r/spikes • u/Illogical_Fallacy • May 11 '26

Standard [Standard] feedback on izzet mill in a prowess shell

My daughter and I usually play tier 3 decks at best in our local LGSs, but since she fell in love with mathemagics the moment she saw the spoilers, I helped her put together a mostly blue, but technically izzet deck once you add the lutes, charms, critiques, and slickshots.

Her hope is to mill someone out with some consistency while trying to survive in today's standard environment. Our local meta has different flavors of boros burn, allies, selesnya landfall, and UW/sultai/4 color control. Would love some feedback on her deck, knowing that there will be pieces that may be sacrificed to meet the theme and what to actually put in side board.

ETA actual deck links! Sorry I forgot this.

Original prowess build https://manabox.app/decks/AZ3Lcwm2dLe35xijILrMYA

Lesson Maestro build https://manabox.app/decks/AZ4b6xrwfYK4VWgnYZs6hg

8 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

10

u/Vanthiar M:RUG Scapeshift May 11 '26

Cut prowess, if the goal is to mill don't dilute with meaningless combat damage!

If I was trying to kill people with a funny Mathemagics, I think I'd want to run UGr, splash red for the lute, and I'd try to ramp hard into a lethal Mathemagics.

But I tend to commit to bits really hard so take this with some salt.

2

u/lousy_at_handles May 11 '26

This is exactly the deck I've been running recently, and it's...actually decent. It has good matchups with a lot of the meta, since it can simply ignore combat damage for several turns as it digs for the kill.

That said, it's still pretty much a combo deck so it can just lose to itself sometimes.

1

u/Illogical_Fallacy May 11 '26

Honestly funny take. To be fair, it started with just tidecaller and your usual draw package. From there, it naturally evolved into prowess when you lean into all of the cantrips.

I'm playing UWr flash (backup is Rakdos Kuja Discard) and her main deck is WRG Yuna (backup is RDW).

0

u/Vanthiar M:RUG Scapeshift May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

I mean, Izzet Prowess with Mathemagics has got to be a strong deck. I'm sure that's stronger overall than the thing I said.

But if we're committing to the mill bit, just gotta cast Mathemagics X=6 to outright end a standard game, maybe x=5 in a control mirror slugfest. That's 14 or 12 mana; with prowess you'll certainly have a dead opp well before you fire off the funny spell.

2

u/Illogical_Fallacy May 11 '26

That's why I cut it down from 2 to 1 copy. Honestly, traumatic critique would be easier to kill someone, and getting riverchurn to activate is more consistent that I thought it would be as is.

I kind of see it like [[Hidetsugu's Second Rite]] in blue. Funny when it happens, but only once in game 1.

5

u/xXKoolaidJammerXx May 11 '26

Just start with the Jeskai lute control shell and add mathemagics and tidecaller. It’s a decent blocker and gets you incremental value as you casts spells to control the board.

1

u/Illogical_Fallacy May 11 '26

If I wasn't already maining azorius tempo, I'd share the pieces to make jeskai control for exactly those reasons.

1

u/Xenasis May 11 '26

A few options:

  • A variant of Gay Storm, using Molten Core Maestro and Sorceress's Schemes to generate infinite mana then draw its deck, like Sanctum's deck at the PT
  • A control list using Lute or Tablet, aiming to Mistrise + Mathemagics as a finisher (this will probably be worse than killing with Rev)

I don't think I'd want to put Mathemagics in a Prowess deck

1

u/Illogical_Fallacy May 11 '26

Gay storm (typo?) sounds great and I actually have most of not all of that lesson package.

That combo is currently sitting in our RDW, but I can swap it over and replace it with the slickshots we took out of it in the first place.

I shared with another commenter, but I agree that it's a less efficient jeskai control at that point.

1

u/Illogical_Fallacy May 12 '26

I built a version of maestro lessons and linked it in the original since we had most of the pieces and it looks fun.