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Phoenix of the Black Rose

Commander / EDH* Phoenix Theme/Gimmick UBR (Grixis)

relyks16

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Creature (25)

Enchantment (10)

Land (34)

Sorcery (11)

Commander (1)

Commander: Marchesa, the Black Rose

Artifact (16)

Instant (3)

Phoenix Tribal

Phoenixes have been my favorite mythical creature for a long time. I love the lore and I love the artwork. However, they have gotten a bit of a shaft in most of MtGs formats barring a few notable examples, so a commander deck around these pretty birds while take a bit of brewing. Hopefully, we'll be able to make something that can compete at some level.

The Old Generation

Magma Phoenix
Creature — Phoenix
Flying
When Magma Phoenix dies, it deals 3 damage to each creature and each player.
: Return Magma Phoenix from your graveyard to your hand.
3/3

Looking at an average example of early phoenix design we can get a feel for what we will be working with. Here we have a 3/3 flyer for 5 mana without protection and no real immediate impact on the board. Haste was not yet a possibility in the design of these creatures, most likely due to the large impact hasty flyers would have on limited and standard environments. Many cost require 2-3 to activate.

If we are lucky, our phoenix will have an additional ability which can be activated on the battlefield or is triggered on death. Currently only 5 phoenixes exist which have abilities which fullfil this category, two of which are firebreathing style effects (both of which cost 3 mana a pop to activate). Many phoenixes are otherwise fairly vanilla on the board and will generate little in the ways of board presence.

The next common feature of the old-guard is a very expensive "Revival" activated ability which can allow you to return a phoenix from the graveyard to your hand. Many of these abilities cost as much or more than the mana cost of the creature and also requires a heavy devotion to . Activating these abilites will likely eat up a full turns worth of mana and will get at most 1-2 creautures from your graveyard to your hand.

Given that our example Phoenix is from Core 2011, the old guard is not really that old, but as we'll see next small bumps in numbers and ability tweaks really make all the difference.

The New Generation

Arclight Phoenix
Creature — Phoenix
Flying, haste
At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you've cast three or more instant and sorcery spells this turn, return Arclight Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield.
3/2

Now Arclight is a great example of phoenixes beginning to find a more solid place in the overall game. Right off the bat, we can see some improvements in the mana cost and P/T discrepancies that were common in the older members of the tribe. In fact, we finally have our first 5 power phoenix which just arrived within the past two years. Haste also begins to make an appearance on a few members to allow the birds to lean heavier into their red identities.

Activated and triggered board abilities are still essentially non-existent in the new members, however this is partially made up for with a boost in the revival abilities the tribe is associated with.

The new guard v old guard split is essentially boiled down to the revival capabilities of the individual firebirds. As mentioned previously, the old-birds went to the graveyard when they died and had an expensive ability to return themselves to your hand. The new-guard however have reanimation style revival abilities which makes them infinitely more useful in the format. The achievability of the revival conditions vary greatly between the individual phoenixes and none of them overlap. This great variance is due to the limited/standard environment where these beauties are born, where our red birds are typically used as a medium to upper end payoffs for strategies or keywords specific to their set. Such strategies include: Landfall, Spellslinger, Morph, Burn, Mutate, Tribute, Ferocious, Metalcraft, Escape,Bloodthirst, Battalion (sort of), cycling, cascade, Learn, and even Commander itself. This continues to be a common design strategy which can be seen in one of our newest tribal addition in Midnight Hunt for Day/Night. Even with these diverse and near-mutually exclusive strategies we still maintain a heavy mana-burden for the triggered abilities of the phoenixes in the new-guard.

Even with their more recently powerful additions to MTG at large, phoenixes still only produce a mild board presence in the 4 player, high-impact-turn format that is commander.

Extrapolating from the average phoenixes, our tribe would seem like a collection of over-costed, under-powered creatures with negligible board presence. We lack the go-wide ability of tribes like humans and elves with their numerous lords. We don't have the ability stacking natures of Slivers. We don't have the singular strength of dragons, or the graveyard love of zombies do have a somewhat unique combination of evasion and recurability which can be capitalized on. Let's take a Look at some of the phoenixes that caught my eye when looking at the tribe as a whole:

Immortal Phoenix, Shivan Phoenix, Firestorm Phoenix

The phoenixes that circumvent the revival requirement by directly returning themselves to the your hand. These cards will always be available to you barring an exile or poorly timed counter, with the primary downside being the mana spent to recast them. These really want to be cheated out onto the battlefield in a "sneak-y" way.

