Fu-on, Phoenix of Dying Thought

[Cyberium]

Fu-on, Phoenix of Dying Thought
4UBR
Legendary Creature - Phoenix
5/5

UBR: Shuffle ~ into your library. If ~ is shuffled into the library in this way, create three 1/1 red elemental tokens with, "At the beginning of your end step, put the top card of your library into your graveyard." You may use this ability only if ~ is in the command zone or on the battlefield.

Flying, haste, lifelink

When ~ is put into your graveyard from your library, you may pay UBR. If you do, put it onto the battlefield.

EDIT 1: Added mana cost for its graveyard trigger as well as shrinking its size, so it's not too "swingy" in 60 cards deck. Also reduce the original casting cost by 3 to balance it.

EDIT 2: Edited the wording so the Phoenix could be shuffled into your library without going directly back into the command zone.

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Lore

On a remote plane, inhabitants' souls were not delivered by angels or demons, but by phoenixes who feast on their final moment, allowing their last thought and tinder of life to reborn into far greater beings.

Among them, the great Fu-on was said to have consumed thousands of souls in its short existence, both an omen of salvation and a testament of never-ending cycle. Some wizards attempted to catch this mysterious fire bird, always a few feathers short, each enriched with the last moments of those whom Fu-on absorbed.

Mechanic

The mechanic of Fu-on follows its lore background, self-milling via elementals symbolizes a person's dying mind/life. The more "kindlings" you have, the quicker your deteriorate, but instead of death you come back to life again as the fire bird.

Deck

Self-milling is probably going to be the core theme of a Fu-on deck, though no doubt people would do phoenix tribal with it, which is fitting. I myself might go with a Sevinne grave spellsling.

[void_nothing]

That final ability is far too swingy. Imagine first turn Turn Scour, swing for 10.

[Cyberium]

That final ability is far too swingy. Imagine first turn Turn Scour, swing for 10.

True, I forgot how easily it could be abused in 60 cards deck. What if the revival requires extra mana payment? I will add extra cost to it. Or perhaps I should shrink its size a bit?

[TurkeySloth]

A name doesn't make color identity. Thus, this is either monored or blue-red multicolor because the phoenix typing already has some sort of return mechanic built in without need for black mana. Additionally, the library-graveyard-battlefield ability should be more expensive.

[SecretInfiltrator]

A name doesn't make color identity. Thus, this is either monored or blue-red multicolor

Neither blue nor red gets lifelink though. You could argue black-red. With some changed creative treatment (Make it a Nightmare/Demon and the tokens black Clerics, call it Lord of Delirium) this could be monocolored black, while I couldn't say the same for blue nor red.

But that's not entirely the point either. Akim, the Soaring Wind could be done in just monocolored white - flying, token synergy, flying tokens, double strike are all things white can do -, but different abilities lean into blue and red as well, and the set/product has a theme that favors the color combination for that mechanical space.

Cards like Lorescale Coatl are GU rather than {G/U}{G/U} or monocolored all the time.

[TurkeySloth]

A name doesn't make color identity. Thus, this is either monored or blue-red multicolor

Neither blue nor red gets lifelink though. You could argue black-red. With some changed creative treatment (Make it a Nightmare/Demon and the tokens black Clerics, call it Lord of Delirium) this could be monocolored black, while I couldn't say the same for blue nor red.

But that's not entirely the point either. Akim, the Soaring Wind could be done in just monocolored white - flying, token synergy, flying tokens, double strike are all things white can do -, but different abilities lean into blue and red as well, and the set/product has a theme that favors the color combination for that mechanical space.

Cards like Lorescale Coatl are GU rather than {G/U}{G/U} or monocolored all the time.

And, I, purposefully, overlooked lifelink because it obfuscates the flavor of a phoenix altogether. Phoenixes are immortal birds that revive themselves in a burst of flames, which would kill or injure those nearby without those casualties benefiting the bird directly. Yes, they'd happen, but only as a byproduct of the revival, not bringing the bird back on their own, which lifelink implies. Thus, there's no real reason, regardless of lore, for the card to have lifelink and be a phoenix.

[BeneTleilax]

does that text fit on a card

[spacemonaut]

does that text fit on a card

It fits, but it's at the same font size as used on Animate Dead which is a sign it's doing too much.





We don't tend to see text this small on new cards. It's generally reserved for planeswalkers and super old cards that were hit with major errata like Animate Dead. Wizards avoids pushing cards to this point if possible because cards need to be translated into languages like German which will often need even longer text.

(The Fu-on preview was rendered in https://mtg.design, which is a meticulously accurate renderer. The text size is 27pt.)

