But Jordsn was right. I did away with the lingering souls and substituted death shadow in place of lingering. I’m obviously biased to the deck cause I made it. But if you have the cards and time, feel free to play it and share how it went

I’m having a lot of fun playing it. It competes against everything. The street wraith are cheap card draw into my recursion combo for early game and they take my life down for the death shadows. It’s a really fun deck to play. It’s the best modern deck I’ve ever put together. I know it looks like it wouldnt work together, but it does, and a better pilot could probably get a lot of it.

Looks fun, not sure about the streetwraith though. If you were running some dredge cards it would make more sense

My thought is the same here as it is every time a deck gets too powerful. If you are going to ban anything, ban the offending card. There is no point in making a ban that could potentially hurt the overall diversity of the format. Just ban phoenix. Thing in the ice, blue red decks in general and graveyard recursion strategies were fine before the printing of phoenix. Its a similar situation to dredge. GGT was banned for a reason and dredge was fine. They unbanned it and realized, oh crap that’s broken. So they banned GGT again and now dredge is good, but not broken.

At the IQ I played today, lots of pheonix, and the mill deck did well. I did horrible. Not my deck’s fault. Totally mine as the player. Only the second day I’ve played it and I need practice. Apparently knowing when to smallpox is absolutely crucial.

2 things: a full 4 death shadows should be in the main. It would have made a huge difference.

I probably would have included two skin invasions in the sideboard for matches against aggro and midrange creature decks. The tempo swing from landing a small pox on turn two or three and swinging with two 3 powered creatures is very difficult for the other player to overcome.

Honestly, it has potential but needs to be seriously refined. It could compete with every deck I played against from lantern to BG to jund to death shadow and boggles. Half the games I lost was from me and not the deck

The best way to deal with Phoenix is, in my opinion, unbans. And the one unban that would be amazing against it would be Stoneforge Mystic: it would give Death&Taxes and Abzan (which should be bad MUs for phoenix decks) the right amount of push to become worth considering again without being dominant.

I think that will help, but in my preliminary testing for last week’s article (Leyline Jund) I found that Shadow and Phoenix had too much tension together. Still, the Avatar will help you close out games, and you need another threat alongside Phoenix. For Rakdos I hold that Shadow is your best bet. In any case, good luck!

Yeah, I’m just gonna follow your advice and load up on death’s shadow. I might even add two the the mainboard and deduct two lingering souls. Might even add two K-Command and take out all the lingering souls. Just debating last minute changes. But definitely two shadows in the main

too $$$

Ok, last question, what is your opinion on Discovery//dispersal for the discovery side? The surveil 2 then draw a card sounds good,but two mana is a lot.

Not really playable in its own right, I’d ditch Invasion altogether.

I originally ran skin invasion in the sideboard as another card that that would benefit me from the smallpox engine. Should it go back in the sideboard or just max on death’s shadow

I feel like without the critical mass of cantrips, you’d often get into game states where it’s too hard to bring back the Phoenixes, because you’re topdecking actual spells instead of ones that lead into others. Smallpox engine also pushes you toward topdeck mode so I’d anticipate some tension there too. Might want to max Shadow in the board or have some other kind of steadier plan against heavy-duty hate.

For sideboard, maybe a bontus last reckoning or an anger of the gods would be helpful

Here is my list, and I’m gonna try it at an IQ tomorrow. I’ll let you know afterwards how it went. Also, I was debating whether to run all four amalgum or 3 amalgum and 1 tombstalker. Let me know your opinion.

4 Streetwraith
4 arclight pheonix
4 prized amalgum
2 bloodghast

4 manamorphose
4 faithless looting
4 smallpox
4 lingering souls
4 lightning bolt
3 thoughtsieze
3 surgical extraction
2 fatal push

18 lands

Sideboard:

3 collective brutality
2 abrupt decay
2 assassin’s trophy
2 lilliana of the veil
2 ancient grudge
2 grim lavamancer
2 deaths shadow
2 shadow of a doubt

Please feel free to send me your opinions. I’d love for this to succeed

I’m working on a rakdos build. But mainly because the black discard spells also interact with the board state on a higher level than the izzet deck. And I agree with merriam, the izzet version is really a Thing in the ice deck. It’s what allows the deck to just cantrip into cantrip cause it’s a default board wipe for card draw spells

Well we have the Mono Red version, but I don’t think there’s much room to build something better than UR right now. That color combination just has so many tools at its disposal. WOTC will be more incentivized to leave Phoenix the card (and also the deck) legal if it does start finding its way into other shells.

Manamorphose is only a complaint cause of pheonix. I dont hear anyone complaining due to storm. Also, it can be run in any deck that wants dirt of free can tripping since the only other option is street wraith.

I hope they dont ban pheonix. Honestly, I dont think the deck itself is any more powerful to any than Grixis deathshadow, just easier to grasp. Pheonix is squishy and weak to surgical, but mostly, I think that pheonix itself, similar to faithless, could enable multiple decks. People just havent really expanded their view of it yet. And that would make it more like faithless or stirrings