Everquill Phoenix

The first Phoenix matters card in the game. The mutate ability gives us a feather token which can revive any phoenix from the grave for the low-low cost of one mana. Unfortunately they come in tapped, so there is no real combat shenanigans to be had here, but it is at least a cheaper revival effect than most of the phoenixes. This definitely wants to be mutated as often as possible which would otherwise be impossible with a single mutate creature in the deck, however comboing this with the Immortal or Shivan Phoenix could provide us with the ability to get more than 1 Feather token a game.

Flamewake Phoenix, Warcry Phoenix, Lightning Phoenix

The three members with the easiest reanimation costs and prerequisites. These are some of the easiest members to bring back repeatedly, which will likely be the case with them being 2/2s. They get haste though (which is of limited help to Lightning Phoenix's reanimation)!

Kuldotha Phoenix

One of our phoenix "powerhouses" and one of the easiest prerequisites to fulfill in Metalcraft, especially in a primarily red deck. It is one of the few phoenixes that is 4+ power, with haste, that can be revived regularly for an acceptable cost. AS notable is the extra devotion available on this phoenix.

Rekindling Phoenix

If only this could be better in commander. There is low likely hood the elemental token will survive the length it would need to return this phoenix back to the battlefield. It is one of the few phoenixes who might be able to revive itself for free.

Shard Phoenix

An acitvated ability on a phoenix? Say it isn't so! A instant speed sacrifice ability to deal 2 damage to all non-flyers. Phew, our phoenixes will be safe from this trigger. This ability wants to be combined with either a lifelink or deathtouch (or both), or the ability to multiply the number of triggers within the red color scheme.

Ashcloud Phoenix, Magma Phoenix

Similar to Shard phoenix, these deal damage to multiple targets at various times. Ashcloud notably has to wait to be morphed for 6 mana and deals a max of 6 damage between three players which isn't the best conversion. Plus with the mana cost of the morph leaves it fragile. Though it can revive itself for free as long as it is face-up. Magma phoenix deals 3 damage to everything, which can be useful with the right conditions, however unlike Shard phoenix it will hit our other firebirds who on average cannot survive a lightning bolt. This can add up to a decent board wipe if the affect can be duplicated, though this phoenix also requires some way to kill it to trigger the damage.

Sunstreak Phoenix

One of the newest additions to our aviary introduces Day/Night to the deck. This bird is still fairly early in testing, but adds another body which is fairly cheap to reanimate. I think tracking spells for the rest of the game is worth the 4 power flyer we can bring back. The Celestus also ends up playing well with the deck since it can pitch some of our cheap birds for some incidental card draw/life gain on the body of a color-producing mana rock.

Strengths

  1. Our little birdies are evasive. While flying is not the most effective form of unblockability in Commander, you can't underestimate it early game effectiveness while you build up the power boosts

  2. Good or Bad, we're devoted to Red, which means we can make the most out of the Nyx rocks and lands. And you can add a Fanatic of Mogis for a little splash as well

  3. Phoenixes are mediocre to good at reviving themselves from the graveyard, so you shouldn't have hope for top decking to often mid-late game.

Weaknesses

  1. The Firebirds are an expensive crew, with little in the ways of effective cost reduction.

  2. The phoenixes have low board presence. The bar is set by a 5/3 with no relevant battlefield abilities and another that ping the board for 2, which while occasionally useful, will lose its luster as the game progresses.

  3. Red does not have the best draw abilities. Wheels are certainly powerful, but require a readily access to mana to use efficiently, and impulse drawing is equally ineffective in a tribe of 4-6 cost creatures.

