[Sakura AGM] Phoenix Guardian (14/14)

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Phoenix Guardians are a group of FIRE Winged-Beast with mixed offensive/defensive capabilities.

They mostly consist of Level 4 and under monsters; highest is Level 5/6.

 

Phoenix Guardian - Assault Striker

Level 4 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

(1) This card gains 100 ATK for every "Phoenix Guardian" monster you control.

(2) When a "Phoenix Guardian" monster attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent.

 

1800/1200

 

Phoenix Guardian - Assault Exploder

Level 4 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

You can only use the effect of "Phoenix Guardian - Assault Exploder" once per turn.

(1) You can target 1 "Phoenix Guardian" monster you control and 1 card your opponent controls; destroy both targets.

 

1600/1400

 

Phoenix Guardian - Defender Kouka

Level 4 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

(1) If a "Phoenix Guardian" monster you control would be destroyed by a card effect: You can destroy this card instead.

 

1400/1600

 

Phoenix Guardian - Defender Sentou

Level 4 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

(1) If a "Phoenix Guardian" monster you control would be destroyed by battle: You can destroy this card instead.

 

1000/2000

 

Phoenix Guardian - Double Wing

Level 4 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

You can only use the effect of "Phoenix Guardian - Double Wing" once per turn.

(1) You can target 1 "Phoenix Guardian" monster you control; it can make a second attack during each Battle Phase this turn.

 

1700/1300

 

Phoenix Guardian - Support Wing

Level 4 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

You can only use the effect of "Phoenix Guardian - Support Wing" once per turn.

(1) If this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can add 1 "Phoenix Guardian" monster from your Deck to your hand, except "Phoenix Guardian - Support Wing".

 

1300/1700

 

Phoenix Guardian - Swift Wing

Level 4 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

You can only use the effect of "Phoenix Guardian - Swift Wing" once per turn.

(1) If this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can Special Summon 1 "Phoenix Guardian" monster (from your hand), except "Phoenix Guardian - Swift Wing".

 

1800/1200

 

Phoenix Guardian - Flash Storm

Level 5 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

(1) If your opponent controls a monster and you do not, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand).

(2) This card can attack your opponent directly, but if it does using this effect, any battle damage your opponent takes is halved.

(3) Once per turn: You can target 1 monster your opponent controls; halve its ATK/DEF.

 

2000/2000

 

Phoenix Guardian - Flare Tornado

Level 6 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

You can only use the (2) and (3) effects of "Phoenix Guardian - Flare Hurricane" once per turn.

(1) If you control another "Phoenix Guardian" monster, you can Normal Summon this card without Tributing.

(2) You can target 1 face-up card on the field; shuffle it into the Deck. This card cannot declare an attack the turn you activate this effect.

(3) If this card is destroyed by an opponent's card (either by battle or card effect): You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower "Phoenix Guardian" monster (from your Graveyard), except "Phoenix Guardian - Flare Tornado".

 

2200/1800

 

Phoenix Guardian - Paralyzing Inferno

Level 6 | FIRE | Winged-Beast

You can only use the (2) and (3) effects of "Phoenix Guardian - Paralyzing Inferno" each once per turn.

(1) If you control another "Phoenix Guardian" monster, you can Normal Summon this card without Tributing.

(2) You can target 1 face-up card on the field; while this card is face-up, negate that card's effects.

(3) If this card is destroyed by an opponent's card (either by battle or card effect): You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower "Phoenix Guardian" monster (from your Graveyard), except "Phoenix Guardian - Paralyzing Inferno".

 

2300/1700

 

Phoenix Cycle

Spell/Field

You can only use the (2) effect of "Phoenix Cycle" once per turn.

(1) "Phoenix Guardian" monsters gain 200 ATK and DEF for each "Phoenix Guardian" monster on the field.

(2) You can target 1 "Phoenix Guardian" monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon it.

 

Phoenix Guardian Crush

Trap/Counter

You can only activate 1 "Phoenix Guardian Crush" once per turn.

(1) When your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card while you control 2 or more "Phoenix Guardian" monsters;; negate that Spell/Trap Card.

 

Phoenix Guardian Neutralization

Trap/Counter

You can only activate 1 "Phoenix Guardian Neutralization" once per turn.

(1) When your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card while you control 2 or more "Phoenix Guardian" monsters; negate that monster effect.

 

High Phoenix Guardian

Trap/Normal

You can only activate 1 "High Phoenix Guardian" once per turn.

