Mio's Izzet Murktide List

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

Ever since MH2 came out, Izzet Murktide has been one of my favorite Modern decks.
Back then Ragavan was too expensive, so I shelved the idea.
After plenty of ups and downs, I finally finished building the whole Murktide deck this May. I’ll get into the details of that journey when I have time.

I wrote a similar article on my own blog before, but that was back before Preordain got unbanned. If you want to look back at that old article, click here.

Decklist & Deck Tech

As usual, here’s the decklist first.
In my last article, I mentioned that I was considering two ways to add Preordain: eight one-mana cantrips or replacing Consider with Preordain.
The option I finally went with is an incomplete version of eight one-mana cantrips: I ended up running only seven.
Why pile on a bunch of cards that dig for things when I could just add one more of the thing I’m actually looking for, XD
For example, I recently found in testing that the deck gets stuck on lands very easily, so I swapped the fourth Consider for another land-finding card.
After all, the original slot was there to cycle an Island and find a land, and if I can’t reliably find lands, I’m really playing 17 lands, rather than 19 lands with two of them being cycling lands that just sit there.

Creatures

The creature suite is about the same as what over ninety percent of the meta is playing: a full set of Ragavan and DRC, two Subtlety, and three Murktide Regent.
Ragavan is the strongest one-drop in the format. It feels great against tempo, midrange, and control alike, generating resources and Treasures. Awesome.
DRC is the main graveyard-filling tool, and it also filters the top of your library when you draw. After delirium it becomes a 3/3 flyer and deals damage fast. It has to attack, which is sometimes awkward, but overall the upsides outweigh the downsides.
Subtlety is there to deal with the one-mana Scam in the current environment, and with the Omnath / Teferi, Time Raveler / Karn, the Great Creator in four-color elementals that can’t be countered.
Murktide Regent is the only big threat now. We used to have Ledger Shredder too, but ever since Orcish Bowmasters burst onto the scene, a card that requires you to draw an extra card had to be painfully cut.

Spells

The instants and sorceries are pretty straightforward. Lightning Bolt and Unholy Heat are burn spells, used to clear the board.
Consider, Preordain, and Expressive Iteration are the cantrips.
The rest are counterspells. The current environment is a bit nasty, so we run a lot of counters (sideboard included), which feels slightly unhealthy = =
Also, I personally don’t run a full playset of Lightning Bolt. In the current environment it’s three at most, since even three can’t handle some boards.
And when I have two burn spells in hand: before delirium, if hitting for two is enough, I’ll prioritize discarding Unholy Heat; after delirium, I’ll prioritize discarding Lightning Bolt, unless I’m saving it to go face for lethal.

Mishra’s Bauble

Filtering + extra information + peeking with DRC + enabling delirium. Strong card.

Sideboard

The sideboard is no different from last time (and there isn’t much to adjust, since the format still looks about the same), so the following is copy-pasted (I’m lazy).

Two Engineered Explosives to fight Rhinos + Hammer.
Two Flusterstorm to fight cascade.
Two Cast into the Fire to fight artifacts (especially The One Ring).
Two Dress Down to fight Elementals + Urza’s Saga.
One Unlicensed Hearse is just for graveyard decks (like Living End / Grinding Station).
One Blood Moon + one Magus of the Moon to fight Urza’s Saga, multicolor decks, green Titan decks, Creativity, and so on. I chose to bring one Magus to surprise opponents in closed-decklist events: Murktide opponents usually don’t bring many removal spells (some even take a few out), so the creature version of Blood Moon is a bit better than the regular one, since it dodges counters and removal.
One Force of Negation + one Mystical Dispute \more counters/
One Fury to fight small-creature decks like Boros Burn or mirror matches.
One Commandeer to fight high-value decks like Creativity. Against Creativity, grabbing the opponent’s Karns and The One Ring feels great (in the mirror, whoever lands the small Karn first wins), and green Titan decks run The One Ring now too, so taking it and drawing cards off it feels great as well.

Although Commandeer exiles two cards from hand, and Commandeer itself is a third card, so spending three cards to steal one Ring feels like a bad deal, and it enters without any anti-everything protection (you didn’t cast it).
But think about it for a moment: the turn it comes in, you tap the Ring to draw one card, and on your own turn you tap it again to draw two, so you’ve effectively lost no cards, and you get a lasting draw engine (even though it keeps costing you life). Sounds pretty good, right (?

