r/MagicAlchemy • u/tarmy827 • Aug 01 '26
Izzet Easel is busted.
Hello all. My name is Tarmy and I really like alchemy. I play it a lot. Honestly it’s my favorite format. I know a lot of magic players hate it but I don’t care. It’s fun. It’s really fun right now because there are a lot of busted cards running around because of Alchemy: Strixhaven, and because it’s much different than standard with way less sets since they changed the old rotation system. Anyway I know it seems like I only post to complain but it’s easy to critique the things you love. But let’s be real. Something went and chewed its way out of the blast doors and the mad scientists that are the Alchemy dev team need to find a way to wrangle an unleashed monster and nerf it a bit
https://moxfield.com/decks/d2Gc3zvGHE6cC2uQQgyTxA
This is the deck I have been curb stomping with. The only real trouble the deck has is mirrors and occasional aggro and green deck nut draws but for the most part feels pretty unbeatable a lot of the time. It’s clear that Prismari is the Gryffindor of the Strixhaven school and WOTC is the Dumbledore handing them 150 house points “for being the most courageous”. Right at the end. Anyway, I want to go over the cards that need to be nerfed because quite frankly there are a lot of them. Starting with the most broken.
[[Inspiring Easel]]
I have a group chat of friends that are all avid magic players. We mostly play commander these days but back in the day we played a lot of modern. One of our friends is a judge. They are all paper players so every now and again I like to send them alchemy cards to see what they think. Everyone who saw it was like wtf. Why would they make this. It’s insane. I know I thought the same thing when I first saw it. It is far and away the strongest 2 drop mana rock ever printed.
I’d like to change things up a bit so I will present my proposed nerf first then breakdown each change and why I think it needs to happen
Easel
Comes into play tapped
Tap: add U or R. Spend this mana only to cast an instant or sorcery.
Tap: Choose an Instant or Sorcery in your hand. It gains Incoporate 1UR
At a bare minimum this fucking thing needs to come into play tapped. Having a 2 drop rock that can already fix for any color of mana or activate to eventually copy a spell shouldn’t be a thing. You should have to wait a turn to figure out what to do and it also stops the turn 3 double illuminating lash. Also after playing it with Interdisciplinary Studies it can’t fix for any colors of mana. Crushing mirrors by being able to tutor a [[Naturalize]] in an Izzet deck is unfair.
The copy cost is way, way too low. 3 mana to copy a spell that the Easel can already ramp for may even still be too good but free [[Fork]] without having to even use a card is way too cheap. Bravo on making Incorporate playable though devs, but the monkeys paw really curled up on that one.
[[Summitfest Closing Ceremony]]
Another card that made my friends go wtf, the idea is very simple. People love rituals. Hell one of my favorite cards in magic to cast will always be Dark Ritual. But rituals are busted. They are among the most banned cards in all of magic so the logic is simple. If we make the ritual more expensive, it won’t be as broken. Wrong. In an environment where Easel and Tablet are legal, turn 4 cast Summitfest win the game is very, very doable. I actually think this is an easy fix.
Summitfest.
Covercast (super cool ability btw, alchemy devs if you are reading this please do more of these effects.)
Starting Intensity 5
Add X mana in any combination of U/R where X is this cards intensity. Draw a card.
By starting the card mana neutral akin to [[Manamorphose]], and only growing it by 1 when triggering covercast it makes this card much, much more reasonable. Your first one will not generate mana by itself, you would have to cast Rapturous Moment first and it slows the deck down a tic, but it’s still super easy to win the game with Thor.
[[Interdisciplinary Studies]]
Boy this one flew under the radar for me. But then I put on my thinking cap and realized something. In the first Strixhaven set [[Divide by Zero]] ended up being banned in standard. What got it banned wasn’t its spell bounce, but Learn.
Learn is an absurd mechanic. [[Wish]] is one of the strongest effects in magic. It allows you to have access to your sideboard from your main board. A simple but deceptively powerful effect, and if you look at this decks sideboard you will realize that we have access to not only answers to decks that can harm us, but game finishers like Capstone too.
WOTC learned their lesson and printed only lessons without learning lessons cause learning lessons is broken. But the dev team said naw lets a do a learn card. And honestly, it’s not completely unreasonable but the shell it’s in supercharges this card. I think the nerfs on Easel and Summitfest are much more important, and if they happen and are meaningful this card probably doesn’t need a nerf, but if I have to I would say make it a sorcery to match the power level of Stock Up. There is a reason why most Wish effects are sorceries.
