Burn Away's "exile the graveyard" effect is triggered, so it goes on the stack when the Phoenix dies, as does the reanimation trigger from the Phoenix. If it's your turn, you're the active player, and the trigger you control (from Burn Away) goes on the stack first, then the Phoenix trigger. The Phoenix trigger will resolve first, and the Phoenix gets returned to the battlefield face down. If you'd Burned the Phoenix on your opponent's turn, the ordering of the triggers would have been reversed, and the Phoenix would be exiled along with the rest of the opponent's graveyard.
Yup, and the interaction is especially important in this particular format (not that an uncommon and a mythic are going to be facing each other that often, but it happens) because of the existence of Feat of Resistance- normally you'd be fine with sending a six damage burn spell at an x/1 on your opponent's turn, but with a heavily played common that gives protection in the format it's usually correct to kill high value creatures on your own turn (not always, as you might, for example, want to draw out the Feat of Resistance, but the general point still stands).
I think Jeskai Windscout isn't super great, because you can't threaten to trade 2 for 1 with morphs by leaving it back and holding up mana. Obviously its primary porpoise is to play offense, but every deck has is going to be on the back foot sometimes and in those situations it won't be so exciting.
Rakshasa's Secret - Mind Rot is a lot worse in a set that is slow and people hold onto cards in their hands longer.
How does that make it worse? Wouldn't that make it better, since it's more likely to not be a dead card. The worst part about mind rot is topdecking it when your opponent has no cards in hand.
Yeah, my impression is that it's perfect card for this format. Not only does because morph ties up a lot of your mana, which clogs your hand with spells, increasing the effectiveness of Mind Rot, in the late game there will be times when it's correct to play out your lands so that you can cast a morph face down rather than face up (it's not a huge difference, so you might play your 8th land instead of holding it in your hand, so your chances of knocking spells rather than lands out of your opponent's hand goes up.
The problem with Hunter's Ambush is that even if you're somehow mono-green, it's terrible if your opponent is running even a few green creatures. In other words, it's a sideboard card in a deck that almost never gets built.
I would think that clear a path would be a sideboard card, like plummet. There are many walls in M15, it is playable against durdly decks that want to stop aggro and win in the late game.
Clear a Path matches terribly against the most played wall in M14, so I don't think I'd side it in unless I saw either a Hornet's Nest or multiple Wall of Essences.
I think that people (yes, even pros who are amazing at limited) overrate
As for Silverback, it's worse in those format than it would be in others- the best deck in the format has endless blockers for it and the regeneration is irrelevant against black's best common removal spell, but I still think it's quite good. 6 power dudes that don't die in combat are very useful in board stalls (which are common in this format), even without evasion or trample. I'd say it's better than Overwhelm (I know he wasn't choosing between them), which has, wait for it, underwhelmed me so far.
Radiant Fountain is very bad. I could see playing it in a mono-colored control deck, if such a deck exists, but you certainly don't want it in a deck with two Krenko's Enforcers and lots of low CMC creatures in two colors. Constricting Sliver should in the deck somewhere, I'd probably swap it for the Thundering Giant. In theory I like the idea of suiting up tokens with Avarice Amulet, but it seems like more of a sideboard card then anything else. Other than those two this deck looks quite good.
I would say white is much better than red in this format and green is roughly on par. Convoke is sweet and red doesn't have too many cards that match up well with Raise the Alarm and Triplicate Spirits.
I'm skeptical on the 18 lands part, but he and his brother (!) top 8ed a Core Set sealed GP last year, so he does have a leg to stand on when it comes to this topic.
Removal getting worse makes drafting more skill testing at the higher levels, because you can't just snap pick premium removal over all other commons
I think you're severely overestimating how many "snap pick premium removal" cards there ever were in Limited. It's not like everyone could just mindlessly draft a deck with 10 removal spells. I also don't see how it's more or less skill testing to reduce the power level, because no matter what you reduce or push, there will be always be the best cards that are snap picked.
The BREAD acronym seems to get in the way here. It has created this perception that removal is always better than anything but the top rares and that was never true. It was always an oversimplification.
It's not that there were tons of premium removal spells floating around, it's that the best removal spells were a class above everything else and an instant pick over basically every other common and most uncommons and rares.
Removal getting worse makes drafting more skill testing at the higher levels, because you can't just snap pick premium removal over all other commons, but at the lower levels it has the opposite effect, because it means there's less of a power differential between the cards the better players take and cards worse players take. X years ago, if Timmy takes a big green creature over a removal spell it's probably a huge value loss, whereas today it might not be such a big deal (Charging Rhino is on a similar level to or better than most common removal in this set, for example). Of course, the "skill" being tested in that case is simply knowing that removal is good, so I'm not sure it's so terrible that it's importance has been lessened.
