Today, I'm hosting an article from my good friend Danny Batterman, @DBatterskull on Twitter. Danny has played a LOT of Brainstorm in his time battling Legacy and Vintage, and immediately jumped on the chance for more of it in Historic. And given the (largely accurate) urban legends of me leaving mid-game in testing in response to bad Brainstorms, the fact that I trust him on the subject should mean something big.
Danny has a lot of opinions that make a ton of sense about Phoenix and are clearly based on good fundamentals from those years of Brainstorming, but the interesting part to me is how much players who I respect on the subjects of Brainstorm, Faithless Looting, and Arclight Phoenix diverge within the same basic principles.
Just under a month ago, Ross Merriam wrote about his guidelines for Izzet Phoenix. Ross's credentials with Arclight Phoenix are really untouchable, he literally was the person that refined and drove the Izzet Phoenix deck to its Best Deck in Modern status.
Just under a week ago, Gerry Thompson wrote a detailed primer on Arclight Phoenix (currently on SCG Premium, but it will be free to read as of Friday May 12th). Again, we are talking someone with clear cut credentials on the subject. Years of Brainstorming for a paycheck on the SCGTour, a Pro Tour 2nd place with a fair Faithless Looting deck. And he doesn't entirely line up with Ross or Danny.
What does it mean that so many players who clearly know the fundamentals of what they are talking about disagree?
First, I think there's a lot to be taken from where they agree. Some things are approaching being all caps CORRECT, and you need reasons and then some more reasons to deviate from those.
Second, I think once you start down the Brainstorm and Faithless Looting roads there's a lot of ways to be correct. Danny does a great job of explaining the details here, but you don't have to draw your conditional cards when they are bad.
Finally, I think finding the actual truth in Historic is hard to find. Not only are you "generalizing from sample sizes too small to draw real conclusions", you are doing that from noisy Arena ladder data in a format whose fundamentals are only roughly defined and rapidly change with each crazy release. And again, that's a spot where you want to know all the ways to be correct.
So, here is Danny doing his best to tell you how to Izzet Phoenix the right way, and the other right way, and maybe the other other right way?
-Ari
Intro
My intro is going to be a lot more casual than it could be. In fact, there it was. Here are my thoughts about Arclight Phoenix, aka Birbs, in Historic. This article will range from overall macro thoughts about the deck as a whole, its place in the meta, and how to approach deck building along with micro thoughts on the individual card choices along the way.
Macro: Why Phoenix?
Phoenix is really the first traditional Turbo Xerox (Xerox) deck since Historic’s inception. For those who aren’t paper boomers and may not know the term, Xerox decks are decks that have a high cantrip density to make up for a lower land count. This ideally allows Xerox decks to mitigate flooding in the mid to late game by having more spells than lands in the deck. The other hallmark of Xerox decks is low cost threat/disruption necessitated by having to have a lower curve due to the aforementioned lack of lands. W/B Auras kind of filled this role pre-Strixhaven, but the selection came from cheap draw engines compared to actual busted cantrips. With the introduction of two of the five best cantrips of all time, Brainstorm and Faithless Looting, Historic finally has cantrips powerful enough to lean on. I believe Phoenix is the best way to take advantage of these two spells. Looting is pretty obvious - you discard your birbs (or other dead cards) to it and profit. Brainstorm is more nuanced, and will have its own section dedicated to it.
The other selling point of Xerox decks is their velocity/ability to see cardboard. Because so many of your spells are cantrips, the selection ability you have is well beyond decks that take advantage of this style of deck construction. That leads to intricate game play that allows you to leverage their decision making ability both in what cards to take at what time off cantrips, how to sequence spells, and timing of what/when to cast. That’s not to say Phoenix is a “smarter” deck choice compared to something like R/W Prowess. I hate those kinds of arguments. There are particular skill sets that each deck rewards compared to others, and learning those skill sets takes intelligence and time. These are just the particular ones that Phoenix brings to the table.
Macro: Splashing?
