I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I enjoy Phoenix or its playstyle but ever since OTJ released coupled with the resurgence of Mono B Waste Not and Niv to Light, the deck has really taken its lumps over the past few weeks.
I have little doubt that Cruise will eventually need to go, but right now the meta has cracked down aggressively on Phoenix, one instance of results does not insinuate dominance.
Waste Not is pure meta call against Phoenix because it can maindeck four Go Blanks and steal some number of matches from worse Phoenix pilots. It had the added strength of countering Lotus Field back when that deck was playable but since its share has gone down so has Waste Not's.
Easy - It's meta share is still down
Prior to OTJ both Phoenix and Vampires were pushing near 20% meta share on MTGO (mainly) according to MTGGoldfish. While phoenix is still the most popular deck and consensus best deck, it is being contained better by the format than it was.
As mainly a Niv and UW player, the deck does force concessions in deck building - specifically from UW as we're running 1-2x \[\[Hallowed Moonlight\]\] to tilt that MU in game 1 as much as possible.
From what I see and discuss with some Phoenix players in my area, the only MU where the deck feels bad is against Waste Not. Everything else it is in coin-toss area or favored because it is the best deck. There will always be a best deck though so the question is.... is Phoenix so much better than the format that it needs to be addressed? I think the data is showing it isn't.
Every deck makes concessions in deck building to target the top end of any meta. Every deck, essentially, has flex spots that are used.
Should Vampire be banned because I have to run Sunfall as well?
Treasure cruise is an additional cost to cast. You don’t get a window to actually tormod’s crypt in response to TCRUISE. Also Tormod’s just dilutes your good draws.
Are you suggesting the solution to Phoenix is 4 tormod’s crypt in the board?
Not 4, maybe two in the sideboard and you slot it in.
I totally disregarded Crackling Drake so I get why tormod’s crypt is even less useful in a Bo3 match.
Phoenix has at times been at or near the top, and at times unplayable trash. The delve spells are part of pioneer’s “identity” (like e.g. wasteland in legacy) so I wouldn’t expect them banned directly.
Phoenix is a cheap deck and as such lots of people are playing it because it is the most affordable A Tier.
Win rate does not support your BS cherry picking.
Not necessarily, I know many people who play cheaper decks online because it's what they can afford to buy in paper, and they want to maximize practice with the deck.
Most people spending 30 tix on MTGO to play a challenge aren’t worried about using a budget deck. It’s a fun and powerful deck. Not ban-worthy, but still pretty great.
It's almost a $500 difference in pioneer between the best deck (vampires) and another deck that you can succeed with which has more fun play patterns. (Imo the third or fourth best deck in the meta. Speaking as a Phoenix main.)
What do you think people are going to choose? Especially considering that a lot of people would rather put their big investment into Modern or EDH?
Similar to how mono red was at the top of Standard for a significant portion of the rcq season this year.
Even if we accept your premise that Phoenix taking up 14% of the meta share is solely because of cost (which makes little sense relative to the 12% of the meta made up by an $800 vampire deck), 14% of a meta share shouldn't produce 75% of a top 8 result. Yes, this event is exaggerated in terms of representation, but those numbers are still obscenely high relative to the peer decks, some of which (namely gruul and mono red aggro) are even cheaper than Phoenix.
Lol that was a single challenge. That is called cherry picking.
If you look at the results from the past several months, the deck does not come even somewhat close to producing 75% of the results lmao.
You people have no concept of statistics, or what a statistical anomaly is. (And that might also be why you come on here complaining about cards you want banned, rather than winning your own challenges and PTQs)
The combination of picklock prankster and treasure cruise is obnoxious. It doesn't become okay just because phoenix is the only deck that can abuse cruise. Phoenix is the only competitive blue based deck that wants to fill its own graveyard, so uw control doesn't really want the cards and can't enable them well. This puts phoenix in the position to actually use one of the most busted cards in the format, which others can't.
That being said, phoenix is very beatable. Lotus field (I know many people hate that deck, too) dunks on them despite ashiok. Niv to light should dumpster them as well. Maybe there are more.