Match Detail & Piloting Caution

Starting Hands & Mulligan

By my understanding, Murktide opening hands are usually quite loose (in closed-decklist events):
1 ~ 2x Lands (not color-screwed)
1 ~ 2x One Drop Creatures
3 ~ 4x Cantrip or Removal or Counters (one of each is best)

For example:
2x Lands
1x Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1x Dragon’s Rage Channeler
1x Preordain
1x Counterspell
1x Lightning Bolt

Very comfortable, a hand that can handle anything.

Or something more extreme:
1x Fetch Lands
1x Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
2x Dragon’s Rage Channeler
2x Consider
1x Spell Pierce

You can keep this too, it’s just a bit more painful, and there are some small differences I’ll mention later.

The only hands you truly can’t keep are:

1. All lands / no lands
2. Nothing but counters/burn besides lands, meaning no small creature or cantrip (though you might consider keeping in certain specific matchups)
3. One land with no cantrip

The reason you can’t keep no-land or one-land-no-cantrip hands is obvious: no follow-up resources, and the land is likely to die halfway down the road.
A notable exception: against Boros Burn, Hammer, and other near-aggro decks that force Murktide to play almost like a control deck, you might consider keeping those hands on the draw (usually in sideboard games or open-decklist events).

Yes, that’s right! Izzet Murktide is a control deck that meets the bare minimum of support: cheap removal (Lightning Bolt, Unholy Heat), hard counters (Counterspell, Subtlety, Force of Negation) plus some soft counters (Spell Pierce, Mystical Dispute), a powerful finisher (two swings from Murktide), and cheap resource engines (Consider, Preordain, Expressive Iteration). It’s only missing sustained resources and a powerful sweeper (though putting a sweeper in a tempo deck is a weird idea in the first place).

Also, I personally think DRC matters more than Ragavan. In quite a few matchups (at least in my experience practicing since the end of July), the opponent was killed by a post-delirium DRC. I jokingly say I’m playing DRC aggro XD

Piloting Caution

Dragon’s Rage Channeler

DRC First?

When you have both DRC and a non-creature spell in hand, which do you cast first?
Simply put, the standard is whether DRC will die to the opponent’s removal after it enters.
For example, if the opponent plays black and we haven’t hit delirium yet, casting DRC first might get it shot down by Orcish Bowmasters.
Or if the opponent plays a deck with Unholy Heat, DRC could be hit for two before the opponent even has delirium.
Most commonly lately, against green Creativity, I wonder whether DRC will just get exiled by Warping Wail if I cast it first.
If you can dodge these threats (or the opponent’s hand is already empty), then of course the most efficient play is DRC first and then the non-creature spell.

Of course, if the graveyard is one card short of delirium and you have an instant to respond with (Consider, Lightning Bolt, etc.), you can use that as leverage to bluff the opponent, but I don’t recommend it personally. Playing it safe is better.

Also, we can skip the combat step and trigger delirium in the second main phase, so DRC doesn’t necessarily have to swing for those three points.

F**k You Endurance

DRC’s natural predator is the same as that of our former strongest vanilla, Tarmogoyf: it gets ground into the dirt by Endurance.
Since DRC must attack once delirium is on, the opponent can respond before blockers are declared by flashing in Endurance to shuffle our graveyard away. That really hurts when we have multiple DRCs, and the opponent can combine it with other creatures (like any random 2/2) to block and trade away all of our value.
If I have an instant in hand at that point, I’ll consider holding it and waiting for the opponent to act, then trying to retrigger delirium before blockers are declared.

Cast Murktide Before or After Combat?

Usually we cast Murktide after combat, in order to increase the board’s output.
But if the opponent is playing a deck that might have Endurance, or we need a blocker, we can also make a very big Murktide before combat and throw all the problems at the opponent to deal with.

Mishra’s Bauble

When do you look at the opponent’s library, and when do you look at your own?
Most of the time you look at the top of the opponent’s library, and only occasionally at your own:

1. When you have a land-finding card that can shuffle the top of your library, deciding whether to find the land before or after drawing the card from Bauble
2. When you’ve already looked at the opponent’s top card, and you look at your own top card to decide how to play right now

Also, when I have Ragavan, I wait until Ragavan’s combat damage trigger has resolved before activating Bauble, unless damage/resources/the board are really tight, in which case I decide whether to dash Ragavan to steal a card based on the opponent’s top card.