[[Illuminating Lash]]
The sleeper agent of the format of the if the sleeper agent was a terminator and the German shepherds at the gate are furiously barking at it. This card has been OP since the day it was released and I’m honestly glad the more broken cards shed a spotlight on this monster.
Black sees very little play in alchemy for a simple reason: this card. Why play [[Fell]] when you can play cantripping Fell? This card is so far above the power scale it’s nuts. Copying it with Easel leads to easily the most broken plays I’ve ever made in magic. Imagine you an are green player at your local modern tournament and you opponent shows up and casts a Wrath of God that draws them 2 cards. This is how strong this feels. Nerf is very simple: 2 damage instead of 3. 3 makes it cantripping Lightning Bolt. That is too good. It should be cantripping Shock.
[[Consumed by History]]
Pyroclasm wasn’t good enough, eh? This and Lash combine to make this deck typically dominate green decks which ultimately have the speed and consistency to beat you, but access to either and god forbid both just cements this deck as the top of the format. Not to mention copying with Easel and being able to clap bigger cheeks. I actually like this card a lot. Simple nerf: Make the Unearth 4. Dropping it from 5 will allow aggro to get back on their feet and really pressure the greedy combo player and gives an awesome high risk high reward dynamic to an undercosted board wipe.
In conclusion the rest of the standard cards can’t be nerfed but still get some discussion. Tablet is the strongest 3 drop mana rock ever printed and has perfect synergy with everything in the deck. Thor is what really jumped this deck up in power, before I ran [[Indris]] and it was good conjuring Storm Bolts into the deck, but Thor wins games extremely fast. Rapturous Moment is the glue holding the whole thing together, being the other card that makes mana and generates higher intensity with Covercast leading to Summitfests that can generate 20 mana by themselves. Eat your heart out [[Mana Geyser]]
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. All I’m saying is that this deck is broken, and the broken feeling you get playing it feels great, but yeah. It’s far and away the best deck in the format and something needs to be done about it.
(Arena Devs if you are still reading do this: Summitfest is Covercast 5 since it triggers off of casting 5-drops so do like Covercast 2 that triggers off of 2s. Do like a Grizzly Bear that’s like a Relentless Rats and gets a perpetual buff every time you cast one and you can put as many of them in the deck as you want please WOTC I am begging you do this it will be awesome)
2
u/jaykenton Aug 01 '26
Yeah I mean everyone who played more than 3 events in Alchemy know all this. However I found that with Squirrel Combo I keep a positive winrate vs Izzet Decks. Squirrel Combo is equally busted, and can win t3, something that Izzet cannot ever do. These 2 decks are the best of Alchemy and almost surely will see a nerf soon.
2
u/tarmy827 Aug 01 '26
Do you have a list? I feel like I crush just about every squirrel deck but every now and again they can sneak through a win with a double cub draw but maybe I’m playing against suboptimal list. I would enjoy taking a break from this pile for a bit
3
u/jaykenton Aug 01 '26
16 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Stomping Ground
2 Ba Sing Se4 Llanowar Elves
4 Gene Pollinator
4 Verdant Dread
4 Badgermole Cub
4 Enduring Vitality
4 Formidable Speaker
3 Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu
3 The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
1 Shocking Sharpshooter
1 Ouroboroid
1 Lavaleaper4 Nature's Rhythm
Beware this deck is actually hard to pilot until you start to memorise all the weird sequencing. Sharpshooter is the main wincon after you unlocked infinite mana and infinite pull of cards with Verdant Dread. Lavaleaper is a sort of Plan B that works very well because it packs together Shan-Chi and a wincon with infinite Squirrels. Ouroboroid is there to win against Authority of the Consul. It's valuable mostly in that specific matchup, and must be played to just bruteforce a win, or to make them spend their first mass removal. Craterhoof is not necessary. The deck can almost nothing against Clarion. The Selensya/Abzan variant has card to deal with it, but this version is geared to be just faster and beat primarily Izzet, not Azorius. Azorius has the best matchup agains this.
1
u/tarmy827 Aug 01 '26
I appreciate it. Most of the lists I play against are simic or straight mono green, I think the red and sharpshooter give you what you need to cross the finish line
2
u/Viktar33 Aug 01 '26
That's the deck I made. I know because it is a very peculiar sideboard and you can find it in untapped. The real power house of the deck is actually Thor with all that mana producing spells.
