Phoenix decks have gotten less attention since WAR because of the new shiny toys, but they've still been putting up results. This thread is to discuss variants on arclight phoenix decks. For the record, I play Diamond level; I imagine I would be higher if I had more time to grind the ladder, since I still end most sessions gaining ranks.

My Take

Core cards:

• 4 [[Arclight Phoenix]]

Cantrip Package

• 4 [[Opt]]

• 4 [[Chart a Course]]

• 4 [[Tormenting Voice]]

• 3 [[Warlord's Fury]]

Burn Package

• 4 [[Shock]]

• 4 [[Lightning Strike]]

Tempo Package

• 2 [[Spell Pierce]]

• 2 [[Negate]]

Value Engines

• 3 [[Finale of Promise]]

• 2 [[Kefnet, God Eternal]]

• 2 [[Crackling Drake]]

• 2 [[Entrancing Melody]]

20 lands

Sideboard: (edited)

• 3 Augur of Bolas

• 2 Sorcerous Spyglass

• 3 Narset

• 2 Negate

• 1 Beacon bolt

• 2 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer

• 1 Ral Viceroy

• 1 Niv-Mizzet Parun

Analysis

You can see other takes on the deck here, or here

The idea of the deck is to play from behind on turns 1-3, either playing cantrips or distruption. Then on turns 4-6 we seize the initiative and put heavy pressure on.

One key concept when building this deck is threat density. You can't build this deck with the phoenix as the only win condition -- [[cry of the carnarium]], [[unmoored ego]] or even [[despark]] will simply make the deck a no-win.

Adding too many other threats breaks the deck by keeping the instant/sorcery density too low. On the other hand, adding too few other threats means that midrange and control decks make full use of their removal suite. This leads threat-heavy Drakes decks to run more reactive spells, like [[dive down]], which is not desireable here.

My answer to this issue comes in the form of Kefnet, who forces decks to waste removal spells, and Crackling Drake as a top-end, to be played only after an opponent wasted their removal suite on our birds and gods. The deck also runs enough burn to be a win-con by itself: Finale of Promise is happy to recur lightning strikes for us.

Card-by-card analysis

1 Drops

• Opt and Shock are must-haves. Shock can be reduced to 3 against control decks, but even then it serves as decent planeswalker removal.

• Spell Pierce is solid against RDW, nexus and UBx decks, but makes turns 2, 3 and 4 significantly harder to navigate. This deck generally seeks to spend its mana proactively on its turns, so the decision to leave one mana up for spell pierce on turns 2 through 5 can be difficult and game-changing.

• Crash Through and Warlord's Fury are additional cantrips. They help trigger Finale for 3, are free card advantage under Kefnet, and smooth out early turns. First Strike comes in useful more often than trample with so few drakes.

• Pteramander is good against slower decks, not so much against fast decks. The problem is that by the time he becomes useful, we'd often rather have crackling drake up for card advantage. I ended up cutting him entirely because he'd become a removal magnet on early turns and those resources would rather be spent on cantrips or disruption.

• Maximize Velocity and Samut's Sprint are good against control, threatening instant-lethal turns in late game with a drake. Samut's Sprint is only good if you run a critical density of threats, however, and we don't do that. Maximize velocity on the other hand is a good discard target and can keep being threatning late game.

2 Drops

• Chart a Course is a mandatory 4 of.

• Lightning Strike is almost always better than Lava Coil in the current metagame. It burns planeswalkers, it burns face, and it's instant speed, which lets us leave mana up for counterspells if need be.

• Goblin Electromancer is often seen in top-tier decks, but requires more buildaround (eg. inclusion of [[radical idea]]). He can get phoenixes out faster, but can create decks that run out of gas more easily in midgame. I ended up cutting him because he's a terrible topdeck, and he mostly ate removal without providing enough value.

• Augur of Bolas is very, very good agaisnt RDW and WW. He can be maindecked depending on the metagame you expect. Against slower decks, he's a cantrip that's not an instant nor a sorcery, so he doesn't serve much purpose.

