Niv-Mizzet, Visionary – Foundations
Date Reviewed: December 13, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4.0
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
As the leader of Ravnica’s mad scientists guild, it’s entirely fitting for Niv-Mizzet to go as big as physically possible. We’ve seen variants of that enticing card-drawing ability a number of times on his other cards, but granting it to every eligible spell and activated ability you control is a whole new level of danger. The number of things he combines with in red is too long to list, and the number of things in blue that can set him up is almost as long. He’s a little more fragile than some big creatures and he does require you to have specific types of cards in hand to go with him, though if you’re channeling the Izzet mindset, you won’t be held back by those.
We’ve probably been for some time at the point where you can make a viable Dragonstorm deck that searches for nothing but Niv-Mizzet variants. And I am all on board for it. It sounds like a meme about his vanity, and it kind of is, but it also ends the game just as immediately as any tournament Dragonstorm deck ever did – and in the funniest way possible!
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Back with his seventh card, everyone’s favorite egomaniacal Izzet dragon comes with an effect that…goes infinite with other Niv-Mizzets, which is weirdly poetic. In particular, both Niv-Mizzet, Parun and Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind set up a loop where, as soon as you draw one card, it starts a machine-gun where Visionary loads more bullets and the other two fire them. That is fitting, and while you do need a pair of six-mana dragons to make this work, there are plenty of ways to get it rolling in, say, Commander.
Combos aside, Niv-Mizzet, Visionary is maybe a bit less immediately impactful than his predecessors. His color demands are less demanding than others are, and he is a suitable body, but he relies on outside support to get the cards coming out. A Lightning Bolt drawing you three is nice, and red is a color loaded with noncombat damage options (along with some help from older blue cards)…but you still need to have it to make the most of this, and this is just a swoopy dragon of average size. Still, it is able to swoop gratuitously, which helps a lot in Limited, and while his ability asks for a bit of care to pop, when it does pop, the results are explosive.
Constructed: 3.5 (could be serviceable at the top end as a finisher)
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.5 (rawr xd)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5 (enables a rude number of combos and gives another avenue for such combos to go off)
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