MTG Salvation

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

Source unknown.

Quote from OneRingToGruulThemAll »

Source unknown.

It's from a Spanish streamer, four cards were spoiled by him. See this thread.

There'll be more cards spoiled by european streamers this way, see the announcement on the mothership.

Meh not sure if it could be used in modern, but looks like alot of ropes for a efect other cards do better.

I love that there's a more electric phoenix and the way it looks is cool, but man that's a pretty steep requirement to get it back, especially when the last phoenix we had is easier to get back.

I like the art, but this phoenix is pretty butt.

Quote from Dontrike »

the last phoenix we had

How quickly we forget the Warcry Phoenix of Dominaria, which was the 'last phoenix' we got. Which is also probably easier to get back that this guy.

ah, the mediocre mythic phoenix. no set would be complete without you.

Man that's a lot of work for a small payoff. It feels like your deck would need to be almost entirely cantrips to make this remotely "worth it". It's requiring you to use at least three mana and three different cards you might not have before combat on your turn which means that you're using mostt of your mana and cards in your first main phase, taking your shields down not only for the rest of your turn (including combat, importantly) but also your opponent's. And the body ain't that impressive, if it wasn't obvious.

If this were 3 cmc and said "If you have cast two or more instant and/or sorcery spells since your last end step." I would say that it's pretty great.

I wonder if we could build this around Rebound mechanics.

Notable that it doesn't require any red mana, you've just gotta get it into your graveyard. Rekindling Phoenix may be punchier and revives easier, but you do have to get it on the battlefield before you can use it.

I could see this being a target for a heavy Surveil strategy.

Are you guys forgetting jump-start?

It's a great card to discard towards jump-start, no?

Quote from Heresy19 »

Are you guys forgetting jump-start?

It's a great card to discard towards jump-start, no?

That's not a terrible idea, honestly. I kind of wish the length of time for casting the 3 spells was longer though, so it would count spells you cast during your opponent's turn too.

Late-game spell recursion might be a little difficult but right now Mono-Red Wizards can drop 3 spells in a single turn without difficulty. Of course, by that metric this creature is *slow*, but jump-start should solve that provided we get some more inexpensive jump-start spells. Unlike Rekindling Phoenix this creature isn't targeted or activated, so it gets around Silent Gravestone and Ashes of the Abhorrent.

That looks like a cool instant/sorcery version of Warcry Phoenix

Maximize Altitude plus any other 1 mana instant/sorcery lets you cheat this out on turn 3.

Pretty crap in limited, and would need a very specific deck in standard. I would think that commander decks that cast that many spells in a turn have better things to do. Calling it: jank

Arclight Phoenix: the design is good, but 3 sorceries/instants are too many spells to fulfil the requirement; 2 would be a lot better. So much potential wasted here, sorry. I like the concept and the flavour behind this card, though.

I think this would be a fine uncommon. Maybe even a passable rare. Can't fathom why on earth this is mythic, though. Compare to Warcry Phoenix. One might argue that this has better stats, but I can tell you that attacking with 3 creatures and paying 3 mana is way easier than casting 3 instants and sorceries in most decks.

Maybe if its stats were bigger or if it cost less, I could see this being a justifiable mythic, but as it is, this card acts like a punishment for opening boosters.

This card's pretty powerful, and if Izzet is ever actually going to be a deck (and to be honest, I don't even think that's a sure thing... it's the worst guild in Standard by far), then Arclight Phoenix is probably going to be one of the center pieces to that deck working. Remember, you can have 4 of these in your deck, and assume that you have 2 or 3 in your graveyard at the same time, you can bring them all back by just using 1 jump start card and 1 other spell. Essentially, you can recur an army of phoenixes over and over again with your jump start cards. And unlike most phoenixes, this doesn't cost you any mana to bring them back. Don't forget, blue has access to counters that pull your jump start spells back into your deck so you can increase their density as the game goes on too, solving that "I don't have enough spells" problem.

Just some thoughts....

Its vengevine on wings, so it deserves some thought... i feel the biggest problem is the 3 spells required to trigger it. It feels a little much... but 2 would have been a little bit broken i guess

I don't think that Vengevine is an fair comparison. Casting two creatures in a turn is a long-term investment. Casting three instants/sorceries in a turn is either going off in a strategy that doesn't need this Phoenix to win or desperately grasping for straws only to burn out and lose anyway, regardless of whether you have this Phoenix out.

Not to mention that Vengevine has cards like Gravecrawler to work with.

Seems pretty good with Maximize Altitude and Maximize Velocity. Shoot, I might have found a place for this in my UR Kiln Fiend deck, as prime discard fodder. Imagine discarding two or three of these to jump-start spells. A pity they didn't include a Jump-start double strike spell. But, I suppose that would have been ridiculous with Erratic Cyclops around.