Brewing with Young Pyromancer

It started out as a joke; something fun to play at a Modern tournament at one of my local shops. As I played it I was joking around and my opponents were laughing as well. My record with the deck is no laughing matter though, as I went 11-1 in matches over the course of three tournaments.

I had haphazardly thrown this list together in about twenty minutes a couples days before the tournament since I wouldn’t have time to build anything else because of my work schedule. I had been wondering for a couple days what to play for the upcoming Modern tournament waffling between my norm of RUG Delver and something with [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] or [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] when it hit me that I could just run Izzet with [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]. This led me to the thought that I would be playing strictly tempo as there would be no beefy win condition like I had in RUG Delver with [card]Tarmogoyf[/card].

This is where I ended up after that mad twenty minutes of brewing.

[deck title= Izzet Pyromancer 1.0]

[Lands]

*4 Steam Vents

*1 Sulfur Falls

*4 Misty Rainforest

*4 Scalding Tarn

*4 Island

*1 Mountain

[/Lands]

[Creatures]

*2 Grim Lavamancer

*4 Delver of Secrets

*4 Young Pyromancer

*4 Snapcaster Mage

*3 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*3 Vapor Snag

*4 Gitaxian Probe

*4 Serum Visions

*4 Lightning Bolt

*3 Izzet Charm

*4 Remand

*3 Electrolyze

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Grim Lavamancer

*1 Vapor Snag

*2 Spell Pierce

*2 Smash to Smithereens

*2 Jace Beleren

*2 Vedalken Shackles

*3 Blood Moon

*2 Dismember

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

Tournaments

Tournament #1

Round 1 – Selesnya Hatebears 2-0

Round 2 – Simic Delver 2-0

Round 3 – R/W/U Control 2-0

Round 4 – Mono Green Aggro 2-1

I felt like I was going to get crushed going into the tournament, but was pleasantly surprised when I ended up dropping only a single game due to my own negligence against Mono Green. I did however feel like my sideboard needed a lot of work afterwards. I also only played against one deck I would expect to play against at a high-level Modern tournament, which may be one reason why the deck did so well.

After giving it a try for the first tournament I decided some changes were in order, mostly for the sideboard. So the next day I spent three hours or so poring over the cards that want to be in the main and what I needed in the sideboard. Some of the cards I looked at pretty hard but they didn’t quite make it due to a lack of space.

Here’s where I ended up after I looked over everything, and what I played the next three weeks for Modern.

[deck title= Izzet Pyromancer 2.0]

[Lands]

*4 Steam Vents

*1 Sulfur Falls

*4 Misty Rainforest

*4 Scalding Tarn

*4 Island

*1 Mountain

[/Lands]

[Creatures]

*2 Grim Lavamancer

*4 Delver of Secrets

*4 Young Pyromancer

*4 Snapcaster Mage

*2 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Vapor Snag

*4 Gitaxian Probe

*4 Serum Visions

*4 Lightning Bolt

*3 Izzet Charm

*4 Remand

*3 Electrolyze

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*1 Grim Lavamancer

*2 Pillar of Flame

*3 Spell Snare

*2 Smash to Smithereens

*2 Deprive

*2 Dismember

*3 Blood Moon

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

The [card]Vendilion Clique[/card], while good, just didn’t do as much work as the [card]Vapor Snag[/card] did; I felt like the deck was a little creature-heavy as well. This sideboard was better thought-out after seeing some of the deck’s strengths and weaknesses, though I still need to play against some combo decks to get a better idea of whether anything else is needed.

The Mana Base

After playing RUG Delver for almost the entirety of the Modern formats existence I knew I wanted to run as few lands as possible. Keeping the deck two colors allowed me to go as low as eighteen lands as long as I ran a significant amount of cantrips and I didn’t add any lands that produce colorless mana. Being in two colors also means I need to run four [card]Steam Vents[/card] and eight fetchlands to hit my mana consistently, and running the eight blue fetchlands allows the deck to run [card]Blood Moon[/card] without having to worry about getting hurt by it. I still needed two more red sources, so I put in a [card]Sulfur Falls[/card] and a [card]Mountain[/card], then rounded the mana base out with four [card]Island[/card].

The other lands I considered were [card]Faerie Conclave[/card], [card]Desolate Lighthouse[/card], [card]Halimar Depths[/card], [card]Mutavault[/card], and [card]Ghitu Encampment[/card]. Some number of these may prove to be useful in the future, but as of right now there’s just not enough room in the mana base for them.

The Creatures

It was pretty easy to pick the creatures this deck needed to function, using [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] as a starting place. I knew I needed to play a lot of spells quickly, so keeping the instant and sorcery high limited me to which creatures I could play. With that in mind I needed to find a way to use this to my advantage. The core creatures became [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] to team up with those [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] in an aggressive way. Some form of disruption was needed to keep creatures off the board and nasty cards out of my opponents’ hands, and that led to [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card] and [card]Vendilion Clique[/card].

The other creatures I considered were [card]Goblin Guide[/card] and [card]Spellstutter Sprite[/card], which, while they do play well with the rest of the deck the other creatures, are just better choices when considering what the vision of the deck is.

