(Iyslander, Stormbind | Art by Alexander Mokhov)

This is Rhys, back with another edition of Evergreen, a series focused on helping you unlock the power deep within the heroes of Flesh and Blood in the Classic Constructed format. Together we’ll look at an individual hero for each part of this series, going beyond what just appears on the text of the card and discussing how to release a hero’s full potential, a required skill as Flesh and Blood continues to grow.

Over the last few installments of Evergreen, I’ve covered a number of aggressive heroes and strategies. Let’s put that on ice for a bit, and look at one of the most challenging heroes in the game, Iyslander, Stormbind. This is the hero for those who enjoy counter-attacking.

Even with over eight hundred Living Legend points, the announcement of the Living Legend format means the hours you put into freezing the opposition will still be an applicable skill, even if Iyslander reaches Living Legend.

They Play by Your Rules Now

The majority of Iyslander, Stormbind‘s play patterns involve non-attack actions at instant speed on your opponent’s turn with her hero ability, where mastery is achieved by finding the key points where you present the most devastating blows. While there are two main ways to build an Iyslander, Stormbind deck, today’s focus will be about an arcane damage-focused strategy.

This build, endearingly referred to as “Bull-lander,” focuses on efficient blocking, a smaller amount of disruptive Ice cards, and a blend of high-rate attack action cards like Wounded Bull, Enlightened Strike, and Fyendal's Fighting Spirit.

As you may have guessed, this build approaches the game from a more “fundamentals” angle, aiming to present more damage than you take turn over turn. The arcane-focused strategy employs evasive damage, like pairing Aether Hail with Waning Moon for a two-card attack for six arcane damage. More Ice cards means fusing things like Icebind against Lexi, Livewire, offering a higher density of threats from the sideboard. The advantage Bull-lander offers is an overall lower difficulty to pilot effectively, but it also has a lower ceiling in terms of power. Both builds play at least some of the efficient attacks, as they’re used against Dromai, Ash Artist to trigger Phantasm on transformed Aether Ashwing tokens.

As you’ll have guessed, the bulk of an Iyslander, Stormbind deck consists of blue non-attack action cards, meaning you do a lot of things on your opponent’s turn. As per the comprehensive rules, “Priority is a game state concept that describes which player (if any), may play a card, activate an ability, or pass priority to the next player.” Any time you have priority, you may play instant-speed cards and effects. While daunting, it’s worth giving a look to the comprehensive rules document on priority (Ctrl+F is your friend here).

Turn patterns are precise on resource allocation, and it’s important to prioritize putting a blue card in your arsenal at each end step to keep the pressure on. When you play an Ice card on an opponent’s turn, they get a Frostbite token, disrupting how much they can do, especially if they want to respect how much damage you can present on a return volley. An opponent must always consider playing around a well placed Frostbite, or a disruptive Ice effect, or they could lose their entire turn.

As a general rule, play at least forty blue cards in a deck of sixty cards. More is acceptable, but ensuring you don’t go under forty is imperative, otherwise you’ll risk issues where you can’t both present reasonable damage and put a new blue card in your arsenal. Putting a non-blue card in arsenal isn’t the end of the world, and can even be used to bluff an effect, but shouldn’t be done often.

Surgery With an Icepick

Having a disruptive effect in your arsenal is where you’ll access Iyslander, Stormbind‘s most devastating plays, like a fused Brain Freeze out of arsenal when a Viserai, Rune Blood is playing non-attack actions to set up a powerful attack with go again, or after Fai, Rising Rebellion takes his first action, freezing them in their tracks. Insidious Chill makes those effects even more devastating, but the resource cost means you may not have a powerful return volley.

Aether Icevein has a powerful enough effect that it’s worth taking damage for, and that’s why you’ll see all nine in almost every build. It pressures a formidable amount of damage and a devastating pseudo on-hit effect, and the blue one can even be played from arsenal on your opponent’s turn! Stringing enough of these together can put you in the lead, but don’t be afraid to use them for their excellent three block as well. It’s seldom worth taking sixteen damage if you’re only going to give five back, especially if your hand can give as much back with fewer cards, and save yourself some damage. The opponent’s next turn might be hamstrung, but yours will be too, since you’ll be at such a large life disadvantage.

Begin to think about the times you can play these effects for maximum impact. For example, if Katsu, the Wanderer attacks you with Surging Strike, and activates Katsu’s ability on hit, you have priority during the resolution of that ability, even after your opponent has selected and banished a card. This is called the resolution step. You can end their turn on the spot if you give them a Frostbite, steal a card from their hand, or target Surging Strike with Blizzard (yes, you can still threaten to take away go again after it hits, before that chain link is resolved). The same is true for Dromai, Ash Artist‘s dragon allies. If an Aether Ashwing is declared as an attacker, use your priority during the layer step to destroy that dragon with something like Frosting. The attack consumed their action point, and go again would not apply to restore it, essentially ending their turn.

Effects like Polar Blast exist primarily as “give your opponent a Frostbite, and send Waning Moon at your opponent if you pitched a blue and have the leftover resources.” Even if you’re playing attack action cards, it’s not worth playing this so far below rate on your own turn. Other attacks like Emeritus Scolding or Ice Bolt will serve you best when you have a Fyendal’s Spring Tunic resource available, so you don’t have to pitch a second card to use Waning Moon alongside them. Iyslander is all about maximizing the value of every card, in every hand, and very few things are ever too precious as to not block with them.

