I finally took my Izzet deck out for a spin, and boy it performed well! I went 3-1, making it to the Top 4 but losing there to a White/Green auras deck with tokens and populate (I made a HUGE mistake of not killing his Fleecemane Lion while he was tapped out and ended up getting owned when the only 3-damage removal card I had met his Rootborn Defenses). The deck performs great, even if it's kind of weak to pinpoint removal itself (kill my 'snipes and pyromancers, and the deck's power goes down drastically), and my sideboard cards did relatively well against aggro decks (which was all I ever fought). I also got complimented on the deck a lot, and enjoyed some awesome games where my creatures generated some sick card advantage while my opponents struggled to find answers to them.
Like we guessed, Steam Augury was often quite nice card draw, since 90% of the time I was drawing at least two burn spells and had the ability to put, say, Mizzium Mortars and the land I needed to cast it on the same pile, which wouldn't have been possible with Fact or Fiction, and I could then feel free to group the three remaining cards on the other pile, which often consisted of either two burn spells or a creature and a burn spell, plus a land. Opportunity was okay, but the difference between one costing four and ther other costing six meant Augury often replenished my hand well enough and considerably faster, even if Opportunity was better in the long game (unless Spellheart Chimera was involved); I often ended up siding Opportunity (either one or both copies) out on games two and three against aggro decks, replacing them with more burn or weirds, and the 1 damage scry 1 card for R often ended up getting sided out as well, since most decks didn't have many 1-toughness creatures, so I could turn them into Negates for a more reactive approach or Flames of the Firebrand to give me some versatility for handling both smaller and larger threats.
The singleton Chandra's Phoenix did pull its weight the two times I drew it. It's amazing how I can feed it to Izzet Charm's draw-discard effect to get some nice card advantage, so I'm probably going to look for one or two extra copies for the deck.
