Izzet tempo has always been one of my favourite cube archetypes. While it evolves all the time with the meta and new additions, ultimately it has changed least over the years compared to other ever present cube archetypes. It has a structure, a game plan, and a hierarchy of cards it is looking to play, many of which have not been eclipsed since the inception of cube. Staples such as Lightening Bolt. It is a spell based archetype and spells have changed less over the years than the dorks. There are now however some dorks with such power on offer than it is well worth warping your spells so as to support these heavy hitters. Blue can bring some very over statted and undercost dorks to bear should it go to the trouble of setting up the graveyard appropriately. Tempo decks naturally do a good job of filling up the bin with spells and very much want to be able to play under cost cards. This is a good way to get tempo but it also makes up for one of their main pitfalls at the same time (tempo decks often struggle to apply good stats and can get out muscled by other dork decks if not careful). This all leads me to what I would call the biggest evolution of Izzet tempo in the history of cube. Not the highest of hurdles to clear but note worthy. I think it is the most powerful way to build the archetype presently in my cube but it certainly isn't the only way. There is plenty of overlap with more prowess focused versions as well as just any non combo Izzet deck. The main things you are looking for to go in the self mill direction are the good cheap graveyard filling spells and the big blue payoff creatures. Get your hands on a couple from both of those groups and you are good to go, get most of the premium ones and you are going to be fearsome. This is a list containing all the best setup and all the best payoff. It may be a little heavy on the latter but looting effects help offset that sort of thing massively.
27 spells
Mental Note
Consider
Faithless Looting
Gitaxian Probe
Lava Dart
Unholy Heat
Flame Slash
Into the Flood Maw
Brainstorm
Spikefield Hazard / Cave
Firebolt
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Slickshot Show-Off
Fire / Ice
Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel
Force of Negation
Abhorrent Occulus
Broadside Bombardiers
Lorien Revealed
Pinnacle Monk
Sailor's Bane
Tolarian Terror
Murktide Regent
Ethereal Forager
13 Lands
Steam Vents
Scalding Tarn
Prismatic Vista
Spirebluff Canal
Thundering Falls
Fiery Islet
Den of the Bugbear
4x Island
2x Mountain
As your dorks hit so much harder you are not leaning on burn to finish off the game anywhere near as much as you are with other Izzet tempo builds. This allows for a much more rounded array of removal and disruption. Back in the day you just wanted the premium burn and would fight hard with other red players for that. Now you can replace a burn spell or two with more blue counter and bounce disruption and pad out the red removal with more effective removal that doesn't go face. This could mean more efficient burn like Flameslash or simply more versatile removal like Abrade. As for your blue options, you don't want loads but a smattering goes a really long way. Typically you are looking for efficiency over value in this blue effects meaning Spell Pierce is preferable to Counterspell and Unsummon is better than Repulse etc. Obviously all decks like value and drawing cards but this is not a build that leans too hard on such things. It pulls ahead by using singular very powerful cards to carry a lot of water combined with very well placed cheap cards that enable them to do so. Use what you have well rather than just getting more is the key message her. Cards like Treasure Cruise and Expressive Iteration are both incredibly powerful and pretty solid fits in the deck, the issue is that they use up precious time, mana, and setup to use and this is contrary to the way the deck is trying to win. Trying to recover with card draw is usually too late and sneaking it in sensibly otherwise usually means you are already winning. While I am happy playing draw spells in such decks I am not aiming to do so and consider them more filler than anything else. Even Ethereal Forager is a bit too value based for my liking in this deck. Sure, you can lock out the game very effectively with it and the right counter magic, or heaven forbit some form of time walks. The problem is that the card is not all that threatening by itself and so eats up a supported threat slot without often delivering on that front.
Comically the best draw spell for the deck is Lorien Revealed as it is really more of a land that supports you in all the right ways. Partially it is like a safer Fiery Islet, helping your colour and land/spell ratio out nicely. Partly it is acting like blue cantrip that is setting you up while putting spells in the bin. The mana base is actually one of the newer things most pushing this deck that have allowed it to break out. The land cyclers are nice, the MDFC are arguably nicer, they are certainly rather more abundant now and come with a generally lower tempo cost. Plenty are playable and they allow you to play a low land count while getting a much higher ratio of instant and sorcery cards in the bin. A rare example of an archetype getting more consistent and more powerful simultaneously. Surveil lands are pretty massive too. Being able to freely sac land into a surveil is putting two cards is basically a Consider. Certainly equivalent in terms of cards put in the bin and card quality received for the same cost of effectively one mana and net zero cards.
