Grixis Phoenix

[Whitefaces]

Grixis Phoenix



https://i.ibb.co/NTRPwgg/buried-phoenix.png (https://imgbb.com/)


Table of contents
1) Overview - about the deck
2) Card choices
3) Sideboard
4) Decklist
5) Resources

1) Overview - About the deck

Grixis Phoenix is a deck looking to abuse the interaction of Dark Ritual and Buried Alive fetching up three Arclight Phoenixes.

There’s a bunch of ways to approach this interaction. You could build it more combo oriented with Dark Petition and additional Rituals, or Infernal Tutor and LED. But the combos strength comes from the low resources needed to pull it off in my opinion. To round out the combo you’re looking for 1cmc spells. Cantrips and discard are the most obvious approach. This also leads into the best shell for it, which I think could be a Young Pyromancer based one which masquerades as a midrange or control deck, but has this high ceiling of the combo and turn three kills.

2) Card choices


Core


Dark Ritual: Dark Ritual is part A of the combo and leads to the most explosive openings. To maximise the decks power level I believe it’s an auto 4-of.

Buried Alive: Buried Alive is part B of your ‘Show and Tell’ plan. In my preliminary testing I was playing three copies to help avoid the problem of diminishing returns, but I quickly realised that the first copy is so powerful it almost fully negates that drawback. I believe Buried Alive to also be an auto 4-of in the deck. It's fine to be played as it says on the tin too. You can cast it turn three then follow up with some spells the following turn, or 5 lands is another sweet spot for the deck where you can chain two cantrips into a Buried Alive. Notably the spells don't need to resolve, so it's common to beat a Chalice by casting Buried Alive then throwing some spells into it.

Brainstorm/Ponder/Preordain: Cantrips are what make most of the best decks in the format tick, there’s nothing more to say on Brainstorm and Ponder. Preordain didn’t start in the deck though, they were Faithless Lootings at first but very quickly it was obvious that the deck just wants to chain these cantrips into each other to maximise the Phoenixes and rebuy them vs fair decks or to find your interaction vs unfair. There could be an argument for too much air and wheel-spinning, but the deck has such a high ceiling that I believe you want to maximise both its potential and consistency. There are also plenty of decks that use discard over countermagic as their interaction, like Depths decks, Grixis control etc in the format at the moment. When you’re getting into lower resource battles you’re always hoping to draw a cantrip.

Thoughtseize: This deck relies on a base of discard to disrupt opponents and power through our gameplan. The reasoning for Thoughtseize and Cabal Therapy is they are able to be played proactively which is what both Young Pyromancer and Arclight Phoenixes want. Countermagic are also options in the deck, though, I ‘ll touch on that later. It’s not clear if Thoughtseize is always going to be a 4-of, but it’s inclusion is at least cemented in my mind.

Cabal Therapy: Cabal Therapy does so much in this deck. It synergises with Young Pyromancer, is often two spells to bring back Phoenixes and is a ‘discard outlet’ for Phoenixes (target yourself). Auto 4-of.

Young Pyromancer: Peezy is the the key that lets the deck play both fair and unfair. Coupled with discard it’s not hard to clear the way of removal then due to the decks heavy spell count is able to run away with the game. For those unfamiliar in how he synergizes with Cabel Therapy, the token created by casting Therapy in the first place is perfect sacrifice fodder for the flashback.

Lotus Petal: This was a later innovation that gives the deck even more explosive openers. Combos on turn one are day and night to turn two to the point that the card disadvantage is well worth their inclusion. It also gives the deck some much needed speed vs other combo decks.

Lightning Bolt - Lightning Bolt helps facilitate both the fair and unfair plan. Two hits from three Phoenixes is 18 then Bolt can finish the opponent off while it also picks off the decks hatebears, simply a great card with a lot of flexibility. Two copies is generally going to be enough, but in a metagame with more Delver or other creature based decks I'd play 3.

Lands

15 or 16 lands should suffice with the 12 cantrips and Lotus Petals, if you play less Petals I'd add another land or two.

Basics - the deck wants to be able to chain cantrips and from them the spells they find so duals are usually fetched out first. But we don’t always have this luxury and vs Wasteland decks we still need to fetch out basics, they’re important for Blood Moon matchups too. The deck is base UB so one of each is sufficient.

1 Island
1 Swamp

Duals and fetches - The rest of the manabase is made up of duals and fetches. As stated above, sequencing cantrips and discard spells is critical to the deck so having each fetch get any colour you need is important. Badlands takes after its name, it’s not great in the deck but necessary. You’re almost always fetching out Underground Sea first followed by Volcanic Island. Though a discard heavy hand may be getting Badlands or a second Sea first.

2-3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands

4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire



Cards that underperformed


The following cards I’ve tried but weren’t as good as expected.

Faithless Looting - Looting started as a 4-of but quite quickly I realised that the card disadvantage really hurt. Discarding Phoenixes with them was rarely a winning line and they went from 4 to 3 to 2 then 0. They became the Preordains which has been a massive improvement.

Thought Scour - The random draw off Scour is even worse in this deck than usual since you're looking to chain spells, you really want every cantrip to be filtering rather than just velocity. You also don't have a large density of cards you want to mill over, it's just Phoenixes which you already have a good gameplan to get them into the graveyard for and Therapy, which is not worth playing something like Scour for.

Entomb (plus all the cute targets for it) - Entomb was decent but rarely did anything before turn three, which it then relied on you being able to cast two other spells for it to turn into a Phoenix. It’s a decent rate for a single black mana, but the effect is still pretty low powered in the grand scheme of things. Entomb was also cut in basically every matchup for being low power level and to hedge vs GY hate. For these reasons I don’t think it deserves a slot. I tried it with all the cute targets like Lingering Souls, Deep Analysis, Creeping Chill etc but all they do is dilute the deck down and give it bad topdecks.

Bloodghast - Ghast falls partly under 'cute Entomb targets', but can also be an extension to Buried Alive. While it's kind of a way to play around Surgical, the power level is so low in my experience it wasn't worth a slot.

Intuition - I’ve not actually played with Intuition in the deck yet, but it’s suggested by every second person so I’d like to comment on it. It has a few problems to fit into Grixis Phoenix. Firstly and most obviously it’s only putting two of them into the yard, so you probably then want to play more cards to discard the one in hand. Secondly, and much more importantly, it can’t be cast off Dark Ritual. One of the most common lines in this deck is Cantrip/Discard T1 into Cantrip/Discard T2 into Rit+Buried, a large amount of the time you’re finding your second combo piece off the cantrip on turn two. Given that, Intuition is more likely getting back two Phoenixes ~T4, rather than 3 on T2.

3) Sideboard

When constructing a sideboard you should have a clear view of what you want it to be achieving. From testing so far the deck has been struggling most vs unfair decks, especially Dark Depths strategies and Reanimator, so I’ve been concentrating on them.

Card choices

Tormod’s Crypt - This may look like a weird one when Surgical Extraction is a card, but there is reasoning for it. Almost every deck you want Surgical for is also playing discard spells, most importantly BR Reanimator. This deck plays little to no countermagic so we’re not able to protect our hand from that, so I believe it’s important to have something proactive to play. Why I’ve chosen Crypt is because it can be cast T1 through a Chancellor of the Annex trigger, or if they don’t have one of them you can cantrip for it. This same reasoning is true for Dredge, and the mirror should it come up! It could be possible that we should play Surgical too, or a split but in favour of Crypt.

Alpine Moon - As I mentioned above, Dark Depths is proving to be one of the hardest matchups. Other options are Blood Moon or Unmoored Ego, but due to all their discard I wanted again something proactive and cheap to cast so you can cantrip into it. It may be a narrow card, but it’s what I’m testing for the matchup currently.

Flusterstorm - Generic good card vs combo decks.

Force of Will - Another good card for combo matchups, I think you want to play either Force of Fluster. Another thing to be tested more.

Abrade - The deck is pretty cold to Chalice of the Void so we need some answers to that. Abrade has fit the bill best so far, nice in Aether Vial matchups too where we can take a more control role.

Echoing Truth - Grixis notoriously has a hard time with Enchantments, Echoing Truth is an ‘answer’ to them as well as a nice catch all and has some cross application to help with Dark Depths decks. The key to Echoing Truth is it ‘combos’ with Cabal Therapy. You bounce everything, then name everything. Problem solved!

Pyroblast - Blast is just a generically great card, though I don't think it solves many of the decks problems. There will be some metagames, such as heavy SnS or control where it could shine, but I don't think it's worth a slot at the moment.

Diabolic Edict - Edict is another nod to Depths while being decent vs creature matchups where we can play control.



4) Decklists

My latest list

3 Dark Confidant
3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
3 Lotus Petal
2 Forked Bolt

4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sb:
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Abrade
2 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Spell Pierce
2 Echoing Truth

6) Resources

Discord - https://discord.gg/PM5StrY

https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/02/grixis-phoenix-w-callum-smith/

https://soundcloud.com/thecedricphillipspodcast/one-time-for-tommy-mtg

http://itsjulian.com/everyday-eternal-50-birds-the-word/

www.twitch.tv/ewlandon (http://www.twitch.tv/ewlandon)

www.twitch.tv/whitefaces (http://www.twitch.tv/whitefaces)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgwtxBf0I88

Thanks Elfkid for the banner!

[kinda]

I suggest in your list to cut dark rit/buried alive/the standard bird card then replace with good cards :cool:.

Or...cut the planes walkers/strix and replace with doomsday/emrakul.

[mistercakes]

i still like buried alive for 2 prized amalgam and a narcomoeba.

[Maximus]

I've loved watching this deck played out in person.

That said, I don't think the planeswalkers really fit your gameplan. This can be a really good thing by giving you more angles of attack, or it could just be poor synergy within the deck. Unfortunately, the cards are also just very good on their own which makes it harder to tell without extensive testing. Have you tried something like 3x Snapcaster Mage in this deck?

So many good options to try.

[Megadeus]

i still like buried alive for 2 prized amalgam and a narcomoeba.

That's an interesting plan in case you can't get a third spell

[Cartesian]

Just a word of advise to anyone who hasn't seen what this deck can do, Whitefaces knows what he's doing. I've seen enough to know it's very explosive and powerful.
I might try the deck out myself, now that I have this primer. Thanks Whitefaces, and I hope you will keep streaming and developing this cool deck.

[maharis]

Here is a version I tested that’s a little more all-in:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvStTuVU0AECn0y?format=jpg&name=medium

The Lilis are nice because they give you something else to cast off Ritual that is a bomb. I think Rob’s Amalgam idea may be better than my Scourge idea because Amalgam is easily castable if you face GY hate (and you can keep Narcos in play to fly over ground armies/TNN).



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[oOOoOphidian]

I feel like if you are trying to go all-in with it you want both moeba and amalgam as well as lotus petal. 18 land seems too many.

[Whitefaces]

I'm hoping the update the primer a bit more tomorrow.

I streamed another two leagues last night, the VOD is on my twitch. The first was very combo heavy and the second fair, leading to 2-3 and 4-1s which backs up my feeling that the sideboard should be heavily concentrating on combo. Two of the losses were because I was playing Leylines over Crypts interestingly. Not being able to cantrip into them hurts (unless you also have a Ritual to play the Leyline off, it's often way too slow).

Second league was almost another 5-0, fell to Shortcake in the final round, their own Crypt beat a T2 combo hand.

I'm now trying out different configurations for sideboard hate and countermagic suites. Because of Reanimator we'd love to have some turn 0 interaction. I think Tormod's Crypt is the best gy hate available to us, and Flusterstorm probably the best combo hate, but they don't let us beat T1s. So pairing Leyline with Flusterstorm and Crypt with Force makes some sense, though there is also an option of splitting Crypts and Surgicals too, 3 and 2 sounds like a decent place to start in my head. Hopefully I'll be back with some more info on this soon.


I suggest in your list to cut dark rit/buried alive/the standard bird card then replace with good cards :cool:.

Or...cut the planes walkers/strix and replace with doomsday/emrakul.

And a sideboard plan of Leyline and Helm I assume? ;)


i still like buried alive for 2 prized amalgam and a narcomoeba.

That's a cute idea! I know it's not directly connected, but so far Surgical hasn't been a problem, a friend is trying some Bloodghasts to play around it somewhat. Other than that I don't really see a reason to be playing targets other than Phoenixes so long as you're able to hit the spells cast quota honestly, which the deck has been doing.


I've loved watching this deck played out in person.

That said, I don't think the planeswalkers really fit your gameplan. This can be a really good thing by giving you more angles of attack, or it could just be poor synergy within the deck. Unfortunately, the cards are also just very good on their own which makes it harder to tell without extensive testing. Have you tried something like 3x Snapcaster Mage in this deck?

So many good options to try.

Thanks Max! (I assume this is you). It's been fun playing it too.

The Jace I was playing recently has looked pretty bad I'll admit, I'm off that idea now. But Liliana, the Last Hopes have been performing well. Adding strong Dark Rit plays raises the floor of the deck somewhat and she can close to auto win some matchups, like you say she's just good on her own too which while the deck is based on synergy, as long as I'm not sacrificing from that area raising the floor is something I think the deck is interested in. I hadn't considered Snapcaster, seems a bit expensive in the deck to me, while Lili is too she's playable off a Rit, Snap doesn't have _that_ many appealing targets too since it's largely redundant, nice with Therapy though. I could see trying a couple though!


Just a word of advise to anyone who hasn't seen what this deck can do, Whitefaces knows what he's doing. I've seen enough to know it's very explosive and powerful.
I might try the deck out myself, now that I have this primer. Thanks Whitefaces, and I hope you will keep streaming and developing this cool deck.

Thank you, very kind! Would love to have you on board, you know I'm a big fan of your deckbuilding.

[kombatkiwi]

i still like buried alive for 2 prized amalgam and a narcomoeba.

1 Haakon and 2 Midnight Reapers

[Qweerios]

I've had a similar deck idea in mind for a while now and here's what I think is constructive:

Bloodghast is your missing link to successful Entombs. I played all variants of Living Dead Girl/Young Frankenstein/Zombardment/Expendables (my thread) and the minute you include a Pyro + Therapy package you want Entomb with 1-2 Ghasts. Entomb for Ghast is a 1 mana recursive 2/1 and is one of the most efficient way to play Ghast. Entomb acts as an additional copy of Therapy and a single phoenix (AKA: flipped haste Delver).

As amazing as Buried and Ritual sounds, it seems to me like the two cards pull you in a direction you don't necessarily need or want to go in (all-in combo ish à la Entomb+Reanimate). You find yourself looking for ways to abuse ritual in what could be a streamlined UR cantrip Delver deck. I think it would be better to try and make this into that Delver deck that dominates Grixis ctrl by slowing it down a little and abuse the availlable haymakers (Delver/Pyro/Phoenix). That way you preserve the traditional aggressive Delver shell and forego a bit of disruption for some recursive threats or increase your explosive potential when left to your own devices. As of now, Entomb for 1-2 Ghasts destroys Grixis Ctrl pre-board so that's something to think about.

I think Daze and FoW belong in this deck. The way Phoenix is worded makes it possible to cast Entomb/Buried in a turn post Bolt/Cantrip/counter and still get the trigger off. It changes the dynamics of play on the stack when you can combine your cantrips and removal precomb mainphase to get hasty delvers in play.

Check out Izzet Charm instead of Brutality. They are quite similar in function but one is an instant blue spell that you can use as a Looting. It's a good spell to keep in mind when checking the blue count.

Here's a rough draft of what I have in mind:

4 Delver of Secrets
4 Young Pyromancer
2 Bloodghast
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Entomb
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Izzet Charm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Thoughtseize
2 Cabal Therapy

4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Islans
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
//SB
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Flusterstorm / Thoughtseize
2 Pyroblast
2 Abrade
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Darkblast
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
1 Silent Gravestone

The threat suite and manabase seem solid but the disruption suite has room for innovation. Perhaps 4 Therapy is better than a TS/Therapy split but Entomb tends to make Therapy much more accessible.

For the SB I chose a Surgical/Gravestone split because Gravestone stops Loam clean and protects from opposing Surgicals while shutting down Snaps at the same time. Additional discard over Flusters against Combo because of Therapy synergy and its proactive nature unless you want more blue cards. The rest is pretty standard with an Abrade/EE split against Chalice/Aggro decks, a pair of Edicts against Eldrazis, Depths and TNN, a Needle > Alpine Moon and a spicy Darkblast to top it off.

[Whitefaces]

I've had a similar deck idea in mind for a while now and here's what I think is constructive:

Bloodghast is your missing link to successful Entombs. I played all variants of Living Dead Girl/Young Frankenstein/Zombardment/Expendables (my thread) and the minute you include a Pyro + Therapy package you want Entomb with 1-2 Ghasts. Entomb for Ghast is a 1 mana recursive 2/1 and is one of the most efficient way to play Ghast. Entomb acts as an additional copy of Therapy and a single phoenix (AKA: flipped haste Delver).

As amazing as Buried and Ritual sounds, it seems to me like the two cards pull you in a direction you don't necessarily need or want to go in (all-in combo ish à la Entomb+Reanimate). You find yourself looking for ways to abuse ritual in what could be a streamlined UR cantrip Delver deck. I think it would be better to try and make this into that Delver deck that dominates Grixis ctrl by slowing it down a little and abuse the availlable haymakers (Delver/Pyro/Phoenix). That way you preserve the traditional aggressive Delver shell and forego a bit of disruption for some recursive threats or increase your explosive potential when left to your own devices. As of now, Entomb for 1-2 Ghasts destroys Grixis Ctrl pre-board so that's something to think about.

I think Daze and FoW belong in this deck. The way Phoenix is worded makes it possible to cast Entomb/Buried in a turn post Bolt/Cantrip/counter and still get the trigger off. It changes the dynamics of play on the stack when you can combine your cantrips and removal precomb mainphase to get hasty delvers in play.

Check out Izzet Charm instead of Brutality. They are quite similar in function but one is an instant blue spell that you can use as a Looting. It's a good spell to keep in mind when checking the blue count.

Here's a rough draft of what I have in mind:

4 Delver of Secrets
4 Young Pyromancer
2 Bloodghast
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Entomb
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Izzet Charm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Thoughtseize
2 Cabal Therapy

4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Islans
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
//SB
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Flusterstorm / Thoughtseize
2 Pyroblast
2 Abrade
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Darkblast
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
1 Silent Gravestone

The threat suite and manabase seem solid but the disruption suite has room for innovation. Perhaps 4 Therapy is better than a TS/Therapy split but Entomb tends to make Therapy much more accessible.

For the SB I chose a Surgical/Gravestone split because Gravestone stops Loam clean and protects from opposing Surgicals while shutting down Snaps at the same time. Additional discard over Flusters against Combo because of Therapy synergy and its proactive nature unless you want more blue cards. The rest is pretty standard with an Abrade/EE split against Chalice/Aggro decks, a pair of Edicts against Eldrazis, Depths and TNN, a Needle > Alpine Moon and a spicy Darkblast to top it off.

I'd urge you to try the Ritual and Buried side of the deck, it's both more powerful and less all in than you're expecting. It doesn't just sound amazing, it is, though there's been skepticism from a lot of people until they've seen the deck in action.

I tried Bloodghast in the first lists, I forgot to add some thoughts on it. It's just so low power level, even if you're doing stuff like Entomb for it, at least compared to what this deck is usually doing.

I'd not call it 'finding ways to abuse dark ritual', Buried Alive is doing that already. The engine is powerful enough that I'm now looking for ways to raise the floor of the deck like flooding on Rituals, other good Ritual plays that are also fine on their own (Liliana) is a way to do that.

All of what I'm saying is off the basis that you need to see and try Rituals and Buried Alive in action to be sold really since it sounds like you're not. You don't need any other threats, Delver would be the same reasoning as I said for Gurmag Angler, though it's arguably worse.

I think you're underestimating how awkward countermagic can be in this deck, but what you have in mind is really different so it's hard to talk on the same things.

Collective Brutalities effects have been fine, the problem with it has been 2cmc which Izzet Charm doesn't really solve.

[kombatkiwi]

Yeah I don't understand the logic behind the Entomb/FoW version
Pyro and Therapy are 2 good cards, you don't have to go and clunk it up by adding 2 bad cards in Entomb/Ghast. (And if the whole justification for Entomb/Ghast is to complement the Pyro-Therapy package, why cut the Therapy from 4 to 2?)
Then counters are awkward as Phoenix enablers compared to discard, and the only way to get a Phoenix into the bin (assuming you never want to target yourself with a discard spell) is either Entombing for 1 Phoenix or taking a neg 1 to discard it to Izzet Charm. The explosiveness of Buried Alive seems like it would be easily worth it rather than jumping through a similarly awkward hoop to get just a single 3/2.

I agree that you want some kind of other 3 mana black spell to make plays with ritual and that Liliana is a good idea, my immediate instinct is that the deck actually wants Veil rather than Last Hope but maybe shredding your own hand makes it too difficult to return Phoenixes?

I don't mind playing e.g. 1 Bloodghast over a Strix just so you have a bit more flexibility with the Buried Alives, in case you need to enable therapy in a pinch or something, but maybe this is unnecessary.
I keep trying to come up with a hybrid version of this and reanimator with a 1 of Dread Return to entomb and go with the YP but I can't come up with a version that makes sense (i.e. that deck probably doesn't want to play Phoenix).

[JackaBo]

Isn’t 4 bolts great in this deck?

[Whitefaces]

Yeah I don't understand the logic behind the Entomb/FoW version
Pyro and Therapy are 2 good cards, you don't have to go and clunk it up by adding 2 bad cards in Entomb/Ghast. (And if the whole justification for Entomb/Ghast is to complement the Pyro-Therapy package, why cut the Therapy from 4 to 2?)
Then counters are awkward as Phoenix enablers compared to discard, and the only way to get a Phoenix into the bin (assuming you never want to target yourself with a discard spell) is either Entombing for 1 Phoenix or taking a neg 1 to discard it to Izzet Charm. The explosiveness of Buried Alive seems like it would be easily worth it rather than jumping through a similarly awkward hoop to get just a single 3/2.

I agree that you want some kind of other 3 mana black spell to make plays with ritual and that Liliana is a good idea, my immediate instinct is that the deck actually wants Veil rather than Last Hope but maybe shredding your own hand makes it too difficult to return Phoenixes?

I don't mind playing e.g. 1 Bloodghast over a Strix just so you have a bit more flexibility with the Buried Alives, in case you need to enable therapy in a pinch or something, but maybe this is unnecessary.
I keep trying to come up with a hybrid version of this and reanimator with a 1 of Dread Return to entomb and go with the YP but I can't come up with a version that makes sense (i.e. that deck probably doesn't want to play Phoenix).

Right, Entomb and Ghast just aren't very good cards.

I've been meaning to try a Liliana of the Veil or two, will get around to it soon. The +1 does go against our gameplan a bit of using a critical mass, but we shall see. It's kind of an out to Ensnaring Bridge game one too, which the deck has been suffering vs.


Isn’t 4 bolts great in this deck?

Maybe. The full playset might be a bit excessive, but I've been leaning to playing 3 recently. Reason for not wanting all of them is we often don't need to be killing creatures in fair matchups, the onus is on the opponent to kill ours and vs combo they can be dead.

[Qweerios]

I'd urge you to try the Ritual and Buried side of the deck, it's both more powerful and less all in than you're expecting. It doesn't just sound amazing, it is, though there's been skepticism from a lot of people until they've seen the deck in action.

I tried Bloodghast in the first lists, I forgot to add some thoughts on it. It's just so low power level, even if you're doing stuff like Entomb for it, at least compared to what this deck is usually doing.

I'd not call it 'finding ways to abuse dark ritual', Buried Alive is doing that already. The engine is powerful enough that I'm now looking for ways to raise the floor of the deck like flooding on Rituals, other good Ritual plays that are also fine on their own (Liliana) is a way to do that.

All of what I'm saying is off the basis that you need to see and try Rituals and Buried Alive in action to be sold really since it sounds like you're not. You don't need any other threats, Delver would be the same reasoning as I said for Gurmag Angler, though it's arguably worse.

I think you're underestimating how awkward countermagic can be in this deck, but what you have in mind is really different so it's hard to talk on the same things.

Collective Brutalities effects have been fine, the problem with it has been 2cmc which Izzet Charm doesn't really solve.

Perhaps I am underestimating the power of Ritual + Buried like you say and that's my loss. However my rational for doing so is that I don't believe it is good enough to be built around as a combo deck because it doesn't stand up to any Reanimator deck out there. 12 Reanimation spells at 1-2 mana for Griselbrand (or better) and Entomb + loots as enablers makes Reanimator a much more consistent and faster deck at doing something better.

My idea of a Grixis Phoenix deck gives up the combo aspect in favor of synergy and recursion in a hyper-efficient shell that could leverage those aspects.

Izzet Charm is mostly a blue card for FoW and a better Looting. There is no doubt that brutality is very good, just that the lime between the two is fine which makes either a contender for the slot.

I completely understand if we are headed in opposite directions and figured any discussion is better than none. I don't mean to criticize your choices but merely to discuss the potential of Phoenix in legacy.

Regardless, best of luck in your project! Keep us posted.

[Whitefaces]

Perhaps I am underestimating the power of Ritual + Buried like you say and that's my loss. However my rational for doing so is that I don't believe it is good enough to be built around as a combo deck because it doesn't stand up to any Reanimator deck out there. 12 Reanimation spells at 1-2 mana for Griselbrand (or better) and Entomb + loots as enablers makes Reanimator a much more consistent and faster deck at doing something better.

My idea of a Grixis Phoenix deck gives up the combo aspect in favor of synergy and recursion in a hyper-efficient shell that could leverage those aspects.

Izzet Charm is mostly a blue card for FoW and a better Looting. There is no doubt that brutality is very good, just that the lime between the two is fine which makes either a contender for the slot.

I completely understand if we are headed in opposite directions and figured any discussion is better than none. I don't mean to criticize your choices but merely to discuss the potential of Phoenix in legacy.

Regardless, best of luck in your project! Keep us posted.

Thanks. I'm not trying to stifle discussion and sorry if it came across that way, but I think we have different views on what the deck wants to be doing. It's also been compared to Reanimator a bunch of times. While reanimator might be a better deck, it's really not like it. This has way more game vs sideboard cards but is less objectively powerful.

Fwiw Jarvis also streamed a straight UR style of this deck with Faithless Lootings and stuff as well as your normal suite of Dazes and Forces, while not exactly like yours the philosophy was more similar. It was a lot less powerful than the Buried version.

[kombatkiwi]

Perhaps I am underestimating the power of Ritual + Buried like you say and that's my loss. However my rational for doing so is that I don't believe it is good enough to be built around as a combo deck because it doesn't stand up to any Reanimator deck out there. 12 Reanimation spells at 1-2 mana for Griselbrand (or better) and Entomb + loots as enablers makes Reanimator a much more consistent and faster deck at doing something better.

Your list suffers from a similar problem too because you're playing 4 Entomb and the best thing you can possibly do with it is 1 Phoenix or 1 Bloodghast or 1 Cabal Therapy: if you're going to play Entomb why not just reanimate Griselbrand?

You're playing bad cards (B instant: mill yourself) to enable the synergies but the payoff on the synergies is so low that it doesn't seem like it's going to compensate for the inconsistency most of the time. If your payoff is a singular small free value creature then why wouldn't I just play a Strix/Snap/Kolaghans deck, which has a similar gameplan and arguably a higher ceiling but doesn't suffer from as bad consistency issues because it's not playing 4 drop creatures, Entomb, Izzet Charm, etc

[kinda]

Your list suffers from a similar problem too because you're playing 4 Entomb and the best thing you can possibly do with it is 1 Phoenix or 1 Bloodghast or 1 Cabal Therapy: if you're going to play Entomb why not just reanimate Griselbrand?

You're playing bad cards (B instant: mill yourself) to enable the synergies but the payoff on the synergies is so low that it doesn't seem like it's going to compensate for the inconsistency most of the time. If your payoff is a singular small free value creature then why wouldn't I just play a Strix/Snap/Kolaghans deck, which has a similar gameplan and arguably a higher ceiling but doesn't suffer from as bad consistency issues because it's not playing 4 drop creatures, Entomb, Izzet Charm, etc

Stop discouraging him, the entomb->Phoenix could be the next thunder bluff.

[maharis]

MTGO has been a shitshow the past couple days, but I played a few matches with this more all-in build:

4 Arclight Phoenix
3 Narcomoeba
3 Bloodghast
3 Prized Amalgam

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Faithless Looting
2 Lightning Bolt

1 Liliana, the Last Hope

18 lands

3 Surgical Extraction
2 Pyroblast
2 Echoing Truth
2 Flusterstorm
2 Abrade
1 Bitterblossom
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Liliana, the Last Hope

Quick thoughts:

-The Narco-Amalgam plan is very strong for a couple reasons. It makes Ritual-Buried on the first turn a must-answer play (yes it's not quite as flashy as the Phoenices themselves, but it's still 7 power that comes down before they've played a land). And, it makes Buried Alive off the top into a bomb if your resources have been taxed.

-Bloodghast is medium as discussed in here. Pros: Good with therapy (especially multiples + a fetchland), good off looting, haste can close out games fast. Cons: Not great buried alive target (if you have the follow-up land to bring it back, you can probably just cast a spell or two and trigger Phoenices), can't block which matters in certain combat situations, double-black forces you to play into Wasteland to cast from hand. Will test a little bit longer to see if there's a more consistent way to get it off with Therapy and a fetch more often.

-Most of the games I've lost have been to Reanimator. Maybe we need even more GY hate. May go up to 2 crypts cutting a Pyroblast, I guess, but space is getting tight.

-I played Echoing Truth to beat Leylines, figuring it's almost as good as Edict vs. Reanimator. But, I don't think Leyline is as big a problem because I won through a Rest in Peace by just letting them spend their turn doing that then casting stuff from hand, and I also lost to a TNN, so maybe Edicts are better in that slot. But I have to finish the league I'm currently in first, hopefully MTGO isn't a pile today.

-I find myself looking for a bolt pretty often but not sure I can actually fit more.

[mistercakes]

Thanks for testing it. It's viekos idea. I only tried it a bit in oops all spells, but it's pretty questionable there.

[maharis]

Thanks for testing it. It's viekos idea. I only tried it a bit in oops all spells, but it's pretty questionable there.

Thanks for the suggestion. I wish scourge of nel toth was better but I think this does what I was hoping that would do. There's an evasion tradeoff, but the same effective power; Amalgam is easier to get out but easier to remove, but if you never get the scourge out its difficulty to remove doesn't matter.

I forgot about this situation I faced. Here is the relevant info:

-Game 2 vs UR delver, but a more tempo than burn-based build. We won game 1. Opponent has been sitting on crypt whole game (t1 land, crypt, go).
-We knew they had Brainstorm, Force and Lavamancer from a previous Therapy.
-Opponent brainstormed two turns ago. Have not fetched since. Last turn played Lavamancer and passed.
-We cast a therapy from our hand this turn, named Force and hit. Remember, this means storm count is one. We have not played a land.
-Opponent's deck has True-Name Nemesis in it. We have hit one with a discard spell but do not know how many there may be or what's on top of their deck.
-We have no creatures in our graveyard. Our buried alive package has been trimmed, but not cut completely. There are still 4 Phoenices in our deck.
-What do you do here? (Edit: You may need to right-click and open pic in new window)

https://imgur.com/0oD47Lw

https://i.imgur.com/0oD47Lw.jpg

[mistercakes]

"-We cast a therapy from our hand this turn, named Force and hit. Remember, this means storm count is one. We have not played a land."

i don't see this.

[maharis]

"-We cast a therapy from our hand this turn, named Force and hit. Remember, this means storm count is one. We have not played a land."

i don't see this.

i don't know what makes the storm counter on mtgo pop up, which is why i added the reminder. I also forgot to pop out the graveyards, but rest assured there are two therapies in ours and a force at the top of theirs. :smile:

[mistercakes]

I just don't see any tapped lands for casting therapy this turn from hand.

[maharis]

Oh you’re right. I definitely missed something. I think they brainstormed, the next turn I therapied force, then their turn they played lavamancer, that brings us here. So I guess storm is still 0.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Whitefaces]

@ maharis

I do like that Ritual > Buried is a thing on turn one with Narc and Amalgam, I'll try it at some point. The cards aren't totally embarrassing to cast either, Phoenixes have been legit to hardcast too.

You should try more Tormod's Crypts for reanimator. Sure we lose to their T1s, I'm now tryng 2 Surgical 3 Crypt to fight that angle, but if we get a Crypt in play they have to use a lot of resources to fight through it, often buying time to either kill them or find another.

Echoing Truths aren't exactly for Leylines, they're a catch all to 'combo' with Therapy. They've been great for me, your list is weaker to leyline too, so I'd be on them I think.




I played 2 leagues on stream with the below list today. Mainly trying out Liliana of the Veil and cutting the Strix. Strix is always a tough one to evaluate since the card is so good as a standalone, but it's pretty mopey in the deck, I didn't feel like it was missed at all actually.

The maindeck is feeling really powerful, the slots that are open to be flex are 4th Pyromancer, 3rd Bolt and the Veil, other than that I'm almost sure everything else is beyond questioning, which I know is early in usual deck development but it's enacting the gameplan over and over again with consistency.

We went 4-1 in both the leagues, the VOD is here if anyone fancies watching it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/355457463

1-2 vs ANT
2-0 vs Rebels
2-1 vs Grixis Delver
2-0 vs Miracles
2-0 vs UW Blade

2-1 vs UB control
0-2 vs Depths
2-0 vs Tin Fins
2-0 vs Eldrazi
2-0 vs BW Chrome Mox stuff, Chalices, Rips, PWers etc

https://i.ibb.co/SXr8s2z/buried-phoenix.jpg (https://ibb.co/zhJYn1z)

[maharis]

@ maharis

I do like that Ritual > Buried is a thing on turn one with Narc and Amalgam, I'll try it at some point. The cards aren't totally embarrassing to cast either, Phoenixes have been legit to hardcast too.

You should try more Tormod's Crypts for reanimator. Sure we lose to their T1s, I'm now tryng 2 Surgical 3 Crypt to fight that angle, but if we get a Crypt in play they have to use a lot of resources to fight through it, often buying time to either kill them or find another.

Echoing Truths aren't exactly for Leylines, they're a catch all to 'combo' with Therapy. They've been great for me, your list is weaker to leyline too, so I'd be on them I think.




I played 2 leagues on stream with the below list. Mainly trying out Liliana of the Veil and cutting the Strix. Strix is always a tough one to evaluate since the card is so good as a standalone, but it's pretty mopey in the deck, I didn't feel like it was missed at all actually.

The maindeck is feeling really powerful, the slots that are open to be flex are 4th Pyromancer, 3rd Bolt and the Veil, other than that I'm almost sure everything else is beyond questioning, which I know is early in usual deck development but it's enacting the gameplan over and over again with consistency.

We went 4-1 in both the leagues, the VOD is here if anyone fancies watching it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/355457463

1-2 vs ANT
2-0 vs Rebels
2-1 vs Grixis Delver
2-0 vs Miracles
2-0 vs UW Blade

2-1 vs UB control
0-2 vs Depths
2-0 vs Tin Fins
2-0 vs Eldrazi
2-0 vs BW Chrome Mox stuff, Chalices, Rips, PWers etc

ooh good point about Truth. Maybe I should bring it in more. I will try some new crypt/surgical splits in the side too.

I went 2-3 after 2-0 in the practice room.

2-0 vs Vial Wizards
2-0 vs Miracles
1-2 vs Grixis (no lands in 7, 6 or 5 card hands game 3)
1-2 vs UW stoneblade (mull to 5, TNN)
0-2 vs Death's Shadow (i misplayed like crazy)

A little bad luck, a little TNN. Gonna tweak and re-run.

I watched a bit of your leagues today. If I can't get better results I might just play it at my 1k this weekend. :)

Getting 0-2d by Depths with 3 Alpine Moon hurts. Is it even worth trying to solve for it?

Regarding the puzzle I butchered -- and can't repair because MTGO's replays are messed up... The situation hinged on whether or not I could resolve Last Hope through their hand to kill the Lavamancer without using my entire hand in case I needed Ritual or Fluster in the future, and I ended up using the Phoenix to discard Fluster so I could play Ritual->Lili through Pierce. However, I think I may have miscounted storm so I probably didn't need to actually do that :)

[IamHANDSOME]

Whats the reason for playing any Liliana in the main 60?

[mistercakes]

ooh good point about Truth. Maybe I should bring it in more. I will try some new crypt/surgical splits in the side too.

I went 2-3 after 2-0 in the practice room.

2-0 vs Vial Wizards
2-0 vs Miracles
1-2 vs Grixis (no lands in 7, 6 or 5 card hands game 3)
1-2 vs UW stoneblade (mull to 5, TNN)
0-2 vs Death's Shadow (i misplayed like crazy)

A little bad luck, a little TNN. Gonna tweak and re-run.

I watched a bit of your leagues today. If I can't get better results I might just play it at my 1k this weekend. :)

Getting 0-2d by Depths with 3 Alpine Moon hurts. Is it even worth trying to solve for it?

Regarding the puzzle I butchered -- and can't repair because MTGO's replays are messed up... The situation hinged on whether or not I could resolve Last Hope through their hand to kill the Lavamancer without using my entire hand in case I needed Ritual or Fluster in the future, and I ended up using the Phoenix to discard Fluster so I could play Ritual->Lili through Pierce. However, I think I may have miscounted storm so I probably didn't need to actually do that :)

Why not flashback therapy to discard spell pierce? Then you can cast Lili and he has no way to interact. (flusterstorm is cold to it)

[Whitefaces]

Whats the reason for playing any Liliana in the main 60?

It's mentioned a bit in the first post, but basically they're solid cards in their own right while also powerful cards to play fast with Dark Ritual. The second point is to raise the floor of the deck slightly if you flood on Rituals. Last Hope especially is also an important part of the deck in sb games as it's a win con fighting on another axis to the GY from Phoenixes and go wide from YP. These three angles make sbing very hard vs this deck.

[Ceralyst]

Has anyone else toyed around with mission briefing in the main?
I am running 2 in the main right now, and they have been relevant in my games so far. The benefits of mission briefing in this deck are that it’s a mid to late game top deck that can actively allow u to cast 3 spells in a turn. Mostly by casting it and replaying a cantrips from the GY is enough to get u there. Also having a buried alive and mission briefing in hand with 3 lands out and a D ritual in the graveyard can get u the phoenix’s. It can also allow us to recast removal or discard from the GY to help put us in a position to win games.
I’m not sure 2 is the correct number to play, but 1 may suffice as a way to give us a late game out to situations.
I’m also playing 2 Unmoored Ego in the SB for depths /lands or combo matchups.

[Whitefaces]

Has anyone else toyed around with mission briefing in the main?
I am running 2 in the main right now, and they have been relevant in my games so far. The benefits of mission briefing in this deck are that it’s a mid to late game top deck that can actively allow u to cast 3 spells in a turn. Mostly by casting it and replaying a cantrips from the GY is enough to get u there. Also having a buried alive and mission briefing in hand with 3 lands out and a D ritual in the graveyard can get u the phoenix’s. It can also allow us to recast removal or discard from the GY to help put us in a position to win games.
I’m not sure 2 is the correct number to play, but 1 may suffice as a way to give us a late game out to situations.
I’m also playing 2 Unmoored Ego in the SB for depths /lands or combo matchups.

Interesting idea, I hadn't thought of it. I can see it being good in the later stages of the game. It is pretty slow, but the scenarios you're describing do some up, I'll give one a try. I don't think we'd want to play any more though.

I was considering Unmoored Ego for Depths but it's so slow, they can either discard it, fluster it or simply have DD in play already/Crop Rotation in response. I think that's too many things that can go wrong.

[Cartesian]

I tried some leagues with this deck today, went 4-1, 3-2, 3-2.
The raw power is there, but I need to refine my skill a lot.
Some things I have tried: 2 Jace Prodigy, 1 Anger, and IoK/Duress split because after spending all my tickes on the Phoenixes I could not also get 4 Thoughtseizes. I don't think it made much of a difference tbh.
I also run only 8 fetches, and I thinks that was actually fine alongside 4 Preordain.

[Hanni]

Anger seems pretty spicy with Young Pyromancer, although it doesn't really make sense to Buried Alive for it. It definitely makes the Entomb version better, although I agree that Entomb is too low powered here.

I also think there are some other interesting options that could be good in here, probably as singletons, like Gut Shot and Lava Dart. Flashback spells in general seem sweet, though it's probably not worth destabilizing the manabase to run Ancient Grudge in the board.