Short answer: Don’t
Long answer: There are some compelling cards you want to splash for. Abundant Harvest is a unique cantrip in a pure Xerox sense because it will always let you hit land drops when you need them or find you gas when you need it. Thoughtseize provides a different angle of disruption in addition to being in the top handful of Magic cards ever printed. Various sideboard options like Rip Apart, Klothys, Cindervines, and others I’m probably not thinking of allow you to answer problems that pure UR won’t. The issue becomes the mana. Historic isn’t like Modern, the last place Phoenix truly shined, where you could play a smooth three color manabase at the cost of your life total. Not in Historic. Untapped lands are pivotal to the success of any Xerox deck, and no Copperline Gorge nor Blackcleave Cliffs means half of your main colors lack a good untapped dual land outside of their respective shock. Pathways exist, but oh god do they suck. The amount of one mana spells you have to cast, especially to revive your birbs, basically means any Pathway you have to play on the splash side is a basic Wastes for the rest of the game. Going this route also means you likely can’t hit your color requirements and play Fabled Passage; a card I think is critical to the deck despite the land it gets entering the battlefield tapped in the early game (more on that latter). Ultimately, I just don’t think any of the cards you get from a splash is worth the overall consistency hit in a deck that you’re sleeving up in part due to how consistent it is.
Macro: Brainstorm, and Brainstorm in Phoenix
In terms of the pure definition of a cantrip, a spell that lets you draw a card without giving you card advantage, Brainstorm is the most powerful cantrip to ever be printed. That’s because Brainstorm effectively gives you more than the one card a cantrip normally yields when played properly. The nuances of how to play Brainstorm properly can be (and has been) the subject of its own article, but the short version is this: If you cast Brainstorm with two bad/dead cards in your hand and are able to shuffle your library, it’s like you’ve effectively drawn three cards. This makes the ability to clear the bad cards vital to the power level of the card. Historic doesn’t have proper fetchlands like Scalding Tarn, so decks mostly rely on spells to maximize Brainstorm’s power. The notable exception to this is Fabled Passage. It’s the closest thing to a real fetchland in Historic as everything else either sucks (Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse) or doesn’t really play well outside of control decks (Field of Ruin).
The power level of Brainstorm is high enough that most decks will play it even if you can’t always get the best results. The stock Rogues list only runs four copies of Fabled Passage, while things like U/G Turns run a set of Passages and four or five Planeswalkers that help get rid of the dead cards. This pales in comparison to what Phoenix gets to play. Off the top of my head, there are four unique “full clear” spells and four unique “half clear” (only drawing one card) spells in pure UR, and another full clear in the form of Abundant Harvest if you do decide to splash. The fact that so many cards that Phoenix would play regardless of Brainstorm do such a good job at giving you full value from it makes me believe that Phoenix is the best Brainstorm deck one can build in Historic.
Macro: Aggro or Control
Another benefit about the high density of cantrips that I hadn’t really touched on is the flexibility of having a core based around cantrips gives you. The rest of the deck is extraordinarily customizable. Your ratios may be locked (X threats, Y pieces of interaction, etc), but what you put in those slots changes the overall gameplan of what your deck is trying to do. Be conscious that the “worse” option might actually fit your overall gameplan better.
Macro: Two Drop Instant/Sorceries
Ross Merriam brought up this point in his article about the deck, but you really only have so many slots for two drops in the deck. The more you have, the more mana you’ll need to chain three spells together in a turn. My number right now is either four or five of these two drops, and all of them are card draw/filtering. Some of the more potent pieces of sideboard interaction cost two, but if I’m spending mana to interact I want it to be as lean as possible.
Macro: Interaction
More Ross here. The more interactive spells you have the more bricks you have while going off. Some interaction, Shock/Pillar of Flame/etc, aren’t entirely dead when you absolutely need another spell. It’s still not ideal to point one of those at your opponent’s face compared to something that replaces itself. I’ve found either six or seven pieces of interaction is where I want to be, with nothing that interacts on the stack in the main. If there are enough decks in the field where you need stack based interaction main, I would play those over the other “dead” removal spells like Lightning Axe as opposed to the more flexible ones like Shock or Pillar of Flame.
