Cloudburst is Ral Zarek’s red/blue “Izzet” deck featured in Magic: The Gathering’s Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 expansion. Classic red/blue offerings are available in the unlockable section, but the basic deck leaves a lot to be desired, feature vanilla creatures like Storm Crow and Wind Drake. Let’s take a look at the decklist and see how Cloudburst stacks up to other Duels of the Planeswalker 2012 decks.
Decklist:
2x Skirsdag Cultist
Unlockables:
2x Murder of Crows
Cloudburst is missing a lot of the card advantage solutions that make a blue/red deck really excel. While Cloudburst has direct damage and hasty hits, there’s no real engine behind the scenes powering the assault, leaving you with few methods to win should your rather lackluster creatures run into trouble.
While there are some excellent cards in the main deck to accomplish your goals like Gelectrode, Wee Dragonauts, and Into the Roil, there are few situations more depressing than drawing a rack of Storm Crows and Arc Runners. Most decks will have little difficulty handling your low power threats while you struggle to draw into your more effective cards.
Thankfully, the unlockable section offers some great choices to toss into Cloudburst. Niv-Mizzet, Spellbound Dragon, Murder of Crows, Prophetic Bolt and Lightning Bolt all make excellent choices to improve Cloudburst.
While these choices can’t replace all the fluff, they go a long way toward making Cloudburst playable fare. Ral Zarek and his red/blue Izzet creation will certainly have more unlock options coming in the next expansion that could make this deck a high quality competitor.
Cloudburst doesn’t really feature any exceptional choices for Archenemy, but if you do want to give it a try going 3vs1, try and use your resources to take out one of the players early with your haste and damage.
Cloudburst does a decent job at capturing the Izzet flavor and will hopefully gain some new tricks as Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 pushes out more expansions.
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