Magic the Gathering (MTG) is a complex game that thrives on strategy, deck-building, and understanding the unique mechanics of the game. One of the most exciting elements of the game is choosing your commander for the Commander format, especially in the Izzet league.
Who are the Izzet?
The Izzet League, one of the ten guilds of Ravnica, is a group of eccentric inventors, engineers, and scientists who value creativity, discovery, and large-scale experiments. Driven by the mind of their parun, Niv-Mizzet, the Izzet guild is notorious for their unpredictability and explosive gameplay.
Understanding the Color Pairing: Blue and Red
The Izzet guild combines two of MTG’s dynamic colors, blue and red, creating an exciting blend of chaotic energy and cerebral strategy. Blue provides control, card draw, and manipulation while red adds a dash of direct damage, speed, and randomness to the mix.
Why Use an Izzet Commander?
Playing an Izzet commander allows you to command powerful spells and execute explosive combos. With an Izzet commander, your deck becomes an exciting blend of strategic gameplay and unpredictable turns.
Strategy with Izzet Commanders
Izzet commanders thrive in two main strategies: tempo play and control play.
Tempo Play Style
This strategy is about maximizing your turns and maintaining a consistent flow of threats and answers, keeping your opponents on their back foot while you whittle down their defenses.
Control Play Style
The control play style involves manipulating the game to your advantage, using counterspells and instant-speed interaction to maintain control of the game state.
Top MTG Izzet Commanders
1. Jori En, Ruin Diver
Being a multiplayer game, subtlety is the key to winning, especially in commander. Powerful and massive cards will lead to extra attention from other game players and soon become extra care, making any individual player the public enemy.
That’s why using commanders that slowly gather small but meaningful advantage is so significant. With that being said, here comes the first MTG Izzet commander on this list – Jori En, Ruin Diver.
Jori En, Ruin Diver, is a straightforward 2/3 merfolk wizard that requires three mana. With this commander in hand, you can draw an additional card every time you cast any second spell in your hand, which is an essential ability.
Having the power to draw extra cards is undeniable. Firstly, it prevents the controller from running out of all cards, which is highly likely to lead to defeat. Meanwhile, having an extra card means that the controller of Jori En has more options, opportunities, and answers.
PS: here are the best green cards in MTG and the MTG Best Planeswalkers for your reference.
2. Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders
Just being released and printed the previous year, Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders is a solid option for Izzet. Just being released and printed the previous year, this card is a solid option for Izzet game-players who prefer to utilize many artifacts, especially equipment.
Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders, requires three mana and has the stat of 2/4. When using this card, you can tap it for two colorless mana that is only used on artifacts & their abilities. This ability makes Dalakos a reliable mana source for the artifact deck.
As a matter of fact, Dalakos, Crafter of Wonder has another functional ability – providing all equipped creatures held by its controller with the trait of haste and flying, which means that equipment has additional use if controlling Dalakos.
Overall, Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders, is an instrumental Izzet commander when you are the player who seeks to utilize artifacts. However, this makes Dalakos useless for those who prefer other strategies, but this does not stop him from being one of the best MTG Izzet commanders in Magic.
3. Melek, Izzet Paragon
A few Izzet commanders can genuinely encapsulate the pairing’s synergies with sorceries and instants, same as Melek, Izzet Paragon.
Melek, Izzet Paragon is more expensive than the previous two commanders, which requires six mana and has two power and four toughness. Melek has the ability to double the value of all sorceries and instants by copying them, allowing the duplicate to new targets at the same time.
Additionally, while Melek, Izzet Paragon doesn’t draw its controller cards, it will enable its controller to play with the top of their library revealed, allowing them to cast the top best card provided its sorcery or instant.
This ability of Melek allows its controller to chain numerous cards well together even though their hands run dry, which does provide an advantage against other players. Melek, Izzet Paragon deserves a place on this best MTG Izzet commander list.
4. Saheeli, The Gifted
Similar to Dalakos, Saheeli, this card is another commander that has their abilities based on artifacts. Furthermore, Saheeli is a rare Planeswalker that can be used as a commander.
This card needs four mana and has four loyalty since it’s a Planeswalker. Saheeli has three abilities; each utilizes artifacts in entirely different ways, which is that an agile commander can adopt various consequences on the fly. Her first ability is a +1 ability, which can protect herself by creating a 1/1 servo artifact creature token. And Saheeli has the ability to reduce the spell’s cost which is the same as the number of artifacts under her controller’s control.
Finally, she can use her powerful ability to create backups of each artifact her controller controls when she has seven loyalty. This is why she is one of the best Izzet commanders in MTG. Each of her ability has different uses, some can be used to protect herself, some has the ability to reduce the cost of a spell, and some can utilize the use of artifacts and bring the controller of Saheeli colossal advantage.
5. Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
Red has often been related to token strategies like those within the goblin decks. Still, this card is an exception where it puts the Izzet twist on classical token decks.
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, cost six mana in exchange for a 4/4 stat. As a start, Brudiclad provides each creature token of its controller with haste, bringing a meaningful buff to numerous tokens. Furthermore, Brudiclad creates a 2/1 Myr token starting from the very beginning of each controller’s combat turn.