[Mr. Safety]

I watched Jarvis Yu stream a version of this, pretty cool deck. It seems to play out like a genuine agro deck. The young peezy backup plan was really good, a way to make sure you don't just get stuck with air in your hand. His version didn't have bolts or forces, which surprised me. It leaned on discard and daze. Bolt seems like a natural inclusion for removal and reach, force maybe in the sideboard (blue count makes it iffy.)

Link to stream:
https://youtu.be/X5gUWaTNyXk

Regarding Depths: is Wipe Away an option?

[Whitefaces]

I tried some leagues with this deck today, went 4-1, 3-2, 3-2.
The raw power is there, but I need to refine my skill a lot.
Some things I have tried: 2 Jace Prodigy, 1 Anger, and IoK/Duress split because after spending all my tickes on the Phoenixes I could not also get 4 Thoughtseizes. I don't think it made much of a difference tbh.
I also run only 8 fetches, and I thinks that was actually fine alongside 4 Preordain.

Yeah, the deck does take some getting used to, especially when sequencing both cantrips and discard. I'm still making plenty of mistakes myself, but it's the best way to learn.

Jace is nice, I've tried him a couple of times too. I ended up thinking that Strix was better but I've been much lower on that this past week so might try JVP again.

Anger is nice if you're playing some other creatures, but as Hanni said it doesn't seem too great with Phoenixes, so just for YP? Did it do much?

IoK and Duress hopefully you can get by with for a bit, but I think TS is quite a large amount better. It's not too uncommon to TS yourself for a Phoenix, and there are some key cards both the other two spell miss, notably Force for IoK and hatebears like Thalia, or maybe Thought-Knot Seer. When the deck is halfway between combo and control it's important to have the flexibility.

My reasoning for running so many fetches is both the colour requirements when sequencing the spells, and later in the game when you need to chain cantrips they're important for BSs and Ponders especially.


Anger seems pretty spicy with Young Pyromancer, although it doesn't really make sense to Buried Alive for it. It definitely makes the Entomb version better, although I agree that Entomb is too low powered here.

I also think there are some other interesting options that could be good in here, probably as singletons, like Gut Shot and Lava Dart. Flashback spells in general seem sweet, though it's probably not worth destabilizing the manabase to run Ancient Grudge in the board.

There's a bunch of cool cards we can run, yeah. Especially when I first had Entombs in the deck there was suggestions of Lava Dart, among many others, but I think you really want maximum consistency. It's only later in the game that you can sometimes struggle to chain 3 spells together, and if you don't have those Phoenixes in the yard something like Dart is a real liability. The deck also uses its mana well up to ~5, so the flashback cost can be real.


I watched Jarvis Yu stream a version of this, pretty cool deck. It seems to play out like a genuine agro deck. The young peezy backup plan was really good, a way to make sure you don't just get stuck with air in your hand. His version didn't have bolts or forces, which surprised me. It leaned on discard and daze. Bolt seems like a natural inclusion for removal and reach, force maybe in the sideboard (blue count makes it iffy.)

Link to stream:
https://youtu.be/X5gUWaTNyXk

Regarding Depths: is Wipe Away an option?

I've been chatting with Jarvis about all the builds too, that was one we were trying at the time but it was all still in flux. Daze has potential but I haven't tested it enough yet. Also I think there should be more bolts and he agrees, just the nature of trying different configurations out.

The danger of Daze and Force is being reactive cards when the deck wants as many proactive things as possible for Phoenixes and YP, though the reactive cards aren't so bad with YP. It came up a non-trivial amount of the time where a Daze in hand meant I couldn't get back Phoenixes unless the opponent took some bait and we could cast it. I've also tried Forces in the sideboard and I think were in the last 5-0 that was posted of this, but also multiple times you got caught with it and no blue card so I think Flusters and Spell Pierce might be better, just a lot worse on the draw vs things like Reanimator and occasionally storm. Discard has been doing a good job of interaction when coupled with the fast clock, though.

[Jaynel]

I've been chatting with Jarvis about all the builds too, that was one we were trying at the time but it was all still in flux. Daze has potential but I haven't tested it enough yet. Also I think there should be more bolts and he agrees, just the nature of trying different configurations out.

I like your recent list with 3 Bolts in the main and 3 Abrade in the sideboard. The prior list with only 2 MD Bolts was having a pretty rough time against D&T in our testing, especially post board, having to deal with Thalia, Sanctum Prelate, and Containment Priest.

I want even one more Bolt effect. I'll be trying a Fire/Ice in the main over one of the Strix slots (so over the LotV in your latest list). It is a versatile answer for multiple critters as well as being able to deal with Marit Lage for a turn, which could sometimes be enough for the Phoenixes to get there. It's never a completely dead late game draw either.

[Whitefaces]

I like your recent list with 3 Bolts in the main and 3 Abrade in the sideboard. The prior list with only 2 MD Bolts was having a pretty rough time against D&T in our testing, especially post board, having to deal with Thalia, Sanctum Prelate, and Containment Priest.

I want even one more Bolt effect. I'll be trying a Fire/Ice in the main over one of the Strix slots (so over the LotV in your latest list). It is a versatile answer for multiple critters as well as being able to deal with Marit Lage for a turn, which could sometimes be enough for the Phoenixes to get there. It's never a completely dead late game draw either.

Makes sense. I've found DnT to be pretty favourable so far, you can usually control them, but I haven't played vs that many Prelates luckily or always had the Abrade for it. If you don't already have the answers lined up it's tough.

Fire//Ice is a good shout, could see it having a lot of application in this deck. I'm currently trying a second Liliana of the Veil though, she's been impressive in the small sample size so far. I'd recommend trying her out, and if you want to cut something you can trim a YP, especially if you still have 2 Lili Last Hope to rebuy them.

And @Mr. Safety - 'Regarding Depths: is Wipe Away an option?'

Since this deck doesn't play that much countermagic it's hard to protect reactive 'answers' to Marit Lage, I was playing Edicts too for a bit and while they don't get around Safekeeper too, that was never the problem, it was keeping them in hand. Alpine Moon has been good so far for the matchup.

[Cartesian]

Anger is nice if you're playing some other creatures, but as Hanni said it doesn't seem too great with Phoenixes, so just for YP? Did it do much?
Well, Jace is a creature also. That was my idea.
And there were times where the extra damage from getting Anger with Pyromancer in play added up to more than an extra Phoenix would have.
But overall I don't know if it is worth it, no.

You are right about the Thoughtseizes, I will get them.

[Whitefaces]

Well, Jace is a creature also. That was my idea.
And there were times where the extra damage from getting Anger with Pyromancer in play added up to more than an extra Phoenix would have.
But overall I don't know if it is worth it, no.

You are right about the Thoughtseizes, I will get them.

Ah I see, pretty cute with Jace yeah.

I played the challenge today, pretty mediocre 4-3 but may as well comment on the matches.

2-1 vs Rip Helm - This should be a nightmare matchup for us, I was locked out by rip and energy field quite quickly game one and couldn't find a Liliana of the Veil before they found a Helm. I was then able to take the sideboard games, second game from Echoing Truth and the third from a Veil ultimate, especially Liliana really proved her worth by breaking up Rip and Field as well as destroying 3 lands at the end.

1-2 vs Eldrazi - Game one I got Chaliced out into multiple Thought-Knots, didn't stand a chance. Game two I had a turn two combo and they didn't have sb cards for it. Game three they had Leyline and a Matter Reshaper to open, I thoughtseized and took a Smasher leaving them with a Macabre and All is Dust, they drew running Wastelands then a Ballista to take out a Pyromancer I finally got down. In retrospect I could have fetched basics despite knowing there were no Wastelands in their hand and potentially won this game.

2-1 vs TES - I think I was a little lucky to take this match too. Game one I had a turn two combo putting them to 9, they had to Ad Nauseum with no mana floating and didn't find a Petal or Mox. Game two they killed me on their turn two. Game three I had a Fluster for their Duress for a turn two combo, they had a slower hand and conceded their turn three.

0-2 vs UW Blade - Game one I had a decent hand with cantrips and sculpted into the combo plus some discard, but that was met with Pierce, Counterspell and a Force and I wasn't able to pull anything together. Game two I played poorly, I got a little frustrated and forgot that Phoenixes aren't a 'may' return and threw a Buried Alive after multiple spells into a Containment Priest, with the intention of killing it the following turn to return then. Again this game they had a lot of interaction too, felt rough for a usually great matchup.

1-2 vs SnS - JPA does JPA things episode 578345743. Game one he had a turn three combo after Intuitioning for Show and Tell after Forcing my combo, then Omni into two Emrakuls. Game two I Thoughtseized a Petal out of a hand with no other coloured mana, this gave me the time to combo twice (first being Forced) and stripping his combo cards away. G3 was a turn two Griselbrand, I put in a land and had two Rituals, Buried and Lili Veil, so went for Buried which got Forced, then went for Liliana which got forced too. Sometimes there's nothing you can do...

2-0 vs UW Blade - This match was a bit more textbook, discarded relevant cards and comboed, they had a Swords and CJ for two Phoenixes but a harcdcast fourth put it away. Game two was again fairly textbook, they had surgical, flusters, force etc but discard and Young Pyromancer/s eating the Force cleared the way for the combo.

2-1 vs Moon Stompy - Game one I get to Preordain off a Sea which is met by a Magus of the Moon followed by a Chalice, I have a couple of turns to draw basic Swamp and Buried but a Rabblemaster puts it away quickly. Game two they get a Chalice down but I play Buried Alive turn three and throw three spells into it, smack for nine. They have a Magus on the board but are forced to Fiery Confluence wiping it, which unlocks my blue mana to play some more cantrips into chalice and bring the birds back. Game three they keep a hand of multiple Chalices but just an Ancient Tomb, I get to eot Echoing Truth two of them then untap and throw a Bolt and four Phoenixes at them, putting them to one with just a Tomb in play. This matchup plays out a bit better than it looks on paper.

A bit sad to lose vs UW Blade as like I said the matchup has been pretty favourable, can't feel too bad about losing to SnS or Eldrazi though, those two decks will get you sometimes.

I was playing two Liliana of the Veil main today, in the small testing with her so far she's really overperformed so I'll continue with two. Last Hope on the other hand has been fine, but a little lacking, I might trim back to one copy and play a third Bolt. While it wouldn't have been too great in the matchups today, I think it's pretty key to a lot of others to have multiple of them.

I was also playing a Spell Pierce in the board to accompany two Flusters, it felt great vs UW Rip Helm at least! May try a second over a Fluster too.

[kombatkiwi]

I was playing two Liliana of the Veil main today, in the small testing with her so far she's really overperformed so I'll continue with two. Last Hope on the other hand has been fine, but a little lacking, I might trim back to one copy and play a third Bolt. While it wouldn't have been too great in the matchups today, I think it's pretty key to a lot of others to have multiple of them.

Glad to hear I haven't lost my touch lmao

[talpa]

I'm very interested in this deck, thanks for opening the thread and congratulations on the results of your build (I saw a couple 5-0 if I'm not mistaken).

I still have not played any games, so I'm speaking only "on paper" and I already saw you answered some questions, but still :tongue:

It seems to me ritual+buried alive is very powerful but it's also a two card combo made by two 4-ofs. Compared to others (show, reanimate) that have 8-ofs and are more powerful in terms of turn-kill it makes me question if we can't find other things to supplement the 4-ofs and increase redundancy, like a couple more rituals, or if we can't find something else to play in addition to buried alive.
I read you tested and disliked both Intuition and Faithless Loothing... what about Thought Scour/Mental notes?

Also, have you tested the more blue version you spoke earlier here?
You cited Jarvis, I found also LSV https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/arclight-delver-legacy-channel-lsv/

Do you think there could be a way to fuse the two approaches together? like no counters, keep discards and buried, but also play delvers or other ways to put phoenixes in graveyard... Chart a Course?

Final question, I saw you wrote Surgical is not a problem, how is that? Shouldn't be better to play a couple Silent Gravestone in sideboard?

Thanks again!

[Mr. Safety]

Makes sense. I've found DnT to be pretty favourable so far, you can usually control them, but I haven't played vs that many Prelates luckily or always had the Abrade for it. If you don't already have the answers lined up it's tough.

Fire//Ice is a good shout, could see it having a lot of application in this deck. I'm currently trying a second Liliana of the Veil though, she's been impressive in the small sample size so far. I'd recommend trying her out, and if you want to cut something you can trim a YP, especially if you still have 2 Lili Last Hope to rebuy them.

And @Mr. Safety - 'Regarding Depths: is Wipe Away an option?'

Since this deck doesn't play that much countermagic it's hard to protect reactive 'answers' to Marit Lage, I was playing Edicts too for a bit and while they don't get around Safekeeper too, that was never the problem, it was keeping them in hand. Alpine Moon has been good so far for the matchup.

Wow, Alpine Moon making it's way into Legacy. It does seem to be a pretty effective (and cheap) answer to Depths. Is Blood Moon an option?

[Whitefaces]

I'm very interested in this deck, thanks for opening the thread and congratulations on the results of your build (I saw a couple 5-0 if I'm not mistaken).

I still have not played any games, so I'm speaking only "on paper" and I already saw you answered some questions, but still :tongue:

It seems to me ritual+buried alive is very powerful but it's also a two card combo made by two 4-ofs. Compared to others (show, reanimate) that have 8-ofs and are more powerful in terms of turn-kill it makes me question if we can't find other things to supplement the 4-ofs and increase redundancy, like a couple more rituals, or if we can't find something else to play in addition to buried alive.
I read you tested and disliked both Intuition and Faithless Loothing... what about Thought Scour/Mental notes?

Also, have you tested the more blue version you spoke earlier here?
You cited Jarvis, I found also LSV https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/arclight-delver-legacy-channel-lsv/

Do you think there could be a way to fuse the two approaches together? like no counters, keep discards and buried, but also play delvers or other ways to put phoenixes in graveyard... Chart a Course?

Final question, I saw you wrote Surgical is not a problem, how is that? Shouldn't be better to play a couple Silent Gravestone in sideboard?

Thanks again!

No problem answering these questions, I'm happy to. Though the deck is quite hard to simply understand from looking at the decklist, I'd encourage you or anyone else to watch either some of my streams (the VODs are posted in this thread) or Jarvis has streamed it again recently. On mine I try to explain a lot of the lines, it might be helpful to understand not just the deck choices but also how I play the deck, then card choices probably make more sense too.

First thing you have to keep in mind about Buried Alive and Dark Ritual is that while they combo together, you don't need them together. It's fairly common to play a Buried Alive on turn three and follow it up the turn after with some spells. Rituals are worse without Buried Alive granted, but they're still fairly strong with the Lilianas. Since this deck is going to come up against Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm a lot too I've used them to 'counter' them using the mana to pay. So on this note I've found the combo to be powerful and with all the cantrips consistent enough that I want to concentrate the rest of the deck on raising the floor, that means things like Thought Scour/Mental note are just too bad a card on their own. If you really look at the deck there's not that much graveyard synergy, just Phoenix and Cabal Therapy so it's not too likely to be hitting off these anyway. And on a similar note to why I found Entomb to be underwhelming, when boarding I usually look to take out any of the low powered synergy cards in preparation for graveyard hate. Scour/Note also opens you up to Surgical, which I'll answer that question here too. Surgical is reactive, so I've found it pretty easy to either take it with discard spells before putting Phoenix into the yard, or simply leave it there and play a Young Pyromancer or Liliana game. The only times where you can lose to it is either if you're under a lot of pressure from something like Delver or Shadow, or if they Thoughtseize a Phoenix then have the Surgical. This is still not a game winning play too, while it can cripple the deck it's not hard to still win with Pyromancer.

I've not tested the heavier blue version with Delver and countermagic, but it's been discussed a lot. I've also watched a bunch of people stream it but it honestly looks less powerful than this one, at least the Phoenix angle. Most of the times I've seen the deck win has been off Delver, Daze and Lightning Bolt etc, while Phoenixes are stranded in hand not doing much. But in this shell, Delver is just another threat and I don't believe the deck needs that.


Wow, Alpine Moon making it's way into Legacy. It does seem to be a pretty effective (and cheap) answer to Depths. Is Blood Moon an option?

Same issue as all the other 3cmc options, it gets discarded or Depths can combo before you play it. I don't care so much about locking them out, just the card Dark Depths itself so I think Alpine is better.

[maharis]

Played at 1K Dec. 30:

4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Young Pyromancer
2 Prized Amalgam
2 Narcomoeba

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Preordain

2 Liliana, the Last Hope

4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

3 Surgical Extraction
2 Pyroblast
2 Force of Will
2 Flusterstorm
2 Echoing Truth
2 Abrade
1 Pithing Needle
1 Bitterblossom

Decided to up the U count and play a couple Forces. They came in almost every game, as you'll see...

Rd 1: Burn 1-2 (0-1)
Game 1: I keep a turn 1 liliana. They play mountain-swiftspear. I change my mind and go ritual-seize-therapy-therapy and empty their hand. Then I never draw gas.
Game 2: I keep turn 1 ritual-buried-narco-double amalgam. This wins.
Game 3: Who can even remember.

Rd 2: BUG midrange 2-1 (1-1)
Game 1: I keep turn 1 ritual-buried-narco-double amalgam, thoughtseize and therapy some removal, then draw 5 lands in 6 draw steps.
Games 2 and 3: Deck works pretty well.

Rd 3: Sneak and Show 2-0 (2-1)
Games 1 and 2: Opponent never has both combo pieces in hand. Discard is great

Rd 4: BR Reanimator 0-2 (2-2)
Game 1: *stares into endless void*
Game 2: Made a sequencing error that allows opponent to get something into play, but even if I had been correct I would've lost the next turn.

Rd 5: Ur Omnitell 0-2 (2-3)
Game 1: Who can even remember
Game 2: I turn 1 seize-surgical Emrakul, and get opponent down to 3, but cannot get the last points across before he gets Show->Omni->Wish->Brainstorm omni to top->Release the Ants

So...

I boarded out my combo cards in every combo matchup in favor of playing a harder Grixis control style. (What's a better three-mana sorcery: Show and Tell or Buried Alive?) That yielded a 1-2 record, including 2 sideboarded losses. I don't think it's a bad idea, just some bad luck.

Narco-Amalgam package was excellent. I should've won the BUG game 1 going away, I just really got bit by the variance bug. And, it was the only reason I took a game off of Burn.

These kinds of hyper-cantrip decks always feel like they flood out more. I looked at a lot of hands filled with lands in the late game... Turbo Xerox theory says that cantrips are part of your mana base. But I also feel like we have to throw back a ton of one-landers with bulky spells. Not sure that can be solved, but interested if others have the same experience. Cards like Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal that increase explosiveness could be considered.

[Whitefaces]

Sorry to hear it didn't go so well, combo is certainly one of this decks weak spots.

When you say you sided out your combo cards in every matchup, which ones exactly? That's a lot to take out, I can see Narc and Amalgams, but I think it's quite important to keep the Rituals and Burieds to put them under a quick clock once you've discarded them. If you don't have a fast clock the discard loses a lot of its effect as you give them more draw steps.

I would recommend playing the full set of Preordains, this kind of addresses your last point, sounds like you need more consistency not mana and explosiveness. This deck especially wants all the cantrips all the time, it operates off pretty low land counts too so a lot of the time you're able to cantrip for just gas. Part of not flooding is playing the cantrips in the right order at the right time too, from my experience with this deck so far you sometimes want to sandbag cantrips if you're not looking for something in particular or have a bottleneck on mana for the turn, for example you have volc and u sea up and some number of phoenixes in the yard, if you only have one cantrip in hand I'd hold onto it since you're not getting full value due to not being able to get the Phoenix back. Flooding here could also just be your draws too, it's a small sample size, it happens sometimes.

[maharis]

Sorry to hear it didn't go so well, combo is certainly one of this decks weak spots.

When you say you sided out your combo cards in every matchup, which ones exactly? That's a lot to take out, I can see Narc and Amalgams, but I think it's quite important to keep the Rituals and Burieds to put them under a quick clock once you've discarded them. If you don't have a fast clock the discard loses a lot of its effect as you give them more draw steps.

I would recommend playing the full set of Preordains, this kind of addresses your last point, sounds like you need more consistency not mana and explosiveness. This deck especially wants all the cantrips all the time, it operates off pretty low land counts too so a lot of the time you're able to cantrip for just gas. Part of not flooding is playing the cantrips in the right order at the right time too, from my experience with this deck so far you sometimes want to sandbag cantrips if you're not looking for something in particular or have a bottleneck on mana for the turn, for example you have volc and u sea up and some number of phoenixes in the yard, if you only have one cantrip in hand I'd hold onto it since you're not getting full value due to not being able to get the Phoenix back. Flooding here could also just be your draws too, it's a small sample size, it happens sometimes.

Oh yeah. I mean, losing die roll to burn first round is just a thing that happens sometimes.

On cantrip counts -- I feel like we can go down to 17 and add the 3rd preordain. I could try your build with the Liliana split over the Narco/Amalgam buried backup plan I suppose, that would support Dark Rit better and also get to 4 Preordains, but I have won some games by having that plan available. It will take a lot of testing and probably recording what happens vs. every deck to understand which of those plans works better.

I cut 3 Rituals, 3 Buried Alives, and 2 Lilianas for 3 Surgical, 2 Echoing Truth, 2 Flusterstorm, 2 Force of Will vs. Reanimator. Against Show and Tell variants I cut everything and added the Pyroblasts. The Narcs and Amalgams stayed in as threats and blue cards. My rationale was that I was either going to win with YP or by running everyone out of cards and playing my threats off the top. I really don't think you can get there with 3 creatures over 2-3 turns vs. decks with Griselbrand. Ritual->Buried is two cards that don't interact with a combo at all. Like you do it and they go "cool, show and tell."

Also, bringing in reactive cards makes it harder to play 3 spells on our turn for Phoenix. (FWIW, I didn't play Crypt because I expected more S&T than Reanimator. It was the most represented deck with 3 or 4 out of 17 players on some variant.)

The power level is here but the sequencing and matchup knowledge is tricky. I seem to never play against fair decks that this just brutalizes like Miracles or Grixis haha.

[maharis]

League w/same build except Crypt over Force

Rd 1 Grixis W 2-0
Rd 2 TES W 2-1
Rd 3 4c Fauna Shaman 1-2
Rd 4 BR Reanimator 1-2 (opponent mulled to 5 g1 and had rit-entomb-animate dead, g3 i had flusterstorm and he had animate dead)
Rd 5 Burn 1-2

Love the deck but think I have to take a break.

[kinda]

League w/same build except Crypt over Force

Rd 1 Grixis W 2-0
Rd 2 TES W 2-1
Rd 3 4c Fauna Shaman 1-2
Rd 4 BR Reanimator 1-2 (opponent mulled to 5 g1 and had rit-entomb-animate dead, g3 i had flusterstorm and he had animate dead)
Rd 5 Burn 1-2

Love the deck but think I have to take a break.

I would suggest watching whitefaces' videos to help learn how to 'sequence cantrips correctly and play them at the right time'.

Why are you running the liliana that doesn't work well with phoenix/amalgam?

Cutting fow seems odd?

[maharis]

This wasn’t really about sequencing, just bad matchups/luck. Both games I lost to fauna shaman had Leovold in play. Both games I lost to Burn had Eidolon. I kept crypt-Flusterstorm on the draw game 3 vs Reanimator and they went thoughtseize into animate dead win. What can you do?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[talpa]

Hello everybody,
just a quick report of my test yesterday (in our local store we don't play Friday Night Magic, we play swiss-only Saturday Afternoon Legacy :tongue:).

I played this list:
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize
3 Force of Will
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Faithless Looting
1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Cabal Therapy
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Bitterblossom
2 Pyroblast
1 Invasive Surgery
1 Force of Will
2 Abrade
2 Perilous Voyage

Choices explanation. Maindeck: no Lilianas, FoW, Faithless Loothing. Reasons: I expected a fair amount of combos, Liliana did not seem a good choice, FoW self explanatory given the premises. Loothing because I was afraid of having uncastable phoenix in hand.
Impressions after testing: FoW promoted, Faithless rejected (always boarded out, casted twice in g1 never in the correct situation but both times as a bad cantrip). I am considering maindecking Lilianas again, or 4th copy of cabal OR FoW. I'd like to fit in 2Amalgams and a Narcomoeba but then I'd have to cut another copy of bolt, or therapy of Fow, and don't like any of these options. Moreover, the amalgams seem cute but I don't know if them not being evasive would matter in the end.
Sideboard: no lands hate, except Perilous Voyage for Marit Lage, who could also hit Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void, since in this colors we don't have good ways of handling enchantments. Bitterblossom as another threat diversification against control strategies (also "infinite" chumpblock against Marit Lage, saving Sejiri trick). Impressions after testing: I troubled way more than expected against Surgical, I think I'll reconsider Silent Gravestone (as I already suggested even though the answers deemed it unnecessary).

Tournament performance: I went 3-1 which was good for a 3rd place. I faced Humans (lost 1-2), Miracle (won 2-0), BUG Control/Midrange (won 2-1), Miracle (won 2-1). Found Miracle way harder than expected, between Terminus, Plowshares, Surgicals and Containment Priests.
Humans I won G1 on the draw being able to FoW his Freeboter in order to protect the "combo" Ritual, Buried, Cantrip next turn. I then lost g2-3, nothing noteworthy.
G1 against the first player with Miracle pretty strange, I was able to go for the "combo", protected by discard, early, but after a swing two phoenix were met with a Swords to Plowshares, the third being followed by a topdecked third copy of Swords to Plowshares. He was able to resolve a Counterbalance, to which I responded with a Lightning Bolt to the face Bringing him to 4 life. The game then went long, I tried a play every now and then to try and play around CB, he started beating with snapcaster, but at some point went to 3 life FoWing something on my side, and two turns before I died I was able to go Buried Alive, spell, spell to deal 3 fast damage with the last Phoenix.
G2 on the contrary ended pretty fast, though I kept a bad hand like fetchland, pyroblast, thoughtseize, ponder, brainstorm, preordain, buried alive. I thought the game would go long and leave me time to find lands. I didn't start with a cantrip because I expected CB on his second turn, which I was able to counter with pyro. On my turn I was able to cantrip for land leaving ritual on top for the protected combo on turn three.

I would gladly hear comments on how to sideboard and play in this matchup. I boarded out cabal therapies (I prefer hitting for sure with seize, expecially given the fact that the threats become too diverse with surgical, containment, fluster adding to FoW, counterspell, CB, ...), loothing (not only disadvantage but don't want to expose something to surgical too soon) and bolts. Though I am not sure if bolts could be useful in dealing with Containment (not so much as a form of "reach", I think).

Against BUG I was able to race a Tarmogoyf with a fast "combo", though I immediately lost one phoenix to Assassin's Trophy and preferred to "waste" a combat dealing with Jace, in the end I was able to reanimate all 4 phoenixes and even overkill. I lost G2 to a removal on an hardcasted Phoenix + surgical, don't recall anything noteworthy G3.

Against the last Miracle I lost game1 after going for the combo early... I started with a discard spell, he answered by brainstorming but while resolving it "accidentally" dropped back to basics on the table... seeing the coast was clear and being afraid of being locked out of the game by b2b I decided to go for ritual, buried alive, but of course he left a terminus on top. I should have expected and waited a turn. Playing with two lands only and NO RELIABLE RED SOURCES was hard and I was out of the game pretty soon, a single basic mountain would have helped but I don't see it upgrading the list more than worsening it. Thoughts on this?
G2 he mulliganed to five and kept a no-land hand, scrying on top. I went for a thoughtseize turn 1, which saw snapcaster, plowshare, jace, fow and ponder. Even if I ended up taking the ponder I really thought about taking FoW since I had Bitterblossom and Liliana in hand, considering I expected the game to go long (and thus that he would eventually find lands, cantrip or not, which in fact is exactly what happened :cool:). I proceeded to go Bitterblossom, which he FoWed pitching Jace, then Liliana which soon met a Council Judgement (pretty impressive for this kind of mulligan on his part) then I was able to go for the combo once again.
G3 he terminused a lonely early pyromancer, I had surgical in hand as well as another pyromancer and active FoW. This second pyromancer was met by a Sword; my plan had been to go wide with tokens and surgical an eventual second terminus with miracle trigger on the stack, now I thought for a while and decided instead to don't Fow, let resolve, then go for surgical on plowshares. After a pretty long game this ended up being the winning decision when I was able to hardcast and resolve two phoenixes thus avoiding his surgical, then protect them from a tapped out terminus FoWing.

That's all, apart from the changes I already suggested I liked the deck, even though maybe next time I'll try a Mardu version with Lingering Souls.

Final question, in regard to "how to maximize dark ritual when you don't have the combo/attack from a different angle", has anybody thought of a couple of Dark Confidants instead of (or to supplement) Lilianas? A start of ritual, discard, confidant would seem strong too.

[Megadeus]

With forces and Phoenixes I can imagine the curve being brutal on your life Total at times with Bob.

[talpa]

With forces and Phoenixes I can imagine the curve being brutal on your life Total at times with Bob.
I wasn't necessarily suggesting to try Confidant in a build with FoW, but since we are in a developmental section, I think we can discuss freely if it could have sense as a way of exploiting an early ritual. Worst case a removal on him could open the way to a pyromancer and vice-versa.

Anyway, the average CMC counting lands would be 1,2 in Whiteface build and 1,3 with 3 FoW (which by the way it's the same as a Jund pre-ban build, which played 4 Bob; for reference, in a typical Aggro Loam it's precisely 1), not so much of a difference and not so high imho.

One could always consider Phyrexian Arena, we can discuss this if you like. Or Bitterblossom maindeck. I don't think we have an established optimal build already :cool:

[Megadeus]

I wasn't necessarily suggesting to try Confidant in a build with FoW, but since we are in a developmental section, I think we can discuss freely if it could have sense as a way of exploiting an early ritual. Worst case a removal on him could open the way to a pyromancer and vice-versa.

Anyway, the average CMC counting lands would be 1,2 in Whiteface build and 1,3 with 3 FoW (which by the way it's the same as a Jund pre-ban build, which played 4 Bob; for reference, in a typical Aggro Loam it's precisely 1), not so much of a difference and not so high imho.

One could always consider Phyrexian Arena, we can discuss this if you like. Or Bitterblossom maindeck. I don't think we have an established optimal build already :cool:
Could also just straight up play nights whisper. It makes up the card disadvantage of ritual quickly and draws gas to trigger Phoenix as well as being card advantage that isn't Grave dependant.

[Whitefaces]

Hello everybody,
just a quick report of my test yesterday (in our local store we don't play Friday Night Magic, we play swiss-only Saturday Afternoon Legacy :tongue:).

I played this list:
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize
3 Force of Will
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Faithless Looting
1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Cabal Therapy
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Bitterblossom
2 Pyroblast
1 Invasive Surgery
1 Force of Will
2 Abrade
2 Perilous Voyage

Choices explanation. Maindeck: no Lilianas, FoW, Faithless Loothing. Reasons: I expected a fair amount of combos, Liliana did not seem a good choice, FoW self explanatory given the premises. Loothing because I was afraid of having uncastable phoenix in hand.
Impressions after testing: FoW promoted, Faithless rejected (always boarded out, casted twice in g1 never in the correct situation but both times as a bad cantrip). I am considering maindecking Lilianas again, or 4th copy of cabal OR FoW. I'd like to fit in 2Amalgams and a Narcomoeba but then I'd have to cut another copy of bolt, or therapy of Fow, and don't like any of these options. Moreover, the amalgams seem cute but I don't know if them not being evasive would matter in the end.
Sideboard: no lands hate, except Perilous Voyage for Marit Lage, who could also hit Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void, since in this colors we don't have good ways of handling enchantments. Bitterblossom as another threat diversification against control strategies (also "infinite" chumpblock against Marit Lage, saving Sejiri trick). Impressions after testing: I troubled way more than expected against Surgical, I think I'll reconsider Silent Gravestone (as I already suggested even though the answers deemed it unnecessary).

Tournament performance: I went 3-1 which was good for a 3rd place. I faced Humans (lost 1-2), Miracle (won 2-0), BUG Control/Midrange (won 2-1), Miracle (won 2-1). Found Miracle way harder than expected, between Terminus, Plowshares, Surgicals and Containment Priests.
Humans I won G1 on the draw being able to FoW his Freeboter in order to protect the "combo" Ritual, Buried, Cantrip next turn. I then lost g2-3, nothing noteworthy.
G1 against the first player with Miracle pretty strange, I was able to go for the "combo", protected by discard, early, but after a swing two phoenix were met with a Swords to Plowshares, the third being followed by a topdecked third copy of Swords to Plowshares. He was able to resolve a Counterbalance, to which I responded with a Lightning Bolt to the face Bringing him to 4 life. The game then went long, I tried a play every now and then to try and play around CB, he started beating with snapcaster, but at some point went to 3 life FoWing something on my side, and two turns before I died I was able to go Buried Alive, spell, spell to deal 3 fast damage with the last Phoenix.
G2 on the contrary ended pretty fast, though I kept a bad hand like fetchland, pyroblast, thoughtseize, ponder, brainstorm, preordain, buried alive. I thought the game would go long and leave me time to find lands. I didn't start with a cantrip because I expected CB on his second turn, which I was able to counter with pyro. On my turn I was able to cantrip for land leaving ritual on top for the protected combo on turn three.

I would gladly hear comments on how to sideboard and play in this matchup. I boarded out cabal therapies (I prefer hitting for sure with seize, expecially given the fact that the threats become too diverse with surgical, containment, fluster adding to FoW, counterspell, CB, ...), loothing (not only disadvantage but don't want to expose something to surgical too soon) and bolts. Though I am not sure if bolts could be useful in dealing with Containment (not so much as a form of "reach", I think).

Against BUG I was able to race a Tarmogoyf with a fast "combo", though I immediately lost one phoenix to Assassin's Trophy and preferred to "waste" a combat dealing with Jace, in the end I was able to reanimate all 4 phoenixes and even overkill. I lost G2 to a removal on an hardcasted Phoenix + surgical, don't recall anything noteworthy G3.

Against the last Miracle I lost game1 after going for the combo early... I started with a discard spell, he answered by brainstorming but while resolving it "accidentally" dropped back to basics on the table... seeing the coast was clear and being afraid of being locked out of the game by b2b I decided to go for ritual, buried alive, but of course he left a terminus on top. I should have expected and waited a turn. Playing with two lands only and NO RELIABLE RED SOURCES was hard and I was out of the game pretty soon, a single basic mountain would have helped but I don't see it upgrading the list more than worsening it. Thoughts on this?
G2 he mulliganed to five and kept a no-land hand, scrying on top. I went for a thoughtseize turn 1, which saw snapcaster, plowshare, jace, fow and ponder. Even if I ended up taking the ponder I really thought about taking FoW since I had Bitterblossom and Liliana in hand, considering I expected the game to go long (and thus that he would eventually find lands, cantrip or not, which in fact is exactly what happened :cool:). I proceeded to go Bitterblossom, which he FoWed pitching Jace, then Liliana which soon met a Council Judgement (pretty impressive for this kind of mulligan on his part) then I was able to go for the combo once again.
G3 he terminused a lonely early pyromancer, I had surgical in hand as well as another pyromancer and active FoW. This second pyromancer was met by a Sword; my plan had been to go wide with tokens and surgical an eventual second terminus with miracle trigger on the stack, now I thought for a while and decided instead to don't Fow, let resolve, then go for surgical on plowshares. After a pretty long game this ended up being the winning decision when I was able to hardcast and resolve two phoenixes thus avoiding his surgical, then protect them from a tapped out terminus FoWing.

That's all, apart from the changes I already suggested I liked the deck, even though maybe next time I'll try a Mardu version with Lingering Souls.

Final question, in regard to "how to maximize dark ritual when you don't have the combo/attack from a different angle", has anybody thought of a couple of Dark Confidants instead of (or to supplement) Lilianas? A start of ritual, discard, confidant would seem strong too.

3-1 is decent, nice one!

I still haven't got around to testing Force of Will in the maindeck, just the sideboard and it was poor for me there. I found that this deck can really struggle with card disadvantage and especially pitching blue cards was tough, we want to be playing basically every cantrip, but maybe they deserve another look. I've been playing around with Dazes and they've felt OK.

On Lilianas, Liliana of the Veil has been excellent vs combo for me.

Good to see you've had the same impression as me for Faithless Looting. It's constantly suggested but is actually really poor in the deck.

As cute as it is, and I've not tried it granted, but I'm still very wary of playing Amalgam and Narc. It's nice to have a turn one play with Ritual and Buried, but we don't have the two in our opener THAT often, and after turn one getting the phoenixes is clearly better, there is also the argument of not having the third spell but that is often not the case as the deck is flush with them, the downside is getting them really isn't that powerful for legacy. A couple of 3/3s and a 1/1 flyer aren't going to do much, and if you draw any one of them the 'combo' is severely hurt if it's an amalgam, or straight up cut off if it's the Narc.

I'd suggest playing Echoing Truth over other bounce spells. It 'combos' with Cabal Therapy, you can bounce everything then name everything, it comes up a lot vs multiple hate pieces.

I've not struggled vs Surgical, the only way I've found it hard to beat is if they either have a very fast clock on you and you're forced to make them have it, or if they Thoughtseize you and there's a Phoenix there and they get to Surgical them, which is still a 2-for-1 for you and you have Pyromancers to win with still. The deck does require you to be able to sequence discard well, know when to save them and not fire them off whenever in hand, often it's correct to wait. And Cabal Therapy more often than not you need to name to win, not to hit. But if you're having a hard time with that Silent Gravestone can help, I just see it as wasted sb slots honestly.

Miracles I've found quite heavily favoured, but CB or Back to Basics is the way they can steal wins. Cabal Therapy is nuts in the matchup, I'd not recommend cutting them at all. From your list I'd be cutting the Lootings, Forces and maybe some Bolts though they're OK.

On how to maximise Dark Ritual, that's why I've been playing Lilianas, they're pretty good!






I played the Challenge again yesterday and managed to top 8, but punted the quarterfinals stupidly!

2-1 vs ANT
2-0 vs UB Omnitell
2-1 vs Eldrazi
1-2 vs Manaless Dredge
2-1 vs Punishing Dack
2-1 vs Eldrazi Post
1-2 vs DnT

5-2 and 5th seed going into T8

1-2 vs Elves

The punt was in game three, I had 4 lands in play, Ponder then Alive on Top of my library and a Cabal Therapy in the graveyard. Also had a Phoenix in play and the opponent was on 10 life. They had a stacked board of ~10 creatures and Cradle so just needed an action spell, I drew for turn to win and drew the Buried...not sure how but maybe I zoned out, I was sure I'd put Ponder on top as that was lethal. Ah well.

Decklist

https://i.ibb.co/G74ZfXn/phoenix.jpg (https://ibb.co/JnwYWNm)

Revelers I didn't draw much, I only played one and it was good, but otherwise they were sided out vs Combo. Hard to give much feedback.

Lilianas were excellent, they really helped vs combo and Eldrazi especially.

Dazes were decent but have a low floor really fast so I think 2 is the most you should play.

I missed bolts, I'd like to get some back in the 75.

[talpa]

I still haven't got around to testing Force of Will (...) I found that this deck can really struggle with card disadvantage

I've not struggled vs Surgical, the only way I've found it hard to beat is if they either have a very fast clock on you and you're forced to make them have it, or if they Thoughtseize you and there's a Phoenix there and they get to Surgical them

Miracles I've found quite heavily favoured (...) Cabal Therapy is nuts in the matchup, I'd not recommend cutting them at all. From your list I'd be cutting the Lootings, Forces and maybe some Bolts though they're OK

Congrats on your Challenge Finish.

On FoW, maybe it's just me, but I don't like being prone to t1 plays and topdecks. From my small sample size, they won me at least two games.
On Surgical, they can also go for removal + surgical. I don't think this deck can win on Pyromancer only, actually it seemed to me the floor was pretty low when you couldn't combo.
On Miracle, would you care to describe you approach to the matchup? I don't see how it could be "so heavily" favoured between Plowshares, Terminus, Surgical and Contaiment (let alone if they are on a Mentor version). Same goes for cabal... since you can't kill with just one swing, I don't get how you can rely on playing it "to win" instead of "to hit"; it seems to me there are too many things that could wrong in order to let you name "the one and only" thing that kills you.

On bolts, I see you regretted cutting them... why is so? I was actually thinking just that, they almost seem dead, the only things you care about are...? Thalia most definitely, protected flickerwisp, maybe strixes?

Actually I was thinking the Night Whisper suggestion was worth a try (and was even thinking about Impulse).
(oh and by the way what do you think about basic mountain?)

[kombatkiwi]

I like the Reveler idea and maybe you can just replace Daze with Bolt again

[Zavec]

Admittedly I've only played it in modern, but I've been consistently impressed with reveler's ability to get you back in a game from behind. Will definitely be testing it once I pick up my phoenixes.

[shonenkakumei]

3-1 is decent, nice one!

