Grixis Phoenix

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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/c...nge_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

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."

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.

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?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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?

---

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:

Quote:

---

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.

---

@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.

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)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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.

---

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

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-grix...adow-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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tobitzki

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:

Quote:

---

"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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kombatkiwi

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

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