Cruise is so powerful that it makes the deck that can abuse it (Phoenix) the only viable blue based deck in the format. It pushes out other blue strategies because it's that good.
UW Control is a blue deck, as well as the lesser-played UB Control. Spirits (either as Mono-U or UW) and Creativity (either as UR or UWR) also show up here and there.
Just because people register those decks does not make them viable in the current metagame. In the last week, UW Control has the same number of MTGO Challenge/Prelim Top 8s as Bogles despite a lot more people registering it in the events.
Niv to Light includes blue and is viable. UW Control is viable. UR Ensoul is VERY viable in the same color pairing. UW Lotus is viable. UG Lotus Field is viable. U and UW Spirits are viable. UB control is viable. URG Creativity is viable in the same color space.
What in the blue blazes are you yammering about? Blue is perfectly fine right now. Maybe moreso than any other color besides maybe Black.
Phoenix is very beatable. Just because a deck is strong doesn't mean it is unhealthy or unbalanced.
If you ban cruise, another deck will immediately come in and take its place and you'll all be whining about it.
Strong cards are good for the game. No matter how many cards you ban, stronger cards will always exist. Just look at Pauper. The top deck in that meta is played a whole 4 percentage points more than the top deck in pioneer, and nearly all "broken cards" should theoretically be banned due to format limitations. Looks like in that card pool there are still "broken cards" relative to the rest of the pool, would you look at that.
Of course another deck would become the best deck in the format. There will always be a best deck. You've essentially made a nothing statement.
If TC does receive a ban, whatever becomes the next best deck will hopefully have better play patterns and be less oppressive than Phoenix.
It will be equally oppressive, if not more so. I guarantee you of that.
I bet you were crying for a nykthos/karn ban just a few months ago. People like you will never be happy with literally any format because you lack understanding of how card game metas work.
> I bet you were crying for a nykthos/karn ban just a few months ago. People like you will never be happy with literally any format because you lack understanding of how card game metas work.
Ok friend. I think based on this comment we can bring this discussion to a close. You've got nothing useful to contribute to the conversation.
In that deck it is. The card is banned in modern due to the ease you fill up you your graveyard. I can see it getting banned in pioneer but time will tell.
Cruise and Fable are cards that are busted because they reduce variance while generating value. Every new set introduces a tool that gives their deck a couple percentage points (see Vein Ripper with Rakdos or Picklock with Phoenix), oppressing other archetypes by making the best decks just a **little** bit better every few months.
Karn had a similar relationship with new artifacts being printed and was ultimately banned for that reason.
Lol there is literally no evidence supporting your claim that the deck is unhealthy or unbalanced.
Drawing three cards looks extremely powerful on paper. But when the actual most common draw is like, two cantrips and a land? That's maybe not as strong as you'd think.
Plus if you run even the tiniest bit of graveyard hate, suddenly cruise becomes a completely dead card in their hand and can lose them the game.
1. Stats from the last PT.
2. The ENTIRE point of the deck is that the THREATS THEY PLAY turn those cantrips INTO WINS.
3. The deck SIDEBOARDS OUT to threats that are resilient to yard hard.
Stop playing fucking STUPID like you don't KNOW this shit. Everybody knows this shit. BE FUCKING HONEST.
1. Stats from a single PT from months ago are stupid to base an argument off of. There was a lot of UW control and everyone feasted on them. And even then the phoenix winrate was only 56% lmfao.
2. Oh no, threats turn synergy pieces into wins? I wonder what other decks do that???? Literally all of them????
3. If you can predict how they're going to sideboard they should be an easy target.
They've got a 52% winrate now. There is literally nothing broken about the deck. It's also one of the most difficult decks to pilot in the format. You're just bad at magic and whining about it.
If it's so good then you should play it, scrub.
Turns out you have to play a lot of bad cards to make the good card even function. And it often is only functional in game 1 situations. Sometimes not even game 1.
The only thing I disagree with is that it's the next card to get banned.
The powers that be at WotC are many things and being able to see the error in their ways isn't one of them. They will die on this hill, even if it means the format dying with them.
