The plane-wide city of Ravnica is one of the most popular settings in Magic: the Gathering, and it's home to ten unique guilds. The zaniest guild of all is the Izzet League.
This is the blue-red guild, a collection of mad scientists, wizards and drakes that are seek to push magical science to the limits, and then break those limits with glee. To the Izzet, no idea is too crazy or risky to pursue, no hypothesis is too wild to test, and no project is too outrageous to fund. They are always looking to the future, where science can pave the way to new insights and discoveries... or a big explosion. Let's see what the Izzet is really like.
Meet The Team
Every guild on Ravnica has distinct creature types in its fold, and in the case of the Izzet, the ubiquitous humans are joined by vedalken (genius blue-skinned humanoids), bizarre elementals, fire-breathing drakes, some dragons, cyclopses and goblins. Often, these creatures are either the scientists themselves, or the test subhjects. Drakes and cyclopses in particular are willing guinea pigs, being outfitted with cutting-edge, prototype armor, magic enhancement devices, goggles, helmets and much more. Either these brave test subjects will help prove a theory correct and thus lead to a breakthrough, or end up in a glorious fireball of crazy magic. Then it's back to the drawing board.
All these scientists and engineers are watched over by their boss, Niv-Mizzet. He is an ancient dragon whose blistering intellect is matched by his sheer vanity, and he demands that all projects somehow honor him. The guild's emblem depicts a blue-red dragon, and the guild also bears a portion of his name. Niv-Mizzet is the chief scientist, giving approval and funding for worthwhile projects and simply devouring any engineers or scientists who somehow fail him. He is a generous boss if pleased, and a deadly enemy if angered or disappointed.
As for inter-guild relations, the Izzet League is often seen as a weapons research lab, and other guilds sometimes contract them to develop new weapons, suits of armor or other works of artifice. The Izzet are seen ase as useful oddballs, and their inventions and creative magic can solve nearly any problem. The Orzhov Syndicate, according to one card's flavor text, once asked the Izzet to animate some ruined slums and order those newly-born elementals to wander off and clear up some real estate.
Gameplay
In all three Ravnica blocks, the Izzet League features a new and unique mechanic, and Izzet cards are usually either crazy instants and sorceries, or permanents that care about these cards. Izzet decks don't win through brute force; they are tempo decks that disrupt the opponent and slow them down with blue mana, then recklessly deal damage and attack with high-powered creatures with the power of red. Izzet decks are unpredictable, rash, and clever, embodying the unusual blend of blue and red.
In the Guildpact set, Izzet cards used the Replicate mechanic, which allows an instant or sorcery to be duplicated any number of times, so long as the Replicate cost is paid each time. For example, Thunderheads is an instant that can create a temporary 3/3 blue Weird creature token, and it has Replicate 2U. If the player spends 4UU, then they cast this spell twice, and if they pay 6UUU, they end up with three of those tokens.
Return to Ravnica, meanwhile, brought the Overload mechanic into the fore, and each Overload card ordinarily selects a single target when cast. But if the Overload cost is paid instead, then the card will target every permanent of the appropriate type. For example, Mizzium Mortars is a sorcery that costs 1R to deal 4 damage to a creature you don't control, but if you pay the 3RRR Overload cost, you deal 4 damage to each creature you don't control, creating a one-sided boardwipe.
Finally, Guilds of Ravnica added the Jump-start mechanic, a variation of Retrace (from Eventide). An instant or sorcery with Jump-start may be cast from the graveyard once its mana cost is paid and a card is discarded from your hand, and then the Jump-start card is cast and exiled upon being resolved. This works well with self-mill strategies, to fill up the graveyard with cards that can be cast once each.
The Izzet League rewards reckless creativity, flexible thinking and daring innovation, and an Izzet deck will confuse and burn away anything that gets in the way of mad science.