Lands:
6 Mountain
4 Swamp
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Darksteel Citadel
2 Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace
1 Kher Keep
1 Keldon Necropolis
Creatures:
4 Festering Goblin
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Avalanche Riders
1 Siege-Gang Commander
3 Molten Firebird
Other Spells:
4 Wayfarer's Bauble
4 Pyroclasm
4 Howling Mine
3 Confusion in the Ranks
2 Blood Rites
2 Brainspoil
1 Obliterate |
  Dark
Phoenix.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
Basically, it goes like this: With Blood Rites
and Confusion in the Ranks on the board, play Molten Firebird (a
timeshifted Ivory Gargoyle). Confusion will trigger, and you can swap
the Firebird for an opposing creature. Sacrifice your new creature to
Blood Rites, choosing Molten Firebird as the target of the two damage.
The Firebird will die, your opponent will skip his next draw phase
(since he controlled the Firebird when it went to the graveyard), and
the Phoenix will rise from its ashes on your side of the board at the
end of the turn, kickstarting the process again.
It’s a fairly fragile combo, relying as it does on three
five-mana spells. Any Disenchant effect will foil your plans, and even an
opponent’s Glorious Anthem will throw a wrench in the works. Worst of all,
the combo comes with its own built-in get-out-of-jail card. If your
opponent is playing red, he can just pay 4R and remove Molten Firebird
from the game. Fortunately, you can do a few things about that.
1. Destroy red-producing lands. This is what Ross
suggested, and the idea is sound. I don’t think I’d want to make the deck
too-heavy on land destruction, but one card I like is Avalanche Riders.
It’ll destroy a land and allow you trade for a creature with Confusion in
the Ranks. Best of all, since it has echo and requires a payment of 3R
during your opponent’s next upkeep, there’s a good chance that your
opponent will not be able to keep it around. You just got a creature and
destroyed a land, basically giving up nothing in return.
2. Use Damping Matrix or Pithing Needle. The Matrix will
shut off the Phoenix’s activated ability, as will a Needle naming Molten
Firebird. Both cards seem good with Confusion in the Ranks as well, since
their effects are the same no matter who controls them. The only problem I
can see is that the whole combo already has the potential to backfire
horribly, and with either of these cards in play, you add the risk of
getting locked out of your own draw step.
3. Don’t rely 100% on the lock. I’m a big fan of this
approach. I love an unwieldy, unnecessarily complicated combo as much as
the next guy, but expecting to pull it off on a regular basis is a recipe
for frustration. Go ahead and put it in the deck, but at least make sure
that your deck can do something if Plan A fails. That way, you can still
experience the thrill of pulling off an unlikely combo when everything
works, and you can still have a fun game when everything doesn’t.
To that end, I filled the deck with cards that aren’t
terrible on their own but become much better with either Blood Rites or
Confusion in the Ranks or both. Festering Goblin, Mogg War Marshal, and
Siege-Gang Commander all have synergy with the key, non-Phoenix cards and
oodles of synergy with one another. The War Marshal is particularly
useful. When it comes into play, both its comes-into-play and Confusion in
the Ranks will trigger. Arrange things so that you make the swap first.
Your opponent will get the War Marshal and you will get whatever monster
they have on hand. Then, when the War Marshal’s comes-into-play ability
resolves, you’ll get the Goblin token which you can then swap for the War
Marshal. You end up with an extra creature. At the same time, Kher Keep
provides you with an endless number of creatures to trade and gives you
plenty of Blood Rites fodder as well. Howling Mine and Brainspoil help you
to get all of the lock pieces. If do achieve the lock, your opponent will
stop getting any benefit from Howling Mine. They’ll be left with whatever
cards are in hand, and you can take those out with Rix Maadi, Dungeon
Palace.
Keldon Necropolis and Kher Keep: Is there a more
mana-intensive “combo” between two rare lands beginning with the letter
“K”? I’d say it gives you a way to machine-gun your opponent’s creatures,
but that might be overstating it slightly. You’d be lucky to musket them.
Some other cards worth mentioning, since they seem to
fit in with what the deck is trying to do, include Pain/Suffering,
Nightscape Battlemage, Thunderscape Battlemage, Goblin Gardener, and
Mindslicer. |
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