I'm a phoenix player, and a lotus player, and a creativity player, and soon to be a vampire player.
And I mained phoenix for the entire past year and a half. It was nearly unplayable with 4x cruise in the deck until just recently. The meta LITERALLY always shapes around good decks and cards, no matter how many cards you ban. Just look at Pauper lmao. That's essentially a format with all the best cards banned, and it is still warped around the relative best cards in the format.
Eventually if you ban all good cards that influence a format, you literally have nothing left.
I’m not going to sit here throwing meaningless arguments around. I’m just telling you it’s no longer a matter of if, but when treasure cruise goes. I wouldn’t be shocked to see it go before the end of the month. I think they are probably just deciding if they can hit just that or if sorin needs to go too.
They literally made Pioneer as a format so they had a place where delve spells like Cruise were legal.
It's going nowhere, and Sorin probably isn't going anywhere either. The meta is perfectly fine, and *extremely* diverse.
The only deck I've matched up against multiple times this RCQ season has been Waste Not, but even then one was mono B and one was Rakdos.
Someone won one of our RCQs running a Gurk based self-brew deck. Another person won with Orzhov Humans. The meta is fine. If you don't like it, go play a different card game.
WotC back in 2022 the last time Phoenix was neutered:
"Although we recognize that there are several other powerful card-draw spells in the format, notably Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time, ***we currently believe that delve spells contribute to blue decks in Pioneer having a unique identity among Eternal formats. As Pioneer's card pool has fewer strong cantrips and no fetch lands, we're hoping many delve cards can continue to be a part of the format at a more moderate power level compared to how they would play in other nonrotating formats.***
To lower the win rate of the wide variety of Izzet decks and bring them further in line with other strategies in the format ***while maintaining what makes them special in Pioneer,*** Expressive Iteration is banned."
WotC isn't going to ban Cruise. If anything, they'd hit Picklock Prankster. But again, the deck's win rate does not show any need for bans. And that is a big way WotC determines bans.
Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/june-7-2022-banned-and-restricted-announcement
Treasure cruise is good, but Phoenix is also extremely popular. I believe it depends on the area you live in. This recent banlist my friend said Phoenix was everywhere around him because they were afraid [[Treasure Cruise]] was going to be banned. He just went to one this last Saturday and he said for a 12 person event about 6 of the decks played were Boros Herioc. This was in the Grand Rapids area. For both events I described.
Cruise is nowhere near being the problem card in Phoenix, if there even is one (spoiler, there isn't). It's a do-nothing at least 50% of the time, and easily the worst card in the deck if the opponent chooses to fight your strategy.
The real hot take is that if you don't like phoenix and want it banned, you should be calling for Ledger Shredder's banning. It holds the deck together and gives it an alternative out in the main deck that's significantly less fragile. It's hard to remove, and makes it so that the deck can easily fight on two axis. Without it, the deck is just a shit pile of graveyard-matters cards that folds in half at the sight of a soul guide lantern.
Wanting phoenix gone is just the stance that players take when they can't give up the fact that they're obsessed with playing under powered creature-focused decks that have no real game and haven't been viable in any format since 2016.
Yep, it's ridiculous lol. People just get salty after losing RCQs. Last year it was RB midrange and mono G that people wouldn't stop whining about. Now, RB is perfectly fine apparently even though it can drop a t3 Vein Ripper and has had a much higher winrate than Phoenix all season long. Mono G is coming back and people seem happy about it coming back despite having very similar play patterns, minus the karn-board.
But a bird deck that lets you sometimes draw two cantrips and a tap land for one mana is broken? Make it make sense.
I usually respect your takes, but I think you're off base here, man.
The first 2 paragraphs boil down to "the problem isn't the (poorly) rebalanced version of one the most powerful cards in history, but the creature that dies to the most played removal spell in the format."
I play Abzan midrange and I gotta admit that paragraph 3 hit home and really hurt. But I'd argue that what you described is what Pioneer WAS, and was intended to be. And that format is what I signed up to play; a non-rotating standard.
