Jon Irenicus, Shattered One - Budget Deck Tech

Jon Irenicus, Shattered One | Illustrated by Igor Grechanyi 

Hello, everyone! For this week's deck tech I wanted to revisit the deck that first got over 1,000 views on my YouTube channel, Jon Irenicus, Shattered One

Generally, Jon is built to give your opponents creatures that have some form of downside, like Abyssal Persecutor

Key Cards

Evasive Creatures

Let's kick things off with the evasive creatures. Because Jon wants our gifted creatures to attack, we want to make sure they stay alive through combat, and the easiest way to do that is to have them be unblockable, so creatures like Changeling Outcast

The other types of evasive creatures are fliers. Ornithopter

Decay is Good?

The other type of creature I like to give away is decayed Zombie tokens. Now, you might be thinking: why would you want to give away a token that sacrifices themselves? It's simple: because of Jon's ability, they can't be sacrificed, and this is true for any effect that requires you to sacrifice creatures. Some other examples are encore, echo, and fading, so creatures like Falcon Abomination

Can't Sac This

Edicts are especially powerful because opponents can't sacrifice the creatures we so kindly gift to them, so we can keep the board clear of their creatures while leaving ours free to draw us a ton of cards. I included Fleshbag Marauder

Value Creatures

Next, let's talk about the ETB creatures. There are three categories of ETB creatures in the deck: value, removal, and clones. The value creatures are cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury

Clones

In total, we have four clone creatures in the deck. Two can only clone opponents' creatures: Malleable Impostor

Hey, That's Mine!

And finally, let's get our creatures back! There are two ways to get creatures we control back. The first is if the opponent loses the game. You might think the creatures would be exiled, but actually, they would return under your control. The other option is using cards that let us gain control of the cards we own. We could use blink spells, such as Teferi's Time Twist

Winning, Cuts, and Upgrades

#Winning

Winning with this deck can be a bit tricky since you're giving away creatures. I would describe this deck as a political control deck. You want to try to sneakily have opponents finish each other off while you lay in wait to strike the final blow. Don't over-extend, and try to make deals with who you give creatures to.

Not Quite Good Enough

There are two cycles of cards I want to showcase that didn't quite make the cut. That would be the Vow and Impetus Cycle. The Vow cycle is Vow of Flight

The Upgrades

Unlike other decks, there aren't any key upgrades I could think of for this deck. As always, I'd suggest upgrading the mana base first, but if you want to spend a few extra bucks you could always add Roaming Throne