(1) Target 3 "Phoenix Guardian" monsters in your Graveyard; shuffle them into the Deck, then draw 2 cards.

 

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As you can probably guess by now, this was a prompt from that Archetype thread in Games. 

(Running out of ideas lately, so contributing a bit to that thread + getting things out for potential usage)

 

Stats reflect their capacities; offensive stuff has better ATK and defensive stuff, well you get it.

Level 4s have a combined 3000 ATK/DEF and the higher Levels have a combined 4000.

 

Granted, the Level 4s only have one effect (bar Striker, but it's only ATK boosting), but this was designed on team stuff; each member has a different role.

In a nutshell:

• Striker allows you to pierce.
• Exploder allows you to destroy stuff in a similar vein to Scrap Dragon (it also triggers the Continuous Spell, mind you).
• Kouka/Sentou are effect and battle protection, respectively. Yes, their names are literal Japanese for those two things. Ideally, a third one to deal with non-destructive removal (i.e. Castel, 101 and the like) would be useful here, but I'll lay off on doing it for now.
• Double Wing lets you hit multiple targets.
• Support Wing is their Stratos (it only searches the Level 4s though)
• Swift Wing enables them to swarm a little bit. (Yeah, this is very similar to that of Satellarknight Vega)
• Flash Storm is your CyDra + direct attacker.
• Flare Tornado is theoretically your Castel + floater.
• Paralyzing Storm is Fiendish Chain for face-up cards. Was going to have it hit backrow, but decided against it due to the current nature of things.
• Cycle pumps them up + helps them to revive the lower monsters. As much as I'd like to give the higher Levels a way to revive themselves, you have CoTH for that. (Although I will look it over if there isn't going to be problems with allowing that)
• Raging is essentially a way to deal burn damage. Remember that Exploder can also trigger this card, as can your opponent's stuff (if they die in battle or get popped).
• Crush/Neutralization are your negation cards of sorts; also fills in the gap for non-destructive removal (remember that Sentou/Kouka don't block against it). Of course, they are hard OPT because they just require that you control 2+ Phoenix Guardians.
• High Phoenix allows you to recycle dead PGs and draw new ones.

 

At the time I was designing these, I had forgotten that because of their nature, Fire King support cards can also work here.

 

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I don't think I'll be adding anything else; given that they should more/less deal with everything else that they need to contend with.

That, and other Winged-Beast / FIRE support.

 

CnC appreciated (and will be repped)

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Time for a (bi-)daily bump.

 

Upon further review, I've decided to remove the Continuous Spell, because indeed combined with Fire King support cards and other things [which destroy stuff], the counter accumulation will add up quickly, even after it got nerfed to 300 damage per counter (as opposed to the initial 500).

 

I also remember that it would still trigger Backfire, so that's 500 from Backfire and 300 for the counter, totaling 800 damage every time a Phoenix Guardian pops itself.

Yeah, that's not a good thing to be having.

 

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Also changed the activation requirements on the negation traps to require only Phoenix Guardian monsters on the field, similar to Yosenjus' Secret Move. 

I could lighten up on the hard OPT, but given they are SS-heavy also, I'm keeping those as a limiter.

[Malacoda-Eviltail]

Slight typo to Flare Tornado: "If this card is destroyed by an opponent's card (either by battle or card effect): You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower "Phoenix Guardian" monster (from your Graveyard), except "Phoenix Guardian - Flare Hurricane".

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Yeah, I originally had it named Flare Hurricane, but changed it to Tornado for some reason.

Any thoughts on the cards in general though?

[Malacoda-Eviltail]

Yeah, I originally had it named Flare Hurricane, but changed it to Tornado for some reason.

Any thoughts on the cards in general though?

Overall, I easily see this being paired with the likes of Circle of the Fire Kings, Onslaught of the Fire Kings and even the infamous Garunix-Nephthys loop. I think FIRE Winged Beasts should be more a thing as we already have Firebird and the above cards mentioned. One thing to note though, Flare Tornado and Paralyzing Inferno won't even able to Special Summon each other as they ain't Level 4-lower.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

When they had that Continuous Spell, the Fire King support would've definitely made more sense, although like I mentioned above, likely due to some things regarding burn damage.

But indeed, there are only 12 FIRE Winged-Beasts in existence; hopefully Konami develops a few more in future sets.