• Tormenting Voice and Discovery//Dispersal. AKA "Chart a Course 5-8". I find that Tormenting voice in general makes the deck more consistent. You simply have more options on what to put in the GYard looking at your hand than your topdeck. It also functions with Finale of Promise, whereas Dispersal's only upside is that it combos well with Kefnet.

3 Drops

• Enigma Drake got the boot since Finale of Promise joined the deck. Remember Crackling drake counts cards in exile whereas this doesn't so it's farewell for our 3-drop drake.

• Narset, Sideboard Staple does her thing against control and mirror matchups. We board her in in those cases.

• Saheeli, Sublime Artificer I found underhwelming. She pulls the deck to be a few turns slower, which messes with the tempo overall. She's also only really useful if you run a critical mass of Pteramanders and/or Drakes, but this also ends up being kind of a "win more" scenario -- if you can set up a Saheeli copy of your threats with an izzet deck then you likely were stomping on the opponent anyways.

Overall she's a better inclusion in slower decks than phoenix decks, like Decks running Ral. But those decks are often tier 2 decks compared to the phoenix deck...

• Beacon Bolt is a good inclusion against creature based decks. It doesn't hit face or planeswalkers, so I don't mainboard it.

4 Drops

• Entrancing Melody is here to solve this deck's problems against creatures with big butts. It also often shuts off RDW and token decks immediately. It's also a great topdeck with Kefnet, leading to hilarious ragequit turns where you steal two creatures. Overall a worthy inclusion, since you can simply discard it game 1 if you see a control deck.

• Kefnet is an all-star in this deck, blocking aggro decks and providing constant value against midrange and control.

• Crackling Drake is our late game threat. He's modern-playable so there isn't much more to say.

• [[Ral, Izzet Viceroy]] and [[Ral, Storm Conduit]] play decently against control decks, but tend to make the deck a bit slow. I sometimes sideboard them against control.

• [[expansion // explosion]] is a decent card against control, but god notably worse since [[dovin's veto]]. It's also fundamentally a reactive card, which our deck dislikes. While copying a Finale of Promise or Entrancing melody is hilarious, we're generally not happy to see it in our hand.

• [[Niv Mizzet, Parun]] is good against reclamation decks and mirror matchups, but useless agaisnt aggro's clock and often just eats removal agaisnt control. He makes more sense in decks that already run Dive Down.

Matchup analysis

• Simic Nexus are the reason we keep so many counterspells mainboard. Game 1 they often get greedy playing Wilderness Reclamation on turn 3-4 and we can counter it, then kill them ASAP. Fog-heavy versions have a harder time against this deck since we can also burn them to death.

Phoenix decks tend to have a harder time against this deck, since we both do setup in early turns, their payoff is more powerful, and they can fog our key turns. The answer to this is Narset to block the value of extra mana, more counterspells agaisnt their key cards (Taymio, Wilderness Rec) and to try to close out games fast.

Fun fact: since all our threats are 4-drops, and so it Taymio and Wilderness reclamation, [[blast zone]] is a dead card for them. This actually comes in handy sometimes in this matchup.

• RDW can have a rough game 1 if we're unlucky, since it requires a different mulligan strategy than other decks. Games 2 and 3 are generally favorable for us with Augur of Bolas and our knowing that they play RDW (so impacting key turn 1 and 2 decisions).

Overall my winrate agaisnt RDW is significantly above 50% but we're certainly not crushing them -- many games are glorified coinflip races.

• Esper Control decks can give our deck a hard time. I would say overall my winrate is in the 40-50% range. It's often better to delay our key turns and have a game plan against their inevitable disruption.

We board in maximize velocity, narset and more drakes agaisnt them to capitalize on the slower speed of the matchup. Then we wait for turns where they mistakenly tapout and sneak in 8-10 damage with a maximize velocity'd drake or a phoenix turn.

• Grixis and Jeskai control decks are generally worse versions of the above, bumping our winrate above 50% here. [[Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God]] is less threatening than Teferi against us since his lower loyalty means he often dies the turn after he comes in.

• Mono U and Mono W aggro we tend to beat on pretty hard. Mono W (and selesnya variants) are especially vulnerable to entrancing melody and usually run out of gas agaisnt our disruption and blocking.