Does this sound like a lot to think about? That’s because it is, but that’s part of the appeal for some. Be patient with yourself if you make mistakes, because trust me, you will. Those mistakes may cause you to lose the game on the spot, but if you learn every time, eventually you’ll become a menace.

When in Doubt, Spirit Bomb

Some decks will play a high amount of Arcane Barrier, and will be perfectly happy giving half of their hand to pay for it. (Ser Boltyn, Breaker of Dawn and Uzuri, Switchblade both come to mind.) While Ice Eternal and Frost Hex should most often be looked at as blue cards with three block and fuse potential, these matchups are where they shine.

Pitch stacking your Ice Eternals to the bottom of your deck is key, and make sure you have as many Frost Hex out as you can comfortably play. Presenting a pile of Frostbites that each deal three arcane damage at the end of your opponent’s turn is going to put them in a series of unwinnable scenarios, but be ready to block early and often if that’s in your mind.

It can be disheartening if you have multiple Frost Hex deployed, and are a turn or two from your Ice Eternal when you have to start making full blocks to survive and watch your advantage dwindle away. The long setup time and massive damage output on its execution has earned it the title of Spirit Bomb (because we all want to be Goku just a little bit). If you want to dedicate a bit more of your list to this plan, especially in a tournament where you expect a lot of Arcane Barrier, Energy Potion is a useful sideboard card to set up for bigger Ice Eternal plays.

Icy Roads Ahead

Warmonger’s Diplomacy is a rare case of a blue card you absolutely don’t want to play from arsenal if it can be helped. This is due to how the card is worded; playing it on your opponent’s turn means it won’t take effect until their following turn, meaning both that they aren’t affected now, and they have all of your turn to play for how to minimize its impact.

Channel Lake Frigid has a devastating effect on an opponent’s entire turn, meaning playing them as soon as possible is tempting. Think carefully before doing so, as multiples are nearly impossible to keep around. Channel ice requires putting a card on bottom of deck per counter, so keeping one around for one or two flow counters’ worth of turns is better than playing two quickly and losing them both in a turn.

Ice heroes are flexible, and are at their best when you can shift your approach to best pressure your opponent. Iyslander, Stormbind is a hero you can lose a game with on the second turn because you chose to either block too much or not enough, and learning to recognize those moments will be a sign of growth. Remember that if you’re ever taking lumps and feel disheartened about the difficulty level of the deck.

Dress for the Occasion

Iyslander, Stormbind has a nearly identical equipment suite across every deck, simply because the equipment is so optimally designed. Fyendal’s Spring Tunic helps play a two-resource card alongside an activation of Waning Moon, Coronet Peak is a wonderful piece of one-card disruption that can help keep Channel Lake Frigid around, and Storm Striders is there when you’re ready to move in for the kill. It’s imperative that you don’t activate Storm Striders until you can guarantee lethal.

On average, a player will need to start being careful about how vulnerable they are to dying from as high as nine life if they get too aggressive. If you don’t have Storm Striders, that number goes down to around five, and the increased pressure from a more free opponent can overwhelm you.

Metacarpus Node and Alluvion Constellas are valuable pieces of Arcane Barrier with different use cases. Metacarpus Node can help take down a Dracona Optimai in Dromai, Ash Artist matchups, as well as soak up damage from Burn Them All. Alluvion Constellas can absorb Runechant damage from Viserai, Rune Blood for free Waning Moon activations, and both can be used together to pressure another Iyslander, Stormbind in the mirror. The Iyslander mirror is a slow, difficult matchup that tests all of your lessons tenfold, because you’re thinking about what your Iyslander can do, as well as what your opponent’s can do to you.

This may come as a surprise to you, but Ironrot Gauntlet is for blocking. Some still stick with Ironhide Gauntlet to more easily block attacks for five, like Lexi, Livewire‘s Sedation Shot, but in the end you’re giving two cards to block those anyway, so you might as well just block with two cards up front and still have an equipment to block with later.

Let it Go

Heart of Fyendal is the target of a lot of well-deserved ire for being a “needed” fable in Iyslander, Stormbind decks. I generally avoid discussing budget, as this series focuses on full-power strategies, but this is a special case. Simply put, Heart of Fyendal is in nearly every winning list for a reason, especially when the reason it isn’t is usually due to the player not owning one. But there’s absolutely no reason to spend the money required to own one for Armory level play. Bull-lander builds can justify cutting it for a blocking blue card like Brothers in Arms, but even an arcane-focused build doesn’t “require” the Welcome to Rathe fable.

I’d be remiss to not give a shoutout to Rhea Adams for being a great inspiration, as well as a skilled player. You can check out her decklist here, which was used as a source for this article. And to you, the reader: I appreciate your time and attention, and I hope this is something you can come back to to re-study as you learn! As always, let me know what you think, or if there’s anything you’d like to see from me in the future. See ya next time!

Rhys

Rhys (she/they) is a long-time Magic: the Gathering fan, having started in Seventh Edition. She played Legacy until around 2018, and now mostly plays EDH. She Transitioned to competitive play with Flesh and Blood at the release of Tales of Aria, where she was quickly enamored with the skill expression, seeking constant self-improvement. When not obsessing over cards, Rhys can be found consuming speedrunning content, or fawning over literature like The Witcher, or Sherlock Holmes.