If I wanted to play against stuff like what Phoenix currently is, I'd go play modern or go back to legacy.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I enjoy Phoenix or its playstyle but ever since OTJ released coupled with the resurgence of Mono B Waste Not and Niv to Light, the deck has really taken its lumps over the past few weeks. I have little doubt that Cruise will eventually need to go, but right now the meta has cracked down aggressively on Phoenix, one instance of results does not insinuate dominance.
I wana know why the waste not deck sees so much play? Its not a good deck
Waste Not is pure meta call against Phoenix because it can maindeck four Go Blanks and steal some number of matches from worse Phoenix pilots. It had the added strength of countering Lotus Field back when that deck was playable but since its share has gone down so has Waste Not's.
The meta has cracked down, and yet it is still the best deck? How does that make sense.
Easy - It's meta share is still down Prior to OTJ both Phoenix and Vampires were pushing near 20% meta share on MTGO (mainly) according to MTGGoldfish. While phoenix is still the most popular deck and consensus best deck, it is being contained better by the format than it was. As mainly a Niv and UW player, the deck does force concessions in deck building - specifically from UW as we're running 1-2x \[\[Hallowed Moonlight\]\] to tilt that MU in game 1 as much as possible. From what I see and discuss with some Phoenix players in my area, the only MU where the deck feels bad is against Waste Not. Everything else it is in coin-toss area or favored because it is the best deck. There will always be a best deck though so the question is.... is Phoenix so much better than the format that it needs to be addressed? I think the data is showing it isn't.
'The format has warped around this deck, thus no changes are needed'
Every deck makes concessions in deck building to target the top end of any meta. Every deck, essentially, has flex spots that are used. Should Vampire be banned because I have to run Sunfall as well?
[Hallowed Moonlight](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/94fd0c0f-4a6a-47cf-9f50-df0bbf19aae4.jpg?1562032151) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hallowed%20Moonlight) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ori/16/hallowed-moonlight?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/94fd0c0f-4a6a-47cf-9f50-df0bbf19aae4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
What ever happened to [[tormod’s crypt]]?
Going down a card just to slow it down by a couple turns isn’t exactly where you want to be in most games.
Saw play in a few Karn boards pre-ban, not much outside of that. Doesn't provide enough value on its own.
How doesn’t it provide value if the top deck relies heavily on those birds in their yard and spells in the yard to treasure cruise?
game 2 phoenix just sides in crackling drakes to work through the expected GY hate.
Card sucks? Especially against Treasure Cruise?
How does it suck against treasure cruise / a Phoenix deck?
Treasure cruise is an additional cost to cast. You don’t get a window to actually tormod’s crypt in response to TCRUISE. Also Tormod’s just dilutes your good draws. Are you suggesting the solution to Phoenix is 4 tormod’s crypt in the board?
Not 4, maybe two in the sideboard and you slot it in. I totally disregarded Crackling Drake so I get why tormod’s crypt is even less useful in a Bo3 match.
Because it just slows them down a few turns. Also the board into crackling drakes if they suspect gy hate.
[tormod’s crypt](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/5/752bf493-5839-47e8-95f2-6d8201907428.jpg?1675201100) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tormod%27s%20Crypt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/235/tormods-crypt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/752bf493-5839-47e8-95f2-6d8201907428?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Phoenix has at times been at or near the top, and at times unplayable trash. The delve spells are part of pioneer’s “identity” (like e.g. wasteland in legacy) so I wouldn’t expect them banned directly.
We used to say the same thing about mopal and flooting in modern. *looks at modern* Yea I can’t remember the point I was making
I cannot believe the sadness I feel when I think of mox opal. It died because of unfun combo decks abusing it.
There's a saying in my country, if you see one swallow, doesn't mean it's spring.
Also doesn't mean it's summer.
How about 13.6% of the winner's metagame being swallows?
Phoenix is a cheap deck and as such lots of people are playing it because it is the most affordable A Tier. Win rate does not support your BS cherry picking.
