Phoenix Brew
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Hi,
I saw the phoenix deck running around in legacy and wanted to see if I could port it to vintage with some obvious improvements. This deck is not 100% refined but has the ability to provide some absolutely busted draws 21 power on the first turn with no interaction etc.
Please let me know your thoughts, the list is below.
Sorcery (18)
4x Buried Alive
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Faithless Looting
1x Gitaxian Probe
3x Thoughtseize
1x Time Walk
Land (16)
2x Badlands
4x Bazaar of Baghdad
3x Polluted Delta
3x Scalding Tarn
2x Underground Sea
2x Volcanic Island
Artifact (6)
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
Creature (14)
4x Arclight Phoenix
3x Basking Rootwalla
4x Hollow One
4x Prized Amalgam
Instant (6)
1x Ancestral Recall
4x Dark Ritual
2x Mental Misstep
Sideboard (15)
2x Gut Shot
3x Hydroblast
4x Pyroblast
2x Silent Gravestone
2x Tormod's Crypt
2x Young PyromancerEdit-Removing Additional Probes
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@rodtrav Vintage has Survival which is pretty much a strictly better version of this deck.
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Probe is restricted.
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Yes you are indeed correct about probe I should have looked thanks. I felt that this deck and survival were different but I could have been mistaken. Survival feels more like a grindy Toolbox deck that has answers to everything. When i was brewing the above list I was more worried about if it would just be a worse dredge.
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@rodtrav said in Phoenix Brew:
Yes you are indeed correct about probe I should have looked thanks. I felt that this deck and survival were different but I could have been mistaken. Survival feels more like a grindy Toolbox deck that has answers to everything. When i was brewing the above list I was more worried about if it would just be a worse dredge.
Survival's strength is that it can opt into playing either the grindy toolbox style or the explosive comboish style, depending on what's appropriate to the matchup and/or game state. Not to say that Phoenix isn't worth trying, but getting some games in with Survival might bring the strengths and weakness of this deck into relief somewhat. Something that jumps out at me is this: is there much synergy between Phoenix/Buried Alive and Bazaar/Rootwalla/Hollow One? In Survival the latter package works because Rootwalla and Hollow One are reanimate Vengevines, so the only "extra" card is Bazaar which works with all of it, but unless I'm missing something you just have two separate game plans, right?
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@craw_advantage I do have what seems like two seperate game plans but there were many times where I would have two to 3 phoenix in my hand and a Buried Alive, making the Buried Alive useless. I then added the Bazaar to be able to discard them. The Prized Amalgam's were added as a natural card for synergy with Phoenix coming out of the GY. Sometimes in testing I did not have any of the above but was able to get three hollow one's in play off of the back of one activation of a Bazaar.
The Rootawala's are probably the weakest card and the easiest cut. I am by no means saying this is a fine tuned list but perhaps a start. Getting to three spells is pretty trivial in vintage and wanted to give it a try.
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I made something similar. I was doing well in the practice room but terrible in leagues. Maybe you can salvage it.
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@Rodtrav I would say you need to copy more from the Legacy decklist. I see a lot of different gameplans going on here and you need to be more focused. I would suggest adding around 3 Young Pyromancer to the maindeck and cutting the Amalgams and Rootwallas as they do not contribute to your plan of casting spells and generating massive value for a low cost. Additionally you probably do not need Faithless Looting if you have Bazaar. I would also recommend upping the number of Mental Misstep to at the very least 3 as it helps you resolve most of your key spells. I would also suggest cutting some number of Dark Ritual and Buried Alive since Bazaar is so darn efficient at what it does. If you want more discard outlets I would suggest some number of Vintage all-star Dack Fayden. For the Sideboard I would suggest cutting the Silent Gravestones because Surgical is not played in Vintage nearly as much as Legacy and would also suggest cutting the Hydroblast for some more Shops and Dredge hate.
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I played Grixis Phoenix a few weeks ago but unfortunately did not save the decklist.
My build was more like a modified Grixis Pyromancer deck. With 4 Cabal Therapies, some number of Thoughtseizes, and of course 4 Buried Alive, looting and other GY powering effects weren't really necessary.
Here's the one pic I took that has a lot of cards in it that should give an idea of what my decklist looked like.
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Deep Analysis seems too good not to play, right?
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@wfain said in Phoenix Brew:
Deep Analysis seems too good not to play, right?
and Collective Brutality
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@nedleeds What about Ancient Grudge?
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There was a thread for Bazaar control, by @YakuzaXRock I think. Perhaps some inspiration can be found there?
In fact, I think I’ll work on something this afternoon. I’m thinking Loam/Wasteland/Strip Mine all sound lovely. Ancient Grudge, Deep Analysis, maybe even Accumulated Knowledge...
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@wfain You have to watch out though that you do not lean to heavily on your graveyard or you will risk having very tough post-sideboard games like Dredge.
"Pitch Dredge is the worst thing to happen to Vintage this decade." - 2015 Vintage Champion Brian Kelly
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@rat3de in my experience developing Survival, that’s not really true when you play normal cards. Phoenix, for example, is castable and is a decent clock. Wasteland/Strip Mine are fine cards and offer a quality plan even without using Loam. They just happen to work together.
Edit: I lied, not working on this. Phoenix are over 50 tix. Not spending that much to brew rn.