2
u/tarmy827 Aug 01 '26
It is something I found on untapped, I appreciate it. I made a couple changes to the SB but for the most part it’s intact. I kinda glossed over it but Thor really is the straw that broke the camels back for this deck. Other wincons weren’t bad, just slow. Thor kills wicked fast.
1
u/Viktar33 Aug 01 '26
I didn't invented much in this deck. I swapped Stock Up for Interdisciplinary studies (and added sideboard) and Thor as a wincon, instead of Prismari or the big otter.
As a wincon is 10 better. Usually you don't have enough mana or card to follow Prismari, but Thor rebuys you a card, so in 1 go generates both. Also you don't need a spell to deal damage to the face, because he deals damage itself.
The win rate is insane, at some point was well over 90%. https://mtga.untapped.gg/profile/d5e60039-29e7-46b4-a4e7-ae91f143435e/IBLJNVDSIVEUJOZMZRHCYUMSJM/deck/3dc94bb4-a36d-4156-8e7d-b3c8f9672e1d?gameType=constructed&constructedType=ranked&constructedFormat=alchemy
2
u/TangerineTasty9787 Aug 03 '26
It didn't have a great match up against Omni, but they nerfed Omni, so....it exploded.
I've been day one with Alchemy, but I've increasingly had to swap back to standard, which is also bad
1
u/MTGCardFetcher Aug 01 '26
All cards
Inspiring Easel - (G) (SF) (txt)
Naturalize - (G) (SF) (txt)
Fork - (G) (SF) (txt)
Summitfest Closing Ceremony - (G) (SF) (txt)
Manamorphose - (G) (SF) (txt)
Interdisciplinary Studies - (G) (SF) (txt)
Divide by Zero - (G) (SF) (txt)
Wish - (G) (SF) (txt)
Illuminating Lash - (G) (SF) (txt)
Fell - (G) (SF) (txt)
Consumed by History - (G) (SF) (txt)
Indris - (G) (SF) (txt)
Mana Geyser - (G) (SF) (txt)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call
1
u/Agatone05 13d ago
Izzet siempre esta roto, es hasta obscena la cantidad de arquetipos en esa combinación de colores que son buenas, verde tampoco se queda atrás, al menos cuando veo que ya me van a encadenar los sumiffest mejor me voy, y si puedo evito los combates con esos jugadores.
El Easel debería o hacer la adición de UR a un hechizo solo 1 vez y desaparecer como muchos permanentes con efectos asi que han sido infrecuentes, o hacer que solamente añada ese efecto a hechizos de coste 2 o menos, pero que lo haga muchas veces ya es excesivo, saca demasiado valor a hechizos (y sobretodo en partida avanzada).
Coincido con tu idea de Summifest, aunque yo le quitaria el robar carta, quizas que descarte primero y luego robe una carta para que tampoco sea injugable, pero ya de por si genera mucho mana y se puede encadenar con otros hechizos, por mi que la borren de la existencia (?
Aun asi hay muchos arquetipos por explorar, aunque sin cambios no creo que ocurra, BO3 esta muy vacio :(
6
u/Affectionate-Cod8808 Aug 01 '26
Unfortunately most of these proposed changes will not dethrone Izzet as the most dominant color pair in Alchemy or save the format from being a combo slopfest, even if WoTC bothers to take 2 seconds to look at the win rate and play rate of Alchemy decks. Players will pivot to Vivi which is currently almost as powerful if not on par with the Izzet Storm deck. It somehow took WoTC 4 entire months to nerf the Aquatic Subtlety degenerate deck which pops off on turn 3 and 4 consistently while Summitfest usually drops on turn 4 or 5 but can easily brick half the time.
The crux of the problem is that the format has been plagued with uninteractive combo decks since the start of the year that sits at the top of meta. We had Kona(nerfed to 5 mana), then Aquatic Subtlety(nerfed last month to scry instead of discard), then Vivi Sewer combo(Sewer got banned), then this Summitfest Easel combo. I can already see the Wizard's Staff from the upcoming Hobbit set pushing Vivi to Tier 0 yet again.
If the devs truly cared about the format, they would keep a close eye on the meta and instantly rework or tweak any clear outliers in the meta instead of pussyfooting around for half a year hoping the broken combo will somehow die down on its own. After all, adjusting the stats or wording on a card is far less controversial than outright banning a physical card in a paper format.