Need advice on casual blue/red deck

[grayson]

Hello everyone,
this is my first post on these boards and I need your help.
I have never made a blue/red deck before and a friend challenged me to make one before we play this weekend. I was hoping you could take a look and give me your opinion or suggestions on possible improvements or just comments on the deck as it is so far.

3 Shard Phoenix
1 Eron the Relentless
2 Rainbow Efreet
4 Repulse
1 capsize
4 intuition
3 Brainstorm
1 Dismiss
1 Deflection
2 Mana leak
4 Counterspell
2 earthquake
1 Fireball
1 Lightning bolt
4 Incinerate
4 Volcanic Hammer
1 Scroll Rack
9 mountain
12 island


I thought about replacing repulse with Man O'War (for more creatures) and Brainstorm with Impulse but not quite sure which combinations would be better or more helpful.

Thanks for any help.
grayson

 

[Spiderman]

What cards or sets do you have available?

 

[grayson]

Hey Spiderman,

most of the cards I have available are weatherlight, tempest, 5th and visions. I have some invasion, planeshift, ice age, 6th, 7th and odds and ends. I played a year or two during weatherlight/tempest and started back earlier this year. I play casually so I only have the cards that I've picked up or that are given to me.

Thanks for any suggestions.
grayson

 

[Spiderman]

Do you have any R/U lands? Pain or otherwise? Gemstone Mine?

Any mana accelerators, like Fire or Sky Diamond, Fellwar Stone?

More Lightning Bolts?

I don't know about your creature mix... I'd stick in the Man-o-Wars and maybe Suq-Ata Lancers instead of 3 Phoenixes. Maybe

-2 Phoenixes
+2 Lancers
-2 or 3 Repulses, replacing them with Man-o-Wars

That's what I can come up with off the top of my head without knowing what's in most of your sets (I'm familiar with Visions and Tempest and Ice Age of what you have).

 

[John`O]

Your deck looks fine to me, Intuition/Pheonix/CounterBurn
should work great.
But you don't have enough land.
Pheonix recursion is very mana intensive.
Rainbow Efreet while an ok kill card in control decks is probably
not needed.
-2 Efreet
-1 Eron
-1 Deflection
+2 Island
+2 Mountain

if you have any Nevinyrrals Disks they are pretty good in this
sort of deck, also Whispers of the Muse, to add these
probably cut some of the red cards, you probably have
slightly too much burn and not quite enough counters.
Forbid is good in this deck as well.


John

 

[Gizmo]

With a limited card pool you can really only throw out ideas and say 'have you got these?'

Really you are 8/10ths of the way to playing a CounterPhoenix deck which is a very powerful deck from 1998/99. If you play the deck you`ve listed there you will have a very good chance indeed, so props to you if you came up with that off the top of your head.

Ideally you should try to up the counterspells quite significantly, to around 10 or so. Forbid is the most powerful one to add, maybe 2/3 of those would be ideal, or another Dismiss, although at 4cc it`s kinda expensive.

Personally I`d keep the Repulses over the Man O Wars, this deck is going to play slowly and win gradually by Phoenix recursion.

Your only weakness really is that you need a few more counters, and some more effective ways of drawing additional cards - Whispers Of The Muse or Fact Or Fiction would be ideal if you can get them

 

[grayson]

Spiderman, John'O and gizmo,

Thanks guys for the input.

I got the idea for this deck because I like the Phoenix and have wanted to use it in a deck and this challenge gave me the reason to try. Looking through my cards I found Intuition which I didn't think much of at first glance, except the fact that I only have three Shard Phoenix. So, I thought those would work together. It's funny, if I had had four Shard Phoenix I may not have looked further at this combo and ignored intution. ;-)

Then, I threw is some cheap burn spells and the counters you see in my list and I had a good start. After this I ran into some problems. I thought the Rainbow Efreet might be good due to the phasing and flying ability (not affected by the Phoenix sac). I like the Man o'War but am not convinced they are useful in this deck because they die to the Phoenix sac. So, I added the repulse for creature return plus the card drawing ability. I included Brainstorm for more library manipulation esp. with the intuition to allow me to shuffle the deck if I need to. I just added some other cards (Eron) to fill out the deck.

I was thinking I needed more mana also due to the capsize and Phoenix but wasn;t sure what to remove. I hadn't thought about having the Phoenix as the only creatures in the deck. I'll try that. I'll add some u/r painlands for mana and take out the efreet and Eron. I don;t have forbid but I do have disrupt, memory lapse, power sink, rethink, foil, and miscalculation. Disrupt is cheap and draws another card, would it be worth using? I also want to use Feldon's cane.

So, now I have:

3 Shard Phoenix
4 Repulse
1 capsize
4 intuition
3 Brainstorm
1 Dismiss
2 Mana leak
4 Counterspell
2 earthquake
1 Fireball
1 Lightning bolt
4 Incinerate
4 Volcanic Hammer
1 Scroll Rack
1 Feldon's Cane
9 mountain
11 island
4 Shivan Reef


I can add fact or fiction (I have 4) and some additional counters. What would be best to remove? Brainstorm, maybe???
Sideboard

4 Man O'War
4 hydroblast
3 pyroblast (I have 4)
2 thunderbolt
2 shock


Thanks everyone for your suggestions.
grayson

 

[rakso]

I wrote up the old guide in Beyond Domnia, but I'd seriously not stick to the Tempest-era deck.

I mean, Shard Phoenix is just so weak compared to Squee, especially the triple-red. I'd just use ONE Phoenix and use Squees and think of all the other combos... Masticore-Squee, Forbid-Squee, etc., and add other Intuition ideas. You get the Phoenix anyway off any Intuition, and its creaturekill ability was useful for me only when playing with Mana Drain.

I'd also avoid the temptation to stick Feldon's Cane into every deck. You don't necessarily "gain back" the cards you reshuffled in until you draw them, and the Cane doesn't do anything else, either.

Rather, I notice that your deck has a lot of mana intensive cards but no way to draw more cards or mana at least. This is one deck where you can use Thawing Glaciers, and I used Ophidian when I played this sort of deck before Masques.

Ophidian's just a common.

Incidentally, I wouldn't use this if someone plays something like Millstone with you. Your burn has no targets, but you don't have enough to defeat him directly until much, much later.