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After constantly being a step below the top tier for years in the Modern format, Izzet Prowess (or Blitz) is finally crawling its way to the top of the metagame. Most of this is due to one, frankly absurd card — Cori-Steel Cutter — which has been taking over every format it's legal in, and for good reason.
Alongside the infamous artifact, there’s a package of fast, aggressive creatures that grow with spells being cast, as well as cheap and impactful spells to cast alongside them. After all, the name ‘Blitz’ doesn’t come from nowhere, and this deck is sure to have your opponents at zero life in the blink of an eye.
In this guide, we’re going to take a look at the Izzet Prowess deck and everything you need to know about playing it in Modern. That way, whether you’ve played Blitz in other formats or you’re completely new to this style of deck, you’ll be able to pick up the deck knowing everything that you need to succeed.
What is Izzet Prowess?
“Gotta go fast.”
Few phrases in life are truer than the words of the speed messiah himself, Sonic the Hedgehog. Or, that’s what players of this deck will tell you, as speed is, in fact, key to success. This deck aims to kill your opponent before they can even react to what’s happening by throwing as much damage at them as possible.
This is mainly due to the Prowess mechanic, which gives the creature +1/+1 until the end of the turn each time you cast a noncreature spell. In a deck with so many noncreature spells, these creatures can be dealing 3-5 damage every turn, and that’s not considering your burn spells.
This is all well and good, but when you consider Cori-Steel Cutter, which, if played correctly, can make a 1/1 with Prowess every turn. This can spiral out of control incredibly quickly, leading to huge board states that become far too overwhelming for your opponents to deal with. And, even if your opponent kills the Steel Cutter, they’ll still have creatures left behind that are very much able to kill.
Izzet Prowess Decklist and Guide
For this guide, we’ll be taking a look at Patrick Cahill’s deck that came 7th at the $5k RCQ at SCG CON Hartford.
Firstly, the most important thing to note about this deck is that there aren’t that many creatures in it. There are usually 8-12, which is a small number compared to the 31 non-creature nonland cards there. But, this doesn’t count Cori-Steel Cutter, which is technically a creature too, as it will almost always generate a 1/1 once you’ve resolved it.
What this does mean, though, is that you need to make sure that you start the game off with one of these 16 ‘creatures’ (including Steel Cutter), to be able to smash your way to victory. So, when making early mulligans, make sure that you have a creature to be able to play with, as even a hand with a cantrip can lead to not having anything, and losing because of it.
On top of this, your deck doesn’t really need many lands to function, so try not to keep hands with too many lands. Expressive Iteration can dig for your third land drop if required, but generally speaking, you never need more than three lands to win a game with this deck.
There are a few specific cards to keep an eye out for, though:
- Mutagenic Growth: Mutagenic Growth is a really important card to be able to pump out damage as quickly as possible. It may seem unassuming, with it only adding two power, but with a Steel Cutter token or a Monastery Swiftspear, it represents three damage. With a Slickshot Show-Off, it represents four damage, and with a Violent Urge, it represents double that. And that’s not even considering other creatures’ Prowess triggers.
- Lava Dart: Lava Dart is a card that you have to be careful about, as it can be immensely powerful in the right situation, but can also cause you to lose a land for no real upside in a worse one. Generally speaking, you want to be dealing 3+ damage with each cast of this, otherwise, it isn’t worth sacrificing a land over.
- Removal: Your burn spells (Lightning Bolt and Lava Dart) can also be used as removal spells if needed! Sometimes it can be easy to fall into the trap of trying to kill as fast as possible and not killing a threat that’ll cost you the game — your main mode of victory will always be creatures, and so don’t be afraid to cast a Bolt at an opposing creature if it means staying alive.
Mastering this deck will require a significant amount of practice. It’s simple on the surface, but a lot of the skill here comes down to hand evaluation and working out what decisions will lead to the most damage, especially when learning not to rely on Cori-Steel Cutter. But, on the flip side, it’s a deck that teaches by doing — so, don’t let that skill curve deter you from playing, as it’s part of the fun of learning this deck.
Izzet Prowess Sideboard Guide
As a general tip, in some matchups, you’ll be able to board in a little more as your plan will be to balance disruption and sustained damage, but in other matchups, you’ll need to kill as quickly as possible.
So, we’ve got to hit the balance of bringing in enough to help the matchup, while also making sure we’ve got enough of a deck plan to kill our opponents, depending on how quickly we need to be able to kill them.
Boros Energy
In:
- 4 Unholy Heat
- 2 Into the Flood Maw
- 2 Surgical Extraction
Out:
- 4 Preordain
- 3 Violent Urge
- 1 Expressive Iteration
In this matchup, we bring in Unholy Heat for removal to slow down our opponent wherever we can. We also need Into the Flood Maw to bounce a Deafening Silence, which shuts down our gameplan, as well as Surgical Extraction to stop Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury (which will gain them life and take them out of kill range for us).
We don’t mind bringing in more here, as our removal is already pretty suited to be able to take out their deck. As long as we can stop their lifegain, we have inevitability to be able to kill them eventually through Prowess, even if our spells are busy removing creatures. But this does mean we need to take out those creatures as quickly as possible, though.
Izzet Prowess
In:
- 4 Unholy Heat
- 2 Into The Flood Maw
- 2 Spell Pierce
Out:
- 4 Preordain
- 4 Expressive Iteration
The plan for the mirror is similar to versus Boros Energy, but a massive difference is that they will be trying to rapidly kill you too, which means cards like Preordain or Expressive Iteration can be too slow. You can also expect them to block far less, and so the Violent Urge kill is more active.
Into The Flood Maw can bounce a large Prowess creature, or bounce a Cori-Steel Cutter token, so it can be massive in making sure that you can keep your opponent at bay until you have enough damage to win.
Temur Eldrazi
In:
- 4 Consign to Memory
- 2 Into the Flood Maw
- 1 Alpine Moon
Out:
- 4 Lava Dart
- 3 Violent Urge
Against Temur Eldrazi, the plan is to go as quickly as you can. There aren’t many creatures to remove, and most of them are either too big (such as Emrakul, The Promised End) or too small to deal with. However, you can’t go too fast, or else you might get hit by a sweeper. And so, it leaves you between a rock and a hard place.
So, you pretty much take out Lava Dart as it’s not able to remove much, and you’d rather a piece of better interaction, and take out Violent Urge as your plan here is to go wide rather than go tall. You do need to be careful of their sweeper in Kozilek’s Return, as it can take you out pretty quickly.
Consign to Memory can win you this matchup single-handedly, as it stops cast triggers on Eldrazi as well as being able to counter them, meaning you can easily keep the pressure up without investing too much into disruption. Into The Flood Maw is there to bounce a timely Trinisphere, and Alpine Moon turns off Ugin’s Labyrinth to stop early ramp.
Closing Time
Izzet Prowess is a powerful deck that harnesses the power of a very strong card in the form of Cori-Steel Cutter alongside a pretty potent Prowess package. Even the worst matchups can sometimes be a win with the explosive power and ‘blink of an eye’ nature that it brings, and there’s enough space in here for some key interaction too.
Hopefully, this guide has been enough to inspire you to get your racing boots on and blitz your way into the format, but if not, check out our other Modern content to see if there’s another deck that tickles your fancy!
In any case, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in the stars.
