Rize of the Fenix

This is what happens when I am looking at Magic cards late at night.

"Hey, I bet there are enough phoenixes in the game to make a phoenix deck. I could even name it after that Tenacious D song..." (Note, album cover artwork considered work-questionable).

And 48 hours later, here we are. I had planned to talk about a dragon deck but instead I have this:

4 Flamewake Phoenix
4 Chandra's Phoenix
3 Firewing Phoenix
4 Demigod of Revenge
2 Akoum Firebird
2 Magma Phoenix 

3 Wild Guess
4 Tormenting Voice 

3 Fiery Temper
4 Lightning Bolt

4 Braid of Fire 

23 Mountain

Except I don't. While building the deck I discovered that I didn't have any Braid of Fire and only two Demigod of Revenge. I'll order the Demigods but Braid of Fire is $7 for damaged copies. The heck with that. My money > less of my money.

I'll test this deck on Cockatrice as is and perhaps Braid of Fire will prove itself to be invaluable. Until then, I'm running the paper version with the following changes:

-3 Mountain

-4 Demigod of Revenge

-4 Braid of Fire

+3 Great Furnace

+4 Kuldotha Phoenix

+4 Fire Diamond

Which isn't quite as awesome. Still, I own these cards, they have synergies or advance what the deck wants to do so I'm giving this a run until the other two Demigods can be acquired.

Seven artifacts-four to boost the mana production-is, I hope, enough to get Kuldotha Phoenix going reliably. The seven draw spells I'm running should keep things smooth and with the abilities of my creatures, I shouldn't have to worry about discarding them.

As a side note, this is one of the things I feel Magic should do: allow the drawbacks of certain powerful strategies be turned into strengths, given the right deck. Discarding a card before you've even drawn one? That's risky, even though it's often the correct thing to do, because card draw is so powerful. But which card?

With the avenue existing for me to turn that drawback around, with an array of phoenixes and Demigod of Revenge, I feel I have a really strong core idea. Card draw in Red that, coupled with other things, provides actual card advantage-as opposed to Blue which just has raw card advantage.

Contrast this with a card like Delver of Secrets which reinforces a strategy that Blue already wants to do (run a lot of instants and sorceries) and maybe you'll see why I find Rize of the Fenix so exciting.