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Main » Articles » Arclight Phoenix: The Best Card from Guilds of Ravnica

Arclight Phoenix: The Best Card from Guilds of Ravnica

Rudy Briksza
Posted on October 29, 2018
 Reddit

I've discussed at length my love for Overgrown Tomb decks. If you've read my articles in the past you'll know I'm a big fan of midrangey cards and a massive fan of two-for-ones. However, Arclight Phoenix has captured my attention and my heart. While there were several variants I was interested in last week, I've been so excited to sit at home and play around with the Arclight Tempo version. I have a Modern tournament I just went to in Charlotte and if you're interested in my 75 it's just this:

Runaway Red | Modern | Rudy Briksza

I'm very likely to have played this deck at SCG Charlotte. It's an absurd combo deck and allows you to do some crazy things like this:

Or this:

And even the games you don't have everything, there's enough draw in the deck you end up being surprisingly consistent. While some of these decks end up being fragile, this deck feels like combo mixed with Burn and has the ability to play a long game. There are some games I've won on turn 12 or even later. Risk Factor is an incredible card and plays well with a lot of what is going on and you haven't lived until you've discarded a Fiery Temper to Jump Start a Risk Factor. If I don't play this deck it's because I was convinced to just play Humans instead. Despite Humans being hailed as on the downswing in favor of Bant Spirits, it's pretty clear Humans is still a deck to contend with and will continue to be in the future. Modern can move slow at times and MTGO results are vital to look at. If you looked at those results you would have known Dredge was the deck to beat and Zan Syed made Top 8 with 3 Tormod's Crypt in his deck. This Red deck also packs 4 Tormod's Crypt as a nod to graveyard decks. That being said, Humans has looked stellar and just needs some time to rebuild. Now that it has some great tools, I expect the deck to return to the forefront of Modern. As a side note, don't play Hallowed Fountain right now. This is the most hostile time for control. The format is getting faster and control doesn't really have the tool set to compete.

Back to Standard though.

I thought, at first, the Arclight Phoenix decks were kind of cute, but after watching them in action I became enamored with the deck. Turns out Arclight Phoenix is just really good in any format you play it in. You have some sick combo turns in Standard where you get to use Chart a Course and Jump Start cards to discard multiple Phoenix to get in for quite a few points of damage and can end the game in a few turns. Conversely you're able to grind out everyone in the format (yes, including Golgari) since you draw so many cards and are able to re-buy Phoenix many times. Let's take a look at where I'm currently at and then I'll break down the card choices.

Izzet Arclight | Guilds Standard | Rudy Briksza

The Creatures

Crackling Drake
While we have some clear winners in this deck in Goblin Electromancer and Arclight Phoenix, the one that I've gone back and forth on is Crackling Drake. While the card is clearly fine in terms of power level, it's a little expensive for not a ton of value and dies pretty easily. While sometimes the card does just win, more often than not it sits back to trade or dies to every removal spell. What is an expensive 4-drop doing that much better than Enigma Drake? If the goal is to get 'em dead, I think I'd almost prefer to play Engima because of its lower casting cost.

Instead, I've been working with Niv-Mizzet, Parun in the deck. Niv pairs exceedingly well with everything the deck is trying to do. With Niv in play you can start a chain of spells that not only can trigger any Arclight Phoenix but can also kill your opponent. It isn't unreasonable to play Niv on turn six or seven and untap into dealing 20 damage to your opponent. While things need to go right in your draws, this is something that happens with some consistency. On its own, Niv is a big threat that can clean the board and win the game with ease. While it can be a little expensive, he's one of the best creatures you can play in Standard by a mile. It is worth mentioning Golgari has some great tools to beat Niv that are rough to interact with, but as we get into the spell selection you'll see that we are prepared a bit for this.

Goblin Electromancer lets you have some wild and crazy turns. Making every spell cheap means the low land count doesn't matter.

Arclight Phoenix is one of the best cards in the deck. It's great to discard off Jump Start, provides a fantastic clock, and, best of all, it's easy to cast. I think that's an often overlooked part of Arclight but there's often no need to discard it when you can cast it and use it to either pressure your opponent or use it to block then re-buy the next turn.

The Spells

Beacon Bolt
For the most part the spells will be stock from list to list. However one of the major changes in this variant is the addition of Spell Pierce and Dive Down. Since we're not in on Crackling Drake it's more important to protect our Niv-Mizzet either proactively with Spell Pierce on planeswalkers or with Dive Down reactively. These cards are generally bad in multiples which has led to the low count. Perhaps some more copies might be okay in the sideboard, but getting beat down by creatures while holding a bunch of Spell Pierces and protection spells doesn't feel very good. It's a fine tightrope you have to walk to balance having enough spells to trigger Arclights and Niv-Mizzet while still being able to protect them. I think, with how this deck is built and how easy it is to cycle through your deck, I'd like to look into Search for Azcanta in a future iteration. It's pretty hard to miss with all the spells in your deck and with Arclight and Jump Start cards you're happy to fix all your draw steps and even nab some sweet sweet value.

Beacon Bolt has been one of the most impressive cards in this list. At first, I was satisfied cutting it for other spells; but, there's nothing quite like it that just takes care of pretty much everything at all points in the game. Sometimes it may take a bit of work to turn on, but when it gets going it's the best thing to be doing. Plus having Jump Start gives us the late game opportunity to wipe out two creatures for one spell. I have the full set of Lava Coils because of how popular Golgari has gotten. Lava Coil is the best card at shutting down their recursion and Find // Finality as an engine. While it seems odd to not include Lightning Strike; the one-mana cost of Shock and the power of Lava Coil are just better than Lightning Strike in every way. Strike does not kill a large swath of creatures and there's no reason to lose to Tempest Djinn to add more ways to interact with your opponent's life total. We have enough ways to close out the game with our creatures, just have to make sure we don't randomly lose to some mediocre value creatures.

A helpful play pattern I've found with the deck is how important it is to hold spells, especially Opt. While this doesn't mean never cast your spells it is important to keep in mind how often you'll need to leverage your spells in a certain way. Triggering Arclight Phoenix is important and burning through all your spells can leave your Arclights burning a hole in your graveyard, yearning to be reborn.

The Lands

The more I've played with this deck the less I've wanted to have so many. You see so many cards every game that more often than not you'll "flood". It is kind of hard to actually flood with all the Jump Start spells and how expensive some of the cards can be in the deck (especially late game when drawing an Arclight or Niv happens). I could even see going down to 20 lands if you're playing a Search for Azcanta or another cycle spell. I've included a Drowned Catacomb because it's mostly "free" and lets us on occasion cast the Dispersal half of Discovery // Dispersal which is quite relevant against Carnage Tyrant.

The Sideboard

There's some weird ones in this sideboard, and while it looks random I can give you some confidence that this came about over quite a few leagues between myself and Brad Carpenter. Murmuring Mystic is a fantastic sideboard piece that's great against Golgari and the aggro decks while being fairly reasonable against the control decks. I'm not super thrilled with it in the main deck since it kind of lines up awkwardly with some of your plan and is very slow. I'm going to throw up my sideboard guide here as well since the sideboard is a little awkward.

The Mirror

Mono Red

Golgari

If you play against a lower to the ground Golgari version with Elvish Mystics, board out another Radical Idea or Spell Pierce for a Fiery Cannonade.

Mono-Blue

Selesnya Tokens

I'm in LOVE with this deck so far and while I'm not 100% on this list I feel like every league I play gets me closer and closer. I can't wait to see what the Pro Tour brings.

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, analysis, modern, rudy briksza, guilds of ravnica, guilds standard, 10292018, arclight phoenix

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