I don't understand what is wrong with Sign in Blood with 8 or 9 swamps. I'm not often casting it on turn 2 anyway - it's there to refill my hand once I've played it out (or occasionally to deliver the last 2 points of damage to my opponent).
Imagine the following scenario: You're on the play & looking at a starting hand with 4 spells, 1 mountain, 1 swamp, 1 Sign in Blood. That Sign in Blood would probably have been excellent in this hand, drawing you out of a mana screw making sure you can play your cards on time... if you could cast it.
Really, what you're doing is remove half of the applications of Sign in Blood:
Early play to make sure you hit your land drops and have spells to play
Late play to refill your hand once you're empty (or Shock the opponent)
When you do this (i.e. remove one of its applications), the card becomes significantly worse.
Eh, if I'm casting a "draw 2 cards" spell on turn 2 my draw was bad anyway. I think representing the two uses as equal isn't accurate. You *can* use it on turn 2 to hit more land drops, but it's not what you'd like to do with it, so having a *slightly* lower chance of doing so (it's not like 8 or 9 swamps will never have 2 swamps by turn 2) seems like a pretty small marginal hit to me.
You might not be excited to play a turn two draw spell, but think of it this way. On the play, you're given the choice between a hand with a 2 lands, 5 spells and a hand 2 lands 4 spells and a Sign in Blood. Regardless of how good the spells in the first hand are, there's a very real chance you'll lose as a result of missing land drops. To put it precisely, you have a ~29% of missing your third land drop and a ~15% chance of missing twice. With the Sign in Blood, you have a 7.5% chance of missing your once. Granted, this is the ideal case, but it's not an uncommon at all and there are situations where it will be almost as useful.
Since we're pretty much sure there was outside influence on the pick, just yesterday something close happened to me: my mouse kept double clicking, making deck building a chore. So I unplugged it and plugged another USB mouse instead. Windows somehow failed to find a driver for it. I replugged the other mouse. Windows fails to find a driver for it. (Whaaaaaat? I just unplugged it!) I had to go in the device manager and select the default HID mouse driver by hand by keyboard only before I'd time out, after losing a long time trying to plug each mouse in turn.
Can we ask for refund due to MTGO not having keyboard support for all operations?
They are very generous with refunds, as they'd much rather "fork over" a bit of product than lose a potential customer.
As for the question, if card value were irrelevant, I'd consider picking a truly premium common over Archangel, because white is beyond terrible in M14, but such a card doesn't really exist.
Yup, and the interaction is especially important in this particular format (not that an uncommon and a mythic are going to be facing each other that often, but it happens) because of the existence of Feat of Resistance- normally you'd be fine with sending a six damage burn spell at an x/1 on your opponent's turn, but with a heavily played common that gives protection in the format it's usually correct to kill high value creatures on your own turn (not always, as you might, for example, want to draw out the Feat of Resistance, but the general point still stands).
Yeah, my impression is that it's perfect card for this format. Not only does because morph ties up a lot of your mana, which clogs your hand with spells, increasing the effectiveness of Mind Rot, in the late game there will be times when it's correct to play out your lands so that you can cast a morph face down rather than face up (it's not a huge difference, so you might play your 8th land instead of holding it in your hand, so your chances of knocking spells rather than lands out of your opponent's hand goes up.
Clear a Path matches terribly against the most played wall in M14, so I don't think I'd side it in unless I saw either a Hornet's Nest or multiple Wall of Essences.
As for Silverback, it's worse in those format than it would be in others- the best deck in the format has endless blockers for it and the regeneration is irrelevant against black's best common removal spell, but I still think it's quite good. 6 power dudes that don't die in combat are very useful in board stalls (which are common in this format), even without evasion or trample. I'd say it's better than Overwhelm (I know he wasn't choosing between them), which has, wait for it, underwhelmed me so far.
I'm skeptical on the 18 lands part, but he and his brother (!) top 8ed a Core Set sealed GP last year, so he does have a leg to stand on when it comes to this topic.
It's not that there were tons of premium removal spells floating around, it's that the best removal spells were a class above everything else and an instant pick over basically every other common and most uncommons and rares.
You might not be excited to play a turn two draw spell, but think of it this way. On the play, you're given the choice between a hand with a 2 lands, 5 spells and a hand 2 lands 4 spells and a Sign in Blood. Regardless of how good the spells in the first hand are, there's a very real chance you'll lose as a result of missing land drops. To put it precisely, you have a ~29% of missing your third land drop and a ~15% chance of missing twice. With the Sign in Blood, you have a 7.5% chance of missing your once. Granted, this is the ideal case, but it's not an uncommon at all and there are situations where it will be almost as useful.
They are very generous with refunds, as they'd much rather "fork over" a bit of product than lose a potential customer.
As for the question, if card value were irrelevant, I'd consider picking a truly premium common over Archangel, because white is beyond terrible in M14, but such a card doesn't really exist.
Another absurd situation as opposed to a pwn, but still... !!!