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Personally I'm not a huge fan of the design in its current state. I choose commanders so I can gain access to certain features they offer. They give me those features just by playing the card. Meanwhile, Fu-on's features (self-mill, self-revival, big chunky flier) can't be accessed without facing difficult dilemmas for every single one of those features. Also, actually using it as a flier is mutually exclusive from using it for mill. That's not good!

Self-mill: To get self milling going I have to give up my commander for possibly the rest of the game. Tuck is extremely strong removal that usually says "target card ceases to exist", and you're asking me to do it to my own commander just to access their basic features. I'll probably only see my commander if I'm playing tutors (which are discouraged in commander, so we shouldn't be making commanders that encourage playing them) or if I'm milling so hard I'm likely about to win anyway or about to lose. This is a big dilemma: do I get to mill or do I get to see my commander ever again?

Self-revival: It's also a commander that self-revives, which is cool. But I can only revive it if I have the mana open at the exact right time, i.e. at my end step or whenever else I might get milled. (My opponents might mill me, so I have to keep UBR open during all of their turns too.) This means that I can never fully tap out just in case it gets milled. I'll feel bad if I mill it and I don't have red open. But then again, I'll feel bad if I go a full turn cycle with UBR open just in case I see my commander and I never do see it.

"Can't afford to fully tap out" is a huge tax: it means I have virtually that many fewer lands to work with. If you know Im holding cards like Mana Tithe|PLC and Spell Pierce, you can't afford to cast any spells you want to see resolve unless you play 1-2 lands behind to pay the or the . That's a tax I should be subjecting my opponents to, not myself!

Note that I also can't revive my commander if I happen to draw it.

I don't think I could actually do this. It's way more reliable to just use my mana however I see fit, and maybe I'll happen to have mana open when Fu-on gets milled, but I'll probably just send it to the command zone or leave it there to get reanimated by something. That means if/when Fu-on actually gets milled, I'm still likely not to use the reanimation. It's not worth having on the card.

Big chunky flier: Functionally in most games this commander is actually one of these two things:

• Actually just three 1/1 tokens that mill me, for UBR.
• A 5/5 with flying, lifelink, and haste for 4UBR that does nothing else. (Optionally it vanishes forever to become the other option.)

If I want to leverage the big chunky flier, I have to choose not to engage any of the card's other features and I can't bring that out until I have 7 mana. Since I want to use the flier I don't want to tuck it in response to removal (I'll never see it again) so I won't activate its first ability, meaning I won't see its self-mill or its revival. Given the colors I'm in I can revive it more reliably just by letting it die and reanimating it from my graveyard later with another card.

If the stars align perfectly, this is actually a card that gives me self-milling and a 5/5 hasty lifelink flier for UBR on turn 3 then another UBR on turn 4 or 5 or 6, but considering all the requirements and failure modes that's going to be less than 1 in 20 games, or less 1 in 10 if I leave the three mana open every turn (which means I'm not actually developing my board in any way). I'll have to shuffle this card into the top ten or so cards of my library (which at that point will have about 85-90 cards in it), not draw it, and have the mana open at just the right time.

Dilemmas are for opponents, not for us. Dilemmas put stress on a player, tax their mental resources, and make them make bad decisions. They present a player with a situation where there's multiple options available but none of them are good. Our own commander should not be making us face our own dilemmas, certainly not this many of them (each of these three features separately involve multiple dilemmas at multiple steps) and not to just access the basic features I'm choosing the commander for.

If I want a reviving commander and self-mill, give me those things without making me make hard decisions. I chose this commander, it should just give me the things I chose it for.

Something like this:

Flying, haste, lifelink
When you cast Fu-on, create three 1/1 red Elemental tokens with "At the beginning of your end step, put the top card of your library into your graveyard."
UBR, Sacrifice three Elementals: Return Fu-on from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Creating the elementals could be done on ETB, but it's done on cast instead for a couple of reasons. First, it means the self-reanimation won't functionally refund part of its own cost (sacrifice 3 elementals, get them back right away). Second, it means we can't flicker the phoenix for arbitrarily high amounts of self-milling—and our opponents can't flicker it to mill us out either.

Alternately we can play around with self-mill and elementals and revival differently:

Flying, haste, lifelink
At the beginning of your end step, put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.
Whenever a nonland card is put into your graveyard from your library, create a 1/1 red Elemental creature token.
UBR, Sacrifice three Elementals: Return Fu-on from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Since many people will want to use the self-mill as an enabler for other things (like an Undying or Flashback deck), it should probably cost 3-5 mana so it can be out early-ish. Proportionately the power and toughness should drop to something like 3/3 plus or minus one depending on the mana cost you settle on, bearing in mind this is a flier with lifelink dealing commander damage.