 

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Like I mentioned, I temporarily forgot about their support while designing them [only really remembered them after I did the Continuous Spell, which was since removed]. Basically, it would've gained a counter every time a PG monster blew itself up, then once it got removed, opponent would take damage.

 

Didn't necessarily intend for it to happen, but flavor-wise, it probably works given the phoenix's legend of burning itself and then reviving.

Onslaught/Circle are definite; Island can be used for the second effect, but that's about it.

[Malacoda-Eviltail]

Still loving the theme and what it does - sometimes simple is best.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Yeah, sometimes it's good not to push so much stuff onto one card.

Granted, the "bosses" have more than one effect, but that's what you'd expect from them.

 

Of course, they can't SS themselves, but I opted not to give them that ability, because of what they do.

Although I could modify Cycle to allow them revival; that way, they at least have some way of coming back, outside of CoTH and Circle, etc.

[Darj]

Hmm, I want to keep this review short so I won't go into much detail with each card.

There are gems here that you can use to build an effective deck, arguably at the level of Tellars.

I mean, looking at them in the following way:

Support Wing = Deneb

Swift Wing = Vega

Phoenix Cycle = Altair

 

Then you have additional toys such as:

- Flare Tornado: for non-destruction removal that can be Summoned by Swift Wing, Cycle or outright Normal Summon it without Tributes. Also it floats and can revive the Deneb to push forward.

- Assault Exploder: for 1-for-1 destruction removal in a pinch. It can target itself so it's always live.

- Paralyzing Inferno: Basically a different take on Flare Tornado. It doesn't remove the card from the field as Tornado does, but it exchnage this gets to attack. I guess this should shine depending on the matchup.

 

- High Phoenix Guardian: Imagine if Tellars had a "Yang Zing Path". Yeah, this is basically that, but, needless to say, as a Trap it is not as fast.

 

Unlike Tellars they don't have ROTAs for consistency nor an omni-Counter, but in exchange, their Altair is an OPT Field Spell (and thus searchable by Terraforming), and as FIRE/Winged Beasts they get access to toys such as the aforementioned Onslaught and Circle of Fire Kings, also Icarus Attack, Swallow's Nest (with would in a way function as Tellar's Skybridge), the Spiritual Art for burning and potentially sealing games, and Zerofyne; so I believe with the above cards these are actually top tier contenders. And they don't even have ED monsters of their own, or otherwise bigger monsters than Flare Tornado that function as "bosses", but they shouldn't really need them.

 

The rest of the monsters don't look as good in my opinion:

- The Defenders are situational since they are only live on a field with at least 1 other Guardian, and killing a Defender in place of another monster is kinda subpar when this Defender could very well have been another card that further helps you, namely a backrow, a call/Oasis, etc. My point is that deck space should be better used for other cards than these.

- The Level5 is awkward since it doesn't disrupt cards like the Level6s, nor makes Rank4s with the other Guardians.

- Assault Striker is a 1900+ ATK Normal Summonable beater and piercer. Not really impressive in my opinion but you could side or tech 1 copy for answering certain stuff, such as crashing with a Rai-Oh, etc.

 

As for the Counters... well, they don't look as good since they require you to control only Phoenix Guardians, and at least 2, and thus are situational, but either way they are cute toys to have for different matchups. For instance you could side both and against, let's say... Nekroz, main the Spell/Trap Counter; you get the idea.

 

 

That aside, mistakes I noticed on some cards:

 

Flare Tornado:

The (1) effect doesn't activate, so the first clause should read the same as Paralyzing Inferno's.

 

Paralyzing Inferno:

A different card name is on its hard OPT clause.

You don't need the "()" in the "from the Graveyard" clause. The "()" are used on inherent Summons or conditions (e.g. Cyber Dragon, Flash Storm).

Also, this last effect doesn't target; is this intended?

 

Swift Wing

Same issue with the "()"

 

Neutralization:

First it says that it activates in response to an Spell/Trap, then it says it negates a monster effect.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

I might've forgotten that I had copy/pasted the PSCT locks from other cards; fixed those.

 

I can remove the "only PG" restriction on them; that way, you can at least make Zerofyne or something and still trigger the Traps.

But yes, first three are partly based on 'tellars.

 

For the defenders, I suppose I could make them float upon destruction, but that may be pushing it.

I'll need to repair that.

 

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Traps have been modified, so you only need 2+ Phoenixes; if you opt for ED, that's fine.

 

I suppose I should add back the Continuous Spell.

(I mentioned it in the bump post)