Hello!
This is a brew of mine combining Izzet Phoenix with Mono-Red Burn and tossing in Aria of Flame for the fun of it. I've been playtesting it with few tweaks here and there in FNM and modern showdowns. So far I've been winning mostly 3 out of 5 and 2 out of 2, but once I managed to snag a 4 out of 4 in FNM.
Also, feel free to comment and throw in suggestions!
Summary
There is no single distinct winning condition in this deck, instead choosing to be agile and having multiple wincons that are linked together in ways they are achieved, so they do not interfere with each other too much. Much like Izzet Phoenix, we're playing a lot of card-draw cantrips to search for business spells. This enables
Monastery Swiftspear
and
Soul-Scar Mage
to pack a heavy punch early on and still stay relevantly strong if the game drags on. Instant/Sorcery spell casts add counters to
Aria of Flame
and since we're casting a ton of them, unless draws are really unlucky, the drawback of Aria can be paid within a single turn and far exceeding in second and third. All casts, of course, also add to storm counter. That's why
Grapeshot
is a thing in this deck as well.
The way this deck feels to play is rather interesting. It is not entirely a burn, though it can play out that way. It's not entirely prowess, though it can play out that way. This is an extremely low-margin deck, you will be dishing out a lot of 1-damage hits and very often your lethal blow will be behind a well-calculated sequence. It can catch your opponents off-guard by dishing out way more spells than it should at first glance, thanks to cards like
Lava Dart
,
Gut Shot
.
Manamorphose
and
Dreadhorde Arcanist
, which can add to a hefty sum of spells for each of the wincons on board.
Known problems
Even when the wincons usually do not interfere with each other, there are still cases where they might do just that. For example, casting creatures doesn't really help out Aria at all. Drawing Aria late game can be a very undesirable card due to the drawback. Mainboard especially lacks big removals, sporting only one measly copy of
Magmatic Sinkhole
. Sideboard cards do not really help the wincons, even if they're usually meant to just counter opponents' strategies. The deck is vulnerable against decks like 8-Track that have land destruction and hand destruction in same package.
Rest of the page under way
