Sideboarding with Pioneer UR Phoenix

🖛 This post contains ✨on-hover card images✨, indicated by the hanafuda card symbol, “🎴”, like so: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 🖚

—is indulging me by trying out tournament magic. She wanted to play something reasonably competitive & not have to spend a ton & to not have to make cuts to save on budget & for there to be a local scene. She picked pioneer.

I don’t play pioneer. I am okay at magic—

—and so I think maybe I can be helpful despite not playing pioneer. I made this overview of the format to help her pick a deck. She’s built UR Phoenix and is taking it to an event soon. I now attempt to help her sideboard. Read on for wild, uninformed speculation about UR Phoenix and the pioneer format in general.

The Deck

Here’s the deck:

Main (60)

Creature (9)

4 Thing in the Ice

4 Arclight Phoenix

1 Brazen Borrower

Instant (21)

4 Consider

4 Fiery Impulse

3 Lighting Axe

4 Opt

3 Spell Pierce

2 Spikefield Hazard

1 Galvanic Iteration

Sorcery (11)

3 Chart a Course

4 Pieces of the Puzzle

4 Treasure Cruise

Land (19)

2 Hall of Storm Giants

2 Island

1 Otawara, Soaring City

4 Riverglide Pathway

4 Spirebluff Canal

4 Steam Vents

4 Stormcarved Coast

Sideboard (15)

Creature (5)

3 Young Pyromancer

1 Crackling Drake

Instant (8)

1 Rending Volley

2 Abrade

3 Fry

2 Negate

1 Mystical Dispute

Sorcery (2)

2 Brotherhood’s End

General Remarks

You are a Xerox™ deck: you want to cast cheap spells, especially self-replacing ones (“cantrips”) to set up wins through Arclight Phoenix reanimations and Thing in the Ice flips for the beatdown.

You win by being able to interact profitably since you can do things you “already wanted to do” (e.g. cast Consider ) and have it move you closer to objectives like “phoenixes in graveyard” and “three precombat instants and/or sorceries” that make you win. Interacting with the opponent & trading resources with them is usually good since you have a lot of card draw / card advantage.

You expect to spend the first few turns “setting up”: using the cantrips to get Arclight Phoenix s in the graveyard & durdling around until you have enough lands for it to be possible to cast three spells in a turn.

If you can, it is of course great to use the Galvanic Iteration on something expensive like Treasure Cruise rather than a mere Opt , but using it on a small spell is still fine.

Arclight Phoenix’ Ability And You

Arclight Phoenix reads:

At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you’ve cast three or more instant and sorcery spells this turn, return Arclight Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield.

You want to look for opportunities to cast three instants or sorceries in your turn & before combat. Your opponent knows you are trying to do this and may try to stop you.

Our Meta

Our local meta is aggro heavy, and mono-blue spirits heavy in particular. Per the [matchup matrix] the UR Phoenix player is actually favored if they understand the matchup well enough.

This makes sense to me:

• blue is bad at exiling graveyards, so the phoenixes and delve targets are probably not going anywhere.

• you can accomplish your goals by casting nothing but Opt and Consider , and it’s really bad to counter an Opt or Consider most of the time

• Arclight Phoenix’ “return to play” ability doesn’t count as casting it, so it’s not like they can counter you.

• Arclight Phoenix has flying, can lethally trade with most spirits most of the time, and can be gotten back. One of Spirits’ play patterns is to play one spirit, put Curious Obsession on it, then attack like ten times with it, using the extra cards to protect the spirit and counter your stuff.[ref]they’re playing like “Delver”[/ref] This is only good if they’re able to do combat damage to you.

However: spirits has a lot of mechanics and many of them make it possible for an experienced player to trick the opponent. It’s important to know what the deck can do, so you can plan ahead around “if I do x, they might do y or z. Depending on which, I will do a or b…”. You not knowing they can give a spirit hexproof at instant speed, for example, would give them an advantage.

We’re going to tweak your sideboard to be very anti-spirits. Most Phoenix sideboards make more concessions to fighting ramp and control, but I’m not seeing these at our store.

Rules & Rulings & Conventions

• The copy made by Galvanic Iteration does not count as “casting” a spell

• The discarding done by Lighting Axe is a “cost”: it happens as you start casting the spell. So for better or worse the opponent can’t use counterspells to stop you from using Lighting Axe ’s secondary cost as a discard outlet.

• The first thing that happens in the upkeep step is all the effects that say “at the beginning of your upkeep, do x” all go on the stack in FILO order. If you control simultaneous effects, you choose the order.

• The opponent is probably not going to help you by reminding you to take counters off of Thing in the Ice or reminding you to bring back the Arclight Phoenix . Everyone misses triggers sometimes. You get a lot of win% by making sure you remember the most important ones always. This will take practice. Use visual aids.

  • I’m going to make you a reminder card for tracking “precombat instants/sorceries cast this turn” so you keep in mind to think about whether to work towards reaching it that turn & how far you currently are. It may take getting used to; that is okay.

• The stack is FILO. If you try to use a lighting axe to kill something and the opponent responds by casting Rattlechains , then the Rattlechains will resolve first. Then its’ ETB hexproof-granting ability will go on the stack also ahead of the lighting axe, and by the time the axe resolves the target will have hexproof and so not get axed.

• “Can’t be countered” means countering it doesn’t do anything. It also means that countering-related effects such as “ward” (which usually counter stuff unless you pay the ward cost) don’t do anything.

• “Can’t be countered” does not go through hexproof.