The best example here is the Boros Burn matchup: if the opponent will have lethal on board next turn and is tapped out now, I’d consider dashing Ragavan if stealing that card gives me a chance to counter-kill or stabilize, but if it’s just a land I’d consider casting it normally and keeping it as a blocker.
Another example is when the opponent is on white Hammer with no cards in hand and Sigarda’s Aid on board: if I see the top card won’t give them Colossus Hammer, I won’t dash Ragavan, but if it’s a combo piece, I’ll dash and steal it to see if I can scrape by for another turn.

Sideboarding Guild

The sideboarding plans here are my own, focused on commonly seen decks at tournaments, with the swap logic attached.
Because Modern has so many decks, I only list the top 14 decks by usage on MTGGoldfish over the two weeks before writing, plus a few other common decks.

Izzet Murktide (Mirror Match)

The same cards come in for the mirror, but what comes out depends on whether you’re on the play or the draw.
On the play we take out Unholy Heat to be more aggressive.
On the draw we take out Ragavan, because in the mirror it’s powerless unless it survives its first turn, and after that first turn it’s too easy to deal with.

What comes in is more counters, graveyard hate, and board control. We skip Force of Negation because we don’t want to go down too many cards.

On Play

On Draw

Rakdos Scam

Take out all the Ragavans, since they will absolutely get shot down by Bowmasters.
Beyond that, just bring in Dress Down, Fury, and Cast into the Fire. On the play you can consider adding another Unlicensed Hearse.
Dress Down shuts off all creatures with ETB effects, Fury clears the board, and Cast into the Fire handles Bowmasters and Ragavan.

Rhinos

Load up on EE and counters, then take out cards like Lightning Bolt, which can’t kill a Rhino, and Subtlety, which doesn’t counter much.

Mono-Green Tron

Mono-Green Tron is not easy to beat game one, but the sideboard games are far more comfortable, so don’t be discouraged even if you lose game one!
Blood Moon is a must, and we’ll also consider taking out all the burn (if you don’t need to cut that many cards, start with Unholy Heat, since Lightning Bolt can still go face).

Amulet Titan

Just don’t let the Titan do anything. Also, bring in every piece of artifact removal without hesitation.
We take out Lightning Bolt because there are no good targets, and in this matchup going face for three isn’t that important.

Yawgmoth

A tough matchup (or rather, there’s too little interaction). All we can do is max out graveyard hate and Dress Down.

4C/5C Omnath

It plays out much like green Creativity: the opponent’s cards all generate tons of resources, but unlike Creativity, the opponent gets messed up by Dress Down.
Because they’re multicolor decks, Blood Moon works wonders.

Hammer Time

A somewhat unfavorable matchup, where Murktide basically has to be the defender the whole game.
Basically all of our counters are too slow, so they all come out.

Burn

Load up on counters, that’s all there is to it.
Since Boros Burn is less common now, you can take out all the Unholy Heat, or it will probably sit stuck in your hand.

Living End

Personally I think this is a very hard matchup. The hope is to open with Hearse and land it on turn two.

Five-Color Creativity

Not too hard a matchup. Time your small creatures or your Murktide well, and if it survives, you win.

Death’s Shadow

It gets much easier once you kill their creatures and survive the early pressure, so only cheap removal comes in here.

Dimir Control

A very hard matchup, and the win rate on the draw is much lower.
All in all, we hope to open with DRC or Ragavan.
Lightning Bolt can’t do much of value here so it comes out, and don’t keep too many draw spells, or Bowmasters/Sheoldred will put too much life pressure on us.

Jund Sagavan

Basically you can take out all the non-creature counters and bring in small burn and Blood Moon instead.
On the draw you can also consider taking out Ragavan instead, though personally I still prefer the version with Ragavan.

Mill

Against mill, you basically need Murktide and Hearse to hold down the graveyard count, and you can’t keep giving the opponent resources.
We also bring in Commandeer to stop cards like Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Fractured Sanity, and Archive Trap that mill a huge number of cards at once.
Also, against mill it’s fine to run a few extra cards, since playing around 65 cards is still acceptable.

Domain Zoo

One of the matchups Blood Moon loves: if you wreck their mana, you have a chance to hold on.
Also, Engineered Explosives set to two works wonders, since there are quite a few two-drops these days.
If there are more one-drops on the board, setting it to one is fine too.

Epilogue

These past two weeks, thanks to Preordain’s unbanning, Murktide has returned to the front line, second only to Rakdos Scam in usage.
But that also makes it a target for other decks again. I may switch to Death’s Shadow for the upcoming MITQ, or try an Izzet midrange build with Dreadhorde Arcanist.
I hope to see you all at the MIT venue next spring.