With the printing of Arclight Phoenix, we discovered a new whole world in Modern. Graveyard recurring strategies are always been in the format, but in the last few years they went over the top, with the addiction of powerhouses such as Creeping Chill and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis (which lead to an almost emergency ban of Bridge from Below, given the astonishing results of the deck expecially on MTGO).
Izzet Phoenix isn't the same "kind" of strategy, if compared to Dredge or Altarvine. It's, actually, one of fairest deck in Modern, with the exception of having in Arclight Phoenix one of those "recurring concepts" which are the bane of many players. The deck can be considered as the successor of the old Suicide Bloo, certainly faster than Izzet Phoenix but much easier to disrupt (that's where the differences between Kiln Fiend and Arclight Phoenix show their weight). The goal, once again, is to kill the opponent as fast as possible. But, compared to Bloo and the other hyper-aggros in the format, consistency is something we hold dear. If the opponent can interact with us, we aren't going to lose on the spot. Our threats are resilient, big and hungry. There's no way we can't go toe to toe against many Tiers in Modern.
STRATEGY AND PLAYSTYLE
Obviously, this deck falls in the "aggro" category. But there's much more, because our spectrum isn't the clearest, and we can move between different fields. When we're facing Combo decks or Big Mana strategies, we are the aggressor. There are few ways to interact with them (expecially pre-side), so we should focus on killing the opponent in the shortest arc of time. In the "aggro mirror" we often take the role of the Control deck, cleaning the board with Lightning Bolt and its big brothers (Flame Slash, Magmatic Sinkhole, Lightning Axe). Thing in the Ice is the best card we've got to face them, because it's at the same time a big beater and a pseudo-monodirectional Evacuation.
How to sequence cantrips is a topic that I hold dear. We can't always afford to play untapped land into Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand, because being a critical-mass strategy means saving our resources for when the time calls. The most common scenario is deploying a Thing in the Ice on turn two, flipping it on the next, or reanimating one-two Arclight Phoenix when we have two lands available. This means we should keep our cantrips in hand, preparing for the turn two/three sequence (which involves Manamorphose or free spells such as Surgical Extraction). If we don't need to, keep in mind that Faithless Looting is, most of the time, the very last "cantrip" we cast, because digging throughout the library to find some more Phoenixes is one of our priorities. Serum Visions is at its best when being the first of a sequence, and Thought Scour is the one we can shave in postboard matches, given the fact it doesn't provide card-selection.
One of the strongest play we have available is to cast a Thing on turn two, untapping and sequence a bunch of cantrips followed by a Faithless Looting, discarding two Phoenixes. Thing in the Ice will become an Awoken Horror before entering the combact, so it will bounce every creature the opponent controls, then we get to reanimate the Phoenixes and deal a bunch of damage to him/her. If the opponent can easily deal with Thing and/or Phoenix (expecially when Surgical Extraction is running rampant in the metagame) we've got a plethora of alternative win-conditions to get rid of them. Crackling Drake and Aria of Flame are the most common one.
DIFFERENT APPROACHES
There are three ways to pilot this archetype. When we talk about differences, even though there are few cards involved in the various attempt of deckbuilding, the strategy may vary quite consistently.
If we analyze all of these lists, the crucial point is easily pinpointed: while the skeleton of Izzet Phoenix persists, wincons and utility spells aren't set in stone.
The most common lists tend to run a variety of win conditions which are either cheap (Pteramander, Pyromancer Ascension) or that can take over the game on their own (Aria of Flame, Crackling Drake, Saheeli, Sublime Arteficer). Cards such as Finale of Promise are very midrangey, but also extremely powerful when you hit Manamorphose + random card from your graveyard. Aria of Flame is risky, because other than letting the opponent gain life (ugh) if they're able to dispose of it in a short time we've got a serious issue. That said, it bypasses things such as Ensnaring Bridge, which can be a nightmare for us.
A similar reasoning can be done for Pyromancer Ascension + Noxious Revival. It isn't the fastest of the combo, but it's extremely consistent (for the ones who don't know about it, it involves having two Manamorphose and two Noxious Revival either in the graveyard or in hand, a Pyromancer Ascension fully charged and at least one cantrip different from Sleight of Hand in case we only had the combo in the grave → we make infinite mana, then we can recurr Thought Scour and mill the opponent). It's easier said than done, but playing the deck you'll notice that the gameplan of Izzet Phoenix suits perfectly the Unstorm B-plan. That said, it's *again* a card affected by graveyard hate.
The last approach is the one I personally favor. Cutting midrange cards or cute Combo interactions in order to have some sort of disruption in the maindeck. People have played Izzet Charm and Spell Pierce in their sixty, before, and Force of Negation IMHO takes the deck on a whole new level, interacting with the opponent's threats (Narset, Parter of Veils and Chalice of the Void, anyone?) on the stack, before they land. The deck will have less opportunities to do broken things (fast turn two double Phoenix thanks to Surgical/Gut Shot), but the pros outweight the cons, according to my experience.
So, why should we play this deck?
PRO
- This is the best Thing in the Ice deck in the format. The fact it's called Izzet Phoenix doesn't mean it only relies on the angry birds. Awaken Horror is the way you're closing out most of your games, and TiTi is a crucial threat in the current Modern. We can flip the Ice into Horror the turn after deploying it on the battlefield with almost no effort.
- The deck can easily swap gears from Aggro to Control, depending on the matchup. It's one of the most consistent strategy in Modern, thanks to the plethora of cantrips it run, and you'll have few difficulties in looking for the "right half" of the deck even in g1, binning dead cards with Faithless Looting.
- It's fundamentally cheap for being a Tier. Expecially if you run Flooded Strand / Polluted Delta instead of Scalding Tarn. It's one of the reasons why it's so popular.
- It doesn't have any 30-70 match-up. Again, being consistent means that you'll find your sideboard cards with a little effort, and it can be explosive enough to overcome the opponent even when you're the underdog.
CONS
- Being one of the top Tier in Modern, the opponent is expecting to face Izzet Phoenix. They'll have a certain number of hate cards between main and side.
- When the metagame is saturated with graveyard decks (at this moment, it is), Surgical Extraction become one hell of a card to run maindeck. You don't lose because the opponent is able to remove from the game all the copies of your Arclight Phoenix, but the deck becomes certainly much worse.
- It is very threat-light. There's a lot of air in the deck, as a price to run that many cantrips.
Hate cards against Izzet Phoenix: tbc
Splashes: tbc
Matchups: tbc