We want to spend the first couple of turns setting up and keeping things calm. If they start making little dorks we are likely burning those out of the way while we pile the bin full of gas. We might sneak out a little utility dork, throw out a cheeky counter, but mostly we are just setting up. Then come about turn three we want to flop out something obscene and seemingly well ahead of curve and ride that to victory! Murktide is the best in my experience but it is rather horses for courses. Ward more than makes up for being rooted to the ground against the black and white players with their efficient spot removal. A lot of the skill in this archetype is knowing how you are most likely to navigate a route to victory in any given matchup and then setting up for that accordingly. That can mean the choice between keeping a walking ward dude or an evasive flier in your first loot of the game. It can then mean identifying that the deathtouch snake token from Ophiomancer is your main problem and as such you ensure you have a plan against it. Perhaps that is forcing the issue with a Lava Dart or perhaps you are keeping mana open to answer the Ophiomancer before he charms out any snakes.
In previous builds of tempo I would want all my dorks to be somewhat threats, ideally also offering some value or utility. Here my dorks are either finishers or they are primarily for setup and utility and any threat they pose is pretty incidental. There are not too many small dorks I want to play that are primarily threats. Pteramander and Delver of Secrets are the best two as they are cheap enough to provide real tempo, sizeable enough to be a relevant threat, and importantly both fly, so as not to be negated my opposing dorks real easily. Good old DRC is the best of all the worlds being a powerful setup tool, really cheap, and pretty often a relevant evasive threat.
Beyond the cards discussed here it is pretty straight forward. You pad out the ranks accordingly with cheap burn and cantrip card to keep things low, consistent, and easily able to fill up the bin with the right stuff. Then you jam in some looting effects to further support. Kitsa, Otterball Elite and Ledger Shredder both do reasonable work. Even simpler Looter il-Kor style cards still perform well in this sort of build. There are plenty of these kinds of cards of a cube playable power levle and most cubes will contain at least some of them. If you still need playables after milking your one and two mana cards then there are some heavier hitting three mana looters like Fable of the Mirror Breaker that are perfectly playable but will tend to slightly underperform. The enchantment side of it, or the planeswalker side of Dack Fayden can be useful if you are supporting a couple of delirium cards. Kiora the Rising Tide looks like she would be outstanding in this deck, and she is fine, but again she somewhat underperforms compared even to the two mana looter dorks, which in turn tend to be considered more as filler most of the time. Returning to the notion of delirium, the Baubles get rather more playable too under those conditions. Normally you want you cheap cyclers to be instants or sorceries but you can overlook that a little when they help in other ways and cost that sweet sweet zero.
Recursion effects are quite nice in this list, if just a dabble. Because you are so streamlined you only have one or two bounce spells, one or two counters, perhaps only a bit of burn going face etc. You are also milling pretty aggressively and so you can easily nix all your own effects of a certain type before you need them, or just be in far greater need of certain effects than your list is equipped to handle. Having some recursion acts on multiple positive axis. Valuable redundancy and security on specific effects is one side of it but it is also a form of card selection in combination with mill. A Snapcaster Mage is a bit of a Mystical Tutor the more you have milled your way through the deck. Typically recursion is very negative on the tempo front and so my favourite froms are those that are somewhat modal or incidental.
Broadside Bombadier is the real naughty boy here, the real innovation and clinical finisher. You can just run him out and have him be fine but ideally the plan is to hold him back and use him to toss one of the massive dorks at face. Sailor's Bane is a casual 11 with the other two big ones being 9 a piece, not to mention anything either they or the Bombardier achieve in actual combat. The card is very much on my watchlist for a ban, a comfortable first pick in my cube and a card I am happy running in most decks. You don't need it in this build for it to work, it is not as key a card as Murktide or Mental Note etc but it is still the most powerful. You can go turn two Murktide into turn three bombardier and slap them down to like 2 life. Bombardier acts as both a Glorybringer style haymaker and a double Shrapnel Blast finisher, without ever being as dead or cumbersome as those cards can be. This is the cherry on the top of an already good deck that takes it from top tier to perhaps a little broken and silly.