Macro: The Graveyard
Your signature threat, Arclight Phoenix, is best when it’s coming out of the graveyard. This means after sideboarding your opponent is likely going to have some way to interact with that part of your gameplan. There are three realistic approaches to this:
All of your other threats ignore the graveyard entirely.
Have a robust selection of anti-hate, and don’t go off until you can remove the hate piece.
Be more reliant on the graveyard preboard, and then side out some graveyard threats for alternative threats you have in the board.
I’m a solid flip between the first and third options, depending on if you want to go the aggro route or the control route. Route number two I think is only really viable if you decide to splash due to Rest in Peace being a pain to remove if you only have access to blue and red cards. One last note is that these plans aren’t mutually exclusive. You absolutely can have a mix of graveyard and non-graveyard based threats, then side out the ones that aren’t as relevant.
Macro: When to Put Phoenix Down
So far the only real bad matchups I’ve found are decks that both blank your interaction and can either race whatever clock you present and/or go way over the top of you. The three perfect examples are UGx Time Walks, Thassa’s Oracle/Tainted Pact Combo, and Angels. You can shore up those matchups postboard, but being such a dog game one means you’re probably gonna have to win two straight. It’s possible to improve game one by mixing up the interaction of course. The issue there is how you line up against all of the random decks in the rest of the tournament field. If decks like these are prevalent at the top tables, it’s likely time to pivot to something like Rogues instead of trying to fight through them.
Speaking of Rogues, I flat out still have no idea who’s actually favored in that matchup. Game 1 you’re ahead because they fuel your gameplan of putting birbs in the yard. Post board it all comes down to Grafdigger’s Cage/Cling to Dust management. If you can deal with those, I think you’re fine. If not, you’re in trouble. The biggest gut punch is the way you can’t rely on cards with Escape to beat Rogues because Cage shuts it off.
I’ve found everything else to be at least even, if not favored. There aren’t decks that make me audibly groan, as much as certain cards at the right moments (or wrong moments, considering they stop me from winning the game).
That’s a broad overview of my thoughts on how to view the deck from a large scale theory level. The next part of the article is going to be about individual card choices, and the things you should consider when putting your 75 together.
Micro: Threat Suite
There are really only two firm rules across your threat suite. The first is that you want to register four Arclight Phoenixes. Second, you want to play 13 threats tops. I typically play 12, and have the 13th be some sort of Adventure creature as my 13th to keep my instant/sorcery density high. Outside of those things, the way you should choose your threats is based on the game plan your deck is trying to execute. Sprite Dragon is an exellect card, but if your deck is playing the more controlling route it might not be the threat you want in the two drop slot. Sticking with the more free flowing structure of this article, my plan is to list off everything I’ve tried so far and my opinions on them.
Bonecrusher Giant: If you’re expecting a lot of low to the ground aggressive decks, this is interaction that also serves to gum up the ground. Brazen Borrower is likely better.
Brazen Borrower: Don’t really consider this a threat as much as a piece to round out your deck. It’s nice to have a catch all that can become pressure later. Would play one main tops, but it’s not mandatory. Solid sideboard card if you want to lean into the anti-hate plan.
Crackling Drake: Solid top end threat that plays really well through graveyard hate. You also can create a Splinter Twin Situation ™ by playing it alongside Maximize Velocity as a massive burst of damage in the late game. I fall between one and three depending on if I go more aggro or controlling, most often playing two. I'm also not above sideboarding copies as threats that sidestep graveyard hate while keeping the threats in my starting 60 lower to the ground.
Dreadhorde Arcanist: I’m so torn on this card. Its pedigree with Brainstorm cannot be overstated, as the combination is in part what led to to be the only non-companion creature besides Deathrite Shaman banned in Legacy since I started playing the format in 2009. Untapping with it feels like cheating regardless of what your opponent is playing. Against Aggro you get to double up on removal spells, while against control you’re drawing an extra card every turn by rebuying cantrips. It doesn’t matter that it won’t trigger Phoenix; the cards it puts you up more than make up for it. The problem is that it’s SO bad against graveyard hate. Maritime Guard is not a constructed playable card, and that’s what you get if your opponent goes after your graveyard in any way. Despite that, I view Arcanist as the main reason to play a more controlling style of Phoenix.