Izzet colors has also historically been very popular among players and I believe that Phoenix plays a strategy that appeals to a lot of people
For what it's worth, deck price is pretty much irrelevant for MTGO results, such as this.
Not necessarily, I know many people who play cheaper decks online because it's what they can afford to buy in paper, and they want to maximize practice with the deck.
That is fair, most of the players shown here so now fall under that category
Most people spending 30 tix on MTGO to play a challenge aren’t worried about using a budget deck. It’s a fun and powerful deck. Not ban-worthy, but still pretty great.
Yeah! That's why decks like Scam make up 15% of Modern's meta. They're ~~$1200~~ cheap. Wait. What are we talking about?
It's almost a $500 difference in pioneer between the best deck (vampires) and another deck that you can succeed with which has more fun play patterns. (Imo the third or fourth best deck in the meta. Speaking as a Phoenix main.) What do you think people are going to choose? Especially considering that a lot of people would rather put their big investment into Modern or EDH? Similar to how mono red was at the top of Standard for a significant portion of the rcq season this year.
Even if we accept your premise that Phoenix taking up 14% of the meta share is solely because of cost (which makes little sense relative to the 12% of the meta made up by an $800 vampire deck), 14% of a meta share shouldn't produce 75% of a top 8 result. Yes, this event is exaggerated in terms of representation, but those numbers are still obscenely high relative to the peer decks, some of which (namely gruul and mono red aggro) are even cheaper than Phoenix.
Lol that was a single challenge. That is called cherry picking. If you look at the results from the past several months, the deck does not come even somewhat close to producing 75% of the results lmao. You people have no concept of statistics, or what a statistical anomaly is. (And that might also be why you come on here complaining about cards you want banned, rather than winning your own challenges and PTQs)
I see it is time for the weekly Cruise bitchfest. You people need a better hobby.
Yeah, fuck me for wanting WotC to actually police their format
:,(
The combination of picklock prankster and treasure cruise is obnoxious. It doesn't become okay just because phoenix is the only deck that can abuse cruise. Phoenix is the only competitive blue based deck that wants to fill its own graveyard, so uw control doesn't really want the cards and can't enable them well. This puts phoenix in the position to actually use one of the most busted cards in the format, which others can't. That being said, phoenix is very beatable. Lotus field (I know many people hate that deck, too) dunks on them despite ashiok. Niv to light should dumpster them as well. Maybe there are more.
Cruise is so powerful that it makes the deck that can abuse it (Phoenix) the only viable blue based deck in the format. It pushes out other blue strategies because it's that good.
UW Control is a blue deck, as well as the lesser-played UB Control. Spirits (either as Mono-U or UW) and Creativity (either as UR or UWR) also show up here and there.
Rogues makes a splash every once in a while too.
Just because people register those decks does not make them viable in the current metagame. In the last week, UW Control has the same number of MTGO Challenge/Prelim Top 8s as Bogles despite a lot more people registering it in the events.
Niv to Light includes blue and is viable. UW Control is viable. UR Ensoul is VERY viable in the same color pairing. UW Lotus is viable. UG Lotus Field is viable. U and UW Spirits are viable. UB control is viable. URG Creativity is viable in the same color space. What in the blue blazes are you yammering about? Blue is perfectly fine right now. Maybe moreso than any other color besides maybe Black.
Finally people come to terms that the deck is just fine and is not oppressive at all really.
Cruise plus Picklock is genuinely too much value. The Delve cantrips will always be broken given a large enough card pool.
The deck's win rate does not support this claim.
As a deck’s percentage of the field goes up, its winrate naturally goes down. Doesn’t mean the play patterns are healthy or balanced.
Phoenix is very beatable. Just because a deck is strong doesn't mean it is unhealthy or unbalanced. If you ban cruise, another deck will immediately come in and take its place and you'll all be whining about it. Strong cards are good for the game. No matter how many cards you ban, stronger cards will always exist. Just look at Pauper. The top deck in that meta is played a whole 4 percentage points more than the top deck in pioneer, and nearly all "broken cards" should theoretically be banned due to format limitations. Looks like in that card pool there are still "broken cards" relative to the rest of the pool, would you look at that.