I still haven't got around to testing Force of Will in the maindeck, just the sideboard and it was poor for me there. I found that this deck can really struggle with card disadvantage and especially pitching blue cards was tough, we want to be playing basically every cantrip, but maybe they deserve another look. I've been playing around with Dazes and they've felt OK.

On Lilianas, Liliana of the Veil has been excellent vs combo for me.

Good to see you've had the same impression as me for Faithless Looting. It's constantly suggested but is actually really poor in the deck.

As cute as it is, and I've not tried it granted, but I'm still very wary of playing Amalgam and Narc. It's nice to have a turn one play with Ritual and Buried, but we don't have the two in our opener THAT often, and after turn one getting the phoenixes is clearly better, there is also the argument of not having the third spell but that is often not the case as the deck is flush with them, the downside is getting them really isn't that powerful for legacy. A couple of 3/3s and a 1/1 flyer aren't going to do much, and if you draw any one of them the 'combo' is severely hurt if it's an amalgam, or straight up cut off if it's the Narc.

I'd suggest playing Echoing Truth over other bounce spells. It 'combos' with Cabal Therapy, you can bounce everything then name everything, it comes up a lot vs multiple hate pieces.

I've not struggled vs Surgical, the only way I've found it hard to beat is if they either have a very fast clock on you and you're forced to make them have it, or if they Thoughtseize you and there's a Phoenix there and they get to Surgical them, which is still a 2-for-1 for you and you have Pyromancers to win with still. The deck does require you to be able to sequence discard well, know when to save them and not fire them off whenever in hand, often it's correct to wait. And Cabal Therapy more often than not you need to name to win, not to hit. But if you're having a hard time with that Silent Gravestone can help, I just see it as wasted sb slots honestly.

Miracles I've found quite heavily favoured, but CB or Back to Basics is the way they can steal wins. Cabal Therapy is nuts in the matchup, I'd not recommend cutting them at all. From your list I'd be cutting the Lootings, Forces and maybe some Bolts though they're OK.

On how to maximise Dark Ritual, that's why I've been playing Lilianas, they're pretty good!






I played the Challenge again yesterday and managed to top 8, but punted the quarterfinals stupidly!

2-1 vs ANT
2-0 vs UB Omnitell
2-1 vs Eldrazi
1-2 vs Manaless Dredge
2-1 vs Punishing Dack
2-1 vs Eldrazi Post
1-2 vs DnT

5-2 and 5th seed going into T8

1-2 vs Elves

The punt was in game three, I had 4 lands in play, Ponder then Alive on Top of my library and a Cabal Therapy in the graveyard. Also had a Phoenix in play and the opponent was on 10 life. They had a stacked board of ~10 creatures and Cradle so just needed an action spell, I drew for turn to win and drew the Buried...not sure how but maybe I zoned out, I was sure I'd put Ponder on top as that was lethal. Ah well.

Decklist

https://i.ibb.co/G74ZfXn/phoenix.jpg (https://ibb.co/JnwYWNm)

Revelers I didn't draw much, I only played one and it was good, but otherwise they were sided out vs Combo. Hard to give much feedback.

Lilianas were excellent, they really helped vs combo and Eldrazi especially.

Dazes were decent but have a low floor really fast so I think 2 is the most you should play.

I missed bolts, I'd like to get some back in the 75.


Hi Whitefaces,

Congrats on your nice finishes and thanks for pioneering this sweet deck.

I was wondering if you had a sideboard guide that you used? I was wondering, for instance, about the Grim Lavamancers. Also, thoughts on/plans for playing against Chalice decks?

[Whitefaces]

Hi Whitefaces,

Congrats on your nice finishes and thanks for pioneering this sweet deck.

I was wondering if you had a sideboard guide that you used? I was wondering, for instance, about the Grim Lavamancers. Also, thoughts on/plans for playing against Chalice decks?

Hey, thanks!

This probably isn't the answer you're looking for but so far I've been siding differently vs the same decks a lot of the time based on what they've seen game one. There are general play patterns, but for example if I'm playing vs a deck like Grixis Control which I know will be playing Surgicals I'd sometimes trim a Dark Ritual and Buried Alive. It's still great in the matchup, but because we know they have a good answer to it we're only looking to execute the plan after seeing their hand first and paving the way for it to work, so the game will be slower and we have time to find the combo pieces while sculpting. But if they lost to a Young Pyromancer in game one and didn't see the combo I'll be keeping all of it in. They might know the decklist at this point, but you need to consider things like this.

The other thing is the sideboard is still very much a work in progress, so it's changing a lot.

But on your questions, Grim Lavamancer is for things like Death and Taxes, Delver or any other creature decks. I wasn't very impressed with it though, it did very little in the challenge, even vs Elves playing it turn one on the play it felt too slow. I think Lightning Bolts would be better in this slot. Dnt especially though you need some removal for.

Vs Chalice decks I'll bring in every answer to it, so Abrade and Echoing Truth, Spell Pierces vs Moon Stompy too. Cut some or all Cabal Therapy and Preordain/s can be trimmed.

I've been playing an Esper version of this deck the past week and I think it's actually even better than the Grixis one. The gist of it is Mentors > Young Pyromancer, better sideboard cards and some more fast mana with Lotus Petals. Mentor is absolutely broken in the deck, still tweaking on the list and sb but the core is

4 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Daze
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
4 Lotus Petal

2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Swamp

Jaces have been so-so, might get cut soon but worth trying more.

[Baum]

What type of white sideboard cards do you mean? When I think about white, the first thing that comes to mind are hatebears. But both Canonist and Containment Priest hinder our own game plan. Removal like StP/Path or Disenchant/C.Judgment?

Is flooding on fast mana an issue with both Petal and Ritual in the deck?

Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A5010 mit Tapatalk

[Whitefaces]

What type of white sideboard cards do you mean? When I think about white, the first thing that comes to mind are hatebears. But both Canonist and Containment Priest hinder our own game plan. Removal like StP/Path or Disenchant/C.Judgment?

Is flooding on fast mana an issue with both Petal and Ritual in the deck?

Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A5010 mit Tapatalk

I'm currently playing with some combinations of Disenchant, Serenity, Swords to Plowshares and Kambal. There's a lot of options in Esper colours though, plenty I've not thought of yet.

You can flood on them, but with all the cantrips and 8 'payoffs' it's not too common.

[jarvisyu]

I re-dub this deck 'British Birds'.

You're welcome, Whitefaces.

[maharis]

Tried this build with 4 Bolts in the Daze/Reveler slots. Idea was to help win races and accelerate out phoenices easier. Didn't really come up, though. Daze may have been marginally useful vs. Chalice.

4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Young Pyromancer

4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize

2 Liliana of the Veil

18 land

3 Surgical Extraction
3 Force of Will
2 Echoing Truth
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Abrade
2 Pithing Needle
1 Flusterstorm

R1 Deadguy Ale WW
R2 TES WW
R3 Humans LWL (g3 i made a crucial error -- on the play they had hierarch into prelate on 1. I had an abrade and a pyromancer, plus preordain, and thought it was better value to get YP in play then abrade and preordain next turn. But: Kitesail Freebooter ruined my day. Basically, nuke a prelate on sight if you can)
R4 Eldrazi LL (scooped to a chalice on the play in g1. g2 i kept a one-lander and thoughtseized a chalice off a sea, but they drew wasteland and i never drew another land before TKS came down)
R5 Burn WLW (finally a little luck -- was able to get phoenices quickly g1, but got beat by cage in g2, in g3 i shredded their hand with pyro and therapy when they got stuck on 1 land and then abraded a cage and ritualed out phoenices)

[Hanni]

After watching Jarvis stream last night, I believe the Lotus Petals should be Cabal Rituals, although it's arguable that they could be something else as well. There were multiple situations where drawing Petals prevented going off with Buried Alive where Cabal Ritual would have worked. I didn't pay attention to see if there were any situations where he had Threshold and the extra mana would have been relevant, but that's something to consider as well.

There were lines for Buried Alive that required Daze, but I did not like it in the Mentor lists. I think Force of Will would have been much better overall. I can dig Daze in the Young Pyromancer lists, however.

I do think the Esper build with Mentor is much stronger. The mana may be a little worse, but the power level is considerably higher, and the deck has enough mana acceleration to compensate for the extra cost of Mentor vs Pyromancer. I do think there should be a couple of Meddling Mage in the sideboard, though.

[Whitefaces]

After watching Jarvis stream last night, I believe the Lotus Petals should be Cabal Rituals, although it's arguable that they could be something else as well. There were multiple situations where drawing Petals prevented going off with Buried Alive where Cabal Ritual would have worked. I didn't pay attention to see if there were any situations where he had Threshold and the extra mana would have been relevant, but that's something to consider as well.

There were lines for Buried Alive that required Daze, but I did not like it in the Mentor lists. I think Force of Will would have been much better overall. I can dig Daze in the Young Pyromancer lists, however.

I do think the Esper build with Mentor is much stronger. The mana may be a little worse, but the power level is considerably higher, and the deck has enough mana acceleration to compensate for the extra cost of Mentor vs Pyromancer. I do think there should be a couple of Meddling Mage in the sideboard, though.

Based on the games I get where you're coming from with Cabal Ritual over Lotus Petal, in a fair few spots it would have been better. But there weren't many 'Mentor games', on the flip side I've been winning without the combo a lot more than what was shown yesterday where Petal is a lot better. Like I said, totally get where you're coming from on that but Petal has been great. He also flooded out a bit more than what I've seen so far, not complaining but the deck doesn't run out of steam that often from all the cantrips. It also allows more consistent turn ones, where you cantrip if you have two of Ritual, Buried or Petal and find the third piece, you'd need all Dark Rit, Buried and the Cabal already in hand for that. I wasn't playing Petals before because I thought this wouldn't happen very often, but it really does.

Admittedly I've not tested Force of Will in this Esper shell but I disliked it quite a lot in Grixis. The cost of pitching a cantrip is really high in a deck like this, when all you want to be doing is cantrip every turn pretty much.

I agree that Esper looks better, I think it is, the mana isn't really much worse either. It's just replacing the red lands with white ones and having a single Volc to cast birds. Worse yes, but not by much. Meddling Mage maybe, it's on a list of things to try!

[ThomasDowd]

Would JTMS be reasonable in the spot of prodigy Jace? There are enough accelerants that you can power him out early/ through soft countermagic. (2 lands petal and ritual gets JTMS mana iirc) I have not played with prodigy so I cannot speak on his upside/ place but mind sculptor seems like much higher impact. Maybe the deck doesn't need/ want that though.

On looking at it on paper I am hesitant with only 8 "threats" but the first buried alive is also a threat, also with 12 cantrips you are probably just chewing through your deck. I don't have much time to play these days but this is definitely cool!

[Whitefaces]

Would JTMS be reasonable in the spot of prodigy Jace? There are enough accelerants that you can power him out early/ through soft countermagic. (2 lands petal and ritual gets JTMS mana iirc) I have not played with prodigy so I cannot speak on his upside/ place but mind sculptor seems like much higher impact. Maybe the deck doesn't need/ want that though.

On looking at it on paper I am hesitant with only 8 "threats" but the first buried alive is also a threat, also with 12 cantrips you are probably just chewing through your deck. I don't have much time to play these days but this is definitely cool!

I've ended up cutting the Jace VPs too, they were nice but like you say this deck doesn't need that effect, I imagine it's the same with Mind Sculptor. I tried him in Grixis a bit but it wasn't great.

The number of threats has been fine, again like you say the cantrips find you what you need. The first is usually so powerful that you don't need more.

[pow22]

After watching Jarvis stream last night, I believe the Lotus Petals should be Cabal Rituals, although it's arguable that they could be something else as well. There were multiple situations where drawing Petals prevented going off with Buried Alive where Cabal Ritual would have worked. I didn't pay attention to see if there were any situations where he had Threshold and the extra mana would have been relevant, but that's something to consider as well.


I sent a bit of time testing more combo-focused builds back when Whitefaces started talking about the deck. Earlier builds had Rite of Flame and Cabal Ritual along with more payoff cards like Empty the Warrens. I tried Dark Petition (too expensive), Burning Wish (moving a Buried Alive to the board is awkward), LEDs (curves super-well with Rite of Flame, Burning Wish, into Buried Alive, but too all-in; three Phoenixes isn't as good as ten Tendrils).

*Anyway*, Lotus Petal turned out to be the best accelerant for the combo after Dark Ritual despite not actually counting as a spell for Buried Alive because you often have to dig for a piece of the Dark Rit/Buried Alive combo. It's not that uncommon in my experience to keep a hand with one combo piece, a Petal and a cantrip and to hit the missing piece off the first cantrip. Lotus Petal really helps the deck go off turn 1-2, while Cabal Rit is probably going to help more with turn three lines.

The Petals do eat into the spell density, which sucks, but IMHO they should mostly replace lands from the earlier builds. I think Jarvis was running 17 land/3 petal; I've had a decent amount of success with 16/3. One slot shouldn't matter that much, but it's worth keeping an eye on the overall spell density.

Cabal Ritual seems like it gets a bit better with planeswalkers since the 'walkers give you more sinks for black mana while adding non-instant and sorceries to the deck as a whole.



Would JTMS be reasonable in the spot of prodigy Jace?


I think the main drawback is the second blue mana. At 3U it would be easy to Dark Ritual out turn one (with a Petal) or turn two (without). I haven't tested JTMS though.

[maharis]

Well, the bolt build is over .500 at least...

D&T LWL
Esper Phoenix WLW
TES WW
BUG depths LL
RUG dack lands keranos brew WW

Got my first look at the Esper deck by playing against it... Lost to a turn 1 Mentor in g2. Seems like that's the big trump card. Unfortunately seemed a little unwieldy otherwise but I'll take for a spin.

[Pdingo]

Hei dear People

I have to say this Deck is a blast to play! After whitefaces shared the Deck i was hyped to play that. In the End i agree with him a Esperbase list feels more strong.

// 60 Hauptdeck
// 4 Artifact
4 Lotus Petal

// 8 Creature
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Monastery Mentor

// 12 Instant
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Dark Ritual

// 16 Land
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Volcanic Island

// 20 Sorcery
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Buried Alive


// 15 Sideboard
// 2 Artifact
SB: 2 Engineered Explosives

// 11 Instant
SB: 2 Disenchant
SB: 4 Force of Will
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Flusterstorm

// 2 Planeswalker
SB: 2 Liliana, the Last Hope

The Mainboard is quit fix and there is so far not really something to change...I like it a lot. Mentor doing really well also with petal.
Daze is so good. This is the Sideboard i have right now. I played today some matches against mainly Grixis Control and different stompy decks.
Grixis control feels really good. Even stompy does. Of course t1 chalice gets us but it gets also 70% of other deck sometimes. I see 4 FoW as needed against those type of Deck and also against Comboish strategy's.It helps a lot. I Played against RB Reanimate and it feels quit a bad match up. so 3 surgical helps a lot and also against lands for example to slow them down. Still R/B reanimated was really though because they are fast and can still go off after we had the combo+ Chancellor. i probably gonna play a 4th hate like Crypt.
Overall how do you guys Board? Like its really hard sometimes. Do you guys take out cards like burial or Phoenix? or just 1 of each cards sometimes. i tried it sometimes when i was awaiting surgical like control Match up and played lili in the slot. She's basically a t1 win if she's resolve against the most control deck and Dnt decks. I'm happy with the 2 EE for overall delver/Shadow and chalice match ups. Also disenchant seems quit good but not sure if 2 are needed.
In the End what do you cut when? for me i really need more brainstorming. but i cut sometimes some therapy's + lotus and also some of the daze for example.
Those are probably the card i try to cute somehow something. I'm still also really on brainstorming.

Greets

[maharis]

I haven't played the esper build yet but with the grixis / 4 bolt build I board all 4 buried alives first in postboard matchups vs. combo decks.

Once the buried alives are out I bring in an entire blue package of 3 force, 2 echoing truth, and 1 flusterstorm at the very least and start trimming from dark ritual next, then bolt/liliana depending on the matchup and additional cards to come in (surgical, crypt etc)

While ritual->buried->3rd spell is powerful, almost any other combo deck is more so. I'd rather just play a hard control game with 8 discard spells and 4 counterspells.

Of course, Echoing Truth is the hardest part of the board plan, but we need blue cards and it has some minor blowout potential:

-vs. empty the warrens (this actually happened yesterday where I was dead af and peeled the echoing truth)
-vs. show-omniscience on an empty hand, or griselbrand in response to draw 7, or a cast sneak attack then pass
-vs. almost any reanimator target
-vs. marit lage (sometimes it works but the mu is so bad no matter what you do it seems)

It's possible that this is not how the deck will end up tackling combo, but the U package (especially sb forces) solves a couple key problems problems I've had with the deck:

-It makes the deck more focused vs. very fast strategies. While we are likely the beatdown in most fair matchups, against combo decks I don't think this deck can keep up unless the combo player keeps terrible hands postboard. Every arclight, buried alive, ritual etc in our hand is not disrupting decks that can kill us out of nowhere. These decks are built to take damage along the way to assembling turn 3-4 wins. Hoping for turn 2 ritual-buried-spell to get us there against decks with more streamlined plans is just not something i'm comfortable with (but it's fine if that's how you want to play it)

-We can board in the whole package vs. Chalice decks as well. Chalice is a beating for this deck. Echoing Truth has more utility there (since it can bounce CotV at 1 and most chalice decks also play Leylines). I don't board out the whole combo in those matchups, though i will occasionally trim it. Flusterstorm isn't as good in those matchups and you can just go 17 U cards w/3 force if you want, but in some cases (like 4c loam, since it hits GSZ and some other things, and is a way to counter a fiery confluence vs. red prison)

What I'm really looking for is a better option in the echoing truth slot. I considered far//away, since it also hits emrakul and TNN, but it doesn't bounce multiple leylines or deal with Empty.

Also, I think depths is a lost cause for this archetype and it's not worth devoting board cards to beat it. Though the karakas in the white versions may be more helpful (as well as closing speed on Mentor). Perhaps Whitefaces will want to weigh on on this but I would say this deck's matchups go like this:

-Miracles, UBx midrange/control: favored to very favored, we have tons of relevant disruption even postboard, discard wrecks them
-Delver/Vial and/or Thalia decks: about 50/50, Wasteland can be very relevant in these matchups. Sequencing is crucial, very tricky
-Storm/Show and Tell: favored (until they start boarding in leyline of sanctity :wink: )
-Reanimator: slightly unfavored because of their raw power more than anything. The fact that we are playing 5 pieces of GY hate is really rough on our sideboard.
-Chalice decks: unfavored because like us they can present bomb after bomb and we do not have enough answers
-burn: unfavored but winnable with good sequencing and bad luck by them

[Pdingo]

I haven't played the esper build yet but with the grixis / 4 bolt build I board all 4 buried alives first in postboard matchups vs. combo decks.

Once the buried alives are out I bring in an entire blue package of 3 force, 2 echoing truth, and 1 flusterstorm at the very least and start trimming from dark ritual next, then bolt/liliana depending on the matchup and additional cards to come in (surgical, crypt etc)

While ritual->buried->3rd spell is powerful, almost any other combo deck is more so. I'd rather just play a hard control game with 8 discard spells and 4 counterspells.

Of course, Echoing Truth is the hardest part of the board plan, but we need blue cards and it has some minor blowout potential:

-vs. empty the warrens (this actually happened yesterday where I was dead af and peeled the echoing truth)
-vs. show-omniscience on an empty hand, or griselbrand in response to draw 7, or a cast sneak attack then pass
-vs. almost any reanimator target
-vs. marit lage (sometimes it works but the mu is so bad no matter what you do it seems)

It's possible that this is not how the deck will end up tackling combo, but the U package (especially sb forces) solves a couple key problems problems I've had with the deck:

-It makes the deck more focused vs. very fast strategies. While we are likely the beatdown in most fair matchups, against combo decks I don't think this deck can keep up unless the combo player keeps terrible hands postboard. Every arclight, buried alive, ritual etc in our hand is not disrupting decks that can kill us out of nowhere. These decks are built to take damage along the way to assembling turn 3-4 wins. Hoping for turn 2 ritual-buried-spell to get us there against decks with more streamlined plans is just not something i'm comfortable with (but it's fine if that's how you want to play it)

-We can board in the whole package vs. Chalice decks as well. Chalice is a beating for this deck. Echoing Truth has more utility there (since it can bounce CotV at 1 and most chalice decks also play Leylines). I don't board out the whole combo in those matchups, though i will occasionally trim it. Flusterstorm isn't as good in those matchups and you can just go 17 U cards w/3 force if you want, but in some cases (like 4c loam, since it hits GSZ and some other things, and is a way to counter a fiery confluence vs. red prison)

What I'm really looking for is a better option in the echoing truth slot. I considered far//away, since it also hits emrakul and TNN, but it doesn't bounce multiple leylines or deal with Empty.

Also, I think depths is a lost cause for this archetype and it's not worth devoting board cards to beat it. Though the karakas in the white versions may be more helpful (as well as closing speed on Mentor). Perhaps Whitefaces will want to weigh on on this but I would say this deck's matchups go like this:

-Miracles, UBx midrange/control: favored to very favored, we have tons of relevant disruption even postboard, discard wrecks them
-Delver/Vial and/or Thalia decks: about 50/50, Wasteland can be very relevant in these matchups. Sequencing is crucial, very tricky
-Storm/Show and Tell: favored (until they start boarding in leyline of sanctity :wink: )
-Reanimator: slightly unfavored because of their raw power more than anything. The fact that we are playing 5 pieces of GY hate is really rough on our sideboard.
-Chalice decks: unfavored because like us they can present bomb after bomb and we do not have enough answers
-burn: unfavored but winnable with good sequencing and bad luck by them

I changed my sideboard alot. Also tried to figure out a better plan. I cutted the fow completly it maybe can be good but the card disadvange is just to big. Also it allows us to play more important cards.

My sideboard now.

2 EE
2 Disenchant
2 Tormods crypt
3 Surgical
3 Fluster
2 Lili last hope
1 Kambal

I dont agree in the Match ups.

Uwx Miracle/Grixis Control/stoneblade

I feel all of them are quit favered. It might ne a surprise effect atm but that i play like 3 strategies that are synergating (phoenix/mentor/lili) are quit good against them. Won so far all of those match ups. I usualy side out 1 of the 4 offs of the combo but not the Dark ritual to enable a t1 lili or t1 or t2 mentor with therapy. Also the discard is just so good to play around surgical. Also kambal is quit sweet in those match ups.

Stompy Decks
I really dont think those are that bad match ups. Ee and disenchant helps alot. Of course t1 chalice / moon is really hard. But the thing is its always strong against the most decks.
I also think the the best way here is to enable the combo really fast or a mentor. I felt so far quit even but i have to test deeper but the board strategy works quit good.

Reanimator
I agree its a really bad match up and probably the ways are to take out phoenix combo and to play just.mentor/kambal + hard control strategy. Also with all the hate it should work quit good.

Storm/snt i also think they are favered. This sb is also quit strong against them. Also here is it maybe correcr to take out the combo and playing the same strategy as with reanimate. What do you guys think.

All the nonblue match ups like Dnt/lands/aggro loam/burn/elves. Also with nonblue decks i feel the best way to enable the combo fast as possible. What do you guys think?

Also there is the idea to bring in cards like surgical/gutshot/ cabal ritual to make the t1 combo more possible against certain decks. What do you think?

Greets

[maharis]

tried the esper build (Straight lift from Jarvis's stream) and didn't do so hot. I think I went 2-3 and 1-3 drop. Storm is still a bye, def beat that in both leagues.

It's a much trickier deck than the grixis build, but Mentor gets you out of many jams. Worth continuing. Actually, I just feel like Lotus Petal is a good card in Mentor decks... not sure how good phoenix really is comparatively.

[Pdingo]

i don't agree that storm is a buy. Depending on the sideboard. Today i played against a friend (i also play ant a lot) and he's not a bad ant player. g1 is quit rough. g2 gets probably better. i decided to take out the combo package because you need to take it out and it can get quit annoying and inconstant to board. i feel mentor + kambal or other hate is the better plan. anyway i think its quit even after boarding. btw. what's the list of you and jarvis?
that's my board:

2 Crypt
3 Fluster
3 surgical
1 Kambal
2 lili of the last hope
2 ee
2 disenchant

i'm tending to play a second kambal or something like a null rod(does not synergate with ee and petal though) but mostly they play the leds down so yeah it's just a idea.

i agree the deck is tricky to play and you need to know how to play. also a good sideboard strategy helps a lot! try to figure it out. i defeated today multiple miracle,grixis, death shadow in matches. against mono U snt and storm i'm litte behind but after that i changed my strategy to side the combo out same against reanimater and its just soo much better so far. but lets test more.

greets Pascal

[Baum]

Yesterday I tested Esper Phoenix at a local ~50 person event. I played the MD from Jarvis' stream and ended up at 5:1. Last Friday, I tested a version with 2 Daze and without Spell Pierce but 1 Liliana, the Last Hope and 1 Liliana of the Veil in the MD. I played only a couple of matches, but found it to be a little clunky at times, so playing more cheap spells instead of MD Lilianas sounded reasonable.

4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Monastery Mentor

4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Daze
1 Spell Pierce

4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard:
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Flusterstorm
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Path to Exile
2 Disenchant
2 Serenity
1 Plains

Path to Exile instead of Swords to Plowshares is something I wanted to try out because I think that against decks like Delver of Eldrazi, the game can come down to a tight race and they usually don't play basics. It possibly is really bad against D&T, but I could not test against them so far.

On Sunday I played against all the Griselbrands -.-

Sneak Show (2:1)
Sneak Show (1:2)
UB Reanimator (2:1)
BR Reanimator (2:1)
UB Shadow (2:0)
Grixis Phoenix (2:0)

Random thoughts about the deck:

- The matchup against Sneak Show seems really sketchy. They have a lot of different stuff we care about (combo pieces, Blood Moon, GY hate), so blind Therapies are hard. They also topdeck really well, even if we hit them with a couple of discard spells. Maybe I'll try out one or two Liliana of the Veil again.

- 4 Mentors might be one to many. I boarded down to two quite often (both against combo and Delver decks). That said, the card is busted if we can untap with it. But I usually don't want to play a naked Mentor into possible removal spells, so most of the time I cast a couple discard spells and cantrips first. When we see a lot of cards anyway before deploying Mentor, maybe we can find it consistently enough with only 3 in the deck. The 4th Mentor could be a possible cut for a Lili of the Veil.

- The Spell Pierce could also be a Liliana but I'm still not sure how many 3-drops the deck can actually support.

- There definitely is a tension between casting both Daze and our expensive cards in time. Not sure if two or three is the right number. The first Daze is great, the second usually is awful.

- Sideboarding with the deck is really hard.

Favorite moments from Sunday:

- Racing Griselbrand followed by a Blood Moon by putting in a Mentor with S&T and ripping a Lotus Petal from the top to cast the Phoenix combo :D

- Winning the die roll in the mirror and drawing an opener of 2 lands, 2 Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal, Mentor and Buried Alive. Ending the first turn with a Mentor, 2 Tokens and 3 Phoenixes in play is completely reasonable...

[Whitefaces]

Quite a lot to catch up on! Glad more people are trying the deck!


Hei dear People

I have to say this Deck is a blast to play! After whitefaces shared the Deck i was hyped to play that. In the End i agree with him a Esperbase list feels more strong.

// 60 Hauptdeck
// 4 Artifact
4 Lotus Petal

// 8 Creature
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Monastery Mentor

// 12 Instant
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Dark Ritual

// 16 Land
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Volcanic Island

// 20 Sorcery
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Buried Alive


// 15 Sideboard
// 2 Artifact
SB: 2 Engineered Explosives

// 11 Instant
SB: 2 Disenchant
SB: 4 Force of Will
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Flusterstorm

// 2 Planeswalker
SB: 2 Liliana, the Last Hope

The Mainboard is quit fix and there is so far not really something to change...I like it a lot. Mentor doing really well also with petal.
Daze is so good. This is the Sideboard i have right now. I played today some matches against mainly Grixis Control and different stompy decks.
Grixis control feels really good. Even stompy does. Of course t1 chalice gets us but it gets also 70% of other deck sometimes. I see 4 FoW as needed against those type of Deck and also against Comboish strategy's.It helps a lot. I Played against RB Reanimate and it feels quit a bad match up. so 3 surgical helps a lot and also against lands for example to slow them down. Still R/B reanimated was really though because they are fast and can still go off after we had the combo+ Chancellor. i probably gonna play a 4th hate like Crypt.
Overall how do you guys Board? Like its really hard sometimes. Do you guys take out cards like burial or Phoenix? or just 1 of each cards sometimes. i tried it sometimes when i was awaiting surgical like control Match up and played lili in the slot. She's basically a t1 win if she's resolve against the most control deck and Dnt decks. I'm happy with the 2 EE for overall delver/Shadow and chalice match ups. Also disenchant seems quit good but not sure if 2 are needed.
In the End what do you cut when? for me i really need more brainstorming. but i cut sometimes some therapy's + lotus and also some of the daze for example.
Those are probably the card i try to cute somehow something. I'm still also really on brainstorming.

Greets

After trying Esper through a few leagues I was pretty blown away by its power level and convinced it's better than Grixis by quite a lot, but now after playing it a lot more I'm understanding it more. The higher power level comes with more variance and Grixis is more consistent I think. Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor are both better in respective matchups and I've really noticed Mentor make the Delver matchup worse, but things like Chalice decks better. Not sure this is where we want to be. I will say though, when Mentor is good it's unreal in this shell.

Daze is great, but like Baum alludes to in their last comment the first is amazing but later ones can be punishing on a deck wanting mana. I played 2 copies in the challenge yesterday (went very badly, more on that later) which I feel like is a decent number.

On Reanimator, I'm surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly?) positive vs it. This will be a recurring thing I say, but please play Tormod's Crypt over Surgicals as your main sideboard hate. It's so, so much better in the matchups we want it. We have very little countermagic so can't protect Surgical from discard spells which basically all these GY decks play, this is the main reason to play proactive graveyard hate. Combined with our clock potential and discard spells of our own reanimator burns through a lot of resources to force the activation of the Crypt, we usually kill them in time or cantrip into another. The other key part of Crypt is being able to play it through a Chancellor trigger and finding it off a cantrip and being able to play it immediately. By doing this we accept we lose to their turn one combos, which yeah sucks, but I think we lose more games by them being able to discard surgical before a combo than them T1ing. They all respect surgical after board and play slower.

Anecdotal, but I played a pretty crazy game in the challenge yesterday, I lost game one as we usually will then game two they got a Chancellor and Grave Titan into play, I managed to combo through the Chancellor and had the 4th Phoenix in hand to Therapy, the 4 Phoenixes then traded off with the Titan and 2 Zombies, thanks to Therapy flashbacks I got them back again, traded off with Chancellor and the other zombies then finally got them back a third time for lethal.

As I mentioned just above, boarding is quite hard, I still don't know what 'patterns' are right myself. A lot of the time will be trimming on things that are just worse than other cards, not that the card is especially bad in the matchup. I'll make a post after this one saying my general boarding patterns.

EE seems nice, a friend mentioned it as a potential card but I haven't got around to trying it yet.


I haven't played the esper build yet but with the grixis / 4 bolt build I board all 4 buried alives first in postboard matchups vs. combo decks.

Once the buried alives are out I bring in an entire blue package of 3 force, 2 echoing truth, and 1 flusterstorm at the very least and start trimming from dark ritual next, then bolt/liliana depending on the matchup and additional cards to come in (surgical, crypt etc)

While ritual->buried->3rd spell is powerful, almost any other combo deck is more so. I'd rather just play a hard control game with 8 discard spells and 4 counterspells.

Of course, Echoing Truth is the hardest part of the board plan, but we need blue cards and it has some minor blowout potential:

-vs. empty the warrens (this actually happened yesterday where I was dead af and peeled the echoing truth)
-vs. show-omniscience on an empty hand, or griselbrand in response to draw 7, or a cast sneak attack then pass
-vs. almost any reanimator target
-vs. marit lage (sometimes it works but the mu is so bad no matter what you do it seems)

It's possible that this is not how the deck will end up tackling combo, but the U package (especially sb forces) solves a couple key problems problems I've had with the deck:

-It makes the deck more focused vs. very fast strategies. While we are likely the beatdown in most fair matchups, against combo decks I don't think this deck can keep up unless the combo player keeps terrible hands postboard. Every arclight, buried alive, ritual etc in our hand is not disrupting decks that can kill us out of nowhere. These decks are built to take damage along the way to assembling turn 3-4 wins. Hoping for turn 2 ritual-buried-spell to get us there against decks with more streamlined plans is just not something i'm comfortable with (but it's fine if that's how you want to play it)

-We can board in the whole package vs. Chalice decks as well. Chalice is a beating for this deck. Echoing Truth has more utility there (since it can bounce CotV at 1 and most chalice decks also play Leylines). I don't board out the whole combo in those matchups, though i will occasionally trim it. Flusterstorm isn't as good in those matchups and you can just go 17 U cards w/3 force if you want, but in some cases (like 4c loam, since it hits GSZ and some other things, and is a way to counter a fiery confluence vs. red prison)

What I'm really looking for is a better option in the echoing truth slot. I considered far//away, since it also hits emrakul and TNN, but it doesn't bounce multiple leylines or deal with Empty.

Also, I think depths is a lost cause for this archetype and it's not worth devoting board cards to beat it. Though the karakas in the white versions may be more helpful (as well as closing speed on Mentor). Perhaps Whitefaces will want to weigh on on this but I would say this deck's matchups go like this:

-Miracles, UBx midrange/control: favored to very favored, we have tons of relevant disruption even postboard, discard wrecks them
-Delver/Vial and/or Thalia decks: about 50/50, Wasteland can be very relevant in these matchups. Sequencing is crucial, very tricky
-Storm/Show and Tell: favored (until they start boarding in leyline of sanctity :wink: )
-Reanimator: slightly unfavored because of their raw power more than anything. The fact that we are playing 5 pieces of GY hate is really rough on our sideboard.
-Chalice decks: unfavored because like us they can present bomb after bomb and we do not have enough answers
-burn: unfavored but winnable with good sequencing and bad luck by them

I don't know this for sure, but I think we should be keeping the combo and cutting the creatures vs combo actually. Or maybe just from Esper since Mentor is clunkier, this is what I've been doing and keeping all the combo, since YP is cheaper maybe it isn't right to do this in Grixis. It's really hard! :tongue: But I don't think just because other combo decks combos are more powerful than ours is a reason to cut it, it's still our best clock and not resource heavy to pull off. We can still play a control game but with this combo as our clock, though it does make Therapy worse admittedly. But at the same time being so much faster gives them less topdecks, which this deck has a problem with.

I like Echoing Truth vs a lot of decks too, I played 2 in the main yesterday, it's such a great card with Cabal Therapy. I don't really like it vs ANT, but I would side it in vs TES (btw your opponent was streaming in the league you said the other day, twitch/tv/graapeshot). I was siding it in vs SnS too, they're often forced to throw out a Sneak Attack without a creature and it's a way for us to interact with that. I wouldn't side it in vs reanimator, it's fine vs Chancellor or Iona or something, but I think we need to play the gameplan of not letting them get anything into play ideally. I think this is more a case of making a reason to play it because of how many cards need to come out, rather than it being good. Great vs Marit Lage yeah, unlikely it stays in our hand for long, but it's an out at least. You wanting to find an alternative card to it so it can come in with Forces is more a strike against Force than anything. Etruth has legit been great for me.

I'll try sb forces again at some point, but I've mentioned it before somewhere but I was pretty disappointed with them. The cost of pitching a cantrip is very high, and seemingly comes with the cost of siding in E Truth every time just because it's blue, I'm not convinced this is really the way to go. And like Surgical, we struggle to protect it from discard, I think proactive hate is the way to go in this deck. There are other ways to fight combo than countermagic, we're very heavy on discard obviously, sure our combo isn't as powerful as theirs but when it's a 2 turn clock after we've discarded them a bit it's often getting there. But we should be more specific when we say combo too, you can pinpoint weaknesses for each deck. For example Tormod's Crypt is absolutely insane vs ANT when we have a clock. They struggle to natural storm kill since they'll be lower on resources from our discard, they're under a clock from phoenixes which can shut off Ad Nauseum fast, and Crypt shuts off PiF, their usual way to beat us. An example of knowing the weakness of ANT, again yesterday in the challenge I snap kept a hand of Crypt, Ritual, Ritual, Petal, Phoenix, Land, Land. T1 Ritual, Petal, Phoenix for the 'clock' and Crypt to take out PiF, I drew another Phoenix which was ritualed out T3. They were forced to Tendrils just to stay alive before dying a couple turns later since both Past in Flames and Ad Nauseum were cut off.

On Chalice matchups, yeah this is almost specifically the reason I put Etruth in the deck. Sure Force is good vs these matchups too, probably where it shines actually as we can lose to topdecks, especially from the moon stompy kind of decks but I've been finding them OK. I wouldn't ever be boarding out the combo vs them, it's how we get a lot of the free wins and throwing out Buried Alive T3 then throwing 3 spells into a Chalice works a lot of the time.

Agree on Depths, I'm close to giving it up. In Grixis Alpine Moon is pretty decent, I've spoken with Negator77 and solnox a fair amount about how to fight the matchup, they've agreed Alpine is probably the best option from Grixis and in Esper StP are fine-ish, but the best strategy is some discard, a quick Mentor and hope that gets there.

Agree that most fair decks feel very favoured too, worth noting that Grixis was crushing Delver in my esp but Esper is struggling.

I think Reanimator is about 50/50 if you're playing enough Tormod's Crypts. Bit of a coin flip as always, if you get a turn you're probably OK, if you don't you got got.

I've found Chalice decks to be slightly favoured, especially with Esper. We play enough answers to their things and they're fairly soft to quick combos.


I changed my sideboard alot. Also tried to figure out a better plan. I cutted the fow completly it maybe can be good but the card disadvange is just to big. Also it allows us to play more important cards.

My sideboard now.

2 EE
2 Disenchant
2 Tormods crypt
3 Surgical
3 Fluster
2 Lili last hope
1 Kambal

I dont agree in the Match ups.

Uwx Miracle/Grixis Control/stoneblade

I feel all of them are quit favered. It might ne a surprise effect atm but that i play like 3 strategies that are synergating (phoenix/mentor/lili) are quit good against them. Won so far all of those match ups. I usualy side out 1 of the 4 offs of the combo but not the Dark ritual to enable a t1 lili or t1 or t2 mentor with therapy. Also the discard is just so good to play around surgical. Also kambal is quit sweet in those match ups.

Stompy Decks
I really dont think those are that bad match ups. Ee and disenchant helps alot. Of course t1 chalice / moon is really hard. But the thing is its always strong against the most decks.
I also think the the best way here is to enable the combo really fast or a mentor. I felt so far quit even but i have to test deeper but the board strategy works quit good.

Reanimator
I agree its a really bad match up and probably the ways are to take out phoenix combo and to play just.mentor/kambal + hard control strategy. Also with all the hate it should work quit good.

Storm/snt i also think they are favered. This sb is also quit strong against them. Also here is it maybe correcr to take out the combo and playing the same strategy as with reanimate. What do you guys think.

All the nonblue match ups like Dnt/lands/aggro loam/burn/elves. Also with nonblue decks i feel the best way to enable the combo fast as possible. What do you guys think?

Also there is the idea to bring in cards like surgical/gutshot/ cabal ritual to make the t1 combo more possible against certain decks. What do you think?

Greets

I like a lot of this sideboard, except I'd recommend more Crypts over Surgical (I'll stop going on about it soon).

Vs reanimator I've been taking out Mentors and keeping combo. Mentor is a liability since they can discard it and go for Reanimate/Animate Dead on it, forcing us to Surgical or Crypt ourselves.

Vs Sneak and Show I agree on taking out some of the combo, they play Pierces and Flusters so the creature side of things is easier to resolve. It can be a tough matchup though, usually we need to disrupt what we can, put them under a clock asap and hope to not get topdecked.

Agree vs non-blue we want to combo asap. I still wouldn't board in the spells you mentioned to try and do it turn one though, it's still fine on turn two.



i don't agree that storm is a buy. Depending on the sideboard. Today i played against a friend (i also play ant a lot) and he's not a bad ant player. g1 is quit rough. g2 gets probably better. i decided to take out the combo package because you need to take it out and it can get quit annoying and inconstant to board. i feel mentor + kambal or other hate is the better plan. anyway i think its quit even after boarding. btw. what's the list of you and jarvis?
that's my board:

2 Crypt
3 Fluster
3 surgical
1 Kambal
2 lili of the last hope
2 ee
2 disenchant

i'm tending to play a second kambal or something like a null rod(does not synergate with ee and petal though) but mostly they play the leds down so yeah it's just a idea.

i agree the deck is tricky to play and you need to know how to play. also a good sideboard strategy helps a lot! try to figure it out. i defeated today multiple miracle,grixis, death shadow in matches. against mono U snt and storm i'm litte behind but after that i changed my strategy to side the combo out same against reanimater and its just soo much better so far. but lets test more.

greets Pascal

Agree that Storm isn't a bye, I find game one is in their favour at least then we can be favoured postboard. I've been cutting down on Mentors and keeping all combo vs them. Kambal is obviously insane too, I've only drawn it once vs ANT so far though weirdly in quite a few matches, they conceded on the spot at least.

