Demented Phoenix Concept

[rufus]

Just working through a dubious idea...

Looking through the new set, I noticed that Lamplight Phoenix can combine with Altar of Dementia to mill the whole library while also repeatedly setting off death triggers. That makes for a pretty straightforward combo with Bridge from Below: Mill the library into the gravyard, produce a horde of zombies, and then mill the opponent's library. Something like Anger can also give the zombie tokens haste from the graveyard which would plausibly be an alternative way to win.

The deck needs to exile cards with a total of CMC 4 (or more) from the graveyard for every 3 cards that are milled with some extra left over so that the combo pieces can remain and do work. That means that the average CMC should be above 4/3, and it probably makes sense to try to pack the deck with as many cards that have cmc>=4 as practically feasible. There is a decent number of cards with alternative or reduced casting like Force of Will, Force of Vigor,Fury, and Leyline Binding that fit with that kind of game plan.

So a deck list might look something like:

22 Lands

Combo pieces

4 Alter of Dementia
4 Lamplight Phoenix
4 Bridge from Below
2 Anger


Filtering

4 Brainstorm
4 Faithless Looting
4 Careful Study


Utility

4 Force of Will
4 Brazen Borrower
4 Fury


Having written that out, I can't help but think that it would be nice to have better self-mill synergy to justify running those Altars of Dementia. I'm not sure if this concept can avoid turning into bad hogaak.

[FTW]

Phoenix mills 3 / Hogaak mills 8.

So even though Phoenix needs less to return, there's also more variance to whether you hit the right CMCs in the top 3 cards.

You also need to recur Phoenix 16+ times; Hogaak does the same with 6 iterations.

To avoid being a bad Hogaak/Dredge clone, the deck needs a unique engine. Hogaak needs raw # of cards, Phoenix needs a lot of 4+ CMC.

Instead of Careful Study effects (bad reveals with Phoenix), I think you want to cheat up CMCs as much as possible:
- Modal effects (Lorien Revealed, Troll)
- Alternate cost cards (Force of Will, Grief)
- MDFC lands with 4+ CMC
- Split cards (low CMC to cast, counts as high CMC)

At that point you could even use 3CMC cascade to put Altar in play and SB into Rhinos vs grave hate?

The hardest part is Phoenix must start in hand/battlefield, not the grave. Hogaak can start in the grave. So you need to get 2 things on the battlefield: Phoenix & Altar.

When you need A+B to mill your deck, is this a worse Cephalid Breakfast?

When you need to resolve a 1RR creature to mill your deck and use MDFC to reduce land count, why not a 2B or 3B creature instead?

[rufus]

...
The hardest part is Phoenix must start in hand/battlefield, not the grave. Hogaak can start in the grave. So you need to get 2 things on the battlefield: Phoenix & Altar.

When you need A+B to mill your deck, is this a worse Cephalid Breakfast?
...

Yeah, I think that that's much more of an issue than potential challenges with reliably getting enough CMC into the graveyard is.

Thanks for the insightful commentary.

[Zoid]

Phoenix can at least turn sideways and win but Altar just sits there and does nothing without the birb.
Then you can also lose against yourself if you don't hit the cmc or have to exile combo pieces to continue.
I think the hoops you have to jump through to make this at least only semi-bad is too much.
In this case breakfast > chicken dinner on the altar.