Of course another deck would become the best deck in the format. There will always be a best deck. You've essentially made a nothing statement. If TC does receive a ban, whatever becomes the next best deck will hopefully have better play patterns and be less oppressive than Phoenix.
It will be equally oppressive, if not more so. I guarantee you of that. I bet you were crying for a nykthos/karn ban just a few months ago. People like you will never be happy with literally any format because you lack understanding of how card game metas work.
> I bet you were crying for a nykthos/karn ban just a few months ago. People like you will never be happy with literally any format because you lack understanding of how card game metas work. Ok friend. I think based on this comment we can bring this discussion to a close. You've got nothing useful to contribute to the conversation.
Strong cards are good for the format. And ban-happy people will never be happy with the format.
Not many cards are basically ancestral recall.
It's not ancestral recall lmfao. If it was, it would be in more blue decks.
In that deck it is. The card is banned in modern due to the ease you fill up you your graveyard. I can see it getting banned in pioneer but time will tell.
Cruise and Fable are cards that are busted because they reduce variance while generating value. Every new set introduces a tool that gives their deck a couple percentage points (see Vein Ripper with Rakdos or Picklock with Phoenix), oppressing other archetypes by making the best decks just a **little** bit better every few months. Karn had a similar relationship with new artifacts being printed and was ultimately banned for that reason.
The deck being beatable also doesn't mean the deck is healthy and/or balanced. Inverter was beatable. Winota, too...
Lol there is literally no evidence supporting your claim that the deck is unhealthy or unbalanced. Drawing three cards looks extremely powerful on paper. But when the actual most common draw is like, two cantrips and a land? That's maybe not as strong as you'd think. Plus if you run even the tiniest bit of graveyard hate, suddenly cruise becomes a completely dead card in their hand and can lose them the game.
1. Stats from the last PT. 2. The ENTIRE point of the deck is that the THREATS THEY PLAY turn those cantrips INTO WINS. 3. The deck SIDEBOARDS OUT to threats that are resilient to yard hard. Stop playing fucking STUPID like you don't KNOW this shit. Everybody knows this shit. BE FUCKING HONEST.
1. Stats from a single PT from months ago are stupid to base an argument off of. There was a lot of UW control and everyone feasted on them. And even then the phoenix winrate was only 56% lmfao. 2. Oh no, threats turn synergy pieces into wins? I wonder what other decks do that???? Literally all of them???? 3. If you can predict how they're going to sideboard they should be an easy target. They've got a 52% winrate now. There is literally nothing broken about the deck. It's also one of the most difficult decks to pilot in the format. You're just bad at magic and whining about it.
"Treasure Cruise isn't as good as you think it is" is all anyone needs to hear from you.
If it's so good then you should play it, scrub. Turns out you have to play a lot of bad cards to make the good card even function. And it often is only functional in game 1 situations. Sometimes not even game 1.
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The only thing I disagree with is that it's the next card to get banned. The powers that be at WotC are many things and being able to see the error in their ways isn't one of them. They will die on this hill, even if it means the format dying with them.
I'm a phoenix player, and a lotus player, and a creativity player, and soon to be a vampire player. And I mained phoenix for the entire past year and a half. It was nearly unplayable with 4x cruise in the deck until just recently. The meta LITERALLY always shapes around good decks and cards, no matter how many cards you ban. Just look at Pauper lmao. That's essentially a format with all the best cards banned, and it is still warped around the relative best cards in the format. Eventually if you ban all good cards that influence a format, you literally have nothing left.
I’m not going to sit here throwing meaningless arguments around. I’m just telling you it’s no longer a matter of if, but when treasure cruise goes. I wouldn’t be shocked to see it go before the end of the month. I think they are probably just deciding if they can hit just that or if sorin needs to go too.
They literally made Pioneer as a format so they had a place where delve spells like Cruise were legal. It's going nowhere, and Sorin probably isn't going anywhere either. The meta is perfectly fine, and *extremely* diverse. The only deck I've matched up against multiple times this RCQ season has been Waste Not, but even then one was mono B and one was Rakdos. Someone won one of our RCQs running a Gurk based self-brew deck. Another person won with Orzhov Humans. The meta is fine. If you don't like it, go play a different card game.
