closing out the game, three life at a time, once the board gets gummed up. Our deck is usually pretty good at chipping in for early damage. Monument gives us a way to force through those last few points of damage to close out the game.
- As far as the rest of the deck, as I mentioned in the intro, a big part of the deck's power is that we don't have to play bad cards to support our discard theme. Our two best discard outlets are Rona, Herald of Invasion and Inti, Seneschal of the Sun. Rona's great since it can loot multiple times a turn as we cast legends like Inti and Captain Howler. Meanwhile, Inti is key since it not only lets us discard a card but also gives something trample. This synergizes nicely with Captain Howler, Sea Scourge's ability, which is great at buffing a creature's power but doesn't prevent our opponent from chump-blocking with a small creature. Inti's trample solves this problem!
- At the risk of reading too much into early-access day, I think Izzet Sharks might be a real deck in Standard. The combination of speed, synergy, and consistency makes it a very scary deck, and its colors offer answers to many of the best answers in the format. How does it line up against the self-bounce decks or red aggro? That will require some testing to figure out, but the deck felt more than good enough to make it worth the effort.
Conclusion
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.
