(For an example of this, listen to the music of Bill Evans, Mark Knopfler, or Stewart Copeland). To my mind, improvising within a small framework can be just as inspiring and aesthetically important as coloring way outside the lines. Third, I personally think that the degree of creativity put into phoenix design over the last three decades is impressive and worth discussing BECAUSE of the narrowness of the design model established in 1994. I'd love to cover other types like these at a later date, but the fact that phoenixes fit into this uncommon “B category” makes them an interesting subgroup for historical discussion. In this respect, phoenixes take up an unusual place in the larger universe of creature types that is shared by other “near iconic” types like djinn (blue), wurms (green), archons (white), and gorgons (black). Second, while phoenixes are actually relatively rare in Magic, they appear almost exclusively at higher rarities despite the fact that Wizards does not consider them to be Red's “iconic creature type” (that would be dragons). In short, their basic design contours have changed little as the game has evolved over the years even as subtle variations on the phoenix theme have been tastefully adapted to the changing context of Magic’s thematic and mechanical evolution. Indeed, as opposed to other creature types from this same source material like dragons, dwarves, elves, or angels, phoenixes have all been designed to cover more or less the same small set of design elements from their earliest days in the game. As I'll demonstrate below, 25 out of 26 phoenixes printed between 19 adhere to a basic template that is actually very, very close to aforementioned view of the bird that is dominant in mainstream Euro-American fantasy. Why examine phoenixes in particular? First, phoenix creatures enjoy a significant homogeneity in design. This fact makes phoenixes all the more interesting as a design archetype, as it suggests that Wizards’ model for phoenix design can still be productively explored and pushed in new directions without TOO MUCH risk of creating oppressive gameplay and metagames. This said, although graveyard synergies lend themselves to Shenanigans of the Very Broken Variety (SVBV), there are surprisingly few phoenixes that have made a mark on the constructed scene. Aside from possessing the flying mechanic, an element meant to express the phoenix’s identity as a kind of bird, all phoenix cards, with one bizarre exception discussed below, are imbued with some form of built-in recursion. However, as games of Magic tend to last less than 500 years, the time required for some phoenixes to die and be reborn, their immortality has been incorporated into Magic by enabling (almost) every phoenix to “rise from its ashes” in ways that mesh with Red’s piece of the color pie, as opposed to that of Black or White, the colors that tend to monopolize efficient recursion at the level of design. The flavour and design of Magic’s phoenixes focuses principally on the bird's ability to defy death by combusting and rising anew from its ashes, Wizards’ importation of the phoenix archetype in gameplay language has remained relatively faithful to the historical source material. Phoenixes have their mythological roots in ancient Egypt and Greco-Roman antiquity, though their current level of visibility in many popular cultures is likely tied both to the work of nineteenth-century folklorists as well as to the emergence of mainstream fantasy over the last fifty years or so. Nevertheless, given that phoenixes are seeing little mainstream constructed play at the time of writing, I hope that readers feel inspired to give them another chance the next time they need evasive and recursive Red creatures regardless of their preferred play style(s). those who appreciate, play, or build decks independently of Magic's established formats-though I both understand and appreciate that many players can wear both of these hats simultaneously. With apologies to the strictly “competitive” crowd, what follows is aimed largely at a “casual” audience-i.e. Instead of posting a new deck, I'm going to devote this page to a historical discussion of the design space devoted to the creature type “phoenix” from its introduction in the early 1990s to the present day. This said, I'm going to try something a bit different this time.
As my username suggests, I have a lot of love for creature-oriented skies decks and I really enjoy thinking up alternate versions of this old archetype.
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