Max Plays Phoenix with Callum Smith
📅 March 14, 2021
•⏱️1 min read
Once you consider unrecovered tournament entry fees, my paper and digital playsets of Arclight Phoenix are probably the most expensive Magic cards I own.
I love everything about Arclight Phoenix decks. They're high velocity, offer a ton of card selection, are decision-intensive, utilize the graveyard, and do all of that to put some Snare Thopters into play. The only problem when I play the deck is that I don't seem to win very much.
Callum "Whitefaces" Smith, one of the progenitors of Legacy Phoenix decks, took down the Lotus Box Legacy Octogon with Grixs Phoenix a few days ago, which is an 8 player single elimination tournament with a $20 entry, where the winner walks away with a cool $100 (and they pay $20 to 2nd place, too).
I lamented on Twitter that given Callum's success, I'd have to burn some playpoints trying to recreate the experience.
The rules are simple:
— Maxtortion (@maxtortion) March 12, 2021
Callum wins with Arclight Phoenix, and I burn 1000 playpoints thinking that maybe I can, too. https://t.co/SWmXGcwMdl
Graciously, Callum offered to jump onto Discord and play a Phoenix league with me, so we recorded it for you all to enjoy! The first 5 or so minutes of the video features a lot of great insight from Callum about the archetype, and the league matches follow. I hope you have half as much fun watching as I did playng!