Interesting that you say reanimator has felt better after cutting down on the combo though, I'll have to try that next. Keeping it all has been working OK for me, but I genuinely don't know, so next times I'm paired vs it I'll do that, I'm just very scared of dying to my own Mentors!

I like Kambal in quite a lot of matchups, it's excellent vs stompy decks too as a way to combat Ensnaring Bridge. Admittedly I've cast it three times vs them, they've taken ~8 damage then topdecked a Chandra or Fiery Confluence to kill it, but the potential is there, I'll keep trying 2 copies.


Yesterday I tested Esper Phoenix at a local ~50 person event. I played the MD from Jarvis' stream and ended up at 5:1. Last Friday, I tested a version with 2 Daze and without Spell Pierce but 1 Liliana, the Last Hope and 1 Liliana of the Veil in the MD. I played only a couple of matches, but found it to be a little clunky at times, so playing more cheap spells instead of MD Lilianas sounded reasonable.

4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Monastery Mentor

4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Daze
1 Spell Pierce

4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard:
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Flusterstorm
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Path to Exile
2 Disenchant
2 Serenity
1 Plains

Path to Exile instead of Swords to Plowshares is something I wanted to try out because I think that against decks like Delver of Eldrazi, the game can come down to a tight race and they usually don't play basics. It possibly is really bad against D&T, but I could not test against them so far.

On Sunday I played against all the Griselbrands -.-

Sneak Show (2:1)
Sneak Show (1:2)
UB Reanimator (2:1)
BR Reanimator (2:1)
UB Shadow (2:0)
Grixis Phoenix (2:0)

Random thoughts about the deck:

- The matchup against Sneak Show seems really sketchy. They have a lot of different stuff we care about (combo pieces, Blood Moon, GY hate), so blind Therapies are hard. They also topdeck really well, even if we hit them with a couple of discard spells. Maybe I'll try out one or two Liliana of the Veil again.

- 4 Mentors might be one to many. I boarded down to two quite often (both against combo and Delver decks). That said, the card is busted if we can untap with it. But I usually don't want to play a naked Mentor into possible removal spells, so most of the time I cast a couple discard spells and cantrips first. When we see a lot of cards anyway before deploying Mentor, maybe we can find it consistently enough with only 3 in the deck. The 4th Mentor could be a possible cut for a Lili of the Veil.

- The Spell Pierce could also be a Liliana but I'm still not sure how many 3-drops the deck can actually support.

- There definitely is a tension between casting both Daze and our expensive cards in time. Not sure if two or three is the right number. The first Daze is great, the second usually is awful.

- Sideboarding with the deck is really hard.

Favorite moments from Sunday:

- Racing Griselbrand followed by a Blood Moon by putting in a Mentor with S&T and ripping a Lotus Petal from the top to cast the Phoenix combo :D

- Winning the die roll in the mirror and drawing an opener of 2 lands, 2 Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal, Mentor and Buried Alive. Ending the first turn with a Mentor, 2 Tokens and 3 Phoenixes in play is completely reasonable...

Nice result! That sure is a looooot of Griselbrands, so it's especially good.

I've been meaning to try Lilianas in Esper, I was worried that they'd be more clunky adding extra 3cmcs exactly like you say, thanks for the feedback. I like Last Hopes like Pdingo has been playing in the sb quite a lot still, it's such a nice play with Ritual and auto wins a lot of matchups. Veil was excellent in the Grixis deck but that struggled vs stompy decks a little bit more than Esper where she can ultimate fairly easily to take out a lot of lock pieces and beat Ensnaring Bridge.

- I like the idea of Path over swords a lot actually, racing is common in the deck. Worse vs some decks for sure, but enough upside vs others. Also people are always siding in Surgical vs this deck, someone suggested a split of Path and StP to play around this too.

- Yep, SnS is hard. Mainly because of your last point, their topdecks game be gamewinning. I guess Esper we could play Containment priest and side out combo, haha. Maybe it's not the most insane idea ever?

- I started this Esper list with 3 Mentors actually because I was worried about the reasons you're saying, poorer than Pyromancer vs combo and Delver for sure. I added the 4th quite quickly when it was clear how busted the card is in this deck, but maybe you're right. Fwiw I tried a build with 2 Kambal maindeck over the 4th Mentor and a Daze a few days ago, went 4-1 in the 2 leagues I tried. He didn't do too much, I played vs a lot of creature decks actually, but it might be worth exploring more. It can give us some free wins/a very big edge vs combo game one and vs fair we're good enough usually, and he still has text at least.

- Certainly tension for Daze, I think 2 is a nice number, but that's mostly going off gut feeling now.

- Nice! This deck can do some really crazy things, I've raced Griselbrand a few times even with Grixis, and like I said above where I got back Phoenixes 3 times to beat reanimator yesterday.

- That's just messed up...I gotta say, I've been playing mostly Miracles for quite a while now, it's nice to have some free wins again.

And finally yesterdays challenge which was a bit of a disaster

R1 vs BR Reanimator - 2-1 - lost game one then won the sb games

R2 vs Eldrazi - 1-2 - Won game one off a turn one combo, game two was close but I ran out of gas and ballista killed mentor, game three I mulled a 7 that maybe I should have kept, would anyone else have mulled this? 3x Mentor, 2x TS, 2x fetch. Felt like the deck can do better but maybe it was a mistake. 6 had no mana and 5 was pretty bad, got stomped.

R3 vs ANT - 2-1 - lost game one, sb games Crypt won

R4 vs - Punishing Fire/Blood Sun/Eldrazi thing - 1-2 - I punted g3 big time, pretty sure I win if I didn't, totally on me.

R5 vs Grixis Delver - 0-2 - I lost both games pretty badly to a lot of Wastelands so didn't get to play much magic it felt like. I also tried siding out the full combo, pretty sure this is wrong but wanted to see if Mentor can do it, answer is no.

R6 vs Elves - 0-2 - Got absolutely destroyed, I can't remember the details too well but I died on the early turns through a lot of disruption, they drew whatever I discarded :P Killed me turn four through a ZP game two!

Drop at 2-4. I felt like with tighter play I'd have done a lot better, the deck was also showing the higher variance side, I felt like I mulled a lot. Unsure if this is a symptom of the deck or a bad day, but figured it's worth sharing all experience, even if it's bad.

[Whitefaces]

Here’s some general sideboarding thoughts. I’m still unsure that these are ‘right’, just sharing my experience so far. And ofc sbs will be different, so if there’s something that you should bring in that I’ve not mentioned, I’m just commenting on what’s mostly played.

Vs control, Miracles and Grixis. – Don’t overboard too much, we’re set up pretty well already. Bring in Flusterstorm/Spell Pierce and any Lilianas, I like up to 2 Surgical vs Miracles as taking out Terminus can be big. We can cut Lotus Petals and one Buried Alive. I like trimming one Buried Alive vs decks I know will play Surgical, we need to set up to discard the Surgical so the games will go longer, giving us more time to find one. Could trim a Dark Ritual too if you’re not playing any Lilianas. Trim on Dazes if on 4 too, I like 2 I think.

Vs SnS – I like cutting down on combo pieces since they play Fluster and Pierce as interaction. Bring in Fluster/Pierce ourselves and probably Surgicals to try and snipe things with discard, I feel like the matchup is hard so we need to take these high variance plays. Therapy vs them is a guessing game a lot of the time, one play to keep in mind if they brainstorm in response to one is naming Emrakul, since if you hit it shuffles their deck and the cards they've hidden away.

Vs ANT – bring in Crypts/Surgicals, Fluster/Pierce and Kambal if in Esper. I’ve been trimming on creatures down to 0, but others have a different experience so I need to try cutting the combo next.

Vs Delver – Trim on a Buried Alive for the same reasoning as vs control, I like trimming one of each TS and Therapy too. We need these in the mu but they put us under a quick clock so need some things for the board too, don’t want too much discard. Bring in any removal, I don’t know if we should bring in flusters, not pierce if you play them though. I've been struggling with Esper but Grixis felt great. Mentor being 3cmc is really the big thing, but I've been aggressively cutting more of the combo sometimes than I should, so I think I've been playing/sideboarding wrong.

Vs Depths – bring in some crossed fingers! I cut a lot of discard, usually Therapies since it will be a low resource battle and we need proactive topdecks, bring in any removal for lage and fluster/pierce.

Vs Stompy – Take out all discard on the draw, bring in all answers for Chalice and friends and any Lilianas. On the play I’ve been keeping 3 TS and 1 Therapy, taking out the StP and a couple Preordain. Kambal comes in vs Moon decks, not Eldrazi.

Vs Thalia, dnt, mav etc – Take out some discard, maybe 2 TS 2 Therapy and bring in more removal.

Vs Reanimator – seems like we’re all trying different things, so I’ll test different sbing configs soon. As I’ve said above I’m a bit scared of them discarding a Mentor and reanimating it, forcing us to use our hate on ourselves. While our combo can be discarded, it’s able to be played off low resources. It’s been working well for me, even if we don’t get it off super early, we just need to find Crypts first and foremost.

[kinda]

Dark rit into ensnaring Bridge seems very strong vs. Depths in the mentor version. At least while no one is expecting it. Plus it's solid vs others like reanimator/snt/eldrazi.

[Whitefaces]

Dark rit into ensnaring Bridge seems very strong vs. Depths in the mentor version. At least while no one is expecting it. Plus it's solid vs others like reanimator/snt/eldrazi.

True. It wouldn't work vs Reanimator, if they get Griselbrand into play they'll get Tidespout/Ashen Rider, but could work vs Snt and Eldrazi too. Just about crazy enough to try!

[Baum]

Ensnaring Bridge is also on my short list of cards I want to try. I really liked it in the SB of Mentor Miracles, when all the Entreat lists were playing Moat against the then new Eldrazi deck.

Regarding general boarding plans: Against Sneak Show and ANT, I tend to take out some Lotus Petals. We can't win the race anyway, so reducing speed for more disruption seems reasonable. Though I wouldn't cut too many against Reanimator because of Chancellor.

Against UB Shadow, after some testing against a friend of mine, I board down to 2 Mentors and cut the Spell Pierce for Removal. I still like all the combo pieces and discard in that matchup. I basically try to play ANT against them. Buying time until soft counters don't matter anymore and I have discard for Surgicals and Forces. In about 10 matches, the matchup felt quite positive, which my testing partner agreed with. I just found it to be easier to force through the combo than trying to cast a Mentor + several spells in the same turn. With the Pyromancer lists, that should be easier, but on the other hand Pyromancer doesn't feel like a reasonable win condition against Delver. It can buy a lot of time, but probably won't kill them. At least not without a Liliana helping out.

I have yet to test against Grixis Delver. Shadow is probably the easiest Delver deck for us, because our combo one shots them a lot of the time.

Against Reanimator, I would keep in the Combo. Of course our combo is slower than theirs, but hitting them for 9 effectively shuts off Reanimate after we disrupted their first attempt, which is huge.

[maharis]

After trying Esper through a few leagues I was pretty blown away by its power level and convinced it's better than Grixis by quite a lot, but now after playing it a lot more I'm understanding it more. The higher power level comes with more variance and Grixis is more consistent I think. Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor are both better in respective matchups and I've really noticed Mentor make the Delver matchup worse, but things like Chalice decks better. Not sure this is where we want to be. I will say though, when Mentor is good it's unreal in this shell.

I think this is correct, which is sort of how I ended up wondering if Phoenix was actually the weak link in this deck :/ Mentor into two spell off Petal is insane, and Petal makes Daze easier to use...


On Reanimator, I'm surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly?) positive vs it. This will be a recurring thing I say, but please play Tormod's Crypt over Surgicals as your main sideboard hate. It's so, so much better in the matchups we want it. We have very little countermagic so can't protect Surgical from discard spells which basically all these GY decks play, this is the main reason to play proactive graveyard hate. Combined with our clock potential and discard spells of our own reanimator burns through a lot of resources to force the activation of the Crypt, we usually kill them in time or cantrip into another. The other key part of Crypt is being able to play it through a Chancellor trigger and finding it off a cantrip and being able to play it immediately. By doing this we accept we lose to their turn one combos, which yeah sucks, but I think we lose more games by them being able to discard surgical before a combo than them T1ing. They all respect surgical after board and play slower.

More and more I'm starting to see this be the case. Crypt is better with Mentor than YP which definitely makes it more correct in the W build.


As I mentioned just above, boarding is quite hard, I still don't know what 'patterns' are right myself. A lot of the time will be trimming on things that are just worse than other cards, not that the card is especially bad in the matchup. I'll make a post after this one saying my general boarding patterns.

I think this is important to keep in mind. Legacy has a lot of variables at the moment -- tempo is so important and board cards that are good on the play may not be on the draw and vice versa.


I don't know this for sure, but I think we should be keeping the combo and cutting the creatures vs combo actually. Or maybe just from Esper since Mentor is clunkier, this is what I've been doing and keeping all the combo, since YP is cheaper maybe it isn't right to do this in Grixis. It's really hard! :tongue: But I don't think just because other combo decks combos are more powerful than ours is a reason to cut it, it's still our best clock and not resource heavy to pull off. We can still play a control game but with this combo as our clock, though it does make Therapy worse admittedly. But at the same time being so much faster gives them less topdecks, which this deck has a problem with.

Keep in mind I'm doing this while experimenting with the Force board plan. If we are playing force, that's less cards to trigger Phoenix, not to mention playing more reactively -> less spells cast on your turn. I may try a different plan at some point where the goal will be to turbo out a win, but right now, I want my cards to be answers to the combo to force the game into topdeck mode and then clean up with a YP or hardcast Phoenix.

Against Reanimator, I haven't had as much success as you, but I also haven't flipped my board plan to be heavier on Crypt yet. (I also lost one match to UB reanimator which plays quite differently -- had my buried alive dazed in a G1 for example). However, one reason to board out Buried Alive there is so we don't end up in a line where we set up a trigger for next turn and then they reanimate all our Arclights themselves.


I like Echoing Truth vs a lot of decks too, I played 2 in the main yesterday, it's such a great card with Cabal Therapy. I don't really like it vs ANT, but I would side it in vs TES (btw your opponent was streaming in the league you said the other day, twitch/tv/graapeshot). I was siding it in vs SnS too, they're often forced to throw out a Sneak Attack without a creature and it's a way for us to interact with that. I wouldn't side it in vs reanimator, it's fine vs Chancellor or Iona or something, but I think we need to play the gameplan of not letting them get anything into play ideally. I think this is more a case of making a reason to play it because of how many cards need to come out, rather than it being good. Great vs Marit Lage yeah, unlikely it stays in our hand for long, but it's an out at least. You wanting to find an alternative card to it so it can come in with Forces is more a strike against Force than anything. Etruth has legit been great for me.

lol, I went back and watched this. I got Aigis and Aerim mixed up and played the first turn game 1 like they were on red prison. Then game 2 got lucky but I would've been happy to go to a game 3 on the draw. Saw Negator77 in the chat -- pretty funny -- my reward for getting lucky in that second game was going to the next round against him and having no lands in 7, 6 or 5 against a terrible mu anyway. :)

I should be clear that I think truth is a great card for us and clearly has excellent applications. I was just saying, that if force plan is correct, maybe a more horizontally good U card there -- especially one with S&T applications against show-Emrakul. However, I don't find S&T that difficult because they are an A+B combo where both parts have to be in hand (vs. reanimator where only one part has to be in hand and if they can get a creature into the GY they have far more topdecks).


I'll try sb forces again at some point, but I've mentioned it before somewhere but I was pretty disappointed with them. The cost of pitching a cantrip is very high, and seemingly comes with the cost of siding in E Truth every time just because it's blue, I'm not convinced this is really the way to go. And like Surgical, we struggle to protect it from discard, I think proactive hate is the way to go in this deck. There are other ways to fight combo than countermagic, we're very heavy on discard obviously, sure our combo isn't as powerful as theirs but when it's a 2 turn clock after we've discarded them a bit it's often getting there. But we should be more specific when we say combo too, you can pinpoint weaknesses for each deck. For example Tormod's Crypt is absolutely insane vs ANT when we have a clock. They struggle to natural storm kill since they'll be lower on resources from our discard, they're under a clock from phoenixes which can shut off Ad Nauseum fast, and Crypt shuts off PiF, their usual way to beat us. An example of knowing the weakness of ANT, again yesterday in the challenge I snap kept a hand of Crypt, Ritual, Ritual, Petal, Phoenix, Land, Land. T1 Ritual, Petal, Phoenix for the 'clock' and Crypt to take out PiF, I drew another Phoenix which was ritualed out T3. They were forced to Tendrils just to stay alive before dying a couple turns later since both Past in Flames and Ad Nauseum were cut off.

FWIW, I think Force is not good in the Mentor build because you have access to more hate cards in W and you have Petal as a way to be more explosive that isn't at 1cmc nor a nonbasic land. But against Grixis not only is Chalice brutal, but a T1 moon can be as well. Getting to play Kambal in W is great (I love Kambal and hope he can find a home) and of course you'll get Lavinia soon (I hate this card as you know but good is good, getting one of these down off a petal turn 1 is going to be insane :tongue:). If the Forces weren't in my Grixis build, I'd be playing 2 Abrades and another Fluster. None of these hit moon...


On Chalice matchups, yeah this is almost specifically the reason I put Etruth in the deck. Sure Force is good vs these matchups too, probably where it shines actually as we can lose to topdecks, especially from the moon stompy kind of decks but I've been finding them OK. I wouldn't ever be boarding out the combo vs them, it's how we get a lot of the free wins and throwing out Buried Alive T3 then throwing 3 spells into a Chalice works a lot of the time.

Sorry I wasn't clear -- I board in the U package vs Chalice decks, but don't board out the combo. I forget exactly what it is, I think I just bring in 5-6 U cards and trim from the margins -- couple discard spells, one ritual/buried, a preordain, maybe a planeswalker. Serenity is so insane vs these decks though :smile:


Agree on Depths, I'm close to giving it up. In Grixis Alpine Moon is pretty decent, I've spoken with Negator77 and solnox a fair amount about how to fight the matchup, they've agreed Alpine is probably the best option from Grixis and in Esper StP are fine-ish, but the best strategy is some discard, a quick Mentor and hope that gets there.

I don't think I've ever won a match against Negator77, but I sure play him in every league. #WhyINever5-0


R2 vs Eldrazi - 1-2 - Won game one off a turn one combo, game two was close but I ran out of gas and ballista killed mentor, game three I mulled a 7 that maybe I should have kept, would anyone else have mulled this? 3x Mentor, 2x TS, 2x fetch. Felt like the deck can do better but maybe it was a mistake. 6 had no mana and 5 was pretty bad, got stomped.

I think you keep that hand so you can T1 and 2 thoughtseize to keep them off anything threatening. You're hoping to draw a cantrip on turn 1 or 2 so you can TS + cantrip on that turn, and you have so many. Also, if you draw a Lotus Petal on 1 or 2, you can T1 thoughtseize their t1 play, t2 play mentor, if they don't answer, you untap on turn 3 with at least a thoughtseize and hopefully a cantrip/some more gas to get ahead of them.

However, 3x mentor vs a deck where removal isn't really a thing is tough, I agree that it's close.


R4 vs - Punishing Fire/Blood Sun/Eldrazi thing - 1-2 - I punted g3 big time, pretty sure I win if I didn't, totally on me.

lol, when we did the Paragon 24 hour stream we played against this deck, I called what it was immediately after we got Blood Sunned into Thought-Knot Seer and everyone thought i was crazy/stupid. They're right, but that's only because I tried the exact same thing when Blood Sun was printed. It didn't really work out.

I'm having a lot of fun working on this deck honestly -- I love Phoenix and Therapy and Mentor, all these cards speak to me.

[Pdingo]

alright guys wow a lot of new information and everyone is on hard testing, great!

i try to talk now more deeply about the combo match up no one is really sure what's wrong or right. Like still here its a lot possible and we have to look at each combo match up differently.

Reanimator UB and RB: i think the same plan is fine here. I agree with you whitefaces, maybe i'm also wrong and we just need to pressure them in g1 and 2 a lot. so actually maybe to take out 4 mentor is not completely wrong.
basically we can still having the fast combo and play a crypt/fluster/discard after for example. But also i have to say i have to test this way and also the way without the combo and more hard control. but maybe is exactly here the problem that they can discard mentor and even reanimate it. What happens with the phoenix maybe aswell but we will not have just 1 phoenix in the gy so maybe we can go and reanimate them again and block the other one for example. i think it could really be the better way also because we pressure them more. what happens with mentor is that if you have mentor+crypt is that it's also nice but maybe we used already gas for answers. with the combo we are probably going of faster and use the disruption and cantrips differently. i'm now on 3 surgical and 2 crypt. i have to test now more with this configuration but 5 is a lot and i think 4 hate peaces with all the other stuff is too much and we don't want to overboard in a way. that's why i would just play 2 surgical and 2 crypt. crypt is probably better in the deck. i would like to find room for a second kambal.
what's also important they play a little less gy hate than the most other decks. i mean even the most ant list's playing 2 surgical today's on.

ANT/TES
here i prefer the control route a lot more. of course they play discard but they also play more cantrips to find more hate and go off to kill us directly. so just gy hate and combo gets less efficient. for example i found 2 ee for really nice to handle put down led's and maybe empty. the mentor therapy way is just strong even it's a 3 mana card. i mean we will come to that mana mostly and play control. mentor can kill quickly aswell. also with my idea of adding 1 kambal more make the whole plan better. with petal we can it t2 and protect him with fluster or discard. that's are my thought's here.

Sneak and Show/ Mono U Show.
I played actually just mono u show so far, don't know why but i lost it twice but it was when i startet to play magic again at saturday, also with a complete new deck so i really had a mix between combo and mentor what's not really the plan.
i figure against bouth version i would choose also the same route as with ant. Its probably the slowest deck of all the 3 i mentioned so far. Leyline is a treath and i even play my 2 Disenchants here, they take omni sneak attack and random blood moons aswell. Also if they not resolve leyline of sanctity, they rather just get therapies. sneak and show is probably a little bit better. i still think it's the easiest match up the 3 combo decks i mentioned.

Dark Depths
To be honest i never played it yet. i figure the best way is just disruption and the t1 or t2 combo and be a little lucky. I don't think it's worth to concider ensnaring bridge because they probably keep decay specially after the decks develops more.
but if its really this bad i would rather just play it like that with the combo and take cards in like fluster. i mean if someone await it like hardly, then sure we should go for a hate. though i like the idea path to exile over stp more because to give life is really not great with this deck.

Mirror
yes it happened, i played the mirror and its some random shit. lost it 1:2 g1 i was on the win with disruption he has nothing and drews BS into combo...

Now some notes to the Delver Decks i found also really interesting

UB Shadow, I played it sometimes now and i felt quit positive. Here i tried to find a balance between the combo and mentor. First to board out some of the mentor is really wrong because a resolves mentor is really hard to handle for them, specially if we disrupt them aswell. i don't have clear boarding plan yet here. i usually board 1 phoenix 1 alive 1 or 2 therapy 1 or 2 petal (not sure yet what's better but probably 2 petal)for 3 fluster and 2 EE.

Grixis Delver

I also did not played it. it's probably a more tough one specially after boarding. let's see what happens. maybe i'm wrong.

RUG Delver

basically the same as with Grixis, probably a little bit easier because we can play around stifle but still the plan is quit mana denial plan is quit strong against ester phoenix if we can not go off really fast. i think the combo here is the right way.

Greets Pascal

[Atreyu]

I missed bolts, I'd like to get some back in the 75.

What about 2x Forked Bolt instead of 2x Lightning Bolt to substitute the 2x Daze? It looks to me we mostly play Sorcery speed and Forked could help with Death and Taxes, Strixes and Elves.

[Pdingo]

What about 2x Forked Bolt instead of 2x Lightning Bolt to substitute the 2x Daze? It looks to me we mostly play Sorcery speed and Forked could help with Death and Taxes, Strixes and Elves.

I dont think we need something like forked bolt, i mean all of those decks are quit faveres match ups. And daze helps alot against other hate. Also not sure how good bolt in a grixis version is.

[pow22]

I dont think we need something like forked bolt, i mean all of those decks are quit faveres match ups. And daze helps alot against other hate. Also not sure how good bolt in a grixis version is.

Strix decks are generally very positive match-ups, but Elves and D+T can be tough IMHO. Elves can race 3 Phoenixes pretty well and discard isn't that great at stopping their combo since they're generally drawing a lot of cards each turn thanks to Glimpse/Visionary shenanigans. D+T's a better match-up than Elves, but Thalia and/or equip are good against us, especially if they have an active Vial to play around Therapy.

[maharis]

Played Esper last night:

Czech Pile WW
Czech Pile WW
Lands LL
Grixis Delver LL
Depths WLL

Wasteland was a huge factor in those middle games, even with Petal.

[maharis]

Esper at the weekly (in paper!)

esper midrange (no sfm) 0-2
Bant Delver 2-1
Eldrazi 2-1
Humans 2-1

So a nice night. My hands in the first round were horrendous though, no landers into whiffing on cantrips.


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[maharis]

BTW-gm 3 vs Humans on the play

Petal x2
Ponder
Brainstorm
Preordain
Mentor
Delta

Is everyone 100% slamming Mentor t1? What do you fetch with delta knowing they have Wasteland? I did island petal petal mentor, but cantrips whiffed for multiple turns and it was a bit dicey. However I think aggro mentor here is the right move, but curious if anyone is digging for Phoenix combo instead.


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[nickochoa212]

Hello everyone, I've been playing this deck at my last few local weeklies to pretty good success and have been having a lot of fun with the build. Thanks Whitefaces for the primer and continued work on the deck!

Last night I actually played the mirror, and I was wondering what people's thoughts are on sideboarding strategy, and if it is play /draw dependent.

My list for reference:
4 Phoenix
4 young pyro
2 liliana last hope
2 liliana of the veil

4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 preordain
4 thoughtseize
4 Cabal therapy
4 dark ritual
4 buried alive
2 lightning bolt

18 land
1 island
1 swamp
3 underground sea
3 volcanic island
1 badlands
4 scalding tarn
4 polluted delta
1 bloodstained mire

Sideboard
3 tormod crypt
2 surgical extraction
2 echoing truth
2 spell pierce
1 flusterstorm
2 Abrade
1 goblin cratermaker
2 bitterblossom

Against the mirror, almost all the sideboard cards seem good in some way! I ended going with
-2 lotv
-1 buried alive
-1 Phoenix
-2 preordain
-1 Cabal therapy
+ 2 echoing truth
+ 3 tormod crypt
+ 2 Bitterblossom

My opponent went more in the direction of siding out discard and bringing in permission. I think being proactive with discard is the right way to go, and surgical seems bad because you can just wait and get it with discard whereas crypt can just hang out on the board.

Looking back, I think maybe echoing truth should not have been brought in, or only bring it in on the draw perhaps. If you need to use it, you're probably not doing well in the match anyway. I'm also thinking bringing in Abrade to kill their crypt or to kill a pyromancer is a good idea. Maybe even cratermaker too (in general he should maybe just be another Abrade honestly) . I don't think Bitterblossom was a good sideboard choice, that should have stayed out probably, too slow. I also think sideboarding out a basic land might be correct. Boarding out preordain I think was wrong too. Maybe this would have been better :

-2 lotv
-1 Phoenix
-1 buried alive
-1 swamp
-1 Cabal therapy
+3 tormod crypt
+2 abrade
+1 flusterstorm

Let me know your thoughts everyone!

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[Whitefaces]

Sorry for the lack of replies and updates everyone, I've been quite busy recently and not as much time to play. I plan to get back to all of you though, as well as post current thoughts on the deck and update the primer, especially talking about Grixis and Esper and what pros and cons they both have.

[youngphx]

Sorry for the lack of replies and updates everyone, I've been quite busy recently and not as much time to play. I plan to get back to all of you though, as well as post current thoughts on the deck and update the primer, especially talking about Grixis and Esper and what pros and cons they both have.

Can't wait to see your update! Thanks for directing me to this thread

[kinda]

Current esper list??

[Pdingo]

For me its still the same as i posted above. You can take a look at it. In the Main board there is not really much to change atm. The sideboard changed -1 surgical +1 kambal

[vincentke]

Went to a local tournament (35 ppl)today with the esper list. Got 4-2 in the end. i'm playing this list for the first time, and pretty happy about result.
round 1 vs scapeshift nic fit: 2-1, 3 phoenix and cabal therapy finished the game pretty quickly. The lost is because he got two explorer and reaps my hand with two therapy.
round 2 vs Grixis delver: 2-1 game 1 i went turn 2 therapy ritual buried 3 phoenix, attack for 3 turns and win. game 2 i thoughtseized a blue elemental blast instead of a fish cause I mistaken it with
brainstorm, and then i died to a fish. game 3 i use a sword on young pz and bated a FOW pitching a daze at the end of his turn. Then i go with the combo into 3 phoenix. He killed two phoenix with blue blast and bolt, but i keep getting them back, so he couldnt find a flipped delver to block and died. After the game, he said he pitched the daze instead of blue blast is because i discarded it in game 2 so he thought its important to counter a looting, otherwise he could have won the counter war. I said, oh what, i thought that was a brainstorm, oops:laugh:.
round 3 vs bule-white stoneblade: 0-2 game 1 i discarded his hand and drew six lands in a row, and died. game 2 couldnt find answer to the batterskull and couldnt win the counter war, and died pretty fast.
round 4 vs dredge：2-0 game 1 he didnt dredge into nacros to block, so i killed him with 4 phoenix. game 2 i surgicaled his bridge and Ichorid on turn 3 and turn 4, and win with 3 phoenix.
round 5 vs eldrazi stompy: 1-2 game 1 I managed to win through a turn 1 chalice on 1 with a mentor and 3 phoenix(hard cast buried alive and bring them back next turn). game 2 & 3 his hand is like god. turn 0 leyline turn 1 chalice turn 2 TKS turn 3 TKS. Couldnt find daze or spell pierce for the chalice. I disenchant the chalice but can not win the race without the phoenix.TKS+TKS+ Smasher is the nuts:cry:
round 6 vs black-white smallpox: 2-0 he got lingering souls out pretty early both games, but i turn 2 combo him both games. Though phoenix trades with the spirit 3 times, i can easily bring them back with therapies, so he couldnt block forever.
My 4-2 record should give me a seat in top 8 but i got to leave early, so I gave the chance to my last round opponent.
Thoughts on this deck so far:
1. Esper list is more powerful than the grixis list. with petal u can protect ur turn2 combo against the daze, and I kept a lot of a one land one petal one discard hands and still combo off on turn 2 with protection.
2. 4 mentors maybe too much. I think the 4th could be a planeswalker, maybe a LotV is good.
3. 4 dazes might not be enough to fight the turn 1 chalice decks, against other decks, drawing it after turn 4 feels really bad. but i dont like putting FOW in this deck, cause the card disadvantage is huge. next time I think i will put 2 daze and 2 other counter spell or EE in the mainboard.
4. i put a lavania in the sideboard today, but didnt see any storm or SNT, so I dont know how good it could be yet. maybe turn 1 lavania against those turn 1 chalice deck is good option too is we r playing first.
5. I do think that putting two ensnaring bridge in the sb in order to board out the phoenix combo and focus on the mentor aspect is worth considering, especially after the lost to eldrazi.
Anyway, esper phoenix is a pretty cool deck, and I think it has more potential in legacy than in modern. I'll keep practicing it and see how it goes. Cheers!

[ButterTime]

Went to a local tournament (35 ppl)today with the esper list. Got 4-2 in the end. i'm playing this list for the first time, and pretty happy about result.
round 1 vs scapeshift nic fit: 2-1, 3 phoenix and cabal therapy finished the game pretty quickly. The lost is because he got two explorer and reaps my hand with two therapy.
round 2 vs Grixis delver: 2-1 game 1 i went turn 2 therapy ritual buried 3 phoenix, attack for 3 turns and win. game 2 i thoughtseized a blue elemental blast instead of a fish cause I mistaken it with
brainstorm, and then i died to a fish. game 3 i use a sword on young pz and bated a FOW pitching a daze at the end of his turn. Then i go with the combo into 3 phoenix. He killed two phoenix with blue blast and bolt, but i keep getting them back, so he couldnt find a flipped delver to block and died. After the game, he said he pitched the daze instead of blue blast is because i discarded it in game 2 so he thought its important to counter a looting, otherwise he could have won the counter war. I said, oh what, i thought that was a brainstorm, oops:laugh:.
round 3 vs bule-white stoneblade: 0-2 game 1 i discarded his hand and drew six lands in a row, and died. game 2 couldnt find answer to the batterskull and couldnt win the counter war, and died pretty fast.
round 4 vs dredge：2-0 game 1 he didnt dredge into nacros to block, so i killed him with 4 phoenix. game 2 i surgicaled his bridge and Ichorid on turn 3 and turn 4, and win with 3 phoenix.
round 5 vs eldrazi stompy: 1-2 game 1 I managed to win through a turn 1 chalice on 1 with a mentor and 3 phoenix(hard cast buried alive and bring them back next turn). game 2 & 3 his hand is like god. turn 0 leyline turn 1 chalice turn 2 TKS turn 3 TKS. Couldnt find daze or spell pierce for the chalice. I disenchant the chalice but can not win the race without the phoenix.TKS+TKS+ Smasher is the nuts:cry:
round 6 vs black-white smallpox: 2-0 he got lingering souls out pretty early both games, but i turn 2 combo him both games. Though phoenix trades with the spirit 3 times, i can easily bring them back with therapies, so he couldnt block forever.
My 4-2 record should give me a seat in top 8 but i got to leave early, so I gave the chance to my last round opponent.
Thoughts on this deck so far:
1. Esper list is more powerful than the grixis list. with petal u can protect ur turn2 combo against the daze, and I kept a lot of a one land one petal one discard hands and still combo off on turn 2 with protection.
2. 4 mentors maybe too much. I think the 4th could be a planeswalker, maybe a LotV is good.
3. 4 dazes might not be enough to fight the turn 1 chalice decks, against other decks, drawing it after turn 4 feels really bad. but i dont like putting FOW in this deck, cause the card disadvantage is huge. next time I think i will put 2 daze and 2 other counter spell or EE in the mainboard.
4. i put a lavania in the sideboard today, but didnt see any storm or SNT, so I dont know how good it could be yet. maybe turn 1 lavania against those turn 1 chalice deck is good option too is we r playing first.
5. I do think that putting two ensnaring bridge in the sb in order to board out the phoenix combo and focus on the mentor aspect is worth considering, especially after the lost to eldrazi.
Anyway, esper phoenix is a pretty cool deck, and I think it has more potential in legacy than in modern. I'll keep practicing it and see how it goes. Cheers!

Nice results, I am going to play the grixis version at a tournament on Sunday. I kind of like the idea of ensnaring bridge in the sideboard. Not only would it be good against Eldrazi, but Sneak & Show, Depths, and maybe even Reanimator. It does cost 3, but it could be cast on turn 1 with a dark ritual.

[Pdingo]

Hei guys

I went to a weekly( 4 rounds with esper phoenix) list above somewhere.

I did 3:1. Matches where:

2:0 Eldrazy stompy, He founds twice no chalice, g2 i disenchant leyline and ee him the clock. G2 mentor is reallly strong.
2:0 Burn i think the way to go here is just race him with a fast phoenix. Kambal+fluster helps. Dont forget to board disenchant for the enchantments.
1:2 UWr Miracle i really believe its a good match up. G3 was the important point i keept a test hand 4 Lands, daze, Ponder, Ts, i should have mull here. I think my idea was to get everything together because i got the time and i dont lose to CA with mull to 6. The Ponder went shuffle into more lands.
At one point i can disrupt his hand and he end with to useless cards and i have the lili. With the last tick he finds the creature and has his bs+outs from the top too. After that i drew basically my whole mana base and i can not win anymore.
2:1 UW Standstill Even more favered. He plays a more greedy manabase than miracle and that can punish him. Mentor is really strong here aswell. I made also a big mistake with not boarding disenchant. I should have boarded at least 1 because i had no clue what me awaits. Still a mentor wins me the race because his clock was quit slow.

Well i'm happy with the results and i gonna play that deck on saturday on a 1k tournament. Also i will write a more detailed report with sideboard choices;)

Greets Pascal

[Whitefaces]

Alright, so I've started writing some changes to the primer. Mostly just updating information with what we've learnt since the deck started, though the core has pretty much stayed the same still. And I'll talk about the Esper build too.


Ensnaring Bridge is also on my short list of cards I want to try. I really liked it in the SB of Mentor Miracles, when all the Entreat lists were playing Moat against the then new Eldrazi deck.

Regarding general boarding plans: Against Sneak Show and ANT, I tend to take out some Lotus Petals. We can't win the race anyway, so reducing speed for more disruption seems reasonable. Though I wouldn't cut too many against Reanimator because of Chancellor.

Against UB Shadow, after some testing against a friend of mine, I board down to 2 Mentors and cut the Spell Pierce for Removal. I still like all the combo pieces and discard in that matchup. I basically try to play ANT against them. Buying time until soft counters don't matter anymore and I have discard for Surgicals and Forces. In about 10 matches, the matchup felt quite positive, which my testing partner agreed with. I just found it to be easier to force through the combo than trying to cast a Mentor + several spells in the same turn. With the Pyromancer lists, that should be easier, but on the other hand Pyromancer doesn't feel like a reasonable win condition against Delver. It can buy a lot of time, but probably won't kill them. At least not without a Liliana helping out.

I have yet to test against Grixis Delver. Shadow is probably the easiest Delver deck for us, because our combo one shots them a lot of the time.

Against Reanimator, I would keep in the Combo. Of course our combo is slower than theirs, but hitting them for 9 effectively shuts off Reanimate after we disrupted their first attempt, which is huge.

Vs ANT and SnS I would be keeping all Petals personally, without Force of Will we need all the tempo we can get I think. As well as cantripping into disruption to play the same turn/get off a faster combo. While they are a faster combo deck than us, it doesn't mean we should slow ourselves down then because we, usually, can't win on that axis. From Esper it lets you play a faster Kambal too.


alright guys wow a lot of new information and everyone is on hard testing, great!

i try to talk now more deeply about the combo match up no one is really sure what's wrong or right. Like still here its a lot possible and we have to look at each combo match up differently.

Reanimator UB and RB: i think the same plan is fine here. I agree with you whitefaces, maybe i'm also wrong and we just need to pressure them in g1 and 2 a lot. so actually maybe to take out 4 mentor is not completely wrong.
basically we can still having the fast combo and play a crypt/fluster/discard after for example. But also i have to say i have to test this way and also the way without the combo and more hard control. but maybe is exactly here the problem that they can discard mentor and even reanimate it. What happens with the phoenix maybe aswell but we will not have just 1 phoenix in the gy so maybe we can go and reanimate them again and block the other one for example. i think it could really be the better way also because we pressure them more. what happens with mentor is that if you have mentor+crypt is that it's also nice but maybe we used already gas for answers. with the combo we are probably going of faster and use the disruption and cantrips differently. i'm now on 3 surgical and 2 crypt. i have to test now more with this configuration but 5 is a lot and i think 4 hate peaces with all the other stuff is too much and we don't want to overboard in a way. that's why i would just play 2 surgical and 2 crypt. crypt is probably better in the deck. i would like to find room for a second kambal.
what's also important they play a little less gy hate than the most other decks. i mean even the most ant list's playing 2 surgical today's on.

ANT/TES
here i prefer the control route a lot more. of course they play discard but they also play more cantrips to find more hate and go off to kill us directly. so just gy hate and combo gets less efficient. for example i found 2 ee for really nice to handle put down led's and maybe empty. the mentor therapy way is just strong even it's a 3 mana card. i mean we will come to that mana mostly and play control. mentor can kill quickly aswell. also with my idea of adding 1 kambal more make the whole plan better. with petal we can it t2 and protect him with fluster or discard. that's are my thought's here.