Following the previous section, we can see that this tribe requires a lot of mana to function, and unfortunately the bulk of this mana can't be discounted by the likes of an Urza's Incubator, Herald's Horn or Ruby Medallion. We can do our best to ramp within , but we are primarily restricted to Artifacts unless you would rather prefer a green aligned general. The staple red ramp include the talisman and signets, however we need to restrict the number of off color signets for the 3+ colored generals due to the heavy devotion within the tribe. Because the tribe itself is currently monocolored, we can also make use of the mana doubling artifacts like Caged Sun, Gauntlet of Power, and Extraplanar Lens. The high devotion of our permanents also allows for effective utilization of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Nyx Lotus.

Alternative ways to deal with the devotion costs is to circumvent it almost entirely. Sneak Attack is a well known enchantment capable of playing any phoenix for a single , and Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded is a more recent, and overall more mana-intensive iteration. The drawback to these enchantments is the creature will die at the end step , however one of the tribes strengths is the ability to reanimate themselves from the graveyard after death. Additionally, sneaking creatures on the cheap also allows us to build up a lot of devotion on the board which creates a form of pseudo-ramp when used with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Nyx Lotus before the creature leave at the end of turn.

As a bonus, Ashnod's Altar or my personal favorite Phyrexian Altar can be used to recoup the mana spent to sneak our creatures into play. Additionally we can ramp some with our shimmer tokens produced from Molten Echoes and Mirror March before they would otherwise exile or be sacrificed at end of turn. Not to mention dodging the errant exile effects within the formats.

Red also provides additional fast ramp in the likes of rituals such as Mana Geyser and some powerful creatures like Neheb, the Eternal. Or we can take advantage of our flying friends evasion with Sword of the Animist and Dowsing Dagger   for long term ramp. Red tribal synergies also allow for effective use of Mana Echoes; note that this only produces colorless mana which can be dumped into Screeching Phoenix and Phoenix of Ash or help boost out some more expensive support cards. The most effective use of colorless mana for the high devotion cost of this tribes is to use filters like Prismite or the expensive Chromatic Orrery (which is otherwise of limited use in this deck).

Our Firebirds have zero intrinsic drawing abilities, and red is not known for the most effective drawing effects. Within red we have access to the wheels which are great to refill a hand that has been sneaked onto the battlefield. These effects tend to run on the expensive side either via mana or $$$ (especially if you want that modern bordered Wheel of Fortune).

Because we don't want to cast a majority of phoenixes, we are somewhat limited by what we can use for consistent draw engines. Unfortunately the tribal artifacts like Vanquisher's Banner trigger with casting, so it won't draw enough cards to justify its mana cost.

Within Green we can use Guardian Project with the sneak effects ETB to draw cards cheaply, and Fecundity can provide draw on the way out.

Blue provides the strongest draw engine for tribal synergies in Kindred Discovery. This one perfectly triggers on ETB and attacking, both of which are our primary goals. With Sneak Attack we get to draw two cards for a single .

Black provides draw engines trigger off dying. Fortunately these birds die and come back frequently, so we can use this to our advantage. We can use Species Specialist to draw cards within the tribal theme. Additionally black has access to numerous other non-tribal drawing inGrim Haruspex, Harvester of Souls, Midnight Reaper etc. I personally avoid these to keep closer to the tribal theme.

White provides ... lol.

Artifacts provide the ever-excellent Skullclamp to give additional draw with theSneak Attack end-step trigger. We can also use Slate of Ancestry to provide a repeatable wheel determined by the number of creatures on the field. Unfortunately the effect cost and creature dependence makes this a win-more card draw, but it is an option nonetheless. We can also use tribal synergy artifacts like Pyre of Heroes to pod through our creatures through our efficient reanimators to keep a more consistent board presence.

Flavorful and powerful, Sunbird's Invocation is a must have in any Phoenix tribal strategy.

Phoenixes provide small-medium bodies with little immediate impact to the board, which is below par in most commander games. A 2/2 haster for 3-4 mana will take a grand total of 60 turns to kill your opponents, so our pretty-birds need a little help to get things moving.

Fortunately, this tribe has built in evasion with flying. When we attack, we should be able to connect with our opponent's life total. Therefore one of the first things we can do to improve our birdies is use 's numerous damage modifiers. This tribe needs to be careful with using any global doubling, because we want to attack all out as often as possible and won't have anything to block with, though our birds don't provide a very threatening body to stave off any attacks anyways. We still have excellent options with Gratuitous Violence, Berserkers' Onslaught, and the amazing Fiery Emancipation. We can also use our tribal synergy to our advantage with the efficiently costed Shared Animosity.