The Spells

I knew to maximize the effectiveness of [card]Young Pyromancer[/card], I needed to run a bunch of cheap spells and cantrips. The starting point was the two most efficient of each in the format [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] and [card]Serum Visions[/card]. It was a little more difficult from there as there were a lot of close choices. One of the tough choices was in [card]Remand[/card] versus [card]Mana Leak[/card], but the tempo of [card]Remand[/card] won out in the end. Another was [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] versus [card]Thought Scour[/card], but being able to cast [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] for free and the information it gets you in game one felt a lot more important than getting extra cards into the graveyard. As it became more of a tempo deck [card]Vapor Snag[/card] became a great choice to fight bigger creatures and clear the board for the onslaught of weenies. I still felt like there was still some more removal, counterspells, card draw needed, and [card]Izzet Charm[/card] fit the bill as an all-in-one stop. And to top out the curve I decided some [card]Electrolyze[/card] were needed to slow creature assaults and to get an edge on some of the decks that it takes longer to win against.

There were quite a few more spells that I considered that didn’t make it like [card]Into the Roil[/card], [card]Dispel[/card], [card]Burst Lightning[/card], [card]Forked Bolt[/card], [card]Flame Slash[/card], [card]Turn/Burn[/card], [card]Searing Blaze[/card], [card]Mizzium Skin[/card], [card]Cryptic Command[/card], and [card]Sage’s Dowsing[/card]. Many of these I intend to try out in the future, but testing that many cards one event per week could take the rest of the year.

The Sideboard

There were a lot of cards I wanted in my sideboard, but I ended up having to shave numbers to cover all the major bases. The first auto include was [card]Blood Moon[/card] to steal a lot of games the deck doesn’t have any business winning otherwise. The next was [card]Dismember[/card], as big creatures like [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] and [card]Restoration Angel[/card] are pretty difficult to deal with in Blue and Red. After testing I felt like a hard counter was needed against other decks with counterspells and combo decks, the winner there was [card]Deprive[/card] due to it only costing two mana. Next, I needed a way to deal with [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] without letting them resolve, this led to [card]Spell Snare[/card] which lets me deal with lots of things even when I’m on the draw. Next was dealing with artifacts in a semi-profitable way; there are a few other options but I felt like [card]Smash to Smithereens[/card] was the best use of resources. Playing against [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] and [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] made me realize that I needed [card]Pillar of Flame[/card] to not get destroyed by card disadvantage against them. And lastly, I decided an extra [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card] was needed against the aggressive decks, because if he sticks for a turn he can turn the whole game around quite quickly.

Tournament #2

Round 1 – Mono Green Aggro 2-0

Round 2 – Red Affinity 2-1

Round 3 – Jund 2-0

Round 4 – Gruul Zoo 2-1

Round 5 – R/W/U Control 2-1

With another tournament undefeated I really couldn’t think of any changes I wanted to make to the deck that would benefit against a normal metagame. I did play against four decks I would expect to see at a high level of play this time though, leaving me with a few more game losses than the last tournament.

Tournament #3

Round 1 – Mono Black Vampires 2-0

Round 2 – Mono Green Aggro 2-0

Round 3 – Bogles 1-2

I had been researching ways to fight the Bogle deck if I were to play against it for a few days prior to this tournament, and had heard about the card [card]Aura Barbs[/card] but was unable to get any to try. I also learned that [card]Hibernation[/card] is Modern-legal as well after this event, and would definitely consider it if you expect a lot of Bogles running rampant. This time I only played against one deck I would expect to see, and I lost to it due to keeping one land hands in both games two and three. I would expect to lose to this deck pretty consistently though, as it had some pretty terrible draws against me.

After my loss to Bogles I felt I needed more ways to interact after Sideboard so I added black to disrupt my opponent’s plans. This gives an added advantage against the combo decks in the format as well as the ability to cast [card]Dismember[/card] without losing any life.

[deck title= Izzet Pyromancer 3.0]

[Lands]

*3 Steam Vents

*2 Watery Grave

*4 Misty Rainforest

*4 Scalding Tarn

*4 Island

*1 Mountain

[/Lands]

[Creatures]

*2 Grim Lavamancer

*4 Delver of Secrets

*4 Young Pyromancer

*4 Snapcaster Mage

*2 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*3 Vapor Snag

*4 Gitaxian Probe

*4 Serum Visions

*4 Lightning Bolt

*2 Spell Snare

*2 Izzet Charm

*4 Remand

*1 Dismember

*2 Electrolyze

[/Spells]

[Sideboard]

*3 Thoughtseize

*2 Pillar of Flame

*2 Smelt

*2 Devour Flesh

*2 Bonfire of the Damned

*3 Blood Moon

*1 Dismember

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

If you want something fun to try out for your next Modern tournament I would suggest giving Izzet Pyromancer a try, I’m not sure I want to play anything right else now.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below, and I will try to get to them.

Thanks for Reading,

Josh Milliken

@joshuamilliken of Twitter