Magmatic Channeler: I think this is just a worse Dreadhorde Arcanist. There are some upsides to it though. Playing through Narset, Parter of Veils (the best card against you IMO) is a very big plus. It’s also a discard outlet for Phoenix in the early game while being a better topdeck late than Sprite Dragon or Young Pyromancer. Still think overall it underperforms, but I could see being proven wrong as things begin to settle more.
Ox of Agonas: More of a late game value piece than an actual threat. Being able to re-gas up your hand after dumping a bunch of spells to fuel your Phoenixes is the draw to this card. Random Rogue hate is also an upside on this. Don’t count it as a threat you can stick in the early game due to its cost, and make sure you have a plan when grave hate comes in post board. My range is 0-1 with my preference being 0.
Sprite Dragon: Really good in the more aggressive versions of the deck. You’re able to deploy it on two without messing up your curve due to the lack of two drop instant/sorceries, and then can easily make it a 4/4 by turn three just through cantrips. The downside is that it’s a poor top deck in the late game after you’ve fired off your spells. It also dies to a stiff breeze before you pump it, so you need to be mindful about what removal your opponent could have before you spend your turns pumping it.
Stormwing Entity: Initially I was really low on this card. No spells with Phyrexian mana means that Stormwing is a turn three play at the earliest, and I didn’t think it did enough. Then I thought about how it cleared Brainstorm by itself, and threw two into my deck just to see how it played out. A few games later and I realized my original assessment was very wrong. Stormwing is a great way to sidestep graveyard hate, is hard to remove, and kills very quickly when you start chaining spells together. I'm still not sold on the full four, but I’ve been happy playing two or three. Prefer three to two, but if I want to be a bit leaner I’ll trim down on them.
Young Pyromancer: The absence of free countermagic to protect Peezy after it comes down makes me low on a lot of copies. The tokens are also hit or miss depending on the matchup. There’s upside in the fact that it avoids the graveyard entirely while being a play on two, but I think I’d max out on Sprite Dragon before I put the first Peezy in my deck. Would likely have to take the Crackling Drake slot if you do play it.
Micro: Land Count
Figuring out the correct amount of lands to play in a Xerox deck is tricky. Too few and you won’t be able to cast your spells in the early game. Too many and you run into patches in the mid/late game where you draw dead pieces of cardboard. There isn’t really a defined formula either, as numbers can shift based on the feel of the games played. My belief for Phoenix is somewhere between 20-22 lands is right, with my default being 21.
Micro: Pillar of Flame vs Shock
I bring this entire point up because I think there’s a broader point than just metagame decisions. The level one difference is exiling a thing vs being able to cast your removal spell at instant speed. Depending on what you expect the field to look like, one of these effects is more appealing than the other. Simple concept, but not all that interesting. Why I bring this up is what lies beneath the surface of this decision. I believe the choice of removal spell should be based around how they play with other cards in your deck. If you’re leaning on Sprite Dragons, Young Pyromancers, and are heavier on Stormwing Entities, Shock has more value due to being able to act as a pseudo combat trick. If you’re leaning on control elements like Dreadhorde Arcanist and/or Finale of Promise, Pillar dealing with random graveyard nonsense has increased upside compared to its instant speed cousin. A mix of these effects is also fine - just don’t play the full eight due to the “too much interaction” point I made previously. The upper limit of what I’ve felt comfortable sleeving up is five of this effect.
Micro: Which Draw Spell?
Because we shouldn’t overload on instants/sorceries with mana value two or more, it’s important to figure out which one of these effects we should register in our deck. The three main cards that show up in lists are: Chart a Course, Expressive Iteration, and Strategic Planning. I think there can be arguments made for and against each one. Strategic Planning is my least favorite of the three due to its clunk and the fact that it doesn’t put you up cards, but it is a full clear for Brainstorm and is the best at binning Phoenixes. Chart a Course is another way to put Phoenix in the graveyard while also being a card advantage spell post combat. It’s just really awkward to play Chart a Course alongside a bunch of creatures that grow larger when you cast spells. Plus, drawing cards plays right into Narset slamming the door on your ability to play the game. Expressive Iteration is my favorite of the bunch because it combos well with Brainstorm, will always put you up on cards, and plays around Narset. The thing you have to give up here is it’s bad at actually putting things in your yard as well as not really being a turn two play (since you want to be able to hit a land drop or cast a spell you find off of it). After starting by playing two copies of each of them (which was too many of that effect), I found myself more frequently sleeving up four Iterations in lieu of the other spells when I tweak the decklists. That means it’s entirely possible I’m discounting how good the other two options are with different threat suites. No matter what spread of these effects you register, the max is four copies.