With our primary goal of Sneaking creatures into the battlefield, we get access to multiple cheap ETBs, and what is better than one Phoenix but 2 Phoenixes! Flameshadow Conjuring lets us get double the pleasure, double the fun for 1 to create shimmer tokens. With our tribal synergies we can also make use of Molten Echoes to get the additional bodies for free for the same initial investment, or we can gamble for additional bodies with Mirror March. With these tokens as a sub-strategy with Sneak Attack, Sundial of the Infinite is can also be an excellent inclusion to keep our creatures at the end of turn.

Attacking with creatures is not always a viable strategy, depending on your particular playgroup, so we need some alternate sources of damage to close the game. Because we should have multiple creatures coming and going from the battlefield, we can use Purphoros, God of the Forge, Impact Tremors, and Warstorm Surge to drain our opponents. These also pair well with our shimmer generators above.

When it comes to wiping the slate clean, our evasive creatures allow us to use the red spells Molten Disaster, Earthquake, Magmaquake etc, as one sided board wipes... or if you add blue we can just use Cyclonic Rift.

Sometimes brewing a strategy as jank as tribal phoenixes leads to the creation of an Infinite combo capable of winning the game. And all of the pieces are in , so it can be accomplished with any commander at the helm. So here is what we need:

  1. The tried and true Sneak Attack. Placing a creature from our hand to the battlefield is undoubtedly strong, but if it dies at the end of turn how can we possibly abuse this? Well, we just happen to be working with a tribe that loves to reanimate itself.
  2. One of a small handful of Phoenixes: Immortal Phoenix, Shivan Phoenix, Firestorm Phoenix. These birds regrow themselves for free.
  3. Phyrexian Altar. Sac a bird, get a . See the pattern now? Basically with Sneak Attack and Phyrexian Altar we can place a bird from our hand onto the battlefield for , then we can sacrifice the bird to the altar and recoup our . When we combine this with one of our regrowing birds, we can loop ETB and death Triggers off our other permanents.
  4. Profit? ETB and Aristocrat effects are rampant in EDH, you can pick your favorite way to win with our birds. Here are some of the quick options I can think of:

For as little as 4-8 specific cards on the battlefield, you too can win the game... in the absence of opponents also playing MtG.

At this point in MtG, there is no Legendary Phoenix to head up our deck, that being said, our only requirement is some form of red alignment, so we can pick a commander that fits the needs of our personal play styles...

What The What??!!??

We actually have a Legendary Phoenix now - Syrix, Carrier of the Flame

Certainly an interesting birdie that tends to play well with the others. Turn and Burn with our grave recursion abilities. If you want to use this bird you can get away with swapping the two blue cards in the above list with cards like Phyrexian Reclamation and some draw synergies like Species Specialist.

Mono-red sacrifices card consistency for mana consistency.

Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded, Ilharg, the Raze-Boar

Sneak Attacks in the command zone for a little less mana efficiency, and additionally adds haste to the handful of birds that don't already have it. Purphoros partially remedies red's lack of consistency by placing a version of our strongest card in the command zone. Ilharg lets us sneak our birds for free, but requires him to attack. He requires some form of additional protection to be functional as a bird commander.

Torbran, Thane of Red Fell

Basic Red general that plays into necessity of boosting damage output. Though we miss out on draw and ramp support which may be missed.

Neheb, the Eternal

Basic red general who ramps. We are more likely to be able to cast our birds and be able to better utilize cards like Vanquisher's Banner and Door of Destinies. He will require good draw support to use the mana efficiently as well as some additional damage modifiers to snowball.

Delina, Wild Mage

Go hard on the shimmer tokens with this commander.

Two Color generals allow us to splash in a color to make up for some of the weaknesses inherent in a mono strategy.

Chainer, Nightmare Adept, Olivia, Crimson Bride

These are probably the best of the 2 color commanders, (what does a reanimation tribe want more than a reanimation commander?). Black also gives us access to the best tutors to search out key engine pieces like Sneak Attack and wheels for better game to game consistency.