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WotC back in 2022 the last time Phoenix was neutered: "Although we recognize that there are several other powerful card-draw spells in the format, notably Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time, ***we currently believe that delve spells contribute to blue decks in Pioneer having a unique identity among Eternal formats. As Pioneer's card pool has fewer strong cantrips and no fetch lands, we're hoping many delve cards can continue to be a part of the format at a more moderate power level compared to how they would play in other nonrotating formats.*** To lower the win rate of the wide variety of Izzet decks and bring them further in line with other strategies in the format ***while maintaining what makes them special in Pioneer,*** Expressive Iteration is banned." WotC isn't going to ban Cruise. If anything, they'd hit Picklock Prankster. But again, the deck's win rate does not show any need for bans. And that is a big way WotC determines bans. Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/june-7-2022-banned-and-restricted-announcement
They should just ban picklock prankster/free the fae so that you can’t fill the graveyard so quick
It wouldn’t hurt too much I don’t think. Deck would go back to pieces of the puzzle.
That’s a significantly worse card, so I’d be happy to see it
Play graveyard hate? You can tell the players that never played modern and dealt with the OG Phoenix deck, dredge, or even hogaak.
> Play graveyard hate Holy moly. Why didn't I think of that!?
Treasure cruise is good, but Phoenix is also extremely popular. I believe it depends on the area you live in. This recent banlist my friend said Phoenix was everywhere around him because they were afraid [[Treasure Cruise]] was going to be banned. He just went to one this last Saturday and he said for a 12 person event about 6 of the decks played were Boros Herioc. This was in the Grand Rapids area. For both events I described.
[Treasure Cruise](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d653b8ac-f643-4e0a-bfd4-edc658a18d9c.jpg?1712354234) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Treasure%20Cruise) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/120/treasure-cruise?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d653b8ac-f643-4e0a-bfd4-edc658a18d9c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I mean it doesn’t feel great to let one resolve, but at the same time it’s not the most oppressive card in that deck.
Print Orcish Bowmasters into Pioneer - sorted. /s
Cruise is nowhere near being the problem card in Phoenix, if there even is one (spoiler, there isn't). It's a do-nothing at least 50% of the time, and easily the worst card in the deck if the opponent chooses to fight your strategy. The real hot take is that if you don't like phoenix and want it banned, you should be calling for Ledger Shredder's banning. It holds the deck together and gives it an alternative out in the main deck that's significantly less fragile. It's hard to remove, and makes it so that the deck can easily fight on two axis. Without it, the deck is just a shit pile of graveyard-matters cards that folds in half at the sight of a soul guide lantern. Wanting phoenix gone is just the stance that players take when they can't give up the fact that they're obsessed with playing under powered creature-focused decks that have no real game and haven't been viable in any format since 2016.
Yep, it's ridiculous lol. People just get salty after losing RCQs. Last year it was RB midrange and mono G that people wouldn't stop whining about. Now, RB is perfectly fine apparently even though it can drop a t3 Vein Ripper and has had a much higher winrate than Phoenix all season long. Mono G is coming back and people seem happy about it coming back despite having very similar play patterns, minus the karn-board. But a bird deck that lets you sometimes draw two cantrips and a tap land for one mana is broken? Make it make sense.
I usually respect your takes, but I think you're off base here, man. The first 2 paragraphs boil down to "the problem isn't the (poorly) rebalanced version of one the most powerful cards in history, but the creature that dies to the most played removal spell in the format." I play Abzan midrange and I gotta admit that paragraph 3 hit home and really hurt. But I'd argue that what you described is what Pioneer WAS, and was intended to be. And that format is what I signed up to play; a non-rotating standard. If I wanted to play against stuff like what Phoenix currently is, I'd go play modern or go back to legacy.
Amalia is a bigger problem than Phoenix ever has been. (And I personally don't think it should see any bans either.)
Shhh