Micro: Finale of Promise
This card is very similar to Dreadhorde Arcanist in that it’s extraordinarily powerful, but absolutely horrid in the face of graveyard interaction. That leads me to flip flop back and forth on whether or not I play it as one of the flex spots in my list. Jury is still out in terms of it being correct or not for me, so experiment with it and see.
Micro: Maximize Velocity
I think the value of this card is directly proportional to the amount of Crackling Drakes you have in your starting 60. If you’re on three plus, try to slot one into your deck. You can make an argument for it even with only two Drakes and a good amount of Stormwing Entities as well, since it’s also fine in combination with Stormwing. I haven’t liked it with only one Drake though, since you can’t reliably pair them together with only one copy of each. Final note here is I’ve also seen Escape Velocity in this slot. Don’t play that. Enchantments don’t trigger Arclight Phoenix.
Micro: Crash Through
As mentioned back in the beginning of this article, Xerox decks need a high density of cantrips to function. Your first 12 slots are basically locked in stone: four Faithless Looting, four Brainstorm, four Opt (Opt being the best option left after Looting and Brainstorm). The question then becomes what other cantrips do you play in order to make your deck function? If it wasn’t obvious by the title of this section, my preferred cantrip is Crash Through. Shockingly, Trample is a good ability to give the various large fliers that this deck can produce. This is extra true when your build is aggressively slanted. Right now I play anywhere between two and four in the deck depending on the threat suite.
Micro: Sideboard cards
I already touched on having a plan for the sideboard depending on which approach you want to take to fight grave hate. While I can’t really give advice for an anti-hate sideboard plan, I want to share some of the cards/numbers I’ve been playing with the other two plans in mind.
Abrade: I'm giving this one its own section because I think it’s probably the most important sideboard card you can have. My experiences are that artifacts are the most common ways people will try to interact with your graveyard, so having a flexible answer to them is key. I want three copies minimum, and keep trying to shoehorn in the fourth.
Alternate Threats: Even in builds that do a good job at sidestepping the graveyard, having a noncreature permanent that contributes to the goal of reducing your opponent’s life to zero can be beneficial. Your deck is pretty good at shrugging off creature removal, but if control decks start packing a lot of exile effects it’s good to have a backup plan. The traditional cards I’ve seen in this slot are planeswalkers like Chandra, Torch of Defiance and/or Narset, Parter or Veils. My success has come from cheaper threats like Roiling Vortex or Improbable Alliance. If you want this kind of effect, two copies are more than enough given the amount of cantrips you play.
Color Hate Spells: I don’t really need to go into too much detail about Aether Gust. The card is very good, and you probably want two-ish copies in your sideboard. The one note about Gust is that I wouldn’t count it in the stack interaction slot even though it absolutely can fill that role. Aether Gust isn’t the reason I’m writing this section though. The reason I’m writing it is Fry. Remember how I’ve been saying that Narset, Parter of Veils is the best card against Phoenix? Fry is the cleanest answer you can get to it. It also has a surprising amount of targets across the top decks in the format. I’ve been playing two copies for a while, and maybe want the third. Don’t sleep on this one.
Counterspells: Your sideboard is where your stack interaction should live. There’s a weird balance with what you play in terms of being cheap, but also countering the things you need to counter. Mystical Despite and Spell Pierce fall into the “cheap” options, Negate and Test of Talents fill the “hard” counter spot, and Memory Lapse is kind of an awkward catch all. So far I’ve played anywhere between four to six pieces of stack interaction: four cheap counters, three cheap counters and two hard counters, a 4/2 split favoring cheap counters, and an even 3/3 split. The interaction you want is going to be dependent on what spell based decks you’re expecting, as these are the main ways to fight against matchups that might give you trouble.
