Phoenix (Card)

The central strategy of the “The Adventures of Meow” Magic the Gathering Deck is based off of accumulating a large army of small characters to overwhelm the opponent. Most of the cards in the deck (with five exceptions) are cheap 1/1 or 2/2 cards that individually don’t have much power. But a good portion of them use the “Banding” ability that allows them to attack and defend together as a single card. As efficient as the deck is at gathering these individual small characters, the chief weakness in this strategy is the lack of power creatures to counter decks that primarily use power creatures and can gather them with equal quickness and efficiency. The answer to this problem became the “Soul Guardians.” The deck contains five Soul Guardians, one of each respective color. And they are costly, despite their apparent cheap casting cost.

The deck uses very little land; two of each color, except white and black, which the deck has three. There are also four special lands that provide one color of your choice. This means, that most of the time when you attempt to summon a Soul Guardian, you are using all of the available land you have of a single color and then some. They all also have abilities that are triggered with colored mana, which increases the need for the player to be able to adequately support the creature after summoning. The abilities are designed not only to reflect the Soul Guardian’s reflective color, but also its character and to counter some of the more common deck strategies. They all also have a costly sacrificial ability intended to be used to change the tide of the game. These abilities also reflect the Soul Guardian nature, as in the stories they were only met in passing and never contributed a great deal of time to Meow and Two’s adventures.

Of course, having costly heavy-hitting Soul Guardians alone isn’t enough to counter decks with very quick strategies. Given the color specific cost of the Soul Guardians, they would normally only be feasible in mid-game, when the opponent’s strategy is already in effect and the little cats you have accumulated have either died off or helpless. Thus, the “Ruby Amé” was created to speed up the acquisition of the heavy-hitting Soul Guardians as a means of keeping the player defended at least long enough to build the little cat army.

The Phoenix is meant to be used defensively. It doesn’t have much power or toughness in comparison to the other Soul Guardians. However, it does have Regenerate which allows it to block attacks that would normally kill it, or keep it alive when targeted by damaging spells or abilities. Also, since it is Flying, it is able to block Flying creatures, which seem to be common in Magic Decks as a way to attack an unprepared opponent directly. Conceivably, the Phoenix could be used this way too. Its sacrificial ability represents the Phoenix’s ability to give life, allowing you to reclaim lost characters from the graveyard. This is especially important in this deck where there are no copies of creatures, and therefore every one counts.

See also, Phoenix (Digital Art and Crayon): kanetakeo.deviantart.com/art/P…