General Tips

Try to look at spending your mana in terms of “how do I make the best use of the mana I get this turn cycle. Sometimes this means doing a lot of things in your turn’s precombat main phase to try to get back the phoenixes. Sometimes it means doing a lot of things in the opponent’s end step so you get to act as late as possible and/or remove counters from a Thing in the Ice . You want to preserve optionality

Notice what your opponent is trying to do. Are they spending resources on trying to find lands to make their land drops vs whether they are advancing their gameplan, etc. If they are struggling to just find their lands, be aggressive; they probably can’t counter your spell.

Failing that, do things that make the opponent play worse. Force them to make a lot of choices, so they have more opportunities to make the wrong ones. Winning is made out of scads of tiny edges and correct decisions made out of habit & reflex. People make a lot of mistakes. If you can make it look like they’re facing a critical choice, they will probably act like it and they might misplay. This works just as well if your hand is nothing but land: they may suspect a bluff, but they usually won’t know it is a bluff.

Think in terms of how many turns you are away from killing the opponent (your “clock”) and how different lines of play change or don’t change your clock. If using a burn spell on the opponent isn’t going to make them die any faster (e.g. it means they are at 1 rather than at 3) this usually means “don’t use it on them; just wait”.

Sideboarding

If killing their creatures doesn’t put you ahead then you probably don’t need things that kill their creatures. Killing a Bloodtithe Harvester doesn’t really set them back or you forward most of the time, so consider ignoring it.

Kill their Thalia, Guardian of Thraben on sight.

They’re going to try to exile the Arclight Phoenix in the post-sideboard games; consider not putting them in the graveyard unless you plan on reviving them very soon. Remember the Brazen Borrower can bounce most permanents, including Leylines. Sometimes the opponent actually cannot recast it due to not running black mana. Sometimes they could recast it but one turn of graveyard access is enough for you to win. And if you pressure them enough, they might not be able to justify casting it.

Specific matchups

Green Devotion

This is the second most popular deck in the format. I don’t think I’ve seen it played at our store. Our sideboard is weak against them since we’re focusing so much on anti-aggro. If you do face them: their thing is to ramp a lot and then cast a huge thing that wins the game. For example: Storm the Festival .

The majority of their “bombs” are noncreature spells. Negate these. Check with them about how much mana they have or can make before you Spell Pierce .

Out: 2 Pieces of the Puzzle

In: 2 Negate

Rakdos Midrange

This is the most popular deck in the format. It’s pretty expensive so it’s going to be underrepresented but I think we have one player on it.

Their premier threat is Sheoldred, the Apocalypse . Save Lighting Axe for this unless you expect to win before their fifth turn since that’s when they’ll start drawing cards → gaining life → becoming ~unkillable via just having the Sheoldred.

They have a lot of removal and can generally drag us into a long grindy game. We take out things that aren’t impactful enough and bring in things that let us clog up or wipe the board.

OUT: 1 Galvanic Iteration , 4 Pieces of the Puzzle , 1 Opt , 4 Treasure Cruise

IN: 3 Young Pyromancer , 2 Negate , 2 Abrade , 1 Crackling Drake , 2 Brotherhood’s End

This might be “over-boarding”; feel free to do less if you want.

White Humans / Weenies

This is my deck! Bring in removal, especially boardwipes. Other than Brave the Elements (and some activated abilities on creatures) this deck plays at sorcery speed. Expect them to dump their hand into play quickly and to have minimal followup if you boardwipe. This matchup is about surviving the first few turns

Take out spell pierces and trim some copies of more expensive spells.

IN: 2 Brotherhood’s End , 3 Fry , 1 Rending Volley , 2 Abrade

OUT: 3 Spell Pierce , 2 Treasure Cruise , 2 Pieces of the Puzzle , 1 Chart a Course

U Spirits

Know what their cards do beforehand. Here is an archetypal decklist; [take a look][U Spirits Decklist]

They’re going to try to play one spirit, put Curious Obsession on it, then attack like ten times with it, using the extra cards to protect the spirit and counter your stuff. This is only good if they’re able to do combat damage to you. Their creatures are pretty bad if you aren’t surprised by them.

The stack is FILO. If you try to use a lighting axe to kill something and the opponent responds by casting Rattlechains , then the Rattlechains will resolve first. Then its’ ETB hexproof-granting ability will go on the stack also ahead of the lighting axe, and by the time the axe resolves the target will have hexproof and so not get axed.

They’re allowed to “level up” the Ascendant Spirit at instant speed. Doing so uses the stack.

Your gameplan is the same as always:

1. survive the early turns as you get set up

2. flip a thing in the ice or reanimate some phoenixes for the win

Since their gameplan leads to them drowning in cards, you’ll want to kill their stuff. Do this EITHER when they are tapped out or right after they declare attacks.

Remember that Mystical Dispute counters everything in their deck for one mana. If you want to prepare even further, we could get you more of them.

I think Thing in the Ice is worse here since it cannot block flyers.

IN: 2 Brotherhood’s End , 3 Fry , 1 Rending Volley , 2 Abrade , 1 Mystical Dispute , 1 Crackling Drake

OUT: 1 Galvanic Iteration , 4 Thing in the Ice , 2 Treasure Cruise , 2 Pieces of the Puzzle , 1 Chart a Course

Generic Control

Take out burn spells such as Spikefield Hazard & Fiery Impulse

Bring in counterspells and things that generate value e.g.  Crackling Drake & Young Pyromancer

Generic Aggro

Take out expensive spells that you won’t have time to cast before dying. Feel free to take out one of each of a few things.

Bring in all the removal: burn spells, boardwipes. Remember that if your third noncreature spell is Brotherhood’s End , you could wipe their board and then get all your Phoenixes back in that same turn

Generic Combo

Burn spells out

Counterspells in

Convoke / Loxodon Hierarch Aggro

Burn and boardwipes in

Expensive spells out

Conclusion

Good luck!