Sneak and Show/ Mono U Show.
I played actually just mono u show so far, don't know why but i lost it twice but it was when i startet to play magic again at saturday, also with a complete new deck so i really had a mix between combo and mentor what's not really the plan.
i figure against bouth version i would choose also the same route as with ant. Its probably the slowest deck of all the 3 i mentioned so far. Leyline is a treath and i even play my 2 Disenchants here, they take omni sneak attack and random blood moons aswell. Also if they not resolve leyline of sanctity, they rather just get therapies. sneak and show is probably a little bit better. i still think it's the easiest match up the 3 combo decks i mentioned.

Dark Depths
To be honest i never played it yet. i figure the best way is just disruption and the t1 or t2 combo and be a little lucky. I don't think it's worth to concider ensnaring bridge because they probably keep decay specially after the decks develops more.
but if its really this bad i would rather just play it like that with the combo and take cards in like fluster. i mean if someone await it like hardly, then sure we should go for a hate. though i like the idea path to exile over stp more because to give life is really not great with this deck.

Mirror
yes it happened, i played the mirror and its some random shit. lost it 1:2 g1 i was on the win with disruption he has nothing and drews BS into combo...

Now some notes to the Delver Decks i found also really interesting

UB Shadow, I played it sometimes now and i felt quit positive. Here i tried to find a balance between the combo and mentor. First to board out some of the mentor is really wrong because a resolves mentor is really hard to handle for them, specially if we disrupt them aswell. i don't have clear boarding plan yet here. i usually board 1 phoenix 1 alive 1 or 2 therapy 1 or 2 petal (not sure yet what's better but probably 2 petal)for 3 fluster and 2 EE.

Grixis Delver

I also did not played it. it's probably a more tough one specially after boarding. let's see what happens. maybe i'm wrong.

RUG Delver

basically the same as with Grixis, probably a little bit easier because we can play around stifle but still the plan is quit mana denial plan is quit strong against ester phoenix if we can not go off really fast. i think the combo here is the right way.

Greets Pascal

Nice post! Again, sorry I've been so absent here lately.

Reanimator: I agree with what you're saying. I've gotten to play it more and more since posting last and I think combo is the way to go over Mentor. I've had them Reanimate a Phoenix and that's fine, we get our own, they need to block then it comes back etc. But if you do get to test with Mentors > combo I think we'd need a lot more permission spells. It's possible, but with how the deck is now I think combo is better. The other thing to keep in mind is if you're on Grixis or Esper, as in Mentor is really scary for them to Reanimate, YP a bit less so.

ANT/TES: I actually still prefer the combo side I think, but it has to be in conjunction with the Tormod's Crypt 'plan'. If you are not playing enough Crypts/heavy GY hate then this doesn't work. The way I build decks to fight ANT is by attacking two of their 'pillars'. They have 3 avenues to win usually, they are PiF which is the most common, Ad Nauseum and tutor loop. I like to attack two of these. Those are in order of ease for them to pull off, by having Crypt we (most of the time) take away the PiF kill. By getting a quick combo and hitting them for 9 Ad Nauseum is usually off, especially considering their md configs, that leaves them usually with the tutor chain option which more often than not requires multiple threshed Cabal Rits and LEDs, it also needs a density of spells in hand which we attack with discard. So with all that said, that's my plan vs ANT currently, I'm very positive in the matchup while going for this. I lose almost every single game one, then win post board unless I whiff on Crypt.

SnS/Omnitell: These have been really high variance matchups for me, it's often just come down to how good both our hands are. The matchups are winnable but I think we're slightly unfavoured, especially if they have Leyline of Sanctity, that just takes away our main interaction and not a whole lot more to say on it. I like to bring in ETruth/Disenchant vs all versions, so there's at least that. I prefer YP/Mentor over the combo in these matchups usually because they have Pierce/Flusters which can disrupt our combo, and our discard usually can't afford to take reactive cards.

Mirror: Yep, mirror is a bit nuts. Crypt also shines here imo, since they can't discard it and stops them comboing. But still have to respect YP/Mentor too, it's high variance. That's the power of this combo too, you can go off from basically nothing.

Shadow: I agree it's the easiest one, have been getting good results vs it with both versions.

Grixis Delver: This is the matchup that really put me off Esper since it's quite popular online especially, the difference between trying to resolve 3cmc threat vs 2 is the world of difference. In the matches I played it just felt like there were too many things to discard, and Wasteland was more backbreaking than usual. Not sure though, maybe I need to try it more.

RUG: Like Shadow I've found this a lot easier than Grixis, as long as you don't get mana screwed by stifle waste etc you should be able to pick apart their hand and combo.


BTW-gm 3 vs Humans on the play

Petal x2
Ponder
Brainstorm
Preordain
Mentor
Delta

Is everyone 100% slamming Mentor t1? What do you fetch with delta knowing they have Wasteland? I did island petal petal mentor, but cantrips whiffed for multiple turns and it was a bit dicey. However I think aggro mentor here is the right move, but curious if anyone is digging for Phoenix combo instead.


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I would Mentor off Island, yeah. Wastelanding into an on board Mentor seems maniacal, but they're so far behind already they might figure they need to get lucky.


Hello everyone, I've been playing this deck at my last few local weeklies to pretty good success and have been having a lot of fun with the build. Thanks Whitefaces for the primer and continued work on the deck!

Last night I actually played the mirror, and I was wondering what people's thoughts are on sideboarding strategy, and if it is play /draw dependent.

My list for reference:
4 Phoenix
4 young pyro
2 liliana last hope
2 liliana of the veil

4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 preordain
4 thoughtseize
4 Cabal therapy
4 dark ritual
4 buried alive
2 lightning bolt

18 land
1 island
1 swamp
3 underground sea
3 volcanic island
1 badlands
4 scalding tarn
4 polluted delta
1 bloodstained mire

Sideboard
3 tormod crypt
2 surgical extraction
2 echoing truth
2 spell pierce
1 flusterstorm
2 Abrade
1 goblin cratermaker
2 bitterblossom

Against the mirror, almost all the sideboard cards seem good in some way! I ended going with
-2 lotv
-1 buried alive
-1 Phoenix
-2 preordain
-1 Cabal therapy
+ 2 echoing truth
+ 3 tormod crypt
+ 2 Bitterblossom

My opponent went more in the direction of siding out discard and bringing in permission. I think being proactive with discard is the right way to go, and surgical seems bad because you can just wait and get it with discard whereas crypt can just hang out on the board.

Looking back, I think maybe echoing truth should not have been brought in, or only bring it in on the draw perhaps. If you need to use it, you're probably not doing well in the match anyway. I'm also thinking bringing in Abrade to kill their crypt or to kill a pyromancer is a good idea. Maybe even cratermaker too (in general he should maybe just be another Abrade honestly) . I don't think Bitterblossom was a good sideboard choice, that should have stayed out probably, too slow. I also think sideboarding out a basic land might be correct. Boarding out preordain I think was wrong too. Maybe this would have been better :

-2 lotv
-1 Phoenix
-1 buried alive
-1 swamp
-1 Cabal therapy
+3 tormod crypt
+2 abrade
+1 flusterstorm

Let me know your thoughts everyone!

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Hey, glad you're enjoying the deck!

I've only played a couple of mirrors so far, so take it with a grain of salt, but I like what your opponent did. It's like a weird Jund mirror where you want to maximise topdecks, so I'd be taking out all Thoughtseizes and probably some Therapy. I also don't like Flusterstorm or Spell Pierce so much because of looking to get better topdecks.

I would go

-2 Lili Veil
-4 Thoughtseize
-1 Cabal Therapy

+3 Tormod's Crypt
+2 Surgical
+2 Abrade

Maybe the second Surgical is a bit too heavy boarding vs the combo and you should just bring in 1 and keep a TS or the last Therapy, not sure there.


Went to a local tournament (35 ppl)today with the esper list. Got 4-2 in the end. i'm playing this list for the first time, and pretty happy about result.
round 1 vs scapeshift nic fit: 2-1, 3 phoenix and cabal therapy finished the game pretty quickly. The lost is because he got two explorer and reaps my hand with two therapy.
round 2 vs Grixis delver: 2-1 game 1 i went turn 2 therapy ritual buried 3 phoenix, attack for 3 turns and win. game 2 i thoughtseized a blue elemental blast instead of a fish cause I mistaken it with
brainstorm, and then i died to a fish. game 3 i use a sword on young pz and bated a FOW pitching a daze at the end of his turn. Then i go with the combo into 3 phoenix. He killed two phoenix with blue blast and bolt, but i keep getting them back, so he couldnt find a flipped delver to block and died. After the game, he said he pitched the daze instead of blue blast is because i discarded it in game 2 so he thought its important to counter a looting, otherwise he could have won the counter war. I said, oh what, i thought that was a brainstorm, oops:laugh:.
round 3 vs bule-white stoneblade: 0-2 game 1 i discarded his hand and drew six lands in a row, and died. game 2 couldnt find answer to the batterskull and couldnt win the counter war, and died pretty fast.
round 4 vs dredge：2-0 game 1 he didnt dredge into nacros to block, so i killed him with 4 phoenix. game 2 i surgicaled his bridge and Ichorid on turn 3 and turn 4, and win with 3 phoenix.
round 5 vs eldrazi stompy: 1-2 game 1 I managed to win through a turn 1 chalice on 1 with a mentor and 3 phoenix(hard cast buried alive and bring them back next turn). game 2 & 3 his hand is like god. turn 0 leyline turn 1 chalice turn 2 TKS turn 3 TKS. Couldnt find daze or spell pierce for the chalice. I disenchant the chalice but can not win the race without the phoenix.TKS+TKS+ Smasher is the nuts:cry:
round 6 vs black-white smallpox: 2-0 he got lingering souls out pretty early both games, but i turn 2 combo him both games. Though phoenix trades with the spirit 3 times, i can easily bring them back with therapies, so he couldnt block forever.
My 4-2 record should give me a seat in top 8 but i got to leave early, so I gave the chance to my last round opponent.
Thoughts on this deck so far:
1. Esper list is more powerful than the grixis list. with petal u can protect ur turn2 combo against the daze, and I kept a lot of a one land one petal one discard hands and still combo off on turn 2 with protection.
2. 4 mentors maybe too much. I think the 4th could be a planeswalker, maybe a LotV is good.
3. 4 dazes might not be enough to fight the turn 1 chalice decks, against other decks, drawing it after turn 4 feels really bad. but i dont like putting FOW in this deck, cause the card disadvantage is huge. next time I think i will put 2 daze and 2 other counter spell or EE in the mainboard.
4. i put a lavania in the sideboard today, but didnt see any storm or SNT, so I dont know how good it could be yet. maybe turn 1 lavania against those turn 1 chalice deck is good option too is we r playing first.
5. I do think that putting two ensnaring bridge in the sb in order to board out the phoenix combo and focus on the mentor aspect is worth considering, especially after the lost to eldrazi.
Anyway, esper phoenix is a pretty cool deck, and I think it has more potential in legacy than in modern. I'll keep practicing it and see how it goes. Cheers!

Nice one, 4-2 is good for a first time with this deck!

Funny match two! That's how I've lost to Stoneblade before too, kinda sucks when the deck is full of cantrips but happens. I would play more if there were more good ones honestly.

1. It's certainly got a higher ceiling, though I think it's less consistent than Grixis. I've been back on Grixis recently for that reason, but there are certainly pros and cons to both.
2. Makes sense, I could see trying trimming down on a Mentor, they can be bad in multiples.
3. Try Spell Pierce, I've tested 1-2 in the main in both Grixis and Esper and they were pretty good.
4. Interesting. I don't like the card generally, but let us know if it performs OK.
5. Definitely, I still haven't gotten round to trying bridge, but in theory I like it.


Hei guys

I went to a weekly( 4 rounds with esper phoenix) list above somewhere.

I did 3:1. Matches where:

2:0 Eldrazy stompy, He founds twice no chalice, g2 i disenchant leyline and ee him the clock. G2 mentor is reallly strong.
2:0 Burn i think the way to go here is just race him with a fast phoenix. Kambal+fluster helps. Dont forget to board disenchant for the enchantments.
1:2 UWr Miracle i really believe its a good match up. G3 was the important point i keept a test hand 4 Lands, daze, Ponder, Ts, i should have mull here. I think my idea was to get everything together because i got the time and i dont lose to CA with mull to 6. The Ponder went shuffle into more lands.
At one point i can disrupt his hand and he end with to useless cards and i have the lili. With the last tick he finds the creature and has his bs+outs from the top too. After that i drew basically my whole mana base and i can not win anymore.
2:1 UW Standstill Even more favered. He plays a more greedy manabase than miracle and that can punish him. Mentor is really strong here aswell. I made also a big mistake with not boarding disenchant. I should have boarded at least 1 because i had no clue what me awaits. Still a mentor wins me the race because his clock was quit slow.

Well i'm happy with the results and i gonna play that deck on saturday on a 1k tournament. Also i will write a more detailed report with sideboard choices;)

Greets Pascal

Nice one! Promising results, I think Miracles is a pretty good matchup too. Good luck at the 1K, and please do!

On Esper, some people have suggested and are trying Dark Confidant. I think it has potential since it bridges the gap of the deck where we want some more powerful plays with fast mana, as well as raw card advantage. I think the damage it might take flipping Phoenixes/Buried/Mentor etc is fine. Something I'll be testing too.





And after all that, back to what I've been up to with the deck!

Like I said a little above, I've gone back to playing with Grixis since I think the consistency is important for the deck, though the idea of Dark Confidant has really spurred my interest in Esper again.

With Grixis I've played it at my last two weeklies and gone 3-1 both times, losses to ANT and Moon Stompy. And I played it at our London Monthly tournament on Sunday and went 4-0 double ID into top seed of the swiss, but then lost to Elves in the quarters, unfortunately it was the only matchup in the top 8 I feel like the deck is unfavoured vs. I had 1 E Plague and 2 Lili Last Hope, but they weren't enough/didn't draw the Plague. Still was happy with the result, the matchups previously were

2-1 vs Grixis Control
2-0 vs Esper Mentor
2-0 vs UB Shadow
2-0 vs SnS

Tombstalkers have been an addition from some friends online also playing the deck (Cartesian and ewlandon) which has been excellent. These going tall, YP going wide and the combo being gy centric really makes it hard for the opponents to sideboard, all their answers are so situational so with discard we're able to pick things apart.

List from Sunday

3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Daze

2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
1 Swamp

4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Echoing Truth
2 Abrade
1 Engineered Plague
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
2 Liliana, the Last Hope

[Baum]

Just for the record: I tried out Thing in the Ice and it wasn't great. It's ok against decks like Eldrazi, but a real liability against control decks. Whitefaces suggested as much when we briefly talked about the deck in the Depths Discord. He was right ;)

Last Sunday, I played a local 45 person event with Grixis (3 Pyromancer, 3 TITI) and the best thing TITI did was providing a sac outlet for a therapy flashback. I played against a lot of control decks and sided it out all the time. I went 4:2 in the swiss rounds:
*
2:0 UB Shadow
0:2 Czech Pile (I could have won G1, had I played better)
2:0 UW Stoneblade
1:2 Grixis Control (Phoenix getting hit by a T2 Hymn and then extracted is slightly unfortunate :D)
2:0 Burn
2:0 UW RiP / Helm

Then I got slaughtered by Eldrazi & Taxes in the Top 8. T1 Chalice, T2 Thalia followed by Eldrazi are a beating.

The next card I'm going to try in Grixis is Counterbalance. A friend suggested CB when we were brainstorming ideas for the MD flex slots that are currently Tombstalkers or Lilianas. I was looking for a "threat" that's good against both fair blue and combo. I've got no idea if it's actually good, but it sounds nice in theory. Fun fact: Our Counterbalance curve is probably better than miracles against Sneak Show. Lots of threes and fours :D

This is the 75 I'm going to try next. There are a couple of experimental cards I want to try out:

4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Young Pyromancer
2 Counterbalance
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Daze
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Echoing Truth (I needed to free up SB slots)
4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard:
2 Flusterstorm
3 Surgical Extraction (maybe I'll go back to more crypts, but I'm sick of getting T1ed on the draw. If we ever get a turn, crypt is much better ofc)
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Rakdos Charm (It's probably too slow, but I wanted both 5 things that get rid of chalice and 5 pieces of gy hate)
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Echoing Truth
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (maybe Jace is not necessary, but I wanted to have a payoff when I hide behind a bridge)
2 Ensnaring Bridge


Another question: How is the Death & Taxes matchup? I rarely see the deck at events and none of my local testing partners has it built, so I'm lacking practice.

[Whitefaces]

Just for the record: I tried out Thing in the Ice and it wasn't great. It's ok against decks like Eldrazi, but a real liability against control decks. Whitefaces suggested as much when we briefly talked about the deck in the Depths Discord. He was right ;)

Last Sunday, I played a local 45 person event with Grixis (3 Pyromancer, 3 TITI) and the best thing TITI did was providing a sac outlet for a therapy flashback. I played against a lot of control decks and sided it out all the time. I went 4:2 in the swiss rounds:
*
2:0 UB Shadow
0:2 Czech Pile (I could have won G1, had I played better)
2:0 UW Stoneblade
1:2 Grixis Control (Phoenix getting hit by a T2 Hymn and then extracted is slightly unfortunate :D)
2:0 Burn
2:0 UW RiP / Helm

Then I got slaughtered by Eldrazi & Taxes in the Top 8. T1 Chalice, T2 Thalia followed by Eldrazi are a beating.

The next card I'm going to try in Grixis is Counterbalance. A friend suggested CB when we were brainstorming ideas for the MD flex slots that are currently Tombstalkers or Lilianas. I was looking for a "threat" that's good against both fair blue and combo. I've got no idea if it's actually good, but it sounds nice in theory. Fun fact: Our Counterbalance curve is probably better than miracles against Sneak Show. Lots of threes and fours :D

This is the 75 I'm going to try next. There are a couple of experimental cards I want to try out:

4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Young Pyromancer
2 Counterbalance
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Daze
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Echoing Truth (I needed to free up SB slots)
4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard:
2 Flusterstorm
3 Surgical Extraction (maybe I'll go back to more crypts, but I'm sick of getting T1ed on the draw. If we ever get a turn, crypt is much better ofc)
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Rakdos Charm (It's probably too slow, but I wanted both 5 things that get rid of chalice and 5 pieces of gy hate)
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Echoing Truth
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (maybe Jace is not necessary, but I wanted to have a payoff when I hide behind a bridge)
2 Ensnaring Bridge


Another question: How is the Death & Taxes matchup? I rarely see the deck at events and none of my local testing partners has it built, so I'm lacking practice.

I'm still glad you tried it out, it's always best to see for yourself why someone doesn't like a card choice. It's entirely possible that I was wrong and my sample size wasn't big enough too, but I was pretty convinced Titi didn't fit in the deck, despite on the surface it looks great.

So T8ing with a handicap like that is impressive :tongue: Well done!

Hymn into Surgical like that is annoying, part of the game loss from my event on Sunday vs Grixis was similar, discard + Surgical on Phoenix. But I also punted on taking the wrong card on a Thoughtseize too, so my bad.

Counterbalance is a cool idea, I like it. Please let me know how it goes, I'm interested in trying it too.

I also like the Etruth in the main a lot, I've even played two sometimes, it's great. You should try Tombstalkers too though if you haven't already, I've been really impressed with them. I talked to most of my opponents after the match was over and Grixis Control saw YP but no Stalkers, so they sided out Strix and died to the flying beats. Then Esper Mentor saw Stalkers and didn't board in sweepers but left Strix and Plows, and died to YP etc. Throw Liliana in the mix and it's so hard to sb well vs this deck.

DnT is pretty good for us I think, we do need to try and be fast though. We're able to play a slow game too but they will have some kind of inevitability. I've won a lot of sb games with Lili last Hope too, she makes the matchup considerably better. So I'd guess at maybe 60-40, but really it's pretty close and quite hand dependent.

I do like your idea of Bridges and more PWers too, YP is also a nice win con while sitting behind a bridge and getting an army together. Was this the first event you tried the configuration?

[Whitefaces]

This is a very rough but proposed list to try Dark Confidant in Esper, hopefully I'll have some time to try it online soon. I'm still very unsure if Esper should be playing basics or not.

4 Dark Confidant
3 Monastery Mentor
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive

4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Daze

2 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Volcanic Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats

1 Serenity
2 Disenchant
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Plains
2 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Flusterstorm

[ButterTime]

Alright, so I've started writing some changes to the primer. Mostly just updating information with what we've learnt since the deck started, though the core has pretty much stayed the same still. And I'll talk about the Esper build too.



Vs ANT and SnS I would be keeping all Petals personally, without Force of Will we need all the tempo we can get I think. As well as cantripping into disruption to play the same turn/get off a faster combo. While they are a faster combo deck than us, it doesn't mean we should slow ourselves down then because we, usually, can't win on that axis. From Esper it lets you play a faster Kambal too.



Nice post! Again, sorry I've been so absent here lately.

Reanimator: I agree with what you're saying. I've gotten to play it more and more since posting last and I think combo is the way to go over Mentor. I've had them Reanimate a Phoenix and that's fine, we get our own, they need to block then it comes back etc. But if you do get to test with Mentors > combo I think we'd need a lot more permission spells. It's possible, but with how the deck is now I think combo is better. The other thing to keep in mind is if you're on Grixis or Esper, as in Mentor is really scary for them to Reanimate, YP a bit less so.

ANT/TES: I actually still prefer the combo side I think, but it has to be in conjunction with the Tormod's Crypt 'plan'. If you are not playing enough Crypts/heavy GY hate then this doesn't work. The way I build decks to fight ANT is by attacking two of their 'pillars'. They have 3 avenues to win usually, they are PiF which is the most common, Ad Nauseum and tutor loop. I like to attack two of these. Those are in order of ease for them to pull off, by having Crypt we (most of the time) take away the PiF kill. By getting a quick combo and hitting them for 9 Ad Nauseum is usually off, especially considering their md configs, that leaves them usually with the tutor chain option which more often than not requires multiple threshed Cabal Rits and LEDs, it also needs a density of spells in hand which we attack with discard. So with all that said, that's my plan vs ANT currently, I'm very positive in the matchup while going for this. I lose almost every single game one, then win post board unless I whiff on Crypt.

SnS/Omnitell: These have been really high variance matchups for me, it's often just come down to how good both our hands are. The matchups are winnable but I think we're slightly unfavoured, especially if they have Leyline of Sanctity, that just takes away our main interaction and not a whole lot more to say on it. I like to bring in ETruth/Disenchant vs all versions, so there's at least that. I prefer YP/Mentor over the combo in these matchups usually because they have Pierce/Flusters which can disrupt our combo, and our discard usually can't afford to take reactive cards.

Mirror: Yep, mirror is a bit nuts. Crypt also shines here imo, since they can't discard it and stops them comboing. But still have to respect YP/Mentor too, it's high variance. That's the power of this combo too, you can go off from basically nothing.

Shadow: I agree it's the easiest one, have been getting good results vs it with both versions.

Grixis Delver: This is the matchup that really put me off Esper since it's quite popular online especially, the difference between trying to resolve 3cmc threat vs 2 is the world of difference. In the matches I played it just felt like there were too many things to discard, and Wasteland was more backbreaking than usual. Not sure though, maybe I need to try it more.

RUG: Like Shadow I've found this a lot easier than Grixis, as long as you don't get mana screwed by stifle waste etc you should be able to pick apart their hand and combo.



I would Mentor off Island, yeah. Wastelanding into an on board Mentor seems maniacal, but they're so far behind already they might figure they need to get lucky.



Hey, glad you're enjoying the deck!

I've only played a couple of mirrors so far, so take it with a grain of salt, but I like what your opponent did. It's like a weird Jund mirror where you want to maximise topdecks, so I'd be taking out all Thoughtseizes and probably some Therapy. I also don't like Flusterstorm or Spell Pierce so much because of looking to get better topdecks.

I would go

-2 Lili Veil
-4 Thoughtseize
-1 Cabal Therapy

+3 Tormod's Crypt
+2 Surgical
+2 Abrade

Maybe the second Surgical is a bit too heavy boarding vs the combo and you should just bring in 1 and keep a TS or the last Therapy, not sure there.



Nice one, 4-2 is good for a first time with this deck!

Funny match two! That's how I've lost to Stoneblade before too, kinda sucks when the deck is full of cantrips but happens. I would play more if there were more good ones honestly.

1. It's certainly got a higher ceiling, though I think it's less consistent than Grixis. I've been back on Grixis recently for that reason, but there are certainly pros and cons to both.
2. Makes sense, I could see trying trimming down on a Mentor, they can be bad in multiples.
3. Try Spell Pierce, I've tested 1-2 in the main in both Grixis and Esper and they were pretty good.
4. Interesting. I don't like the card generally, but let us know if it performs OK.
5. Definitely, I still haven't gotten round to trying bridge, but in theory I like it.



Nice one! Promising results, I think Miracles is a pretty good matchup too. Good luck at the 1K, and please do!

On Esper, some people have suggested and are trying Dark Confidant. I think it has potential since it bridges the gap of the deck where we want some more powerful plays with fast mana, as well as raw card advantage. I think the damage it might take flipping Phoenixes/Buried/Mentor etc is fine. Something I'll be testing too.





And after all that, back to what I've been up to with the deck!

Like I said a little above, I've gone back to playing with Grixis since I think the consistency is important for the deck, though the idea of Dark Confidant has really spurred my interest in Esper again.

With Grixis I've played it at my last two weeklies and gone 3-1 both times, losses to ANT and Moon Stompy. And I played it at our London Monthly tournament on Sunday and went 4-0 double ID into top seed of the swiss, but then lost to Elves in the quarters, unfortunately it was the only matchup in the top 8 I feel like the deck is unfavoured vs. I had 1 E Plague and 2 Lili Last Hope, but they weren't enough/didn't draw the Plague. Still was happy with the result, the matchups previously were

2-1 vs Grixis Control
2-0 vs Esper Mentor
2-0 vs UB Shadow
2-0 vs SnS

Tombstalkers have been an addition from some friends online also playing the deck (Cartesian and ewlandon) which has been excellent. These going tall, YP going wide and the combo being gy centric really makes it hard for the opponents to sideboard, all their answers are so situational so with discard we're able to pick things apart.

List from Sunday

3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Daze

2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
1 Swamp

4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Echoing Truth
2 Abrade
1 Engineered Plague
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
2 Liliana, the Last Hope

I have been playing with Tombstalker as well, but only one. I'm running two Liliana of the Veil and one TS in the main. Everytime, a TS goes unanswered, I win. I think TS definitely has a permanent home in this deck. The LotV is more of a local meta choice, but could also be good for a bigger tournament.

Would you mind explaining why you think 1 daze and 1 lotus petal is good? What matches is Goblin Cratermaker good in except for S&S and any deck with artifacts or artifact creatures? I was also considering running a 10th fetch over the 3rd Volcanic Island. It's a minor difference, but in the situations where it would matter or make a difference, it would be a huge.

[Whitefaces]

I have been playing with Tombstalker as well, but only one. I'm running two Liliana of the Veil and one TS in the main. Everytime, a TS goes unanswered, I win. I think TS definitely has a permanent home in this deck. The LotV is more of a local meta choice, but could also be good for a bigger tournament.

Would you mind explaining why you think 1 daze and 1 lotus petal is good? What matches is Goblin Cratermaker good in except for S&S and any deck with artifacts or artifact creatures? I was also considering running a 10th fetch over the 3rd Volcanic Island. It's a minor difference, but in the situations where it would matter or make a difference, it would be a huge.

Yeah I agree, Stalker has been a house, I've been extremely happy with two copies so far. Liliana of the Veil was also very good for me when I was playing her, she's just kinda fallen by the wayside while trying other things in those slots. She's excelled vs combo where you can try and take away critical mass, Storm and SnS especially. But also had some nice application vs creature decks too.

I'll be honest, I couldn't decide on whether to play 2 Daze or 2 Petal but was happy with the rest of the deck so went with the 1/1 split. Partly to see which one performs better when I drew them, and I don't think the deck often wants to draw more than one most games. I barely drew the Petal, but Daze did a lot of work, I think we've spoken about Daze numbers somewhere in this thread but 2 is feeling like a nice number. 2 Petal is also a good number I think, and the deck can afford to cut a land for that at least, down to 17.

Goblin Cratermaker is for Eldrazi and DnT mostly, while still being fine vs Moon Stompy as well. Eldrazi I was struggling balancing answers to their lock pieces vs threats, sometimes they're playing a 'fair' game with a lot of creatures but just one lock piece, sometimes they overload on hate and just have one threat etc. Killing Endbringer especially was my thinking for the card, but it's still early days in trying it out. It's quite flexible, I'd bring it in vs any chalice deck, dnt, delver, SnS (if there are enough medium cards to board out), possibly even ANT to kill LEDs/attack for 2 but maybe that's loose.

I would play 3 Volcs if you're playing Bedlam Reveler, otherwise 2 is fine.

[ButterTime]

Yeah I agree, Stalker has been a house, I've been extremely happy with two copies so far. Liliana of the Veil was also very good for me when I was playing her, she's just kinda fallen by the wayside while trying other things in those slots. She's excelled vs combo where you can try and take away critical mass, Storm and SnS especially. But also had some nice application vs creature decks too.

I'll be honest, I couldn't decide on whether to play 2 Daze or 2 Petal but was happy with the rest of the deck so went with the 1/1 split. Partly to see which one performs better when I drew them, and I don't think the deck often wants to draw more than one most games. I barely drew the Petal, but Daze did a lot of work, I think we've spoken about Daze numbers somewhere in this thread but 2 is feeling like a nice number. 2 Petal is also a good number I think, and the deck can afford to cut a land for that at least, down to 17.

Goblin Cratermaker is for Eldrazi and DnT mostly, while still being fine vs Moon Stompy as well. Eldrazi I was struggling balancing answers to their lock pieces vs threats, sometimes they're playing a 'fair' game with a lot of creatures but just one lock piece, sometimes they overload on hate and just have one threat etc. Killing Endbringer especially was my thinking for the card, but it's still early days in trying it out. It's quite flexible, I'd bring it in vs any chalice deck, dnt, delver, SnS (if there are enough medium cards to board out), possibly even ANT to kill LEDs/attack for 2 but maybe that's loose.

I would play 3 Volcs if you're playing Bedlam Reveler, otherwise 2 is fine.

I use to play Team America (BUG Delver) a lot and TS was a house. It was always the nut draw and homerun win. The fact that he flies is relevant in so many situations. Yes, you have previously spoken about 2 dazes being the corrent number. I don't know about petal though, it gives the opportunity for more explosive games, but it is a terrible late game draw in most situations. I lose most of the time when the game goes longer and I draw poorly or whif on my cantrips. I will try the 1/1 split and the 2 daze version a few times each just to see how they feel. I'll definitely be playing Gobline Cratermaker in my sideboard though.

Do you think 3 yp's in the main is the correct number or are you testing out the 3 to see how it feels?

[Whitefaces]

I use to play Team America (BUG Delver) a lot and TS was a house. It was always the nut draw and homerun win. The fact that he flies is relevant in so many situations. Yes, you have previously spoken about 2 dazes being the corrent number. I don't know about petal though, it gives the opportunity for more explosive games, but it is a terrible late game draw in most situations. I lose most of the time when the game goes longer and I draw poorly or whif on my cantrips. I will try the 1/1 split and the 2 daze version a few times each just to see how they feel. I'll definitely be playing Gobline Cratermaker in my sideboard though.

Do you think 3 yp's in the main is the correct number or are you testing out the 3 to see how it feels?

Petal does have a low floor, they've been quite impressive though. Better than I originally expected at least, I recommend trying a couple like you say and see how it goes.

I'm not sure on the YP number, 3 is mostly trying out to see if I miss the 4th. So far it's been fine and previously they could get awkward in multiples when you just wanted spells, but I'm not certain it's right.

[Baum]

I do like your idea of Bridges and more PWers too, YP is also a nice win con while sitting behind a bridge and getting an army together. Was this the first event you tried the configuration?

So far, the SB plan with Bridges is untested. I don't think Bridge would have played well together with the TITIs I ran at the last event :wink:
I'm going to play a small tournament at a LGS on Saturday and test the new list.

Regarding Tombstalker: A friend of mine tested it at the tournament last Sunday and liked it so far. I could see cutting the 4th Pyromancer for a Tombstalker in the CB list. It's pretty great that we are three people who test Phoenix at our local events, so everyone can try out other stuff. Fun fact: Phoenix was one of the most played deck on Sunday... Below are the decks with 3 or more players :laugh:

4 Grixis Control & Czech Pile
4 Show & Tell
3 Grixis Phoenix
3 Lands
3 Stoneblade

[Pdingo]

Alright, so I've started writing some changes to the primer. Mostly just updating information with what we've learnt since the deck started, though the core has pretty much stayed the same still. And I'll talk about the Esper build too.



Vs ANT and SnS I would be keeping all Petals personally, without Force of Will we need all the tempo we can get I think. As well as cantripping into disruption to play the same turn/get off a faster combo. While they are a faster combo deck than us, it doesn't mean we should slow ourselves down then because we, usually, can't win on that axis. From Esper it lets you play a faster Kambal too.



Nice post! Again, sorry I've been so absent here lately.

Reanimator: I agree with what you're saying. I've gotten to play it more and more since posting last and I think combo is the way to go over Mentor. I've had them Reanimate a Phoenix and that's fine, we get our own, they need to block then it comes back etc. But if you do get to test with Mentors > combo I think we'd need a lot more permission spells. It's possible, but with how the deck is now I think combo is better. The other thing to keep in mind is if you're on Grixis or Esper, as in Mentor is really scary for them to Reanimate, YP a bit less so.

ANT/TES: I actually still prefer the combo side I think, but it has to be in conjunction with the Tormod's Crypt 'plan'. If you are not playing enough Crypts/heavy GY hate then this doesn't work. The way I build decks to fight ANT is by attacking two of their 'pillars'. They have 3 avenues to win usually, they are PiF which is the most common, Ad Nauseum and tutor loop. I like to attack two of these. Those are in order of ease for them to pull off, by having Crypt we (most of the time) take away the PiF kill. By getting a quick combo and hitting them for 9 Ad Nauseum is usually off, especially considering their md configs, that leaves them usually with the tutor chain option which more often than not requires multiple threshed Cabal Rits and LEDs, it also needs a density of spells in hand which we attack with discard. So with all that said, that's my plan vs ANT currently, I'm very positive in the matchup while going for this. I lose almost every single game one, then win post board unless I whiff on Crypt.

SnS/Omnitell: These have been really high variance matchups for me, it's often just come down to how good both our hands are. The matchups are winnable but I think we're slightly unfavoured, especially if they have Leyline of Sanctity, that just takes away our main interaction and not a whole lot more to say on it. I like to bring in ETruth/Disenchant vs all versions, so there's at least that. I prefer YP/Mentor over the combo in these matchups usually because they have Pierce/Flusters which can disrupt our combo, and our discard usually can't afford to take reactive cards.

Mirror: Yep, mirror is a bit nuts. Crypt also shines here imo, since they can't discard it and stops them comboing. But still have to respect YP/Mentor too, it's high variance. That's the power of this combo too, you can go off from basically nothing.

Shadow: I agree it's the easiest one, have been getting good results vs it with both versions.

Grixis Delver: This is the matchup that really put me off Esper since it's quite popular online especially, the difference between trying to resolve 3cmc threat vs 2 is the world of difference. In the matches I played it just felt like there were too many things to discard, and Wasteland was more backbreaking than usual. Not sure though, maybe I need to try it more.

RUG: Like Shadow I've found this a lot easier than Grixis, as long as you don't get mana screwed by stifle waste etc you should be able to pick apart their hand and combo.



I would Mentor off Island, yeah. Wastelanding into an on board Mentor seems maniacal, but they're so far behind already they might figure they need to get lucky.



Hey, glad you're enjoying the deck!

I've only played a couple of mirrors so far, so take it with a grain of salt, but I like what your opponent did. It's like a weird Jund mirror where you want to maximise topdecks, so I'd be taking out all Thoughtseizes and probably some Therapy. I also don't like Flusterstorm or Spell Pierce so much because of looking to get better topdecks.

I would go

-2 Lili Veil
-4 Thoughtseize
-1 Cabal Therapy

+3 Tormod's Crypt
+2 Surgical
+2 Abrade

Maybe the second Surgical is a bit too heavy boarding vs the combo and you should just bring in 1 and keep a TS or the last Therapy, not sure there.



Nice one, 4-2 is good for a first time with this deck!

Funny match two! That's how I've lost to Stoneblade before too, kinda sucks when the deck is full of cantrips but happens. I would play more if there were more good ones honestly.

1. It's certainly got a higher ceiling, though I think it's less consistent than Grixis. I've been back on Grixis recently for that reason, but there are certainly pros and cons to both.
2. Makes sense, I could see trying trimming down on a Mentor, they can be bad in multiples.
3. Try Spell Pierce, I've tested 1-2 in the main in both Grixis and Esper and they were pretty good.
4. Interesting. I don't like the card generally, but let us know if it performs OK.
5. Definitely, I still haven't gotten round to trying bridge, but in theory I like it.



Nice one! Promising results, I think Miracles is a pretty good matchup too. Good luck at the 1K, and please do!

On Esper, some people have suggested and are trying Dark Confidant. I think it has potential since it bridges the gap of the deck where we want some more powerful plays with fast mana, as well as raw card advantage. I think the damage it might take flipping Phoenixes/Buried/Mentor etc is fine. Something I'll be testing too.





And after all that, back to what I've been up to with the deck!

Like I said a little above, I've gone back to playing with Grixis since I think the consistency is important for the deck, though the idea of Dark Confidant has really spurred my interest in Esper again.

With Grixis I've played it at my last two weeklies and gone 3-1 both times, losses to ANT and Moon Stompy. And I played it at our London Monthly tournament on Sunday and went 4-0 double ID into top seed of the swiss, but then lost to Elves in the quarters, unfortunately it was the only matchup in the top 8 I feel like the deck is unfavoured vs. I had 1 E Plague and 2 Lili Last Hope, but they weren't enough/didn't draw the Plague. Still was happy with the result, the matchups previously were

2-1 vs Grixis Control
2-0 vs Esper Mentor
2-0 vs UB Shadow
2-0 vs SnS

Tombstalkers have been an addition from some friends online also playing the deck (Cartesian and ewlandon) which has been excellent. These going tall, YP going wide and the combo being gy centric really makes it hard for the opponents to sideboard, all their answers are so situational so with discard we're able to pick things apart.

List from Sunday

3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Daze

2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
1 Swamp

4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Echoing Truth
2 Abrade
1 Engineered Plague
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
2 Liliana, the Last Hope


First of all really nice to hear that you doing a Primer. We try to help you with the testing and Choices! Thank you very much.

About the Combo Decks.

Reanimate:
I agree really here and i feel it's the way to go here. Lock them with crypt/discard or a backup counter and just win with the fast combo.

ANT/TES:
Also here i tested and was thinking more and its basically the same logic as Reanimate. If you can do them the early 9 dmg + a hate its really good. The thing is what happens if you play too much control as ok control deck is that ant still wins because its made to beat control.

SNT:
Still never played it, since i play my newer list sadly, but i feel a fast combo + heavy discard is the key. I bring in 2 disenchant. Mentor is probably better here because they can go off 2 turn but i see them slower as storm because they're combo is more clunky in a way.
so mentor + discard gets also really good if they don't have leyline.

Delver Decks:
I have to say i played now against all version and if they don't have nuts you normally can play through it with well timed discard+daze into the combo.
Also against Grixis i made a good Experience where i tested against a good Friend, who is a well Legacy Player and he piloted the Deck. EE helps as well to slow the Delver because this was the card that mostly killed me.

Cardchoices:

Daze:

To be Honest i don't think it matters in which version you play the Card. Daze clearly overperformed and it supports the Gameplan really good! For me it's clearly a 4 off. I think what people forget to ,,bring the combo fast out as possible,, is the most important part about the Deck. Even to Protect a slow gameplan with mentor or pyro is nice or to surprise the opponent just makes the Card even more stronger. I think to play it as a 2 off is just not right and it feels really random. I mean the whole Deck is so consistent, why take out a consistent Protection Spell for the Gameplan?

Lotus Petal:

Clearly more played in the Esper Version. I don't think it's that a big deal here to go to 3. Its like with the UB Reanimation lists basically. I think go to 3 is fine, if you wanna play Cards like Lili or Tombstalker. Still really important Card and it supports the Gameplan a lot.

Basics:

Mainly island and swamp. Yes it's needed. A t1 wasteland can take us out of the Game. Specially in tempo Match ups. it's soo important to land the island or the swamp first to play something. Always remember that maybe the t2 with 2 lands cantrip or discard into DR+Buried is GG. i really think we should not touch that. I also feel Plains is not needed. Petal can make us the mana aswell. Just to play a plains for some SB Cards seems like a wasted slot. I'm just not a fun of using duals or basics in a sideboard.Or then at least with the other 2 basics that you can play 1 of each on the field. This brings us to the next one..