Xenagos, God of Revels, Grand Warlord Radha, Halana and Alena, Partners

Xenagos and Halana-Alena play similar to Torbran, while Radha will play similar to a Neheb. Notably green gives us access to some more reliable ramp options outside of the artifacts as well as some of the powerful creature-based draw effects. Additionally green has powerful damage boosters like Beastmaster's Ascension, Craterhoof Behemoth, and Triumph of the Hordes.

Aurelia, the Warleader, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

Boros does what Boros does, the best generals for these birds are the damage-doublers, either with extra attack steps or double damage. White gives us access to some cheap anthems, expensive reanimation spells, and some protection from crack-back. White does bring in enchantment matters cards and tutors such as Enlightened Tutor and Idyllic Tutor as well as Hall of Heliod's Generosity to use with Sneak Attack. We can also abuse our wheels with Smothering Tithe for quick bursts of ramp.

Zirda, the Dawnwaker

If comboing is your end-goal, why play phoenixes in the first place. Gives access to infinite colorless mana and a combo redundancy piece as described in the previous sections. Bonus, it looks like the phoenix of foxes, so that's pretty cool too.

Hofri Ghostforge

Yep, Boros gets to reanimate now too. Don't underestimate the power of this reanimation commander. Hofri guarantees a token copy of our birds when they die, and will even return them to the graveyard after the token leaves play. Additionally our reanimated birds get an additional anthem boost with trample, and some haste for a little welcome redundancy. Though it is important to note that Hofri's "reanimation" effect replaces normal death triggers, so we will be missing out on a few of our phoenixes regrowth and damage abilities on death (though more often than not, the spirit token will be better than the birds death effect).

Probably the most colors you'll want to stretch your mana base. The high red devotion of the tribe will limit the number on non-red spells and the non-red devotion in their costs.

Marchesa, the Black Rose

My personal choice for a Phoenix Commander. She boosts power, she reanimates, she provides Black for tutors and Blue for Drawing. Marchesa's ability synergizes with a Sneak strategy, allowing use to sneak our birds on the cheap and get them back on the following turns end phase, provided an opponent is on the throne. And Metallic Mimic becomes a clutch tribal lord.

Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper, Kresh the Bloodbraided

Ramp and Tutors. These two synergize well with our creatures death triggers. However these commander tend to diminish the tribal theme. Kresh becomes a Voltron-esque commander and Sek'Kuar encourages a go wide token strategy.

Marisi, Breaker of the Coil, Gahiji, Honored One

Green-White addition to our birds likely encourages a token strategy with focus on duplicating the shimmer tokens with Doubling Season and Anointed Procession effects or with Populate effects. These encourage multiple non-red cards which may clash with the devotion required for the phoenixes, so a lot of tuning will be required to find the right balance. Marisi supports the aggressive strategy of our evasive birds, allowing us to typically attack all out in the early game without fear of combat-based retaliation. Thereby allowing us to wittle our opponents while building up to achieve an ending blow as soon as the game becomes 1v1. And a protected combat step allows us to avoid attacking into a blowout and forcing our opponents to play a smidge more inefficiently. Gahiji is basically a 3 colored Torbran that gives some incentive to our opponents to attack each other.

Oh, you rebel, you daredevil. 4 color Firebirds don't really add much that fewer colors don't really add, other than a commander that you probably won't be able to cast.

Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist / Tymna the Weaver

A risky proposition for some extra card draw. What are the chance you'll get both on the field with any number of phoenixes in a reasonable amount of time.

Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder

Cascading through phoenixes would be cool, though we already have a "tribal" enchantment which does the same thing. A 4 color commander will be difficult to get out on the battlefield.

Just don't, the extra colors are not worth it. These two are probably better utilized in the 2-3 color range

Morophon, the Boundless

What previously was the only legendary "phoenix" in the game. For 7 mana, the single reduction in our creatures we don't typically want to cast in the first place is underwhelming. And there are better tribal anthems in the game.

Kenrith, the Returned King

Pick your favorite 2-3 abilities and build around that. You're not likely to get a lot of use out of Kenrith and maximize the number of birds we can cast simultaneously. Any synergies to use Kenrith effectively will turn the deck into a Kenrith deck rather than a Phoenix deck.

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