Mono R Phoenix List I took to Diamond 3 in BO1 ranked. Don't have enough wild cards for a proper sideboard, but this is my current iteration. I have played extensively with skewer the critic,
Light Up the Stage
,
Young Pyromancer
, and a bunch more cards I'll throw in the maybeboard section. The great thing about magic is the ability to cater a list to your tastes, but for simplicity's sake, this list serves as a base for anyone to liberally work off of.
Deck breakdown:
Soul-Scar Mage
With lots of cheap spells to cast, this creature can make or break your games because the deck's threat density is a bit lackluster and sometimes high variance (lack direct damage spells in this list). Probably your best turn 1 play PERIOD, and I'll go out of my way to mulligan for one just to have a fast start. also, is randomly good against creatures that like to take damage.. specifically abilities that trigger off taking damage. Good at removing indestructible creatures too.
Arclight Phoenix
Namesake yeah? this is our payoff card, but the soonest we can get it out on the board is turns 3/4 with good hands. Great recurring threat. All you have to do is play 3 instants and sorceries and wallah.
Retriever Phoenix
is a pretty neat addition in my recent iterations of the deck. Like
Arclight Phoenix
, it's a recurring threat if we are Learning away with primarily
Academic Dispute
or another
Retriever Phoenix
. Unfortunately, we can only bring back one phoenix per learn as a replacement effect, so it definitely lacks explosiveness compared to arclight phoenix.
Academic Dispute
is interesting because it is very middling at face value and has the drawback of being uncastable without creatures to target. However its converted mana cost makes it REAAAAAALLLY appealing since the deck cares for it, and the learn mechanic in our deck specifically is not that bad since we could use it to discard our pay off cards if need be. What I found interesting in playtesting is sometimes forcing your opponent to block is a very good thing since it effectively punishes decks poorly started value creatures like
Beast Whisperer
,
Risen Reef
, and more. However, when this card is dead in hand, It's pretty bad, but I think given our discard outlets, it's a risk I willingly take when I play
Retriever Phoenix
.
Young Pyromancer
this card is a tried and true threat in multiple formats. Frankly, if I did not like retriever phoenix as much as I do, I'd up the count on pyromancers as it has the ability to board stall and win you games that you may not have any business winning when your hand sucks.
Faithless Looting
Banned in Modern because as an enabler, it filters what are normally bad cards in your hand into good ones by digging deep. While we're not usually playing this on turn 1 (actually incorrect to do so very often, especially with the absence of free spells like
Gut Shot
, it really does give you flexibility at the cost of card "disadvantage". Our preferred way of getting
Arclight Phoenix
and
Retriever Phoenix
in our graveyard.
thrill of possibilities sometimes you'll need more discard outlets to bin your phoenix away. This card is a great way to effectively cycle away cards to dig a bit deeper in your deck.
Crash Through
is the best actual cantrip red decks have access to.. least card draw that is low on our curve and counts toward your
Arclight Phoenix
.
Shock
and
Pillar of Flame
are very cheap direct damage spells that have good flexibility to go face or kill our opponents' creatures. some mix or higher count of either is necessary if you're finding that you need removal quite often, might not have access to it.
Lightning Axe
kill the big things red decks have trouble with. discards phoenix quite effectively too.
Finale of Promise
this card has a very high ceiling as it allows you to bring back your arclight phoenix upon resolution and trigger prowess lick crazy (assuming you have targets, which I'd hope you do.
ramanup ruins sometimes you'll run into scenarios where you need just a little bit more damage to win the game as mid-game approaches. well, this is it.
Included other cards I tested in the Maybeboard. and do not think are inherently good nor bad. my favorite iteration, though super volatile was
Ghitu Lavarunner
with 8 conditional
Lightning Bolt
s in
Skewer the Critics
and
Wizard's Lightning
because of how reminiscent it was to Modern Mono Red Phoenix and the prowess lists ( the explosive hands specifically.).
Got questions about anything be it matchups or other card choices, then ask away. I leave this here because I have not seen anyone play a list similar to this, not the web, but I am not too involved with magic as I once was. Hope you enjoy the deck!