Swords to plowshares/Path to exile

..First if you gonna fight creature decks they probably play Wasteland so yeah maybe it seems ok to play a plains in the sideboard with cards like that. Is a removal like that needed in a Esper list? If yes i would go for path. Why? The Life matters a lot here actually and i think in the match up we take them in (Eldrazi, Delver, Dephts and maybe something like Dnt/Humans), it does not matter to give them a basic if they have it, along if its not Dnt. This brings us to the other question. Do we need to fight hatebear deck like DnT/Humans? Do we wanna take out consistency or just wanna have a fast combo plan even faster if we add Lili, last hope. I made the experience 8 discard + 4 daze+ 2 Lili last hope is in the normal case enough. They will not always have a Thalia or other t2 hatebear. It needs a lot to go wrong with the discard or the combo. i see the only real reason is dark depths.If its popular in your meta, i probably gonna play 2 path to exile. I go with the Philosophy fast Combo is the way to go.

Lili, the last Hope:
absolutly insane and it's the 3 win condition.Best SB Card for sure.T1 it mostly wins games by itself. We even can protect her with Discard and Daze.


New Cardchoices:

Dark Confidant
I like that a lot! i gonna test him aswell. It seems like a sweet card that supports basically everything we need as a gameplay. Supports Ritual into discard, CA and he makes dmg to the oppenent.

Tombstalker:

what i like about him?
Strong Body and in a way hard to kill him.
Probably better in the Grixis version because this version does not have power like mentor.

What i dont like?
It does not support the Combo Plan. Of course it depends what you cut for him.
maybe clunky in some hands, board states?

Counterbalance:
This was one of the first SB cards i played. I cutten it because i think there are better cards. We are not certainly a CA Deck like Miracle. Also we do not really support this Plan. The Cantrips get used for finding Combo Pieces mainly.
It provides us to do suboptimal plays.Do we wanna take the consistency away if we play CB Main? Also CB is not good against all Decks. I feel like there are stronger cards that have a better impact for this Deck.

Why i see Esper Phoenix over the Grixis Version?

For me it's clearly the Power of Mentor which allows us to finish games quickly when he's not getting handled. To be Honest it's probably the Harder version to play. I see the Manabase and the add of bolt for some annoying stuff like Delver or Thalia if you not got the answer in the Grixis Version but also i see the lack of finishing Games with pyromancer when it comes to win without the combo. I wrote some things now and i saw cards like Tombstalker for a adding clock. Seems good in a way but is not better if you just play Grixis Control then? it's just a brainstorming but for me it seems the Deck tries more to control instead to Combo. It loses with the Lack of lotus petal on tempo plays like t1 or t2 Combo or Mentor/Lili what can be a huge difference to win a game. In the End the add of white gives better SB-Cards like Disenchant, Kambal or STP/Path.

So i hope i wrote down everything i had in my mind. It's probably not perfectly written but i hope some people can take notes out of that. It's really based on my analysis.

Greets and have fun to Play

Pascal

[ButterTime]

I played grixis phoenix last night at my local game store and went 3-1. My list:

3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
1 Tombstalker

2 Liliana of the Veil

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
3 Lightning Bolt

2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
1 Swamp

3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrade
2 Blood Moon
1 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm
1 Pithing Needle

I wanted to use Liliana, the Last Hope, echoing truth, and Alpine Moon, but my cards didn't come in the mail on time because of the cold weather.

Round 1: Dredge, won in 3, both sideboard games. He won the die roll and basically had the best turn 1 ever, killed me on turn 2. Games two in 3 I was much faster in conjunction with my SB cards.

Round 2: Eva Green 1-2, I won one, game two I got wastelanded, sinkholed, and he played a Liliana, the last hope off a dark ritual. Games three my opponent killed my tombstalker with a assassin's trophy. That is definently a hard matchup. I would have won if it wasn't for the trophy.

Round 3: BUG control 2-0: turn 1 and turn 2 buried alive, was able to protect the turn two with discard. My opponent forced my buried alive, but I cast flusterstorm for the 3rd spell.

Round 4: Dead Guy Ale /w Terminus, 2-1. Won game 1 and 3, game 2 I lost to discard and force of will and wasteland. I didn't see the wasteland in game one and just assumed he wasn't playing them.

Overall, I really like Liliana of the Veil in the main deck, tombstalker on the other hand is an amazing card, but it doesn't support the combo plan or protect the combo either. I only ran it as a 1 of and he was always answered. Liliana synergizes very well with our game plan. She can be played off a dark ritual, she can source to discard phoenix, she can answer true-name nemesis, good against S&S and reanimator. I think this decks worst matchup is turbo depths or any depths deck in general. What do you guys think of mission briefing, careful study or even manamorphose in the grixis version? I know the UR version plays all of those cards.

[Baum]

What I find really interesting, is that there seem to be two schools of thought about how to play the deck. Some comments about cards like Counterbalance or Tombstalker mention that they don't support our game plan and that we should try to be as streamlined as possible. TBH I think that philosophy is somewhat flawed. I believe the strength of decks like Phoenix is that they have a combo element, but can easily incorporate midrange or control aspects to make life awkward for the opponent. It's similar to decks like Food Chain. If we just focus on comboing as fast as possible, we are doing a worse job than Storm, Reanimator or Sneak & Show. I think we should really try to find the perfect middle ground between playing fair and unfair.

[Pdingo]

What I find really interesting, is that there seem to be two schools of thought about how to play the deck. Some comments about cards like Counterbalance or Tombstalker mention that they don't support our game plan and that we should try to be as streamlined as possible. TBH I think that philosophy is somewhat flawed. I believe the strength of decks like Phoenix is that they have a combo element, but can easily incorporate midrange or control aspects to make life awkward for the opponent. It's similar to decks like Food Chain. If we just focus on comboing as fast as possible, we are doing a worse job than Storm, Reanimator or Sneak & Show. I think we should really try to find the perfect middle ground between playing fair and unfair.

I agree with cards like tombstalker that its a good additional clock and a win option. But with CB its really different and i really dont think the fits the deck well.

1. There are reason why decks like grixis/delver/ant not play CB even if they could support it somehow. The thing is CB is clunky. It's a own card and even it's on the field it can be a dead card. We don't have the luxury to play the cantrip suboptimal because we have to find either a creature/Pw that wins or a combo piece. Same is with delver or storm decks. CB is so good in miracle because the CA-Generator work so well with all the cantrips(they can play land go and just wait)+ they have more CA cards like predict JTMS or AK. Even if you use the BS to counter the removal or the cantrip of the oppenent it's just not enough CA that wins us a game.
2. It use a slot in the deck and i think the slots are important. Is it not just better to play more daze or even a clock like maybe tombstalker then?
3. Its really not good against the most decks atm. Specially without more library manipulation. And i really dont want to play it and just hope that cards get countered randomly.
I really think actuall win cons or clocks fitts the deck better.

[Whitefaces]

First of all really nice to hear that you doing a Primer. We try to help you with the testing and Choices! Thank you very much.

Excellent, I’ll definitely be looking to you guys for some help. I’m not having as much time as I did before to test the deck, so your reports on how cards are playing is invaluable.

About the Combo Decks.

Reanimate:
I agree really here and i feel it's the way to go here. Lock them with crypt/discard or a backup counter and just win with the fast combo.

ANT/TES:
Also here i tested and was thinking more and its basically the same logic as Reanimate. If you can do them the early 9 dmg + a hate its really good. The thing is what happens if you play too much control as ok control deck is that ant still wins because its made to beat control.

Glad we’re on the same page for these matchups 😊

SNT:
Still never played it, since i play my newer list sadly, but i feel a fast combo + heavy discard is the key. I bring in 2 disenchant. Mentor is probably better here because they can go off 2 turn but i see them slower as storm because they're combo is more clunky in a way.
so mentor + discard gets also really good if they don't have leyline.

Makes sense, like I said above while we have some decent tools with discard and daze etc, there’s not a whole lot we can do vs their best hands. I did think about what sb options we have that are heavier vs them, I even considered Containment Priest despite it being bad with Phoenix/es, but SnS isn’t played anywhere near enough to do that. Meddling Mage is another option for combo, though. I think it was suggested by someone in this thread.

Delver Decks:
I have to say i played now against all version and if they don't have nuts you normally can play through it with well timed discard+daze into the combo.
Also against Grixis i made a good Experience where i tested against a good Friend, who is a well Legacy Player and he piloted the Deck. EE helps as well to slow the Delver because this was the card that mostly killed me.

OK fair enough, maybe they’re not as bad as I was experiencing. I could have played them poorly too, at least one of them I experimented with siding most of the combo out to see how reliable or not Mentor was, that’s probably a mistake. So we can attribute some pilot error/trying out different sbing strategies.

Cardchoices:

Daze:

To be Honest i don't think it matters in which version you play the Card. Daze clearly overperformed and it supports the Gameplan really good! For me it's clearly a 4 off. I think what people forget to ,,bring the combo fast out as possible,, is the most important part about the Deck. Even to Protect a slow gameplan with mentor or pyro is nice or to surprise the opponent just makes the Card even more stronger. I think to play it as a 2 off is just not right and it feels really random. I mean the whole Deck is so consistent, why take out a consistent Protection Spell for the Gameplan?

I’ve had some poor experiences with it too, especially in multiples. While our curve is fairly low we can still struggle if you’re using them in successive turns in the early game, we also don’t have Wasteland to keep them live for too long. For these reasons I’m still feeling like two is a good number, but I’m open to being wrong on that. The card can certainly be absurd, and I do feel like Esper using it slightly better than Grixis because it’s more explosive and has more fast mana usually.

Lotus Petal:

Clearly more played in the Esper Version. I don't think it's that a big deal here to go to 3. Its like with the UB Reanimation lists basically. I think go to 3 is fine, if you wanna play Cards like Lili or Tombstalker. Still really important Card and it supports the Gameplan a lot.

Makes sense, I could see trying 3 for sure, I’ll test that as well. Though if we add Bob it gets a bit better.

Basics:

Mainly island and swamp. Yes it's needed. A t1 wasteland can take us out of the Game. Specially in tempo Match ups. it's soo important to land the island or the swamp first to play something. Always remember that maybe the t2 with 2 lands cantrip or discard into DR+Buried is GG. i really think we should not touch that. I also feel Plains is not needed. Petal can make us the mana aswell. Just to play a plains for some SB Cards seems like a wasted slot. I'm just not a fun of using duals or basics in a sideboard.Or then at least with the other 2 basics that you can play 1 of each on the field. This brings us to the next one..

Makes sense on basics, this is probably the thing I’m least sure on in the deck but I’m inclined to agree with you, it really hedges up the Wasteland matchups. Plains I think is still valuable to play, I don’t see it as a wasted sb slot, I think the card is too bad to play in the main (though it could be tried) but the basic is pretty high impact in the matchups where we want a lot of our sb cards. Notably Moon Stompy, DnT, Lands/Aggro Loam etc.

Swords to plowshares/Path to exile

..First if you gonna fight creature decks they probably play Wasteland so yeah maybe it seems ok to play a plains in the sideboard with cards like that. Is a removal like that needed in a Esper list? If yes i would go for path. Why? The Life matters a lot here actually and i think in the match up we take them in (Eldrazi, Delver, Dephts and maybe something like Dnt/Humans), it does not matter to give them a basic if they have it, along if its not Dnt. This brings us to the other question. Do we need to fight hatebear deck like DnT/Humans? Do we wanna take out consistency or just wanna have a fast combo plan even faster if we add Lili, last hope. I made the experience 8 discard + 4 daze+ 2 Lili last hope is in the normal case enough. They will not always have a Thalia or other t2 hatebear. It needs a lot to go wrong with the discard or the combo. i see the only real reason is dark depths.If its popular in your meta, i probably gonna play 2 path to exile. I go with the Philosophy fast Combo is the way to go.

I’m also not sure on this, you make a good case for Path (just keep in mind it could be quite awkward with Daze). Let us know how they feel, if the downside of getting a basic is too bad or not. I think we do need to respect hatebears enough and would like some removal in the deck, I really need to play some more with Esper again though. When I was playing last I didn’t have Liliana the Last Hope in the deck either but as we’ll get onto your next point, I will next!


Lili, the last Hope:
absolutly insane and it's the 3 win condition.Best SB Card for sure.T1 it mostly wins games by itself. We even can protect her with Discard and Daze.

Agree, she’s nuts. I’ve been super happy with 2 in Grixis, I can see the same for Esper. My original thinking for not including her was that Mentor was so powerful already it wasn’t needed, but that was probably wrong.


New Cardchoices:

Dark Confidant
I like that a lot! i gonna test him aswell. It seems like a sweet card that supports basically everything we need as a gameplay. Supports Ritual into discard, CA and he makes dmg to the oppenent.

Great! I’m excited to try him too.

Tombstalker:

what i like about him?
Strong Body and in a way hard to kill him.
Probably better in the Grixis version because this version does not have power like mentor.

What i dont like?
It does not support the Combo Plan. Of course it depends what you cut for him.
maybe clunky in some hands, board states?

Agree that it’s more for Grixis, but I’ve been very happy with him there. He’s rarely felt clunky except in a bad opening hand and closes games fast/hard to interact with.

Counterbalance:
This was one of the first SB cards i played. I cutten it because i think there are better cards. We are not certainly a CA Deck like Miracle. Also we do not really support this Plan. The Cantrips get used for finding Combo Pieces mainly.
It provides us to do suboptimal plays.Do we wanna take the consistency away if we play CB Main? Also CB is not good against all Decks. I feel like there are stronger cards that have a better impact for this Deck.

Why i see Esper Phoenix over the Grixis Version?

For me it's clearly the Power of Mentor which allows us to finish games quickly when he's not getting handled. To be Honest it's probably the Harder version to play. I see the Manabase and the add of bolt for some annoying stuff like Delver or Thalia if you not got the answer in the Grixis Version but also i see the lack of finishing Games with pyromancer when it comes to win without the combo. I wrote some things now and i saw cards like Tombstalker for a adding clock. Seems good in a way but is not better if you just play Grixis Control then? it's just a brainstorming but for me it seems the Deck tries more to control instead to Combo. It loses with the Lack of lotus petal on tempo plays like t1 or t2 Combo or Mentor/Lili what can be a huge difference to win a game. In the End the add of white gives better SB-Cards like Disenchant, Kambal or STP/Path.

I don’t think it’s comparable to Grixis Control, but I understand where you’re coming from. Esper has certainly felt harder to play for me too, but my sample size with that version is still a lot smaller than with Grixis too. About playing control/combo and everything in between, as I wrote to Baum just below, that’s a positive in my opinion as long as the deck can play these different gameplans well. The white sb options are certainly great, Kambal especially I like.

So i hope i wrote down everything i had in my mind. It's probably not perfectly written but i hope some people can take notes out of that. It's really based on my analysis.

Very much appreciated 😊 Thanks for it all, also like I already said, I’m thankful to have more people playing the deck and their feedback.



Pascal


I played grixis phoenix last night at my local game store and went 3-1. My list:

[decklist]

I wanted to use Liliana, the Last Hope, echoing truth, and Alpine Moon, but my cards didn't come in the mail on time because of the cold weather.

Round 1: Dredge, won in 3, both sideboard games. He won the die roll and basically had the best turn 1 ever, killed me on turn 2. Games two in 3 I was much faster in conjunction with my SB cards.

Round 2: Eva Green 1-2, I won one, game two I got wastelanded, sinkholed, and he played a Liliana, the last hope off a dark ritual. Games three my opponent killed my tombstalker with a assassin's trophy. That is definently a hard matchup. I would have won if it wasn't for the trophy.

Round 3: BUG control 2-0: turn 1 and turn 2 buried alive, was able to protect the turn two with discard. My opponent forced my buried alive, but I cast flusterstorm for the 3rd spell.

Round 4: Dead Guy Ale /w Terminus, 2-1. Won game 1 and 3, game 2 I lost to discard and force of will and wasteland. I didn't see the wasteland in game one and just assumed he wasn't playing them.

Overall, I really like Liliana of the Veil in the main deck, tombstalker on the other hand is an amazing card, but it doesn't support the combo plan or protect the combo either. I only ran it as a 1 of and he was always answered. Liliana synergizes very well with our game plan. She can be played off a dark ritual, she can source to discard phoenix, she can answer true-name nemesis, good against S&S and reanimator. I think this decks worst matchup is turbo depths or any depths deck in general. What do you guys think of mission briefing, careful study or even manamorphose in the grixis version? I know the UR version plays all of those cards.

Nice job ButterTime.

On Tombstalker, I more or less agree with what Baum and Pdingo are saying, there is a middle ground between being combo and fair and with the right balance it's really one of this decks main strengths. It's incredibly hard to sideboard against, and Tombstalker is especially hard to kill in the format outside some specific cards (mostly STP, Strix and edicts, which YP trumps these pretty nicely). Sure having the Stalker killed by the Assassin's Trophy feels bad in your game, but that card doesn't see very much play, you also say you'd have won if they didn't have it. Sounds like Stalker was pretty good to me, it's a card that requires a specific answer a lot of the time, they won't always have it. For my event last Sunday it won a lot of games.

I very much agree that Depths is our hardest matchup, that's exactly why I've been trying Alpine Moons. They're narrow but the matchup has been feeling that bad.

Mission Briefing is interesting. I know some people have suggested it before and a friend tried it, but it's quite mana intensive both for CMC and UUX. Being 2 spells in one card is nice though, I would say try one but a lot of the slots are quickly earning their place in my mind and I'm not sure where it'd be better than what they're doing.

Manamorphose I tried and forgot to include in the primer, though there's some mention of it in my next update. It was very bad for me, I wouldn't recommend it. I also tried Faithless Looting and the card disadvantage was too bad, Careful Study is even worse. Honestly I'm not sure what to make of the UR version, to me it doesn't look very good, but one player (xfile) is putting up some results on MTGO so I don't want to judge it too hastily. Morphose seems better there at least since they don't have Dark Ritual to accelerate, Morphose allows for T2 Phoenix/es.

@Baum, couldn't agree more! Spot on.

@Pdingo, I also agree. I'm still interested in Baums testing with CB, but what you say makes sense to me. It's playing towards a longer game that we're equipped to play fine, but not well. I don't think this deck is looking to go into the late game where possible, more that it has the tools for it should we get there.

[ButterTime]

What I find really interesting, is that there seem to be two schools of thought about how to play the deck. Some comments about cards like Counterbalance or Tombstalker mention that they don't support our game plan and that we should try to be as streamlined as possible. TBH I think that philosophy is somewhat flawed. I believe the strength of decks like Phoenix is that they have a combo element, but can easily incorporate midrange or control aspects to make life awkward for the opponent. It's similar to decks like Food Chain. If we just focus on comboing as fast as possible, we are doing a worse job than Storm, Reanimator or Sneak & Show. I think we should really try to find the perfect middle ground between playing fair and unfair.


I commented that TS doesn't support the game plan, but it's still an great card and I think it fits into the deck very well. Sometimes, I need to choose whether I will combo as fast as possible, but other times, I will wait depending on what my opponent is doing and take apart their hand with some discard and ride a yp for a few turns. I've learned from playing the deck that there is a perfect middle ground. I will be playing the grixis version on Sunday at the Legacy Classic in Baltimore. I am excited to play the deck in a large tournament and I will take extensive notes and report them here.

[Gruul]

Hello there,
I'm very interested in this deck, but also quite new to the archetype (I'm a D&T player for the most part). So I read all of your feedback and ideas, and after the few reps I got (I'm Grixis right now), I felt like the worst G1 MUs were amongst pretty popular decks, like BR Rea, Lands and Eldrazi.

I like the Lilis very much and I wonder whether Ensnaring Bridge would be a viable MD plan ? I'm very hesitant but at the same time, it's pretty disheartening to concede G1 with no other hope than goldfishing on T2 and steal the game.

The "filler" package could be :

2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Young Pyromancer
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, The Last Hope
2 Echoing Truth
2 Lightning Bolt

instead of (for example) :

4 Young Pyromancer
1 Liliana of the Veil
2 Tombstalker
3 Lightning Bolt

The presence of Bridge and Truth let us play fewer Bolts, be less vulnerable to Chalice, give Dark Ritual more broken T1/2 plays, and Lilis combo with Bridge and can ultimate easily. All the cantrips can help get rid of Bridges if we face the wrong MU, and we can easily control our hand so bridge doesn't prevent Phoenixes from attacking.
For now it's just an idea on the paper, but I dare to propose it since those cards have been mentionned and validated by some of you. It might be good to dig the idea in the 4C variant as well. :)

[Pdingo]

Rise and Fall of the Phoenix

Hei Guys

I went to the 1k legacy Tournament today in switzerland. To be honest i made the badest result ever in my life 0:4 with the Esper Phoenix List. It had to do with the Bad luck of pairings and with the Deck itself and found the certain Problem of it and why i think it can not comped with other Legacy Decks. Specially T1 Decks. Lets go to the Tournament:

Match 1 UR Control/Blue Moon

G1 i win g2 with the Combo after i discarded him a Spell Pierce.
G2 Here i Mull to 6 and get pretty unlucky. Boardstate i'm on 11 Life he's on 18. I get ride of hist rest hand got 3 phoenixes (He handles me already 2 Lili's). Swing him to 9. He had 1 Topdeck(Badest top deck Bolt or Snapi into Bolt, because with that scenario he brings me to 2)and he kills me next turn even without bolt with the clock he has with true name and snapi. My Hand in this time was 2 Therapy in the GY. So i have to draw a instant or sorcery to play around a possible removal. What happened? Well i drew the TS and he has the Bolt. I cannot get out of this scenario.
G3 Mull to 6 otp again and he just wins with the classic control hand. I went for the T2 Lili but he had a pierce top deck after i discarded him a BS. Also after that he drew into clique into moon wich i was expecting somehow but that it comes after a clique when i saw his hand was quit annoying. still had the island and swamp + duals on the field. but have to wait 1 turn more and he drew a fluster and a pierce wich got my DR. GG

Match 2 Dark Dephts (Probably almost unwinnable)
G1 He starts and has T2 Combo and i have to keep a slow hand with mull to 6.
G2 Was actually the most incredible win with the Deck so far and my opponent was surprised that i win a game like that. at turn 4 his on 16 life and basically he has nuts again library+discard+combo. I was like BS Topdeck could safe me time.with 2 daze in backup and 1 therapy in the GY+ mentor and 1 token on the field. I really drew Buried alive and go for 2 mana in pool with the lands i have + therapy flashback and counter my own therapy with daze to get the land back, play it into buried alive to get 3 pheonix+ a bunch of tokens..still i have to drew a spell from the top. I drew the ritual and attack him for 17 even if he can block.
G3 Short game he has again T2 combo and me mull to 6. i die.

Match 3 Lands (I believe this is the most hardest match up for that deck)
G1 He has a fast Combo at t3 and i mull to 6 with a slow hand.
G2. He has a slow hand but all the combo pieces in the hand wich he plays slowly and even after the combo, if he would played more tight he could just go for chasm or tabernacle and win anyway...No chance even if you play GY hate. There are just to many outs for that deck.

Match 4 Grixis Delver

I basically conceded here, could have won but i was tired and quit unhappy about the deck.

I did not noticed any missplay also the Plays where quit linear today unless Match 1 against Control.


Feedback:

I really like to play the Deck. It's not that, that it's a bad Deck. i just think it cannot comped with the most T1 Decks even blue Decks for us are slightly favored. The actual weakness of the Deck is that, you have to play sooo much hate against certain Decks (Stompy, Dephts, Lands, Reanimate, Storm for example) and that makes the whole plan more inconsistent even if you play Cards like mentor or pyro as a other win con.Even then it's just really hard to win even with Hate. And here is the Point, maybe you gonna win some random matches against such Decks but if the opponent plays good it gets just really hard. And i think if a legacy Deck gonna play too much hate to beat those Decks and try to make the Match up better in a way but you still lose it's just not the right Deck for Legacy. Let's take ANT for example. It's basically similar. You disrupt your opponent and win with the Combo DIRECTLY most of the time. With this Deck it's not possible and he can find a out for the Clock wich makes the Deck bader. Now you can say yes ANT loses also to a chalice on 1 sometimes and yes it does but ANT stays with the same Gameplan and just board in removal and you don't really make the Game bader. What happens with the Phoenix Deck is you have to take out Cards and do basically the same effort to get the combo or a clock to not win the Game directly and that's the Main Problem against all those Combo Deck. The Second thing is the blue Decks are favored Match ups but it's always a fight. And also here it happens that you lose games of some draws because you get some random cards from the Top like DR, Mentor into Land wich is just bad most the Time, specially after midgame. So what i wanna say in the End.The Deck tries to fight specially the Combo Decks post Games but it's still hard to win sometimes.What i wanna say in the End, the Deck is good for a Weekly or also for a Bigger Tournament, but you have to accept that you always gonna Face one or two of the Match ups wich can interrupt your standing in the End, if you play a bigger Tournament. Maybe i'm just a little sad that it went this wrong, but i had many Decks in then Hand since i play 7 years of legacy but with this Deck i really felt a lesser power level wich sadly has to be in Legacy.

anyway Guys i really wanted to be honest and share my thoughts with you Guys. Whitefaces created a new Deck that is really fun to play. Also when the powerlevel not is the same as some other Decks.
Have fun with exploring the Phoenix and legacy:)

Greets Pascal

[Whitefaces]

G2 Here i Mull to 6 and get pretty unlucky. Boardstate i'm on 11 Life he's on 18. I get ride of hist rest hand got 3 phoenixes (He handles me already 2 Lili's). Swing him to 9. He had 1 Topdeck(Badest top deck Bolt or Snapi into Bolt, because with that scenario he brings me to 2. My Hand in this time was 2 Therapy in the GY. So i have to draw a instant or sorcery to play around a possible removal. What happened? Well i drew the TS and he has the Bolt. I cannot get out of this scenario.

Feedback:

I really like to play the Deck. It's not that, that it's a bad Deck. i just think it cannot comped with the most T1 Decks even blue Decks for us are slightly favored. The actual weakness of the Deck is that, you have to play sooo much hate against certain Decks (Stompy, Dephts, Lands, Reanimate, Storm for example) and that makes the whole plan more inconsistent even if you play Cards like mentor or pyro as a other win con.Even then it's just really hard to win even with Hate. And here is the Point, maybe you gonna win some random matches against such Decks but if the opponent plays good it gets just really hard. And i think if a legacy Deck gonna play too much hate to beat those Decks and try to make the Match up better in a way but you still lose it's just not the right Deck for Legacy. Let's take ANT for example. It's basically similar. You disrupt your opponent and win with the Combo DIRECTLY most of the time. With this Deck it's not possible and he can find a out for the Clock wich makes the Deck bader. Now you can say yes ANT loses also to a chalice on 1 sometimes and yes it does but ANT stays with the same Gameplan and just board in removal and you don't really make the Game bader. What happens with the Phoenix Deck is you have to take out Cards and do basically the same effort to get the combo or a clock to not win the Game directly and that's the Main Problem against all those Combo Deck. The Second thing is the blue Decks are favored Match ups but it's always a fight. And also here it happens that you lose games of some draws because you get some random cards from the Top like DR, Mentor into Land wich is just bad most the Time, specially after midgame. So what i wanna say in the End.The Deck tries to fight specially the Combo Decks post Games but it's still hard to win sometimes.What i wanna say in the End, the Deck is good for a Weekly or also for a Bigger Tournament, but you have to accept that you always gonna Face one or two of the Match ups wich can interrupt your standing in the End, if you play a bigger Tournament. Maybe i'm just a little sad that it went this wrong, but i had many Decks in then Hand since i play 7 years of legacy but with this Deck i really felt a lesser power level wich sadly has to be in Legacy.

anyway Guys i really wanted to be honest and share my thoughts with you Guys. Whitefaces created a new Deck that is really fun to play. Also when the powerlevel not is the same as some other Decks.
Have fun with exploring the Phoenix and legacy:)

Greets Pascal

In the game highlighted, I don't quite follow. Why did you cast the Thoughtseize? If you attack they have to use the Bolt on a Phoenix and you still kill them next turn. I understand that you're playing around a removal spell, but in this scenario the removal spell you're trying force kills you by casting the TS.

I don't think a bad event requires such a dramatic shift, especially just a 1k with 4 rounds, but if you're over the deck that's fine. It has some bad matchups, those are Depths and Lands, there's really nothing more to say but we do have some tools to fight them they're just a bit narrow. Most decks have bad matchups, it's a symptom of the format, but I understand what you're saying don't get me wrong. Maybe it's just because Esper is a bit worse than Grixis too, I've been having better results with Grixis anyway. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why, but it feels more consistent.

[Pdingo]

In the game highlighted, I don't quite follow. Why did you cast the Thoughtseize? If you attack they have to use the Bolt on a Phoenix and you still kill them next turn. I understand that you're playing around a removal spell, but in this scenario the removal spell you're trying force kills you by casting the TS.


oh i forgot to mention that i was at 5 life(In my last turn) and he kills me next turn with the clock he has:P quit relevant. so if i attack and he has the bolt he just kill a bird and i die next turn because he just goes to 3.the thing was if i drew a instant or sorcery i have to double therapy from the gy doesn't matter what because i can play around that the bird dies in the combat. i drew the TS and have to therapy and he bolts me randomly of course and i cannot play TS

I don't think a bad event requires such a dramatic shift, especially just a 1k with 4 rounds, but if you're over the deck that's fine. It has some bad matchups, those are Depths and Lands, there's really nothing more to say but we do have some tools to fight them they're just a bit narrow. Most decks have bad matchups, it's a symptom of the format, but I understand what you're saying don't get me wrong. Maybe it's just because Esper is a bit worse than Grixis too, I've been having better results with Grixis anyway. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why, but it feels more consistent.


yes could be that grixis is just better but also there you lose exactly against the same match ups and what i mean is this Deck has a lot of bad match ups if we count chalice decks aswell. Like they're mostly really bad. I just feel there is some powerlevel missing. i will think about it and maybe come to a other conclusion later at one point. thanks for the feedback!

[ButterTime]

I'm going to play the grixis version of the deck at a legacy classic this weekend. Here is my proposed decklist, along with a couple of questions and suggestions. Maybe you guys can help me decide the best configuration.

4 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Daze

2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
1 Swamp

3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrade
3 Alpine Moon (these could be sower of temptation, which I think is better since Alpine Moon is an extremely narrow card)
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
2 Liliana, the Last Hope

So, I'm pretty convinced 18 lands is to many for the deck. I've been testing with 16 and I think it's solid. I played RUG Delver for years and that deck only played 14 lands plus 4 wasteland so I think we're good with 16. I'm also not sure whether to play Liliana of the Veil/Last Hope or two Tombstalkers. Daze is also a reactive spell, but I think it has a place in this deck. I'm not sure if I should play 2 or 3. I expect to run into a lot of fair blue decks/eldrazi/and dark depths decks. Thoughts?

[ButterTime]

yes could be that grixis is just better but also there you lose exactly against the same match ups and what i mean is this Deck has a lot of bad match ups if we count chalice decks aswell. Like they're mostly really bad. I just feel there is some powerlevel missing. i will think about it and maybe come to a other conclusion later at one point. thanks for the feedback!

Chalice is tough if it comes down on turn 1, but buried alive cost 3 and young pyromancer costs 2 so you can still play those cards. I've won againt chalice many times just buy casting buried alive and a young pyromancer. I'll save 3 spells and then cast them even if they don't resolve. They will still count towards your spell count and you can get your phoenixs back.

[Whitefaces]

I'm going to play the grixis version of the deck at a legacy classic this weekend. Here is my proposed decklist, along with a couple of questions and suggestions. Maybe you guys can help me decide the best configuration.

4 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Daze

2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
1 Swamp

3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrade
3 Alpine Moon (these could be sower of temptation, which I think is better since Alpine Moon is an extremely narrow card)
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
2 Liliana, the Last Hope

So, I'm pretty convinced 18 lands is to many for the deck. I've been testing with 16 and I think it's solid. I played RUG Delver for years and that deck only played 14 lands plus 4 wasteland so I think we're good with 16. I'm also not sure whether to play Liliana of the Veil/Last Hope or two Tombstalkers. Daze is also a reactive spell, but I think it has a place in this deck. I'm not sure if I should play 2 or 3. I expect to run into a lot of fair blue decks/eldrazi/and dark depths decks. Thoughts?

Good luck with it! Tommy Ashton has been playing the deck in the main today and went 9-0, I'd use his! Or something close, I think the main at least is excellent. And I agree with your assessment about lands, though that is with some petals in there too. They've been much better than anticipated.

4 Arclight Phoenix
1 Badlands
4 Brainstorm
1 Island
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Daze
4 Polluted Delta
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
3 Lotus Petal
4 Thoughtseize
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Tombstalker
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
1 Bloodstained Mire

2 Abrade
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Echoing Truth
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Flusterstorm
1 Goblin Cratermaker
1 Snuff Out
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Spell Pierce
1 Marsh Casualties

[Pdingo]

Good luck with it! Tommy Ashton has been playing the deck in the main today and went 9-0, I'd use his! Or something close, I think the main at least is excellent. And I agree with your assessment about lands, though that is with some petals in there too. They've been much better than anticipated.

4 Arclight Phoenix
1 Badlands
4 Brainstorm
1 Island
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Daze
4 Polluted Delta
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
3 Lotus Petal
4 Thoughtseize
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Tombstalker
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
1 Bloodstained Mire

2 Abrade
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Echoing Truth
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Flusterstorm
1 Goblin Cratermaker
1 Snuff Out
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Spell Pierce
1 Marsh Casualties

interesting what where his match ups? Seems really like the Grixis list is just smoother. But yeah would be interesting to know the match ups:)

[Whitefaces]

interesting what where his match ups? Seems really like the Grixis list is just smoother. But yeah would be interesting to know the match ups:)

Some hard ones actually, he said even Depths, Elves and Moon Stompy he won pretty easily. It's part of having a deck with discard + a fast kill, you can win any matchup.

Stoneblade
BR Reanimator
Infect
'Kotr/GSZ deck'
Depths
Elves
Moon Stompy
Grixis Control
Eldrazi Post

[Pdingo]

yeah i agree with grixis the mana base is just better and the pyro and the pyromancer are just better. i came also to the conclusion that yesterday was a bad day and had bad pairings. i also understand now better the difference between grixis and esper. well after my disturbing saturday i gonna test grixis now. i also agree with you now about daze. i tested the whole morning with grixis phoenix. also echoing truth seems necessary for bounce dark depths or reanimate peace's.
the only thing i would change in the sb is play at least 1 ee. i just think it's a really strong card atm+ 2 lili the last hope what i found always overperforming.

[Whitefaces]

Second place in the MTGO Challenge today, so close! Coupled with Tommy Ashtons insane display of 14-1 at the SCG open it's been a pretty nice weekend for the birds.

Matchups were

R1: 2-1 vs Turbo Depths
R2: 2-0 vs UB Shadow
R3: 2-0 vs DnT
R4: 0-2 vs UR Delver
R5: 2-0 vs Punishing RUG midrange
R6: 2-0 vs Slow Depths
R7: 2-0 vs Slow Depths
QF: 2-0 vs Moon Stompy
SF: 2-0 vs Pile
F: 1-2 vs ANT (Cyrus)

It was my first time testing Dark Confidant and they really performed, definitely going to continue playing with them. Petals have also consistently been performing, and with Dark Confidant the card disadvantage can be mitigated while giving you a good chance to beat the harder matchups. Really liked this maindeck, I only cast two sideboard cards the whole challenge and they didn't really do very much. No need for a sb if the opponent is dead!

https://i.ibb.co/41GPkQs/buried-phoenix-challenge.jpg (https://ibb.co/jJ2gtpV)

3 Dark Confidant
3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
3 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Daze
3 Lotus Petal
3 Lightning Bolt

4 Polluted Dela
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sb:
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Engineered Plague
2 Abrade
2 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Spell Pierce
2 Echoing Truth

[Jaytron]

With both the tombstalker list and your bob list doing very well this week, what do you like about the two choices?

16 vs 15 lands?

[Baum]

Congrats on the great result, Whitefaces!

Between your and Tommy Ashton's lists, I like that you cut Liliana, the Last Hope from the sideboard. The card is obviously great against Miracles and Grixis Control, but with the recent move towards more Stoneblade, I feel Liliana became a liability against opposing TNNs. The amount of free wins she grants against control just went way down. When I tested against Death & Taxes, I also encountered some situations where my opponent had a Mother of Runes and my deck's lack of other removal spells couldn't break through to make Liliana truly great. And of course she doesn't kill Ethersworn Canonist, which is a beating against us. Same for Containment Priest, but that's not as bad as Canonist.

How has Goblin Cratermaker been? It looks a bit clunky. Is killing Emrakul worth paying three Mana to destroy artifacts or hatebears?

I managed to get in some testing with Counterbalance. Be aware that I might be slightly biased because I've played a fair share of miracles and really enjoy the Counterbalance subgame ;)
*
On Friday, I played some practice matches against Grixis Control and Miracles. Against Grixis, Counterbalance was fine but not game breaking. They've got a number of important spells (Snapcaster, Hymn) on CMC 2, which our Counterbalance curve lines up poorly against. Countering their cantrips, Extractions and Kolaghan's Commands is nice though. Against Miracles, Counterbalance was bonkers. They rely way more on their cantrips than Grixis Control. They CMC 2 Problem is still there, but some of their most dangerous cards (Mentor, Back to Basics) are on CMC 3, which we've got covered. In one game, my opponent had 2 Rest in Peace and a Canonist in play, while I had Counterbalance, Jace and some Pyromancer tokens to protect the planeswalker. Of course, that was a perfect set of cards on my side, but beating Miracles at their own control game was somewhat impressive.

On Saturday, I played a small 4 round event. I didn't do too well, but still learned some lessons. I won against Slivers and lost against Lands, Esper Blade and UB Shadow. Against Lands, there wasn't much I could do. I easily won G1 with a fast combo, but lost both post SB games to an early Sphere of Resistance paired with lots of mana denial. Against Esper Blade, I kept a potential great hand with one Land, Dark Ritual + Buried Alive, Brainstorm and 2 discard Spells. Sadly, I brainstorm locked myself on T2 and died because I found the second land on T5 or so. I then screwed up my sideboarding and lost G2. I boarded out my removal, because I don't really care about their G1 creatures and Containment Priest can be beaten with hardcast Birds. I completely missed that it's pretty likely Stoneblade has Canonist in the SB. I could get rid of the first Canonist with Jace bounce + Therapy, but the second one got me. Counterbalance was great tough. It kept me way longer in that game than I should have. If I had removal for the Canonist, it would have been an easy game to win. Against UB Shadow nothing special happened. I still think the matchup is positive, but sometimes you just lose a match of magic. Maybe I made some errors, but I can't recall any major punts.

Yesterday, I started a league. I still have to play the last two matches, but since I cast Counterbalance in all three matches so far, I guess I can write about them as well.

Match 1 was against Slow Depths (2:0). I mostly won because I had fast draws and they durdled with Dark Confidant. Having Counterbalance with a one on top to be safe from Crop Rotation was nice though. That being said, I don't think we have enough time to set up a counterbalance against a good Depths draw.

Match 2 was the mirror (2:1). In G2, I counterbalanced them after deploying Pyromancer. I was pretty far ahead anyway, but counterbalance put the game completely out of reach for them.

In Match 3 I played against Elves (2:0). G1, I had a T3 kill on the play and my opponent couldn't kill me on his T2. Counterbalance was good in G2. Countering a Zenith for Scavenging Ooze with a blind flipped Buried Alive was hilarious.