However, neither of these abilities are Brudiclad’s ultimate ability, bringing Brudiclad to MTG’s best Izzet commanders. Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer’s last ability let its controller’s every turn choose any of the tokens they controlled and turn every other token to a duplicate the target token. This may sound a little fuzzy to you; however, you will quickly discover how powerful and effective this ability is when brought into battle. Multiple interesting synergies can be done using Brudiclad’s final ability and blue spells since the spells can create tokens of other creatures.
With blue spells and Brudiclad, the value of tokens will grow significantly. If used correctly, the tokens become extremely powerful, which is highly likely to end the game. This is why Brudiclad is one of the best MTG Izzet commanders.
6. Jhoira Of The Ghitu
This commander is one that’s about trading mana for time. Jhoira of the Ghitu requires three mana which is a reasonably low price and has a stat of 2/2. However, the worth of those commanders is not because of their stat, and it’s because of their abilities.
For two mana, Jhoira has the ability to suspend cards, exiling them for 4-turns and adding 4-time counters on them. However, a counter would be removed at the starting of each controller of Jhoira’s turn.
Jhoira of the Ghitu allows the powerful creatures with much-converted mana cost to be suspended for the amount of time that’s mere fractions of their mana cost, which subverts the high mana cost of those creatures. While working with spell-like “Timecrafting” or “Fury Charm” that has the ability to remove time counters, there would be few better efficient ways of playing high-cost Izzet creatures.
7. Mizzix Of The Izmagnus
Being one commander from the “Commander 2015” which uses experience counters, the card – Mizzix of the Izmagnus is one commander that utilizes experience counters to cast sorceries and instants with good efficiency.
Mizzix of the Izmagnus cost four mana and has the stat of 2/2. Whenever the controller of Mizzix is Mizzix of the Izmagnus costs four mana and has the stat of 2/2. Whenever the controller of Mizzix is casing sorcery or instant, if the mana value of that sorcery of instant is higher than the experience counters the controller of Mizzix has, then the controller of Mizzix gains one experience counter.
Moreover, as Mizzix gains more and more experience counters, more significant and more massive spells can be cast for a smaller amount of mana.
With this ability, Mizzix of the Izmagnus will be more beneficial to utilize sorceries and instants. With cheaper spells, the controller of Mizzix can subvert less and find their way to winning.
8. The Locust God
You may dislike insects, but you can’t refuse this card. Being a commander that is capable of turning cards draws into board presence that can be immediately helpful to you. The Locust God has a simple but effective ability.
Starting with The Locust God’s first ability – whenever the controller of The Locust God selects a card, then a 1/1 insect token with flying and haste will be created. With flying and haste, those small insects are able to avoid many blockers & attack immediately. Through time, numerous insect tokens will be made; those will come in great numbers & shouldn’t be underestimated.
Supporting its first ability, The Locust God’s second ability allows the player to draw a card and then discard a card, which helps increase the speed of gaining numerous insects tokens. Furthermore, when The Locust God dies, it will be returned to its owner’s hand at the beginning of the next end step. Relatively, this god of insects would be one of the best MTG Izzet commanders.
9. Niv-Mizzet, Parun
No matter how many incarnations Niv-Mizzet appears, they all follow a similar trend of dealing damage whenever a card is drawn and drawing cards. This card is currently the best of all the Niv-Mizzet available, and of course, on this list.
Costing six mana that is made up of three blue mana and three red mana, Niv-Mizzet, Parun has the stat of 5/5. Firstly, Niv-Mizzet deals one damage to all targets once its controller draws a card. Minor but steady damage every round.
Moreover, the owner of Niv-Mizzet may draw a card when anyone casts sorcery or instant. With these two abilities together, the opponents’ life will be callous since once they plan anything big and start working, you will have more cards than them, as more cards lead to more options and answers.
10. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
Similar to Niv-Mizzet, with it, your card will hardly run out. Being a mighty commander, Jhoira allows the owner to draw a card once an artifact, saga, or legendary spell is cast. With this ability, cards will constantly go in Jhoira’s owner’s hands.
This incarnation of Jhoira is one of the strongest choices for players that are artifact-based, which will This incarnation of Jhoira is one most vital choice for players that are artifact-based, which will constantly serve card advantage to the player. So it’s one of the best MTG Izzet commanders as well.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the best MTG Izzet Commander?
- The best Izzet Commander depends on your personal play style. Some prefer Niv-Mizzet, Parun for card draw and damage, while others like the unpredictability of Arjun, the Shifting Flame.
- How do I build an MTG Izzet Commander deck?
- Start with your commander and build around their strengths. Include a balance of instants, sorceries, creatures, and artifacts that align with your commander’s abilities and the overall deck strategy.
- What is the mana curve and why is it important?
- The mana curve is the distribution of the costs of the cards in your deck. A balanced mana curve ensures you have impactful plays throughout the game.
- How do I use my Izzet Commander effectively?
- Use your Izzet Commander to guide your overall strategy. Plan your turns around their abilities, and make sure your deck supports their strengths.
- Can I use other guilds’ cards in my Izzet Commander deck?
- As long as the card’s color identity matches your commander’s, you can use it in your deck. This means you could include cards from other guilds if they’re red, blue, or colorless.
Conclusion
Building an Izzet Commander deck is an exciting process. With the right commander and a well-constructed deck, you can dominate the game with powerful spells, explosive combos, and dynamic gameplay.
