Ralitha, Sky Aflame
2RRR
Legendary Creature - Phoenix
Flying, Haste
You may cast Phoenix creature spells from your graveyard.
Whenever a Phoenix enters the battlefield under your control, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.
Escape - RRR, Exile two other cards from your graveyard.
Protection from Red
Whenever a Phoenix you control dies, create a 0/1 red Egg creature token. T, Sacrifice an Egg: Charhand does 2 damage to any target. Return up to one Phoenix from your graveyard to your hand.
2/3
Really thought about using the Orcish Cannoneers 3 damage to self when firing eggs. Maybe I'd remove the tap cost if so, but it might be too easy and manaless to just burn someone down if you have a superior life total.
For your card, I'd remove the defender and upkeep restriction (lots of phoenixes have haste so the restriction is kind of pointless)
The restriction is to prevent it going infinite. Though now that I think about it, it kinda does go infinite without a once per turn restriction. The egg revival might be too unbalanced.
I don't know if I feel this card on a flavor level. What about this phoenix compels other phoenixes to do more stuff? I think it would make more sense if it was a Human Wizard, or Bird Shaman, or Egg(!Legendary Egg!) that cared about phoenixes or something. Also, the jump from "bad" to "Solid" or "decent" is kind of unfair, there's at least "meh" somewhere in between those two. Bad and Unplayable are the same thing.
I would say the card is at least average, but not because I want to play it along with a bunch of phoenixes. Hasty evasive threats that loot on etb are just gonna work. The looting has some positive interactions with the tribal, but a lot of phoenixes are expensive to return (Shard Phoenix, Worldheart Phoenix) or you have to invest in other methods to revive them (Arclight Phoenix, Warcry Phoenix)
If it were a phoenix that made Elemental Egg tokens that had "Sacrifice this Egg: Return target nonlegendary Phoenix from your graveyard to play" every turn, or whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, that'd be pretty baller. Something that brought the phoenixes together and ironed out the inconsistencies of the tribal.
I like the egg idea. Perhaps something like:
"When Ralitha or another Phoenix you control dies, create a 0/3 red Egg creature token with defender and "Sacrifice an egg: Return target Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate this ability only during your upkeep."
Whenever a Phoenix you control enters the battlefield, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card.
5RR: Return Ralitha, Sky Aflame from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. Activate this ability only as a sorcery. This ability costs 1 less for every Phoenix in your graveyard.
First, please post card text in the thread rather than just the attachment of the pic, so its easier to reference and respond to.
I'm going to tweak the wording so it flows a little better:
Ralitha, Sky Phoenix 1URRG
Legendary Creature - Phoenix
Flying, Haste
Phoenix spells you cast cost 1R less to cast.
When a Phoenix enters the battlefield under your control, you may draw a card. If it entered from your graveyard, draw two cards instead. If you draw one or more cards in this way, discard a card.
As a tribal Phoenix enabler, the looting ability is a good choice, but its also odd that the Phoenix legend doesn't have a way to return itself from the graveyard. I'd drop the cost reduction ability and replace it with a recursion ability (most phoenixes aren't going to be cast anyway)
Flavorwise, "Sky Phoenix" feels redundant and Temur is an odd choice for color identity. I don't see where green fits in to its abilities.
Thanks for the cleanup.
I added green since creature cost reduction primarily falls into green's color pie.
Any ideas what a good recursion ability would be for this one?
Ralitha, Sky Aflame
2RRR
Legendary Creature - Phoenix
Flying, Haste
You may cast Phoenix creature spells from your graveyard.
Whenever a Phoenix enters the battlefield under your control, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.
Escape - RRR, Exile two other cards from your graveyard.
The restriction is to prevent it going infinite. Though now that I think about it, it kinda does go infinite without a once per turn restriction. The egg revival might be too unbalanced.
I like the egg idea. Perhaps something like:
"When Ralitha or another Phoenix you control dies, create a 0/3 red Egg creature token with defender and "Sacrifice an egg: Return target Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate this ability only during your upkeep."
Ralitha, Sky Aflame
2RRR
Legendary Creature - Phoenix
4/4
Flying, Haste
Whenever a Phoenix you control enters the battlefield, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card.
5RR: Return Ralitha, Sky Aflame from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. Activate this ability only as a sorcery. This ability costs 1 less for every Phoenix in your graveyard.
Thanks for the cleanup.
I added green since creature cost reduction primarily falls into green's color pie.
Any ideas what a good recursion ability would be for this one?
Standard rating applies:
1: Unplayable
2: Bad
3: Decent
4: Good
5: Broken