So what's my verdict for Counterbalance? I think the card is good in the deck and adds a unique angle of attack against some decks. I still have to test against Storm and Sneak Show. I honestly have no clue if it's better or worse than Tombstalker or Dark Confidant. I guess all these cards shine against a different set of strategies. I think I'll keep on testing counterbalance for a bit, just to get more information. Bob sound really nice though... :)

[talpa]

Second place in the MTGO Challenge today, so close! Coupled with Tommy Ashtons insane display of 14-1 at the SCG open it's been a pretty nice weekend for the birds. (...)
It was my first time testing Dark Confidant and they really performed

Congratulations for you result. Can we have a link for the Ashtons result? Don't see him here http://www.starcitygames.com/decks/Star_City_Games_Classic/2019-02-03_legacy_Baltimore_MD_US/1/

Final question, in regard to "how to maximize dark ritual when you don't have the combo/attack from a different angle", has anybody thought of a couple of Dark Confidants instead of (or to supplement) Lilianas? A start of ritual, discard, confidant would seem strong too.
glad to hear this "new ideas" seem to work :tongue::cool::cool:




there seem to be two schools of thought about how to play the deck. Some comments about cards like Counterbalance or Tombstalker mention that they don't support our game plan and that we should try to be as streamlined as possible. TBH I think that philosophy is somewhat flawed. I believe the strength of decks like Phoenix is that they have a combo element, but can easily incorporate midrange or control aspects to make life awkward for the opponent
I strongly agree.
I still don't have so much testing (not enough time) but I've tried a few different builds, including UR without Buried Alive. I am now thinking one can try to merge the UR-delver-pteramander version and the grixis phoenix one. I think the ceiling with Buried Alive is too high to drop it; meanwhile, one should try to raise the floor (which is very low with cards like Thought Scour/Mental Note etc).
I think it would be good to try a delver version instead of pyromancer: this way one can really pressure the opponent since the very beginning, and assemble the combo while he is trying to fight a very different axis (if the opponent search for cards to resolve the board threats, he could disregard the "fight for the stack", leaving the way open to resolve our spells). I think Pteramander has way more potential than Tombstalker (sure, it's a little slower and more prone to common removals, but he is also not weak to unsummon effects, you can play it as soon as turn 1, and you can easily play multiples). If you happen to draw a dark ritual and you don't plan to spend it differently (= for the combo) you can also surprise the opponent adapting it very quickly (a single ritual counts for 4 mana on the 8 adapt costs!).
Final considerations: personally I like to have some copy of FoW; since I play in a field of back to basics, and we need the basic swamp way more than the basic mountain, I thought I could try fatal pushes above lightning bolts (as for now, I never needed the reach - the classic bolt to the face). For a moment, I even considered Contagion as a possibility for a free spell count.
The list I tried last saturday:

3 Pteramander
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
4 Thoughtseize
3 Force of Will
3 Fatal Push
2 Spell Pierce
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire

3 Surgical Extraction
3 Pyroblast
3 Invasive Surgery
2 Rough//Tumble
2 Abrade
2 Perilous Voyage

I went for a poor 2-2 winning against Miracle and Eldrazi and losing to Death and Taxes and ANT, but I really liked the list: I don't think the reasons for my losses were poor choices in the list or bad playing. Against D&T (I knew he played it) I kept a hand that could potentially do 12 damage in the second turn (I had delver ritual and buried alive) but I needed to draw a black mana source since I had only a basic island. I was on the draw, so between lands and cantrips I considered roughly 75% of probability to "go off" t2. I never drew a land in 5 turns and died. G2 he went for cavern on humans, thalia, prelate on 1 (which of course is even worse than chalice). Against ANT, I was again OTD g1 and had a discard t1 and the combo for t2 (so the kill for t3), of course he killed me on his third turn. In g2 I cantripped forever without ever finding anything relevant after a couple early discards. So I don't think I should be disappointed, it was simply inevitable to lose those games I think.

[Whitefaces]

With both the tombstalker list and your bob list doing very well this week, what do you like about the two choices?

16 vs 15 lands?

I think both are good. I've been working with Tommy on the deck, I can't say for sure which is better, we're still trying different things out and with both performing well it's hard to say. I trimmed a land because of the Dark Confidants, if I wasn't playing them I think I'd play 16.


Congrats on the great result, Whitefaces!

Between your and Tommy Ashton's lists, I like that you cut Liliana, the Last Hope from the sideboard. The card is obviously great against Miracles and Grixis Control, but with the recent move towards more Stoneblade, I feel Liliana became a liability against opposing TNNs. The amount of free wins she grants against control just went way down. When I tested against Death & Taxes, I also encountered some situations where my opponent had a Mother of Runes and my deck's lack of other removal spells couldn't break through to make Liliana truly great. And of course she doesn't kill Ethersworn Canonist, which is a beating against us. Same for Containment Priest, but that's not as bad as Canonist.

How has Goblin Cratermaker been? It looks a bit clunky. Is killing Emrakul worth paying three Mana to destroy artifacts or hatebears?

I managed to get in some testing with Counterbalance. Be aware that I might be slightly biased because I've played a fair share of miracles and really enjoy the Counterbalance subgame ;)
*
On Friday, I played some practice matches against Grixis Control and Miracles. Against Grixis, Counterbalance was fine but not game breaking. They've got a number of important spells (Snapcaster, Hymn) on CMC 2, which our Counterbalance curve lines up poorly against. Countering their cantrips, Extractions and Kolaghan's Commands is nice though. Against Miracles, Counterbalance was bonkers. They rely way more on their cantrips than Grixis Control. They CMC 2 Problem is still there, but some of their most dangerous cards (Mentor, Back to Basics) are on CMC 3, which we've got covered. In one game, my opponent had 2 Rest in Peace and a Canonist in play, while I had Counterbalance, Jace and some Pyromancer tokens to protect the planeswalker. Of course, that was a perfect set of cards on my side, but beating Miracles at their own control game was somewhat impressive.

On Saturday, I played a small 4 round event. I didn't do too well, but still learned some lessons. I won against Slivers and lost against Lands, Esper Blade and UB Shadow. Against Lands, there wasn't much I could do. I easily won G1 with a fast combo, but lost both post SB games to an early Sphere of Resistance paired with lots of mana denial. Against Esper Blade, I kept a potential great hand with one Land, Dark Ritual + Buried Alive, Brainstorm and 2 discard Spells. Sadly, I brainstorm locked myself on T2 and died because I found the second land on T5 or so. I then screwed up my sideboarding and lost G2. I boarded out my removal, because I don't really care about their G1 creatures and Containment Priest can be beaten with hardcast Birds. I completely missed that it's pretty likely Stoneblade has Canonist in the SB. I could get rid of the first Canonist with Jace bounce + Therapy, but the second one got me. Counterbalance was great tough. It kept me way longer in that game than I should have. If I had removal for the Canonist, it would have been an easy game to win. Against UB Shadow nothing special happened. I still think the matchup is positive, but sometimes you just lose a match of magic. Maybe I made some errors, but I can't recall any major punts.

Yesterday, I started a league. I still have to play the last two matches, but since I cast Counterbalance in all three matches so far, I guess I can write about them as well.

Match 1 was against Slow Depths (2:0). I mostly won because I had fast draws and they durdled with Dark Confidant. Having Counterbalance with a one on top to be safe from Crop Rotation was nice though. That being said, I don't think we have enough time to set up a counterbalance against a good Depths draw.

Match 2 was the mirror (2:1). In G2, I counterbalanced them after deploying Pyromancer. I was pretty far ahead anyway, but counterbalance put the game completely out of reach for them.

In Match 3 I played against Elves (2:0). G1, I had a T3 kill on the play and my opponent couldn't kill me on his T2. Counterbalance was good in G2. Countering a Zenith for Scavenging Ooze with a blind flipped Buried Alive was hilarious.

So what's my verdict for Counterbalance? I think the card is good in the deck and adds a unique angle of attack against some decks. I still have to test against Storm and Sneak Show. I honestly have no clue if it's better or worse than Tombstalker or Dark Confidant. I guess all these cards shine against a different set of strategies. I think I'll keep on testing counterbalance for a bit, just to get more information. Bob sound really nice though... :)

Thanks!

Honestly I was a bit sad to cut Liliana, I had one in the sb until the last moment when I signed up and she's great in the deck imo, but everything you say is true that while it's a nice angle for the deck to have she makes good matchups better, and I've run into the same issue vs Mother of Runes, it's a fair critique, I've not cut her for good though.

I cast a sideboard card 3 times in the whole event yesterday, and lost 2/3 of those games (both in the finals). So the evidence suggests we shouldn't have a sb :tongue: Jokes aside he's been fine while playing with him before, it is slower and a bit clunky, but quite versatile. It's especially geared for Eldrazi where taking out either a lock piece of creature has come up pretty clutch. I like that it's castable vs Moon too, kills Rabblemaster/Legion Warboss, and kills Delver too though I'm not sure if we bring it in there. It really does a lot, just on the expensive side but with the fast mana I'm at least interested in trying it more.

A shame that the Saturday event didn't go great, but you're right that sometimes there are games that you make the right decisions but can't win, happens. At least you learnt something from it. I like keeping bolts vs Stoneblade decks since like you found out they very often have at least Containment Priest, and sometimes Canonist, Meddling Mage etc.

Nice testing! Thanks for the feedback, I still lean on the side of what PDingo was saying before that while it may perform well it's not necessarily an approach we want to take, but please keep trying it and relay everything here, it's great. It's certainly a unique angle that's for sure.


Congratulations for you result. Can we have a link for the Ashtons result? Don't see him here http://www.starcitygames.com/decks/Star_City_Games_Classic/2019-02-03_legacy_Baltimore_MD_US/1/

glad to hear this "new ideas" seem to work :tongue::cool::cool:




I strongly agree.
I still don't have so much testing (not enough time) but I've tried a few different builds, including UR without Buried Alive. I am now thinking one can try to merge the UR-delver-pteramander version and the grixis phoenix one. I think the ceiling with Buried Alive is too high to drop it; meanwhile, one should try to raise the floor (which is very low with cards like Thought Scour/Mental Note etc).
I think it would be good to try a delver version instead of pyromancer: this way one can really pressure the opponent since the very beginning, and assemble the combo while he is trying to fight a very different axis (if the opponent search for cards to resolve the board threats, he could disregard the "fight for the stack", leaving the way open to resolve our spells). I think Pteramander has way more potential than Tombstalker (sure, it's a little slower and more prone to common removals, but he is also not weak to unsummon effects, you can play it as soon as turn 1, and you can easily play multiples). If you happen to draw a dark ritual and you don't plan to spend it differently (= for the combo) you can also surprise the opponent adapting it very quickly (a single ritual counts for 4 mana on the 8 adapt costs!).
Final considerations: personally I like to have some copy of FoW; since I play in a field of back to basics, and we need the basic swamp way more than the basic mountain, I thought I could try fatal pushes above lightning bolts (as for now, I never needed the reach - the classic bolt to the face). For a moment, I even considered Contagion as a possibility for a free spell count.
The list I tried last saturday:

3 Pteramander
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
4 Thoughtseize
3 Force of Will
3 Fatal Push
2 Spell Pierce
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire

3 Surgical Extraction
3 Pyroblast
3 Invasive Surgery
2 Rough//Tumble
2 Abrade
2 Perilous Voyage

I went for a poor 2-2 winning against Miracle and Eldrazi and losing to Death and Taxes and ANT, but I really liked the list: I don't think the reasons for my losses were poor choices in the list or bad playing. Against D&T (I knew he played it) I kept a hand that could potentially do 12 damage in the second turn (I had delver ritual and buried alive) but I needed to draw a black mana source since I had only a basic island. I was on the draw, so between lands and cantrips I considered roughly 75% of probability to "go off" t2. I never drew a land in 5 turns and died. G2 he went for cavern on humans, thalia, prelate on 1 (which of course is even worse than chalice). Against ANT, I was again OTD g1 and had a discard t1 and the combo for t2 (so the kill for t3), of course he killed me on his third turn. In g2 I cantripped forever without ever finding anything relevant after a couple early discards. So I don't think I should be disappointed, it was simply inevitable to lose those games I think.

Thanks!

Tommys team didn't make T8 unfortunately, but I posted his list on the last page and it's on the SCG results somewhere. It was a team event, but his personal record was 14-1.

And apologies that I didn't try out Dark Confidant sooner since you suggested it, a couple of friends had suggested it to me too but I didn't think the idea was very good honestly, but as the deck has evolved and especially the addition of Lotus Petals makes him more appealing.

Your list is interesting, and quite a different approach. I'll be totally honest and say I'm not a big fan of a lot of what's going on, but that's based on my experience playing the 'usual' list. If you can come back to us with some feedback after playing more that would be cool.

[Baum]

I was just thinking about sideboarding with the Bob/Petal list. Against grindy blue control decks, would you side out some/all petals?

[Whitefaces]

I was just thinking about sideboarding with the Bob/Petal list. Against grindy blue control decks, would you side out some/all petals?

Yeah that's what I've been doing. Generally all 3 Petal come out and some number of bolt depending on the exact mu, I'd keep all bolts vs UW blade, 2 vs Miracles, probably 0 vs Grixis, but I've been changing sbing up half based on intuition and then if the match goes to a game 3 I think it's especially important with this deck to reevaluate sbing based on what hate cards you've seen.

[Jax-]

I don't even play this deck but I come here just to say: very good job WhiteFaces!

Sadly your amazing perform against Depths is not valid because you dodged me. I'm glad that you finally shaved Alpine Moon tho.

[Whitefaces]

I don't even play this deck but I come here just to say: very good job WhiteFaces!

Sadly your amazing perform against Depths is not valid because you dodged me. I'm glad that you finally shaved Alpine Moon tho.

Haha, thanks! I might have bumped into you if you'd won more! :cool:

[adrieng]

Is there a reason to play tormod's cryp over nihil spellbomb ? Is the chancellor trigger a good one ?

I think spellbomb is better especailly against control decks suchh as miracle, grixis control etc ...

draw one card is good

[Whitefaces]

Is there a reason to play tormod's cryp over nihil spellbomb ? Is the chancellor trigger a good one ?

I think spellbomb is better especailly against control decks suchh as miracle, grixis control etc ...

draw one card is good

You're right that Chancellor is part of the reason, second is being able to cantrip into a Crypt from turn one. Since they're almost exclusively for GY based decks, most of which are very fast, it's better to have speed over the card draw. Spellbomb would be better vs control yes, but I'm not sure we'd even side them in there tbh, it's fine in control mirrors but we attack those matchups a bit differently, not with incremental value.

Tormod's Crypt is by far the most asked about card, I really need to update the primer and do a good section on it. Will try to soon!

[Hanni]

Wouldn't a split of Crypt and Surgical be more effective than 3-4 of just one effect? I realize that most graveyard-centric strategies aren't playing the anti-hate game with effects like Pithing Needle anymore, but there are some decks that play Cabal Therapy that could strip multiple copies of a singular hate piece. I'd personally run a split, but maybe that's just not necessary in the meta these days?

[Whitefaces]

Wouldn't a split of Crypt and Surgical be more effective than 3-4 of just one effect? I realize that most graveyard-centric strategies aren't playing the anti-hate game with effects like Pithing Needle anymore, but there are some decks that play Cabal Therapy that could strip multiple copies of a singular hate piece. I'd personally run a split, but maybe that's just not necessary in the meta these days?

I've sometimes played 3 Crypt 1 Surgical, I know some others play 2/2 but when the Crypt is being played proactively the only time a Cabal Therapy is catching it is turn one really, and you can still cantrip into them. I just want consistency in a gameplan vs these decks that give you very little time. It's also crucial for the Storm matchup, I attack the deck on two of their 'pillars', being life total (Ad Naus) and GY (PiF). If you negate Ad Naus line with the combo, which one hit will mostly do, then Crypt shuts off a PiF they need to natural storm you, this relies on a critical mass which our discard is very good at stripping down. If you don't get both these angles in check then they beat you pretty easily. In this gameplan Surgical is easily discarded and doesn't fulfill the roll I want from that card. Every time I've had it in hand vs reanimator it's just discarded too, it's what their deck is built to do.

[Jaynel]

Sb:
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Engineered Plague
2 Abrade
2 Goblin Cratermaker
2 Spell Pierce
2 Echoing Truth

Congrats on the finish. I know you mentioned you rarely saw SB cards, but could you explain the rationale behind the Engineered Plague slot? It seems fine against Storm (name Goblins), okay against Dragon Stompy (again name Goblins), but seems like overboarding when bringing in possibly 7 other cards, and would be great against D&T naming Human...except Bob and Pyromancer are also Humans and I can't imagine boarding those guys out against D&T. I guess it hits TNN or Germ vs Stoneblade?

I like the EE and Cratermaker slots a lot.

[Whitefaces]

Congrats on the finish. I know you mentioned you rarely saw SB cards, but could you explain the rationale behind the Engineered Plague slot? It seems fine against Storm (name Goblins), okay against Dragon Stompy (again name Goblins), but seems like overboarding when bringing in possibly 7 other cards, and would be great against D&T naming Human...except Bob and Pyromancer are also Humans and I can't imagine boarding those guys out against D&T. I guess it hits TNN or Germ vs Stoneblade?

I like the EE and Cratermaker slots a lot.

It was mostly a narrow hedge for Elves. The deck has been doing well the last few challenges and I think it's strong right now, the matchup has felt close but slightly unfavoured for us.

I'd probably swap them for a Marsh Casualties and Liliana, the Last Hope now.

[Whitefaces]

Some nice media in the wake of the weekend

Article on SCG where they talk about the deck, some high praise - http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38278_Five-New-Ways-To-Break-Legacy.html

Cedric Phillips interview Tommy Ashton after his performance at the SCG open - https://soundcloud.com/thecedricphillipspodcast/one-time-for-tommy-mtg

I really, really need to update the primer now!

[ButterTime]

Some nice media in the wake of the weekend

Article on SCG where they talk about the deck, some high praise - http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/38278_Five-New-Ways-To-Break-Legacy.html

Cedric Phillips interview Tommy Ashton after his performance at the SCG open - https://soundcloud.com/thecedricphillipspodcast/one-time-for-tommy-mtg

I really, really need to update the primer now!

I saw you got 2nd place in the last legaue, congratulations! How do you like Dark Confidant in the deck? I also have a question about having a turn 1 or turn 2 buried alive. Do you always try to use a discard spell on your opponent first?

[Whitefaces]

I saw you got 2nd place in the last legaue, congratulations! How do you like Dark Confidant in the deck? I also have a question about having a turn 1 or turn 2 buried alive. Do you always try to use a discard spell on your opponent first?

Thanks!

Dark Confidant was really good on Sunday, but that was my first time trying it so it's still a very small sample size. I'll keep playing him to try it more, Tombstalker is also excellent still though.

As for going for T1 or T2 combos, it's really, really context dependent. I've been trying to write some sb notes or tips but the reality is I sideboard differently vs different decks all the time, this then extends to general play patterns too. The eventual answer will be 'it depends', but if I have a turn one combo on the play vs unknown opponent I will go for it. If I'm on the draw I can use their first play for information, if it's a blue fetch land I will probably cantrip for discard for example because they're either going to have countermagic or be a combo deck.

[Burk3n]

Sry in advance for bad london.

I took the deck for a spin at my LGS today finishing 2-2, winning against DnT, Tinfins and loosing to UR Delver and Turbo Depths. I was basically playing the same 75 as TC, with confidants minus one Bolt and plus one UG sea (I think that 15 lands are to low). Here are some thoughts:

I felt like there should be atleast one more threat, so i will probably play one more Young Pyromancer, this will also make Cabal Therapy better (And this list runs 4 cabal and 3 Thoughseize).

Dark Confidant was good and i dont think i want to cut them in this stage at least, following up a discard with him is nice.

Sideboarding was extremly difficult and i almost never knew what i was gonna take out, usually i went for 1 Buried Alive, 1 Phoenix and some numbers of Petals.

Lightning bolt felt bad, mb this has something to do with me running just 2. I dont know if i will cut them for a less flexible removal or if i will go up in numbers, since i think its important to be able to interact vs opponents creatures.

Im not sure petal is better then chrome mox in the deck.

Tombstalker makes us more graveyard dependent, wich i think is bad since leylines and RIP will hurt us more.

The deck felt "slimmed"(best english word i could find) and it made me feel like there was not a lot of space to mixture and trim.



Im really looking forward on how this deck develops.

[ButterTime]

Thanks!

Dark Confidant was really good on Sunday, but that was my first time trying it so it's still a very small sample size. I'll keep playing him to try it more, Tombstalker is also excellent still though.

As for going for T1 or T2 combos, it's really, really context dependent. I've been trying to write some sb notes or tips but the reality is I sideboard differently vs different decks all the time, this then extends to general play patterns too. The eventual answer will be 'it depends', but if I have a turn one combo on the play vs unknown opponent I will go for it. If I'm on the draw I can use their first play for information, if it's a blue fetch land I will probably cantrip for discard for example because they're either going to have countermagic or be a combo deck.

I think I'll give Dark Confidant a try althought I may play a 4rth Thoughtseize. Your thoughts on only playing 3?

[Whitefaces]

Sry in advance for bad london.

I took the deck for a spin at my LGS today finishing 2-2, winning against DnT, Tinfins and loosing to UR Delver and Turbo Depths. I was basically playing the same 75 as TC, with confidants minus one Bolt and plus one UG sea (I think that 15 lands are to low). Here are some thoughts:

I felt like there should be atleast one more threat, so i will probably play one more Young Pyromancer, this will also make Cabal Therapy better (And this list runs 4 cabal and 3 Thoughseize).

Dark Confidant was good and i dont think i want to cut them in this stage at least, following up a discard with him is nice.

Sideboarding was extremly difficult and i almost never knew what i was gonna take out, usually i went for 1 Buried Alive, 1 Phoenix and some numbers of Petals.

Lightning bolt felt bad, mb this has something to do with me running just 2. I dont know if i will cut them for a less flexible removal or if i will go up in numbers, since i think its important to be able to interact vs opponents creatures.

Im not sure petal is better then chrome mox in the deck.

Tombstalker makes us more graveyard dependent, wich i think is bad since leylines and RIP will hurt us more.

The deck felt "slimmed"(best english word i could find) and it made me feel like there was not a lot of space to mixture and trim.



Im really looking forward on how this deck develops.

No problem for the language, I understood everything :)

Adding another threat is fine, I want a 4th Young Pyromancer in the deck too but have been struggling to find space now.

Sideboarding is really hard yes, I think this is what people may struggle with most. I sideboard differently vs different opponents playing the same decks, I plan to write up some sb guide very soon though.

Lightning Bolt has continued to be great for me, I think you not liking them is because of the very small sample size of 4 matches and your matchups.

I've not tried Chrome Mox but I've learnt that this deck doesn't want to play cards that are card disadvantage if possible, Petals and Dark Rituals are the exception and the reason why for this. You need to balance card advantage and disadvantage proportionately.

In theory yes Tombstalker is bad vs Leyline and RiP, but those cards aren't played that much in the format, it's just stompy decks playing Leyline (and sometimes they're on Macabre) and DnT playing rip basically from the top tier decks. And if they have them it's not hard to cantrip/brainstorm Tombstalker away.

I agree that there is still space to work on the deck. The latest lists we've been playing/I've posted are feeling like they're getting better and better.


I think I'll give Dark Confidant a try althought I may play a 4rth Thoughtseize. Your thoughts on only playing 3?

I'm sure playing just 3 TS was a mistake, honestly I got home just in time to put the deck together quickly and sign up so it was a bit rushed. I'm now not sure what the cut will be to put the 4th back in, probably either a Dark Confidant, Lightning Bolt or Daze.

[ButterTime]

I already want to play a 4rth bolt and a 3rd daze so I don't think that's the slot to cut, but if I had to choose I'd cut a daze. Either a dark confidant or a young pyromancer was my thought. Sometimes I want one over the other so I'd say a daze over a bolt. Daze is really nice when you can actually daze something, but that hasn't happened very often for me.

[ThomasDowd]

I already want to play a 4rth bolt and a 3rd daze so I don't think that's the slot to cut, but if I had to choose I'd cut a daze. Either a dark confidant or a young pyromancer was my thought. Sometimes I want one over the other so I'd say a daze over a bolt. Daze is really nice when you can actually daze something, but that hasn't happened very often for me.

Daze is also free or +1 mana to turn on phoenixes (phoenices?) in a pinch from two lands and 2 other non daze spells.

How often does this deck find itself racing or winning with a turn before death? Thinking about building this but don't own duals, obviously the self damage from bob seems bad/ hard to manage but other than that I'm not sure on the times the deck finds itself racing. It kind of opens up a weird path to play DS in one of the flex slots? Probably not great but somewhere I think bob/ tombstalker is still better there though (Card advantage and flying respectively versus just a big idiot).

[Rancor85]

I just sleeved this deck up and am looking for ways to help this deck evolve. I have seen a couple other interesting lists with different angles on how to play the deck. At this time what would you say are the decks worst matchups? I know a couple people mentioned grixis delver, eldrazi aggro and lands.Dk what we could do to help these matchups as they are on the rise. Also any updates or sideboard guides would be helpful as I can test locally and give feedback on interactions and problems that come up. Was playing grixis omnitell but this deck has my attention at the moment. The power level seems insane!

[Whitefaces]

I just sleeved this deck up and am looking for ways to help this deck evolve. I have seen a couple other interesting lists with different angles on how to play the deck. At this time what would you say are the decks worst matchups? I know a couple people mentioned grixis delver, eldrazi aggro and lands.Dk what we could do to help these matchups as they are on the rise. Also any updates or sideboard guides would be helpful as I can test locally and give feedback on interactions and problems that come up. Was playing grixis omnitell but this deck has my attention at the moment. The power level seems insane!

The hardest matchups so far for me have been Depths (esp BUG), Lands, Aggro Loam and Eldrazi. The latter two are much easier to beat than Depths and Lands, but still tough. We have little to no way to interact with lands like the Stage Depths Combo and Glacial Chasm is the reason. I've tried Alpine Moon specifically for Depths and it wins games, but it's very narrow. I've also played a little bit with Blood Moon, though the concern was that it was too slow vs Depths to get under both their combo and discard, but that was pre-Lotus Petals, it's probably worth testing again.

I'm in the process of writing a preliminary 'sb guide', but in my opinion the deck is still being built and the sideboard especially is in flux, so I'd fear writing something like that might stifle people testing different sb configurations. If you have an idea please do test it and report back.

[Rancor85]

The hardest matchups so far for me have been Depths (esp BUG), Lands, Aggro Loam and Eldrazi. The latter two are much easier to beat than Depths and Lands, but still tough. We have little to no way to interact with lands like the Stage Depths Combo and Glacial Chasm is the reason. I've tried Alpine Moon specifically for Depths and it wins games, but it's very narrow. I've also played a little bit with Blood Moon, though the concern was that it was too slow vs Depths to get under both their combo and discard, but that was pre-Lotus Petals, it's probably worth testing again.

I'm in the process of writing a preliminary 'sb guide', but in my opinion the deck is still being built and the sideboard especially is in flux, so I'd fear writing something like that might stifle people testing different sb configurations. If you have an idea please do test it and report back.

Yeah outside of blood moon I do how you sure up those matchups. Might be our only option honestly. I did find a list from Japan that I'm going to try at the next fnm. Its definitely interesting...

Lands(18)

4《Polluted Delta》

2《Scalding Tarn》

3《Bloodstained Mire》

3《Underground Sea》

2《Badlands》

2《Volcanic Island》

1《Swamp》

1《Island》

Creatures(11)

4《Arclight Phoenix》

2《Baleful Strix》

3《Young Pyromancer》

2《Gurmag Angler》

Spells(31)

4《Brainstorm》

4《Ponder》

2《Thought Scour》

3《Thoughtseize》

4《Cabal Therapy》

4《Dark Ritual》

4《Lightning Bolt》

4《Buried Alive》

1《Liliana, the Last Hope》

1《Jace, the Mind Sculptor》

Sideboard Cards(15)

2《Abrade》

1《Pyroblast》

1《Red Elemental Blast》

2《Diabolic Edict》

2《Empty the Warrens》

2《Surgical Extraction》

2《Collective Brutality》

2《Flusterstorm》

1《Theater of Horrors》

[ButterTime]

Yeah outside of blood moon I do how you sure up those matchups. Might be our only option honestly. I did find a list from Japan that I'm going to try at the next fnm. Its definitely interesting...

Lands(18)

4《Polluted Delta》

2《Scalding Tarn》

3《Bloodstained Mire》

3《Underground Sea》

2《Badlands》

2《Volcanic Island》

1《Swamp》

1《Island》

Creatures(11)

4《Arclight Phoenix》

2《Baleful Strix》

3《Young Pyromancer》

2《Gurmag Angler》

Spells(31)

4《Brainstorm》

4《Ponder》

2《Thought Scour》

3《Thoughtseize》

4《Cabal Therapy》

4《Dark Ritual》

4《Lightning Bolt》

4《Buried Alive》

1《Liliana, the Last Hope》

1《Jace, the Mind Sculptor》

Sideboard Cards(15)

2《Abrade》

1《Pyroblast》

1《Red Elemental Blast》

2《Diabolic Edict》

2《Empty the Warrens》

2《Surgical Extraction》

2《Collective Brutality》

2《Flusterstorm》

1《Theater of Horrors》


There are some really strange card choices in this list.

[Alchemist]

3 Dark Confidant
3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
3 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Daze
3 Lotus Petal
3 Lightning Bolt

4 Polluted Dela
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sb:
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Thing in the Ice
2 Ground Seal
1 Marsh Casualties
2 Abrade
1 Goblin Cratermaker
1 Echoing Truth


Hello everyone! I played a whitefaces list with little modifications this weekend and i went 5-0-1 and the losing in the finals to turbo dephts (he mulliganed to 5 an turn 3 me and g2 i kept a hand with DR Confi turn 1 and ive never drawn the second land in 15 looks). First time playing the deck and i loved it! I played aganist : UW taxes (1-1), SnS(2-0), Storm (2-1), Canadian (2-0), Depths ID(but played 2-1), Burn (2-1), BR reanimator (2-1), T depths (0-2).
I tried out ground seal but i dont think its needed, ita cute tho. The cards im not sure in the main are actually bobs, dazes and bolts.. overall dazes and bolts the most! i know the points of why you have those cards in your list, but i felt like the deck needs to go super fast against SnS, depths, storm ecc or slow against all the delver strategy, ds, grixis control to find a spot to rit buried alive and grind em out and those cards are meh lot of times! Idk i felt the deck was really powerful but still missing something! But hey, idk how to make it better right now, so just writing down my feelings as first time playin it! TITI was amazing, against creature based, depths, sns, br or as an alternative win con its super hard to kill. I played surgicals over tormods because i couldnt find the crypts, overall i liked them, sometimes you need one more spell.

[Burk3n]

3 Dark Confidant
3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix

4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
3 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Daze
3 Lotus Petal
3 Lightning Bolt

4 Polluted Dela
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sb:
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Thing in the Ice
2 Ground Seal
1 Marsh Casualties
2 Abrade
1 Goblin Cratermaker
1 Echoing Truth


Hello everyone! I played a whitefaces list with little modifications this weekend and i went 5-0-1 and the losing in the finals to turbo dephts (he mulliganed to 5 an turn 3 me and g2 i kept a hand with DR Confi turn 1 and ive never drawn the second land in 15 looks). First time playing the deck and i loved it! I played aganist : UW taxes (1-1), SnS(2-0), Storm (2-1), Canadian (2-0), Depths ID(but played 2-1), Burn (2-1), BR reanimator (2-1), T depths (0-2).
I tried out ground seal but i dont think its needed, ita cute tho. The cards im not sure in the main are actually bobs, dazes and bolts.. overall dazes and bolts the most! i know the points of why you have those cards in your list, but i felt like the deck needs to go super fast against SnS, depths, storm ecc or slow against all the delver strategy, ds, grixis control to find a spot to rit buried alive and grind em out and those cards are meh lot of times! Idk i felt the deck was really powerful but still missing something! But hey, idk how to make it better right now, so just writing down my feelings as first time playin it! TITI was amazing, against creature based, depths, sns, br or as an alternative win con its super hard to kill. I played surgicals over tormods because i couldnt find the crypts, overall i liked them, sometimes you need one more spell.

Since you are playing surgicals this mb dont apply. But isnt Silent Gravestone just better then splashing green for a simular effect? Can also work as a slow crypt against things like manaless dredge.

I do agree that i dont think its nessecery with that kind of effect though since we got access to a lot of discard.

I am interesting on how you feel on only 15 lands, obviously you missed lands with confidant once but other then that.. Did you ever reach 4 mana to hardcast Phoenix?

I will try the deck at my LGS again, and probably many more weeks after, and i cut the dazes this time for a 4th Pyromancer and my 3rd Bolt. Thinking about cutting another land for the 4th Bolt aswell.

[Whitefaces]

I've had a decent number of people ask if there's a discord channel for the deck. I was intending to keep info to this thread, at least at the beginning, but there's been enough interest in the deck now that it's probably nice to have somewhere to talk with others in real time too. I'll still post here though.

Here's the link to join the discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/PM5StrY

[sanderanders]

Hey Guys and Galls,

I picked up this deck not long ago, but allready really lean towards the Peezy and Bob build. The different angles this deck can position itself in make it hard to sideboard against, i like the combined midrange with a combo strategy a lot. So will be testing the deck some more the coming weeks, in paper and online.

One idea i have i like to share here is about the Lightning Bolts.

Why not try Gut Shot in stead of the Bolts?

The reach of 2 in stead of 3 damage is most of the time enough, 2 x 9 + 2 = 20.

And the 3/2 of the Phoenix + 2 of the Gutshot is almost always enough to kill the big ones like Endbringer, Gurmag, Pteremander and the likes of them.

Maybe lifeloss is to much, with Thoughtseize and Bob. I propose therefore a 3/2/3 split of Thought/Bob/Gut Shot for example.

The ‘free’ spell you have makes Swamp + Dark Rit + Buried also turn one hands. Wich is bonkers, when you don’t have Petal and anothe spell to make that happen.

I would appreceate your thoughts :-)

[Whitefaces]

Hey Guys and Galls,

I picked up this deck not long ago, but allready really lean towards the Peezy and Bob build. The different angles this deck can position itself in make it hard to sideboard against, i like the combined midrange with a combo strategy a lot. So will be testing the deck some more the coming weeks, in paper and online.

One idea i have i like to share here is about the Lightning Bolts.

Why not try Gut Shot in stead of the Bolts?

The reach of 2 in stead of 3 damage is most of the time enough, 2 x 9 + 2 = 20.

And the 3/2 of the Phoenix + 2 of the Gutshot is almost always enough to kill the big ones like Endbringer, Gurmag, Pteremander and the likes of them.

Maybe lifeloss is to much, with Thoughtseize and Bob. I propose therefore a 3/2/3 split of Thought/Bob/Gut Shot for example.

The ‘free’ spell you have makes Swamp + Dark Rit + Buried also turn one hands. Wich is bonkers, when you don’t have Petal and anothe spell to make that happen.

I would appreceate your thoughts :-)

Hey! I agree, now that I've played vs it too I really struggle to sb vs it from a number of decks, it's certainly one of this decks biggest strengths which is nice. Bob has especially performed.

Gut Shot deals 1 damage, not 2. So the scenarios you're describing aren't quite accurate. Regardless, it's worth testing, I know some people are already. Some have come back with very negative experiences, some very positive and I've not had the time to try it myself unfortunately. I think the life loss of the Gut Shot isn't going to be too bad, even with 4x TS and Bobs.

From what I can tell, these are the most obvious pros and cons

Pros:
Free spell to combo faster
Cheaper vs taxing effects, notably Thalia

Cons:
Doesn't kill flipped Delver, SfM or Jace among others
Life loss could be relevant

Free spell for faster combos I'll a little weary to because for it to be turning on the combo turn one you need to have all of Gut Shot, Dark Ritual and Buried in the opener, which can happen but isn't likely enough to be including cards for it I think.

Cons of not killing Delver and SfM are pretty bad, Delver is one of the primary reasons to play Bolt imo. But please do let us know how testing with it goes.

On the topic of bolts, Eric is trying Forked Bolt and has said it's been really strong. He just posted some videos including a deck tech.

Deck tech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJZ5QQ3quY

Playlist and matches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJZ5QQ3quY&list=PLzjjZciAr55tuomdE8zSx8LluYZgAu1aV

[kombatkiwi]

JUND (?) Phoenix (??)

Turn 2 Ritual Gamble discard Buried Alive omegalul

4 Phoenix
3 Bob
3 Young Pyro

4 Buried Alive
4 Ritual
4 Gamble

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize

3 Punishing Fire
3 Life from the Loam
1 Raven's Crime / Flame Jab
3 Liliana of the Veil

2 Bayou
2 Badlands
1 Taiga
3 Grove
3 Wasteland
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire

Maybe this improves the Delver mu? PFire/Retrace + Pyro/Phoenix seems funny enough but losing the cantrips probably sucks too much

[Whitefaces]

Cantrips are really, really damn good. I've seen a lot of people on various platforms cutting them and I don't really understand it.

I think you'll be at the mercy of topdecks and p fire is all well and good but makes you even more vulnerable to graveyard hate, but give it a spin and see for yourself.

[BeTeP]

Hi Guys, need to know what are you thinking about using dominate vs depth decks? Sure, it is 3cc and can be easy discarded, but also can be saved with brainstorm to do some very serious damage when they try to marit lage you. Seems to me that card can be a solution, am i wrong?

[Hisa]

Hi Guys, need to know what are you thinking about using dominate vs depth decks? Sure, it is 3cc and can be easy discarded, but also can be saved with brainstorm to do some very serious damage when they try to marit lage you. Seems to me that card can be a solution, am i wrong?


Isn't Dominate strictly worse than Entrancing Melody?

EDIT: Dominate is an Instant.

[Whitefaces]

Yep, instant speed would be the reason to play it.

But we have our own threats and ways to close out the game already, in my experience so far it's been hard to even get Echoing Truth to land on Marit Lage, it either gets discarded or countered by Crop Rotation for Sejiri Steppe. Not that it doesn't happen, but having a reactive answer for the token isn't always going to be a winning strategy. For something not guaranteed to work, hard to cast and very narrow I don't think it's a great choice.

[youngphx]

Tried out grixis Phoenix at my local 1k yesterday. Ended up going 4-2, losing to Steel Stompy and a Griseldaddy/Dark Depths deck. Here though I play against zombebardbarment, starts roughly 59min into the stream. I had a few misplays, but ended up winning overall. I ran the Tombstalker list since I’m waiting on my bobs to show up this coming week. Anyway, here it is.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/385566940

[thecrav]

Esper list

Played this list this weekend with the following changes:

* Changed the fetches from 4/4/1 to 3/3/3 and realized that Marsh Flats doesn't get Volcanic Island within minutes of sitting down for my first round.
* Turned Tormod's Crypt #3 into Surgical Extraction #2 because I don't have a third Tormod's Crypt

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0HVWzzWoAItoMU.jpg

Round 1, my opponent had EE, D Sphere, and RIP all in his main so he quite thoroughly wrecked me.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0HVW2DXQAEZuEE.jpg

Round 2 was Esper Control - Just straight Esper good cards. No Stoneforges! A parade of removal, discard, and gravehate took me down.

Round 3 I got the BYE so I dropped to take a nap.

The deck was a lot of fun. One observation I had is I was always either hurting for mana or for cards. Perhaps I'll like the Grixis build better.

[Tortonon]

Been running Grixis Phoenix for two weeks now, to a 3rd and a 7th place at our last weeklies in my LGS.

Gotta say, this whole thread has thought me lots, and I just wanted to thank all of you. I completely fell in love with this deck.



Bob just feels so freaking good in this deck, that I actually regretted playing Tombs last week. Pretty sure some card advantage could've helped me in my loss.

However, the one card that keeps on letting me down is lightning bolt. I dont know if it is just situational, but every single time I have a bolt in my hand, I could do so much better by having another discard outlet, another cantrip or even a maindeck surgical (which I've become more and more towards doing), or even a different win-con or any other spicy 1-of.

Am I just reading the role for bolt in this deck really wrong (and if I am just help me out), or are any of you guys also getting disappointed at our beloved 3 damage for 1 mana?

[Whitefaces]

Been running Grixis Phoenix for two weeks now, to a 3rd and a 7th place at our last weeklies in my LGS.

Gotta say, this whole thread has thought me lots, and I just wanted to thank all of you. I completely fell in love with this deck.



Bob just feels so freaking good in this deck, that I actually regretted playing Tombs last week. Pretty sure some card advantage could've helped me in my loss.

However, the one card that keeps on letting me down is lightning bolt. I dont know if it is just situational, but every single time I have a bolt in my hand, I could do so much better by having another discard outlet, another cantrip or even a maindeck surgical (which I've become more and more towards doing), or even a different win-con or any other spicy 1-of.

Am I just reading the role for bolt in this deck really wrong (and if I am just help me out), or are any of you guys also getting disappointed at our beloved 3 damage for 1 mana?

Glad to hear you're enjoying it and having some success!

Bobs are indeed great, really nice addition. I have been seeing the lack of Tombstalker hurts the Delver matchups though, but that's one of the few matchups where it's better than Bob probably, bar stuff like Burn.

Bolt can look pretty bad sometimes, but I think it's important for the deck to play a mid game, or to take out things like Thalia or other hatebears. If we're playing vs a non-creature deck then it can make 3x Phoenixes lethal the next turn too. It's not especially synergistic but does a good enough job in the deck I think. Saying that, ewlandon has been trying out Forked Bolts and I'm pretty sold on them. They help matchups like Elves, and often Delver and DnT while when it goes to the opponents face it's almost always still going to be lethal because of the 9 + 9 of our combo.

[Tortonon]

Glad to hear you're enjoying it and having some success!