Grave Hate: Since we don’t have Surgical Extraction, you probably only want two pieces if you choose to have any at all. My card of choice for this effect is Tormod’s Crypt because you can cast it after a long cantrip chain.
Spot Removal: Abrade covers your bases here pretty well, so you don’t need to dedicate a lot of room for additional removal. There are some threats (Elder Gargaroth for example) that your main deck just doesn’t deal with well, so any additional removal should be able to answer them. The two best cards suited for that are Beacon Bolt and Blitz of the Thunder Raptor. Despite being more expensive, I’ve been giving the nod to Beacon Bolt because it plays around the graveyard and gives you two removal spells for one card.
Sweepers: Despite playing a lot of creatures, you’re able to leverage damage based wraths very effectively. We sadly can’t play our own Anger of the Gods, but Sweltering Suns does a decent impression of it overall. Flame Sweep also doesn’t hit any of our creatures at all despite being worse at cleaning up the board. Like most of these sections, due to the density of cantrips, I think you only want two sweepers max just based on the mana cost.
Micro: Tech Cards
Here’s just a random list of cards that I’m thinking about playing either in the main or side that I haven’t tried yet. No idea if any of these are good, but I all think they have potential:
Chandra, Acolyte of Flame
Chaos Warp
Enigma Drake
Grim Lavamancer
Guttersnipe
Hazoret, the Fervent
Lava Coil
Phoenix of Ash
Nimble Obstructionist
Prismari Command
Rielle, the Everwise
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
Serpentine Curve
Shatterskull Smashing
Stern Dismissal
Teferi’s Tutelage
The Royal Scions
Decklist
Here’s what I’m trying on the ladder right now. It leans more on the aggressive side, and is a good example of all of the things I discussed to this point.
Aggro Birbs
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Sprite Dragon
3 Stormwing Entity
1 Young Pyromancer
4 Brainstorm
4 Crash Through
4 Expressive Iteration
4 Faithless Looting
1 Finale of Promise
2 Lightning Axe
4 Opt
4 Shock
3 Fabled Passage
3 Island
3 Mountain
4 Riverglide Pathway
4 Spirebluff Canal
4 Steam Vents
Sideboard
3 Abrade
1 Beacon Bolt
2 Fry
2 Mystical Dispute
2 Negate
2 Spell Pierce
2 Sweltering Suns
1 Tale's End
Sideboarding
I don’t really have a definitive sideboard guide for each matchup, as I do a lot of it on instinct. The first place you make changes is remove the weaker interaction for more premium ones, then shave a mix of cantrips, card advantage spells, and graveyard dependent cards. It’s okay to be more interactive postboard as the Phoenix plan isn’t as reliable when they actually have grave hate in their deck. For example, with this list against Jeskai Control I’d do something like:
+2 Fry
+2 Mystical Dispute
+2 Negate
+2 Spell Pierce
-3 Crash Through
-1 Finale of Promise
-2 Lightning Axe
-2 Shock
You lean heavier on stack interaction than removal, and because they don’t really have blockers for your threats the utility of Crash Through goes down. If I had alternate threats in my sideboard, I’d consider siding out a Phoenix or two to bring them in. Just to give some insight into how to approach something with more creatures, here’s how I’d approach G/W Company:
+3 Abrade
+2 Fry
+2 Sweltering Suns
-2 Crash Through
-2 Expressive Iteration
-1 Finale of Promise
-2 Shock
It might seem weird to board out Shock against the creature deck, but it’s really putting into practice that you can’t load up too much on interaction. We then shave some of the more expensive card advantage spells, as our plan is to manage our opponent’s threats and smack them with large fliers.
Conclusion
All in all Arclight Phoenix is a powerful, proactive deck with a lot of small decisions that leads to incredibly fun gameplay. If you have questions, comments, or just want to hear me spout more MTG related nonsense, feel free to reach out to me/follow me on Twitter (@DBatterskull) at any time. Thank you all for reading!
Danny Batterman
