Playing Izzet Creativity in Commander

Indomitable Creativity | Art by Deruchenko Alexander

Welcome back to 60 to 100, a series where I convert beloved 60-card decks to Commander. This time around, I'm going to tackle one of my favorite constructed decks from the last couple years: Izzet () Creativity.

Reid Duke took down Pro Tour Phyrexia with this deck in 2023, and in the process played one of the most suspenseful matches of Magic: The Gathering ever caught on camera. As usual, I'm going to break down the original deck, go over some of the challenges porting it to Commander presents, and then show off the final product.

The Source Material

Izzet Creativity is a combo deck centered around Indomitable Creativity. The combo is pretty simple. The deck is looking to make two artifact or creature tokens, blow them up with Indomitable Creativity, and bring Xenagos, God of Revels and Worldspine Wurm into play. Xenagos doubles Worldspine Wurm's power and toughness, gives it haste, and then swings at the opponent for 30 damage with trample. The rest of the deck is card draw and interaction to find and protect the combo. Reid's deck also had two copies of Hullbreaker Horror in the sideboard as a backup control plan against decks where the Worldspine Wurm plan wasn't as viable.

The Challenges

The most obvious issue with the Worldspine Wurm combo in Commander is that hitting one player for 30 damage doesn't even kill them, much less defeat three opponents. This puts me at a crossroads between stealing the Hullbreaker Horror plan from the deck's sideboard and leaning into the control side of the deck or finding a different two creatures that win the game together.

Next, I'm going to have to tackle the singleton issue by finding comparable cards to Indomitable Creativity or densely packing the deck with tutors that can find it. I can't include creatures or artifacts that aren't a part of the combo, so gone is the option of my beloved Drift of Phantasms for that purpose.

Lastly, this deck will be unable to play the suite of artifact-based ramp that is used in nearly every Commander deck. Sol Ring is a powerful Magic card, but I still wouldn't want to find it with Indomitable Creativity!

The Commander(s)

This deck is perfectly positioned to take advantage of Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh. Here, much like in cEDH, he serves as a zero-mana creature that turns on free interaction, like Deflecting Swat and Fierce Guardianship, and he's a wonderful target to destroy with Indomitable Creativity. Meanwhile, Thrasios, Triton Hero is here to donate his colors and potentially draw a couple cards every now and then. Thrasios is another totally reasonable target for Indomitable Creativity at his mana cost.

Key Cards for Temur Creativity

Thankfully, there are a handful of spells that can do a reasonable Indomitable Creativity impression. Synthetic Destiny and Divergent Transformations both exile creatures and replace them with the same number of creatures from the deck. Divergent Transformations is even cheaper to cast than Creativity, assuming there are at least three opponents. This, alongside a frankly bizarre package of tutors that goes deeper into the well of options the Temur() colors have to offer, will make it pretty simple to find one of these spells necessary to execute the combo. I'm going to save just what those two creatures are for the win conditions section!

There are 18 cards in this deck that produce tokens, plus a copy of Mutavault. That number, combined with the two commanders, should make getting the two creatures or artifacts necessary to combo off with Indomitable Creativity into play very achievable. An important note that 60-card Indomitable Creativity players are sure to have learned the hard way is that an opponent can respond by destroying one of Indomitable Creativity's targets and effectively stop the combo. A simple way to play around that is to target more creatures and artifacts than are necessary. This trick will be easy to pull off after generating four tokens with a Pest Infestation!

The last squeaky wheel this deck can encounter is winding up stuck with the creatures that you're trying to put into play with Indomitable Creativity in the hand, so I've included a few ways to fix that! Brainstorm is a classic fix for this problem, although the creatures will inevitably be drawn again unless the library gets shuffled afterwards. Valakut Awakening, See Beyond, and Volcanic Spite all put cards from the hand on the bottom of the library, ensuring that they won't be seen again until the time is right.

How Does This Indomitable Creativity Deck Win the Game?

Admittedly, I'm a little sad that this is the way I had to go here. Unfortunately, there just aren't that many viable combinations of creatures that end the game on the spot. I spent a lot of time digging through Commander Spellbook, and concluded that Thassa's Oracle and Leveler were the best choice. This one is pretty simple: Leveler and Thassa's Oracle come into play simultaneously, and then the triggers get stacked such that Leveler's enters trigger resolves first. In a pinch, these two can also be reasonable cast from the hand in the unfortunate scenario where they both show up there.

My favorite thing about this deck is by far its resilience. Turn the Earth can shuffle Thassa's Oracle and Leveler back into the library if things go horribly awry. Then, there is a lot of recovery and redundancy for the spells that initiate the combo with cards like Mystic Sanctuary and Bala-Ged Recovery.

Temur Creativity Commander Deck List

Conclusion

I'm happy with how this deck turned out. After going back and watching Reid's matches from Pro Tour Phyrexia, I knew I'd have to find a way to play with Indomitable Creativity in Commander. The one thing that I really wish I could've done was combine the two modes of Reid's deck into one. Unfortunately, without having access to a sideboard, the presence of any other creatures in the deck totally disrupts the main plan.

This deck fits into Bracket 4 (Optimized) quite comfortably, and I'd avoid playing it in either Bracket 3 (Upgraded) or Bracket 5 (cEDH). It won't be able to compete in cEDH, and it will definitely create anticlimactic games at Bracket 3 tables. Players that are as enthralled by this sort of all-in combo deck will have a blast with it, as long as it's being played at the right table. I'd likely expect some groans once Thassa's Oracle's enters trigger hits the stack, though.

I'd love to hear about alternative combo lines I could've used or card inclusions I missed in the comments! I've been really impressed by the suggestions in all of the previous installments of 60 to 100!