Bobs are indeed great, really nice addition. I have been seeing the lack of Tombstalker hurts the Delver matchups though, but that's one of the few matchups where it's better than Bob probably, bar stuff like Burn.

Bolt can look pretty bad sometimes, but I think it's important for the deck to play a mid game, or to take out things like Thalia or other hatebears. If we're playing vs a non-creature deck then it can make 3x Phoenixes lethal the next turn too. It's not especially synergistic but does a good enough job in the deck I think. Saying that, ewlandon has been trying out Forked Bolts and I'm pretty sold on them. They help matchups like Elves, and often Delver and DnT while when it goes to the opponents face it's almost always still going to be lethal because of the 9 + 9 of our combo.

Yeah, my plan B was to get some forked bolts (Our field has DnTs, Delver decks and an Elves player), but I dont have any as of yet and the LGS is out of stock on them, and the friend who was gonna lend me his forgot as well.

I also wanted to ask about Flusterstorm x Pyroblast. Being that we have tormods and surgicals, wouldnt it be better to SB pyroblast for the blue removal capabilities instead of fluster (I'm thinking about removing jace, b2b, counterbalance and so on). Of course fluster is godlike in counter battles and all, but I often feel like pyroblast could really improve the matches where we need to go the distance (which are mostly UW anyways).

[Whitefaces]

Yeah, my plan B was to get some forked bolts (Our field has DnTs, Delver decks and an Elves player), but I dont have any as of yet and the LGS is out of stock on them, and the friend who was gonna lend me his forgot as well.

I also wanted to ask about Flusterstorm x Pyroblast. Being that we have tormods and surgicals, wouldnt it be better to SB pyroblast for the blue removal capabilities instead of fluster (I'm thinking about removing jace, b2b, counterbalance and so on). Of course fluster is godlike in counter battles and all, but I often feel like pyroblast could really improve the matches where we need to go the distance (which are mostly UW anyways).

Lighting Bolt is still a good card. I think Forked is probably better in this deck, but it's not going to be a huge difference.

I've actually been a bit disappointed with Flusterstorms and Spell Pierces recently and want to try some other things in those spots, Vendilion Clique is one that Tommy Ashton played at the SCG team event and said it was very good. I also played Pyroblast before in this deck and they were good, so try the switch and let us know how it goes, it could be good.

[Tortonon]

Lighting Bolt is still a good card. I think Forked is probably better in this deck, but it's not going to be a huge difference.

I've actually been a bit disappointed with Flusterstorms and Spell Pierces recently and want to try some other things in those spots, Vendilion Clique is one that Tommy Ashton played at the SCG team event and said it was very good. I also played Pyroblast before in this deck and they were good, so try the switch and let us know how it goes, it could be good.

Will do, for sure.

Another thing I've already tried online to some good results, and will try and implement on paper next week is to fool around with bitterblossom, maybe 1-main and 1-side.
The deck is not getting anybody off-guard anymore, so hate is coming our way, to the point that new angles of attack are awesome. Given we already play dark ritual and petal, and blossom has a 2-cmc, opening turns in which we get a discard and resolve a bitterblossom are quite common, and that runs away with the game all by itself (specially when people have tons of plowshares and terminus against us).

I know it goes against the whole purpose and prime point of the deck, but it gives it even more flexibility and grind-power, so maybe it works.

[walked]

So I've been doing a lot of off-the-wall testing with the Grixis Phoenix shell.

One of the most interesting pieces I've come up with so far came from not being as satisfied with Dark Confidant as you guys. So; just for kicks; I swapped out Bob for 4x Accumulated Knowledge and found room for 2x Intuition.

The idea being:
- Accumulated Knowledge serves a similar role to Bob; but also triggers Phoenix
- Intuition can do the cute fetch up 3x AK to refill your hand in a late game grindy spot
- Intuition can act as Buried Alive copies 5/6

The verdict is super middling on the AK package; but Intuition has grossly over-performed. There are times where you'll have a Young Pyro on board in a grindy game; you can fetch up 3 Cabal Therapy and just shred hands (and with a single card draw, trigger any birds you happen to have in the yard, too). Plus in a pinch it is just 3cmc instant speed "tutor target card" - although that's the most rarely used mode.

It's just exceptionally versatile in this shell.

Not really impressed with AK; but that's the origin of the experiment at least.

[Tortonon]

So I've been doing a lot of off-the-wall testing with the Grixis Phoenix shell.

One of the most interesting pieces I've come up with so far came from not being as satisfied with Dark Confidant as you guys. So; just for kicks; I swapped out Bob for 4x Accumulated Knowledge and found room for 2x Intuition.

The idea being:
- Accumulated Knowledge serves a similar role to Bob; but also triggers Phoenix
- Intuition can do the cute fetch up 3x AK to refill your hand in a late game grindy spot
- Intuition can act as Buried Alive copies 5/6

The verdict is super middling on the AK package; but Intuition has grossly over-performed. There are times where you'll have a Young Pyro on board in a grindy game; you can fetch up 3 Cabal Therapy and just shred hands (and with a single card draw, trigger any birds you happen to have in the yard, too). Plus in a pinch it is just 3cmc instant speed "tutor target card" - although that's the most rarely used mode.

It's just exceptionally versatile in this shell.

Not really impressed with AK; but that's the origin of the experiment at least.

Intuition in this deck feels similar to the Gifts Ungiven in esper gifts shells in modern, in which you bring the combo pieces and any choice by the opponent will lead to disaster.

I LIKE IT. :D

[Mystical_Jackass]

Cool deck. I only have one suggestion worth testing, have you tried Unmask vs combo? It’s quite good when I used to play in U/B decks. Could probably side out Bolts for it in some matchups.

[walked]

Not sure if anyone caught the 4color version on stream at SCG a few minutes ago; running Land Grant. Not sure how good it is; but deck looked pretty ridiculous. Pretty interested for a list.

[pettdan]

I copied it using the cardboard live extension to twitch, truly great! I imagine it might feel unfair to post it before the tournament is over.. On the other hand it was available to anyone on the stream, so.. Let me know if you think I should remove it until the tournament is over. Here it is for now.

Edit: I guess anyone can go back and watch the stream anyway, potentially using the cardboard live plugin too, so I guess there's not that much reason not to share it.

Edit2: ah, changing my mind back and forth. I guess everyone curious got to read it, I'll put it back in 24 hours (unless someone else puts it up before then) to reduce chances of some opponent reading it in between rounds here.

Edit3: here it is again.


4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Force of Will
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Thought Scour
4 Careful Study
4 Manamorphose
4 Entomb
4 Arclight Phoenix
3 Thing in the Ice
2 Bloodghast
4 Land Grant
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
SIDEBOARD

3 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Sentinel Tower
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Memory's Journey
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Thoughtseize

[kombatkiwi]

Still not a big fan of the small-ball plan with Entomb but Land Grant is spicy
Land Grant -> Bayou Ritual Buried Alive sounds pretty hot but I don't know if this is too all-in (e.g. you cut lands for Land Grant and then your opponent FoWs your Land Grant and you just lose on the spot)
I guess even if your opening hand is 1 Black land (or fetch) plus Land Grant then you can still go off on turn 1 with this setup, Land Grant doesn't have to be your only mana source

[talpa]

Land Grant -> Bayou Ritual Buried Alive sounds pretty hot but I don't know if this is too all-in
Except this list doesn't have any Ritual nor any Buried Alive

[Whitefaces]

It's interesting alright!

This is my gut reaction

- smallballing Phoenixes generally isn't a winning play in the format. What I mean by that is discarding them to a looting effect and getting them back as incremental value, even if it works it's not a high power level play. This version at least goes a step further than some of the straight UR versions that popped up by playing Entomb too, but the original versions I tried also had Entomb, Manamorphose and Bloodghast but they were cut less for not working, but because their power level wasn't in line with the format. This deck is clearly taking enough of a different approach to those lists too though, as there's no Dark Ritual/Buried Alive, so maybe there's more merit.

- Similarly to that, we tried Land Grant very briefly at the beginning and it was quickly dismissed. But maybe it was also because the shell was a lot less refined than it is now.

- Having Force of Will I'm sure helps some matchups, the fact that the deck can/is playing it is nice. I don't know enough about the decks play patterns to know if the card disadvantage is too bad though, but I can see this deck having a slower average clock than Buried Alive variants too so you probably need countermagic.

- AK sb plan is some next level stuff, I have no idea if it's terrible or genius, probably the latter! I can see this build having a hard time with control, so the AKs are a huge step to helping there.

The caveat to all that is obviously I haven't played the build and I know the Buried version that I'm more familiar with is often misunderstood, so I don't want to pass too much judgment without trying it.

[kombatkiwi]

Except this list doesn't have any Ritual nor any Buried Alive

I'm talking about a hypothetical build that does include all of those cards, because I think that Land Grant might be good but I also think that not playing Ritual/Buried in your phoenix deck is a mistake

[Whitefaces]

I tried Land Grant in a Rit/Buried shell through a league last night, base BUG with Goyfs over YPs and a couple of Decays in the main, it felt horrible unfortunately.

I would usually give it some more tries, but going by first impressions it's really not good. Simply put it's a land that can get discarded or countered. Vs Depths, Storm and Shadow both sides of this came out, it feels rotten revealing your hand then they just Daze it...and while it may seem like a tiny sample size and anecdotal, these are cards that a huge majority of the format plays, it'll happen a lot.

So for that downside we're gaining a free spell, essentially raising the roof of the deck for more turn one potential. This is something I've been actively trying to more away from because the deck is better than being a Force Check deck. I very rarely go for turn ones if I have any kind of discard or cantrips to sculpt and clear the way, this is exactly why the deck is good, because we have this flexibility and control over the game. Since we found a strong shell, the main thing I want to work on is reign in the ceiling of the deck to maximise the floor and consistency. These are the features that make legacy decks great usually, not their ceiling unless its from shells with a huge amount of redundancy (like reanimator).

[walked]

So for that downside we're gaining a free spell, essentially raising the roof of the deck for more turn one potential. This is something I've been actively trying to more away from because the deck is better than being a Force Check deck. I very rarely go for turn ones if I have any kind of discard or cantrips to sculpt and clear the way, this is exactly why the deck is good, because we have this flexibility and control over the game. Since we found a strong shell, the main thing I want to work on is reign in the ceiling of the deck to maximise the floor and consistency. These are the features that make legacy decks great usually, not their ceiling unless its from shells with a huge amount of redundancy (like reanimator).

These are the exact reasons I've been liking Intuition in my build; it gives you an insane degree of flexibility and a little additional consistency. In grindy games where you stick a Young Pyromancer mid-late game; it's basically a lights-out win the game draw in a single card.

Give it a whirl :)

[Whitefaces]

These are the exact reasons I've been liking Intuition in my build; it gives you an insane degree of flexibility and a little additional consistency. In grindy games where you stick a Young Pyromancer mid-late game; it's basically a lights-out win the game draw in a single card.

Give it a whirl :)

OK, I'll try and get around to trying it soon! I can see the potential. I think at the beginning I may have zoned in on just fetching Phoenixes, but it is pretty gross with YP and Therapy.

[youngphx]

OK, I'll try and get around to trying it soon! I can see the potential. I think at the beginning I may have zoned in on just fetching Phoenixes, but it is pretty gross with YP and Therapy.

So at my lgs, my friends and I were thinking of trying out collective brutality instead of bolt. Going to try testing thatbin the next week or so. What are your thoughts on that?

[H]

Since we found a strong shell, the main thing I want to work on is reign in the ceiling of the deck to maximise the floor and consistency. These are the features that make legacy decks great usually, not their ceiling unless its from shells with a huge amount of redundancy (like reanimator).

I kind of wonder if the fact Phoenix's wording might actually make Regrowth playable. I mean, spell, Regrowth spell, spell again is three right there. Just thinking it would be something where Snapcaster really wouldn't cut it the same way. If that spell happens to be Bolt, that is a good chunk of damage if you've got a few Phoenix in the grumper.

[Whitefaces]

So at my lgs, my friends and I were thinking of trying out collective brutality instead of bolt. Going to try testing thatbin the next week or so. What are your thoughts on that?

I tried CB out a bunch in the early lists. It's OK, but a bit low power level and 2 mana is a lot for this deck.


I kind of wonder if the fact Phoenix's wording might actually make Regrowth playable. I mean, spell, Regrowth spell, spell again is three right there. Just thinking it would be something where Snapcaster really wouldn't cut it the same way. If that spell happens to be Bolt, that is a good chunk of damage if you've got a few Phoenix in the grumper.

I think Regrowth falls into what you quoted actually, it's expensive in the context of the deck and not flexible (unless you're in the very late game, which is not what the deck wants to play for) so doesn't help with its floor or consistency. The deck doesn't really struggle to trigger Phoenixes, it's finding/resolving the Buried Alive (and more specifically on time to race the opponents strategy) which is often the harder part of the two.

[walked]

OK, I'll try and get around to trying it soon! I can see the potential. I think at the beginning I may have zoned in on just fetching Phoenixes, but it is pretty gross with YP and Therapy.

https://i.imgur.com/fou53Eb.png?1

Here's a game-state that shows some of the flexibility. It came off the top in an iffy start where I'd been hit with repeated discard; it snagged 3x Dark Ritual here; guaranteed 3x spells for buried alive. (I'd already had cabal therapy extirpated at this point).

[H]

I think Regrowth falls into what you quoted actually, it's expensive in the context of the deck and not flexible (unless you're in the very late game, which is not what the deck wants to play for) so doesn't help with its floor or consistency. The deck doesn't really struggle to trigger Phoenixes, it's finding/resolving the Buried Alive (and more specifically on time to race the opponents strategy) which is often the harder part of the two.

Fair enough, 'twas just an idea. Indeed, if the issue at hand is getting the birds in the 'yard in the first place, well, then yeah, you need something else.

[Whitefaces]

https://i.imgur.com/fou53Eb.png?1

Here's a game-state that shows some of the flexibility. It came off the top in an iffy start where I'd been hit with repeated discard; it snagged 3x Dark Ritual here; guaranteed 3x spells for buried alive. (I'd already had cabal therapy extirpated at this point).

Mmm this is nice! I'll give it a whirl soon as you say.


Fair enough, 'twas just an idea. Indeed, if the issue at hand is getting the birds in the 'yard in the first place, well, then yeah, you need something else.

Yeah all good, thanks for suggesting it! The deck can play out differently to how it looks on face value and is a bit unintuitive in spots, so a lot of the common suggestions are focusing on either free spells, or something that helps the quota of 3, but in the end those two are mostly covered by the combo of Ritual and Buried Alive themselves, we just want to play towards that.

[H]

Yeah all good, thanks for suggesting it! The deck can play out differently to how it looks on face value and is a bit unintuitive in spots, so a lot of the common suggestions are focusing on either free spells, or something that helps the quota of 3, but in the end the end those two are mostly covered by the combo of Ritual and Buried Alive themselves, we just want to play towards that.

That makes sense. I guess I was also thinking how it could enable Entomb to get several birds, but like you said, at the cost of 4 mana total for 2 birds, it's likely not worth it. At that point, you really need to be worried that Daze just invalidates the whole line, really.

[Hisa]

I kind of wonder if the fact Phoenix's wording might actually make Regrowth playable. I mean, spell, Regrowth spell, spell again is three right there. Just thinking it would be something where Snapcaster really wouldn't cut it the same way. If that spell happens to be Bolt, that is a good chunk of damage if you've got a few Phoenix in the grumper.

Seems like Mission Briefing is this but better.

[H]

Seems like Mission Briefing is this but better.

Likely true. Means you don't need to be in Green, you can dump birds off the Library, especially if you put them there via Brainstorm. It's still likely too slow, versus the Buried Alive plan.

[youngphx]

Hey Guys! Just wanted to share my card list that I was able to make my first top 8 with at the Seattle 1k this past weekend with. Feel free to tear it apart but here it is!

Creatures & Planeswalker
3 Dark Confidant
3 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
1 liliana, the last hope

Instant & Sorceries
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
3 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Buried Alive
2 Daze
3 Lotus Petal
2 Lightning Bolt
2 surgical extractions

Lands
4 Polluted Dela
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sb:
2 tormods crypt
2 dragons claw
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Engineered Plague
1 alpine moon
2 Abrade
2 Goblin Cratermaker
1 spell pierce
1 flusterstorm
2 Echoing Truth

[Whitefaces]

Nice job! How were the Surgical Extractions and Dazes?

I'm not fully on board with cutting discard spells and a Preordain honestly, especially a Cabal Therapy.




Last night I did some exhibition matches with Phil Gallagher of Thraben University, you can find the VOD here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/401193076

We played 5 matches with Phoenix going 3-2, though I feel like I messed up one of the G3s. The was a really cool game in the middle, ~the 50 minute mark, that's well worth watching.

[youngphx]

I found that surgicals in the main was a huge bonus. As it’s flexes to combo turn 1 without a lotus petal and allows you to protect your combo from other surgicals in the event you have to rebuild your board state. And it can also allow as another means of discard and gathering hand knowledge of your opponent when you surgical something if there’s. As for the daze, I kept a really proactive side board plan as I was consistently able to bait my opponent to try counter my combo when I’m tapped out on my turn. Or when I’m tapped out on their turn and they try and get an important card down. So I found that both of these in the main proved to be really fruitful

[youngphx]

Played the same deck list at our weekly legacy event you can see here against Miracles, surgical and daze won me the game honestly with what I was able to disrupt.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/401301923?t=02h18m50s

[JayJay2101]

Played the same deck list at our weekly legacy event you can see here against Miracles, surgical and daze won me the game honestly with what I was able to disrupt.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/401301923?t=02h18m50s

You actually cheated in that game :/ You shuffled back polluted delta and cabal therapy when the judge came to tell you that young pyromancers should be on the exile zone

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/401301923?t=02h21m45s

[youngphx]

You actually cheated in that game :/ You shuffled back polluted delta and cabal therapy when the judge came to tell you that young pyromancers should be on the exile zone

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/401301923?t=02h21m45s

Did I really??? I didn’t even notice

[youngphx]

You actually cheated in that game :/ You shuffled back polluted delta and cabal therapy when the judge came to tell you that young pyromancers should be on the exile zone

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/401301923?t=02h21m45s

I’m going to see if I can forfeit that match so the points go to her next Monday nthank you for pointing that out

[RogueMTG]

Did anyone else take the birds to GP Niagara? How did it go?

I played a more or less stock Young Pyro/Bob build in a Friday LCQ and the Main Event to some uninspired results.

The roughest matches were against Merfolk & D&T. They each had an early chalice backed up by disruptive dudes and I just couldn't find answers in time.

LCQ: 2-1
2-0: Shared Fate
2-1: Grixis Delver
1-2: Eldrazi

GP: 2-3
2-0: Infect
2-0: Sneak and Show
1-2: Burn
0-2: Merfolk w/Chalice
0-2: D&T w/Chalice


I changed it up to this storm build for the Sunday MCQ: http://www.starcitygames.com/decks/127450

MCQ (storm): 3-2
2-1: BR Reanimator
1-2: Though-knot Affinity
2-0: Stoneblade
2-0: Grixis Delver
0-2: Grixis Delver

I liked the storm build a lot more. It felt very powerful - I had a lot of turn 1/2 Phoenix's, often also with protection. The Tendrils back-up if the phoenix plan gets answered was really strong. It was catching everyone off-guard, and especially easy to pull off if you get in one or two hits with some number of birds.

Sideboarding out the whole phoenix package into Ad Nauseam if they didn't see Tendrils in Game 1 was also pretty spicy. It was able to deaden most of their graveyard hate and creature removal that gets left in.

[maharis]

I also went 3-2 in the Sunday mcq

Storm 2-0
Humans 2–1
UW blade 2–1
Applejacks 1-2
Lands 0-2

The mox diamond decks were brutal in getting lock pieces out early.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kombatkiwi]

Has anyone tested this deck using Dreadhorde Arcanist in the Bob slot?

Unfortunately due to the timing of the trigger you can't use the Arcanist ability to directly help you to return Phoenixes (because it happens after beginning of combat) but you can use it to sculpt your hand with cantrips to return Phoenixes the next turn

It's getting a lot of hype in Delver decks and here it might be even better, it has synergy with more of the spells in the Phoenix deck because you have all 12 cantrips and 8 discardspells (rather than Fow/Daze).
I wouldn't immediately suggest that the ability to flashback Entomb means that the deck would move away from Buried Alive but that's also possibly something to consider.

[youngphx]

Has anyone tested this deck using Dreadhorde Arcanist in the Bob slot?

Unfortunately due to the timing of the trigger you can't use the Arcanist ability to directly help you to return Phoenixes (because it happens after beginning of combat) but you can use it to sculpt your hand with cantrips to return Phoenixes the next turn

It's getting a lot of hype in Delver decks and here it might be even better, it has synergy with more of the spells in the Phoenix deck because you have all 12 cantrips and 8 discardspells (rather than Fow/Daze).
I wouldn't immediately suggest that the ability to flashback Entomb means that the deck would move away from Buried Alive but that's also possibly something to consider.

Played it against 3 dredge matches last night. I’ll post my decklist later today. But I think it is more consistently powerful towards helping getting combo by turn 3 or 4. If not disrupting the ever living hell out of my opponent.

[kombatkiwi]

The minmax blog also uploaded a video of a league with it but he didn't draw it very often.
I think there is some upside to the fact that Bob gives the card in your upkeep so you can use it to make a phoenix chain immediately, and your graveyard can also sometimes run out of gas, but overall the Arcanist is probably slightly stronger? Unsure

[kombatkiwi]

I'm talking about a hypothetical build that does include all of those cards, because I think that Land Grant might be good but I also think that not playing Ritual/Buried in your phoenix deck is a mistake

This guy went undefeated until the finals of the most recent challenge and his current MTGO record is 4-1, 5-0, 1-0, 10-1
https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/cvr7z4/jund_phoenix_101_legacy_challenge_2nd_place/

4 Young Pyromancer
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Bedlam Reveler

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Faithless Looting
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rite of Flame
4 Thoughtseize
1 Abrade
1 Assassin's Trophy
4 Land Grant
4 Buried Alive

3 Badlands
1 Bayou
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Mountain
1 Swamp
2 Taiga
1 Wooded Foothills

2 Alpine Moon
1 Pithing Needle
2 Pyroblast
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Collector Ouphe
2 Plague Engineer
1 Bloodhall Priest
4 Leyline of the Void

The Bedlam Reveler plan seems really good

[mistercakes]

he wrote about it on reddit.

"I went on a tear through the legacy challenge yesterday (8/25/19) losing only in the finals. I also had this 5-0 list drop the same day in the league decklist dump, so I figured there would be enough buzz surrounding my deck that I should probably do a quick write-up for anyone who is interested.

History

My original build was pre-Phoenix and looked something like:
Guys: Deathrite, Young Pyro, Reveler
Disruption: Therapy, TS, Bolt
Velocity: Rite of Flame, Probe, Manamorphose
Filtering: Looting, Brainstorm
I played that list quite a bit (including an EW and SCG Open). Results were unspectacular but promising. After the DRS/Probe banning it got shelved until Phoenix was released. I essentially swapped the DRS, Probes and Brainstorms for Phoenix, Buried Alive and Dark Ritual.

Latest Results

I played this deck at GP Niagara and I did solid. I intentionally drew round 15 to cash (and finished 1 spot out of cash, pfftt). I started strong but ran into some bad matchups down the stretch in day 2.

After the legacy GP, modern was my focus where I brewed up this little gem in preparation for GP Dallas, which has since started picking up steam. Note the B&R announcement just dropped as I was writing this and now this deck is going to be a house. After I broke modern (half joking), I jumped back into my preferred format and started re-tuning the reveler deck.

Currently I’m on a pretty hot run. I’m 4-1, 5-0, 1-0, 10-1, over my last Mtgo events with the current build. (The 1-0 is a league I started before the challenge and haven’t finished). The 4-1 league I legit punted round 5 and it should have been another trophy if I didn’t misclick. So my 16 consecutive wins on Mtgo was almost 21, only broken up by that misclick.

Deck

The best thing about this deck is the ability to play the degenerate combo game and the fair grindy game at the same time. Both of these angles package nicely into coherent shell where all the cards inter-synergize with one another.

You threaten birds out of nowhere as early as turn 1. Your other game plan is shredding the opponents hand with Thoughtseize, Pyro/Therapy and using reveler to gas back up after you’ve 1-1 traded all relevant recourses. Turn 1 Thoughtseize, Turn 2 Rite of Flame, Pyromancer, Therapy, Flash Therapy is nice little opener.

Reveler (a.k.a. Tarmcestral) is just an insanely powerful magic card that I don’t feel people ever quite figured out. He’s dodges bolt, push, decay and rumbles with anglers and tarmo, oh and he draws THREE cards. The thing with reveler is he wants to be paired with proactive interaction (i.e. discard). He fares much more poorly alongside forces and dazes. Even if you have to toss a ritual or two to the wind in order to get that first reveler on-line, that’s fine, you are just now that much closer to chaining into another one (assuming you aren’t just making birds now). You can have some big turns casting rituals and floating mana into the cards you draw with reveler. Sequences like “dark rit, rite of flame, reveler with three black in the pool, draw into buried, make birds” are not uncommon.

Don’t underestimate hard casting the birds either. I’ve had games where opponent mulls to leyline only to get walloped by something like turn 1 rite of flame, pyromancer, turn 2 ritual Phoenix attack.

The mana looks shaky at a glance but I assure you it is really clean and very stable. You have 18 mana sources including land grant, which is crucial for this deck. We essentially are straight BR deck that plays some bayous and taigas just to facilitate land grant and that’s about all the green does. Land grant is the extra spell for Phoenix and how you get them on turn 1. It triggers pyromancer and fuels reveler. We have 2 mountains and a swamp and can function perfectly fine off of all basics.

While on the subject of free spells, manamorphose is fine in this deck. I played 3 copies at the GP (over the two random 1 ofs and a thoughtseize). They help the deck run a little smoother but I am now using those slots for answers, not air. If you crank up the green splash, manamorphose gets a little better.

Matchups

The whole stretch of fair blue decks (Delver, Miracles, 4C piles, etc. ) is where this deck shines. I think we are favored vs the lot of them in the aggregate. Note that the Rest in Peace + Energy Field deck is virtually un-winnable.

Depths (all flavors) are pretty rough. We don’t have a lot of great tools to fight 20/20s. Don’t even bother playing any edicts since it isn’t ever enough and Plague Engineer is where we want to be vs TNN. I currently like alpine moon over blood moon (which I played at the GP) but it’s still not exciting. Between moon and needle we have 3 pieces of 1 mana interaction and we have plague engineer to name vampire. Lands (the deck) tends to feel a little better than the pure depths decks.

Moon Stompy is also very rough. When Eldrazi decks where the popular chalice decks it was much better for us. You can play more GB removal like trophy/Decay and you have null rod effects (for the monolith decks). I even briefly played some tarmos in the sideboard to swap with reveler in order to have another big beater versus leyline. The problem is GB removal doesn’t work versus moon decks (sometimes they board out moons but you can’t count on that). So just the mix of chalice, leyline and moons shutting off your best cards to deal with those types of things, combine for a bad time.

Elves and Taxes have both felt like fairly decent matchups. I definitely don’t feel behind. Plague Engineer and removal is really all that’s going on here. Maverick however is a bit worse than taxes. Knight can outsize reveler and we can’t really interact with cradle so they are able to lay it on pretty thick. While on the subject of Knight, 4C Loam is also a pretty tough matchup since they are like a maverick with chalice.

Storm (ANT) has felt good and is the best combo matchup. Sticking an early threat to make their ad nauseum kills tougher while also tearing apart their grip is a good plan versus them. When you open with a leyline they have trouble going off through so much discard since they need a critical mass of cards. TES is better versus us as they can go underneath discard and aren’t reliant on PiF kill. Reanimator is almost like a mirror, leyline does a ton of work. Show and Tell Decks are the toughest combo matchups. Unlike storm they can just counter your discard to protect their combo. I currently have a needle for Sneak Attack and a couple red blasts to help fight over show and tell.

Sideboarding

Generally I will board out some number of Dark Rituals and Buried Alive versus decks packing Surgical. (which is a majority of the field). I will also board out some revelers versus decks packing leyline. I like having another medium sized threat in the SB to help have some more threats versus grave hate. Overall, sideboarding isn’t too difficult. Bring in leyline versus graveyard decks, grudges versus artifacts, red blasts versus blue decks, plague engineers versus TNN and decks packing x/1s.

What about Grixis Phoenix?

As I mentioned, this deck was built from an older dedicated Reveler deck with probe and Deathrite. It wasn’t an attempt to improve or change what Grixis was trying to do. That being said, there are some similarities and pros/cons to each. The biggest advantage to Grixis is the cantrips. Ponder and Brainstorm really help smooth things out. The issue however, is that deck didn’t really have much game once the phoenix’s got surgicaled. Bob really isn’t a scary threat where as pyromancer and reveler can close out games quickly. Bob also dies to just about everything so he is a bit fragile which makes pulling ahead on cards more difficult. The real difference though is that grixis is a dedicated phoenix deck and we are a dedicated reveler deck that also plays phoenix.

Conclusion

I think this deck is very good and clearly it is capable of putting up some decent results. I will say though I think the meta is a little too hostile for this deck right now. Moon stompy and depths are the worst matchups and those decks are extremely popular right now. I will be playing in ATL and Bologna and there is a 50% I play this deck. I am hoping some of these depths deck simmer down but we’ll see how things shape up.

TL;DR

This deck is GAS. It preys on fair blue decks and storm (ANT). It is soft to moon stompy, depths and show and tell. Bedlam reveler is severely overpowered and underplayed, but it requires playing discard over permission as interaction to properly utilize."

[wcm8]

If the UW Rest in Peace/Energy Field deck ever became popular, an easy sideboard answer to it is Reverent Silence. Might be worth considering to deal with Leyline of the Void as well, particularly if that card becomes a more popular sideboard option.

[Tobitzki]

Man, I love KyFly's list. Great job with all the work and the recent results. Made me consider finally picking up those Phoenixes, now that they're getting soft after the Modern bans. However, investing in, not one but TWO otherwise pretty useless Taigas is just not gonna happen for me--not now and if we're being real, probably not ever. (There's a list of 4-12 other duals on my wish list before I'd get around to those.)

So, here's a budget-minded question for anyone who's been dabbling in the Land Grant tech. I understand that LG = spell + mana fix + no card disadvantage = smiles all around; but how viable would KyFly's list be if we simply replaced the 4 Land Grants & 2 random/meta-tuned 2cmc 1-ofs (here Trophy & Abrade) with a mix of 4 Gut Shots & Lava Darts, 1 Light Up the Stage plus 1 additional land? (And maybe throw some Shenanigans and Angrath's Rampage in the side for the Ancient Grudges)

Yes, this reduces our shot at T1ing 'em, but Gut Shot could still get us there & Lava Dart offers the structural/spell-cost equivalent of Therapies. By my purely intuitive math this may be alright?

[kombatkiwi]

Man, I love KyFly's list. Great job with all the work and the recent results. Made me consider finally picking up those Phoenixes, now that they're getting soft after the Modern bans. However, investing in, not one but TWO otherwise pretty useless Taigas is just not gonna happen for me--not now and if we're being real, probably not ever. (There's a list of 4-12 other duals on my wish list before I'd get around to those.)

So, here's a budget-minded question for anyone who's been dabbling in the Land Grant tech. I understand that LG = spell + mana fix + no card disadvantage = smiles all around; but how viable would KyFly's list be if we simply replaced the 4 Land Grants & 2 random/meta-tuned 2cmc 1-ofs (here Trophy & Abrade) with a mix of 4 Gut Shots & Lava Darts, 1 Light Up the Stage plus 1 additional land? (And maybe throw some Shenanigans and Angrath's Rampage in the side for the Ancient Grudges)

Yes, this reduces our shot at T1ing 'em, but Gut Shot could still get us there & Lava Dart offers the structural/spell-cost equivalent of Therapies. By my purely intuitive math this may be alright?

Land Grant is effectively part of the manabase, if you straight swap it for Gut Shots you're going to be manascrewed a greater amount of the time and if you cut it for lands then the deck is going to be much less explosive

Somebody asked a similar question in the comments on the reddit thread:


How important is the second Taiga? Is it just another forest to grab with Land Grant versus Wasteland decks?

The second taiga is pretty important. If you draw a taiga and need to land grant and don’t have a second it’s pretty bad. You are better off playing a stomping ground over just one taiga.

What about the third Badlands? :)

I would run a shock land over anything else if you are short duals.

[Tobitzki]

@kombatkiwi: Yea, I saw the reddit thread, thanks for pointing me there. But this doesn't exactly address/engage my question tbh. Let me adjust, for argument's sake, my pitch: - 4LD & 2 2cmc randos; + 2 Gut Shot, 2 Lava Dart, 2 Lands. Now we're at 16 Lands (i.e. e.g. the tried-and-tested non-Wasteland UR Delver build) + 8 Rituals. Less explosive, ok. But I thought that 18 mana sources with the LD package looked like a little bit much to begin with. And we've now replaced 4 (2x2) mana to spend and 6 spells to cast across 6 cards with 2 mana and 6 cast spells, ergo moving from 18 down to 16 sources. If you--or anyone else who's tested the deck--tells me that the T1 percentage enabled by LD is absolutely essential for making the deck work (we are moving from 4 T1 enablers in LD to 2 with only 2 Gut Shots), then fine. But I'm not convinced that this avenue is not worth pursuing at this point. Showing yr hand vs. pinging-for-one (or 2 with Lava Darts) also somehow has to enter the equation.

[Zbynda]

I brewed this over the weekend. I was inspired by that jund phoenix deck, and I wanted to port modern Hollow Phoenix to legacy for a long time.
Manabase is budget, because i don't have the right duals.

creatures (12)
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Bedlam Reveler
4 Hollow One

spells (33)
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Faithless Looting
4 Land Grant
2 Lightning Bolt
4 Burning Inquiry
2 Thoughtseize
1 Lava Dart
1 Assasin's trophy
1 Abrade
4 mox diamond

Lands (15)
3 Taiga
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Swamp
2 Mountain

I like mox+looting into Hollow Ones, but Inquiry is too random, even for this kind of deck. Maybe a blue splash for Careful Study instead of Inquiry would be worth it.(UG dual for Land Grant + moxen could be enough)

[kombatkiwi]

@kombatkiwi: Yea, I saw the reddit thread, thanks for pointing me there. But this doesn't exactly address/engage my question tbh. Let me adjust, for argument's sake, my pitch: - 4LD & 2 2cmc randos; + 2 Gut Shot, 2 Lava Dart, 2 Lands. Now we're at 16 Lands (i.e. e.g. the tried-and-tested non-Wasteland UR Delver build) + 8 Rituals. Less explosive, ok. But I thought that 18 mana sources with the LD package looked like a little bit much to begin with. And we've now replaced 4 (2x2) mana to spend and 6 spells to cast across 6 cards with 2 mana and 6 cast spells, ergo moving from 18 down to 16 sources. If you--or anyone else who's tested the deck--tells me that the T1 percentage enabled by LD is absolutely essential for making the deck work (we are moving from 4 T1 enablers in LD to 2 with only 2 Gut Shots), then fine. But I'm not convinced that this avenue is not worth pursuing at this point. Showing yr hand vs. pinging-for-one (or 2 with Lava Darts) also somehow has to enter the equation.

It's not only that there are fewer enablers but also that the enablers are worse.
For example if you go Land Grant, Ritual, Buried Alive, and then later your opponent plays terminus or something (or Surgicals your phoenixes), then you got 2-for-1 essentially (the ritual and the buried alive traded for Terminus).
If you change this equation to involve Gut Shot then not only do you need more pieces to go off (because you need a land plus gut shot rather than just land grant), but if your opponent answers it then you're down an additional resource because you burned another card to ping your opponent for 1.

Pinging for 1 has some use but the format is already shifting away from decks that are vulnerable to this because of Wrenn and Plague Engineer

I haven't tested it yet so this is speculation at this point on my part, but this is how it seems to me at the moment

[Tobitzki]

Well, after putting in some more thought and research--going back through the forum and scouring the tubes & reddits, I think I'd like to actually double-down on ... Lava Dart. Hear me out.

So Gut Shot apparently works great as a little glue/bridge card in an Arclight Shadow build (dope!) someone named BoltBolt brewed up earlier this year (for reference: https://boltbird.com/p/building-grixis-arclight-shadow-in-legacy), but you're probably correct in that it would be too underpowered in the Bedlam version. We don't need T1 Birds that bad, which is also how @whitefaces felt after testing with Land Grants. As now corroborated by Mengucci's (sloppy but much appreciated Veedio from this week): Boy does it suck having your land drops Dazed and Duressed.

@whitefaces wrote (p.9 #177):

"So for that downside we're gaining a free spell, essentially raising the roof of the deck for more turn one potential. This is something I've been actively trying to more away from because the deck is better than being a Force Check deck. I very rarely go for turn ones if I have any kind of discard or cantrips to sculpt and clear the way, this is exactly why the deck is good, because we have this flexibility and control over the game. Since we found a strong shell, the main thing I want to work on is reign in the ceiling of the deck to maximise the floor and consistency."

So this is my proposed adjustment--if we accept that KyFly's Revelers (basically in lieu of Grixis' Bobs) + 8 Rituals provide enough power, card draw and redundancy to make the list work consistently without the blue Xerox cards:

4 Phoenix
4 Pyromancer
3 Bedlam Reveler
1 Kiln Fiend / Gurmag Angler / Dangerous Wager?

4 Bolt
3 Lava Dart
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Looting
1 Light Up the Stage

4 Rite of Flame
4 Dark Ritual

8 Fetches (incl. 2 Vistas)
4 Badlands
3 Mountain
1 Swamp

Think how much Lava Dart facilitates our game plan at almost every stage: Insane with Buried Alive and Pyromancer, it's an instant-speed Forked Bolt across two castings. It is an unspectacular but super flexible utility effect. Once in the GY, the 2nd half is live (almost) completely independent of board state (unlike Therapy). And going from 12 to 15 flashback spells (incl. the birds) in a deck with Lootings and Revelers as prime card draw engines seems important. It can ping away any Delver, Thalia, both Moms, all of Dark Depths' little helpers, Strixes, a downticked W6, even Plague Engineer himself while providing crucial reach in a deck that wants to dole out damage in batches of 9. We only have so many Mountains to sac, which is why 3 seems like a good number (still enough of a strain to shave a Reveler) and the staggered pings make Light Up the Stage a viable option as an extra cantrip.

This ought to considerably enhance our chances of T2 Phoenixes with lines like T1 Dart into T2 (either) Ritual > Buried Alive + flashback Dart or T1 Looting, discard Dart & Phoenix into easy 3-spell shenanigans T2. But it also makes mid-game Phoenixes & Elemental armies so much more potent.

In Mengucci's league (again, I know: not the best display of the deck's potential), almost every single Land Grant I saw would have been more useful as a Lava Dart.

As for the mana base: I went to 24 (16 lands + 8 Rituals) from what used to be 22 (15+3 Petals+4 Rituals in whitefaces' Grixis, with Xerox), then 26 (14+4 LG + 8 Rituals in KyFly's list) while going down to 7-8 2-drops, incl. Revelers, from KyFly's 10. It's also less vulnerable to WL. Hopefully that's enough. I'll be testing it out next month.

[kombatkiwi]

Think how much Lava Dart facilitates our game plan at almost every stage: Insane with Buried Alive and Pyromancer,
Just making sure you know that you can't dump Lava Dart into the graveyard with Buried Alive

It seems reasonable and I will wait for your results
I will watch the mengucci video also

There is also the new card spoiled which seems like it could be very good for this deck:


"Once upon a time" 1G Instant
Look at the top 5 cards of your library. You may reveal a creature or land from there and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.
If this is the first spell you cast in the game then it can be cast without paying its mana cost


Is another turn-1-zero-mana spell that replaces itself (like land grant) to enable Phoenix plays, while in the midgame helping to dig for Reveler.

[Tobitzki]

Just making sure you know that you can't dump Lava Dart into the graveyard with Buried Alive

lol, yea BA as shorthand for the Phoenix plan here, obviously. Reigniting those birds mid-game just becomes that much more feasible with an extra double spell in the deck. (Again: it's structured like Therapy, only with a less conditional 2nd half.)

Another thought: Perhaps Rotting Regisaur should take that 4th Reveler slot? Another Ritual payoff and incidental discard outlet for our GY shenanigans.


"Once Upon a Time" does look super sexy, if you're otherwise ready to go off; just might get awkward when you scry away that Ritual or Buried Alive you needed. Definitely worth exploring though

[kombatkiwi]

The Jund version of this deck made top 8 (top 4?) at the Legacy PTQ at GP Atlanta
I think an exact copy of the kyfly list from the challenge