It’s no secret Modern is in a really bad spot and that Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is incredibly likely to be leaving the format forever on Monday, August 26. But it is unknown what will happen to the rest of the Modern format once Hogaak is banned. I expect many articles to be released covering exactly that but I want to discuss the return of my favorite Modern deck: Izzet Phoenix.
What Happened?
Izzet Phoenix was the reigning best deck in Modern for months but its metagame share plunged with the rise of Hogaak, though I believe Izzet Phoenix actually has a favorable Hogaak matchup. So what happened? Well, Izzet Phoenix lost all of its favorable matchups, it’s bad matchups become more popular, and doesn’t benefit much from the London mulligan.
When Hogaak took over the metagame, it brought Jund midrange back from the dead as well. Jund had the potential to steal game one against Hogaak with efficient disruption and had access to some of the most potent sideboard cards for the matchup. Unfortunately, with the return of Jund came the resurgence of traditional Mono-Green Tron, which is a horrible matchup for Phoenix. Combine that with the resurgence of Mono-Red Phoenix and Burn due to their effectiveness against Hogaak and essentially all of the metagame except specifically the Hogaak deck was bad matchups for Izzet Phoenix.
The introduction of the London mulligan to competitive Magic play at all levels has delivered on its promise to provide more competitive games of Magic when players take mulligans. But Izzet Phoenix is a deck that did not mulligan very often to begin with as it is a cantrip heavy deck. So every other deck in Modern got significant improvements while Izzet Phoenix only benefitted marginally. This took away some of the inherent power Izzet Phoenix provided as a deck that did not mulligan very often.
After the Ban
So will Izzet Phoenix come back after the Hogaak ban? I think it will because it is still one of the most potent and resilient decks in Modern. But the metagame will take time to settle and I expect the initial meta to be hostile to Phoenix.
So where do we start? If the metagame reverts completely, I would want to run a list similar to what I played at SCG Philly earlier this year.
Modern Izzet Phoenix
| Creatures (10) 2 Crackling Drake 4 Arclight Phoenix 4 Thing in the Ice Spells (30) 2 Finale of Promise 4 Thought Scour 4 Faithless Looting 1 Flame Slash 4 Manamorphose 2 Gut Shot 4 Serum Visions 1 Echoing Truth 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Lightning Bolt Enchantments (2) 2 Pyromancer Ascension | Lands (18) 1 Fiery Islet 4 Spirebluff Canal 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Misty Rainforest 3 Steam Vents 1 Flooded Strand 3 Island 1 Mountain Sideboard (15) 1 Magmatic Sinkhole 3 Force of Negation 2 Aria of Flame 1 Beacon Bolt 2 Anger of the Gods 1 Flame Slash 3 Ravenous Trap 2 Blood Moon |
I was very happy with this list based on the pre-Hogaak Modern format. I believe I was favored against the mirror and Humans, and was at least evenly matched against the rest of Modern, excluding Burn. I will at every point concede the Burn matchup. If Burn is popular enough to consider making changes to Izzet Phoenix, I think your time is much better spent just playing a different deck.
However, I think Humans was overrepresented in the previous format, and I don’t think we will see a grand re-entry from the deck post-Hogaak. Instead, I would expect decks like Mono-Red Phoenix and Urza to continue to have a high stock in the Modern format. With that in mind, I want to make quite a few changes to my list, as it was skewed to make the Humans matchup favorable. I will be starting my testing with a list similar to this:
Modern Izzet Phoenix
| Creatures (9) 4 Arclight Phoenix 4 Thing in the Ice 1 Crackling Drake Spells (30) 2 Finale of Promise 4 Thought Scour 4 Faithless Looting 1 Flame Slash 4 Manamorphose 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Magmatic Sinkhole 4 Serum Visions 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Lightning Bolt Enchantments (3) 2 Aria of Flame 1 Pyromancer Ascension | Lands (18) 4 Spirebluff Canal 1 Fiery Islet 3 Island 3 Steam Vents 1 Polluted Delta 1 Flooded Strand 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Mountain Sideboard (15) 1 Beacon Bolt 1 Crackling Drake 1 Anger of the Gods 1 Surgical Extraction 2 Flame Slash 1 Hurkyl’s Recall 3 Force of Negation 2 Blood Moon 2 Ravenous Trap 1 Seasoned Pyromancer |
This is a pretty dramatic shift from the Philly list, but a lot of the changes seen here were held back by the enormous presence of Humans. Specifically things like the maindeck Aria of Flame and Surgical Extractions are cards that do not interact with the battlefield and would cost you dearly in the Humans matchup. However, since the new Urza decks are very good at not being attacked to death because of Thopter Sword combo and Ensnaring Bridge, Aria of Flame is a very important card in the matchup. Surgical Extraction in the maindeck allows you to improve your mirror match a bit and provides more utility against Dredge, Urza, and Mono-Red Phoenix.
The sideboard has a few cards that I have not yet tried in Phoenix and would be testing for how they stack up against the problems the new Modern format presents for Phoenix. Hurkyl’s Recall and Seasoned Pyromancer are cards I think may be important after Hogaak. Hurkyl’s Recall is likely good against both Eldrazi Tron and Urza while having some utility in matchups like Mono-Green Tron. Seasoned Pyromancer is a card advantage tool used for grinding against the fair decks in Modern that is a little more resilient than planeswalkers are in Modern at the moment.
I also have an additional Flame Slash for matchups like Mono-Red Phoenix and Humans where having efficient removal is at a premium. There is also a split on Ravenous Trap and Surgical because the third Surgical in the board complements the maindeck ones, as Surgical Extraction gets better the more of them you draw in matchups where they are effective. Ravenous Trap is noticeably better against Dredge, which I expect to make a comeback as well, so I wanted access to more potent cards for that matchup almost exclusively.
No matter how the new Modern metagame shakes out, I am excited to get back to iterating on Phoenix and find a list I am comfortable registering at SCG Dallas. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter and I am always happy to talk to Phoenix with you! Thanks for reading!