When I was growing up and somewhat newer to yugi oh, I thought sacred phoenix of Nephtys was so cool. I was first introduced to this card when I did a mini tournament at an anime convention where my opponent was playing a sacred phoenix dark dust spirit deck. I was impressed. The only reason I won was because I got lucky and drew a chaos sorcerer off the top, even though looking back, my deck was definitely lacking.
When I dove head first into goat format during covid, I was really disappointed with the design choices of the standard phoenix decks. Historically there have been some zombie decks that splashed a phoenix engine into their deck since it somewhat matched vampire lords effect, but it was effectively just a redundant and somewhat worse version of vampire lord. The common builds I have seen on sites have a weird defend the castle linear phoenix deck idea that is so paranoid about chaos that they run solemn judgment and multiple one for one backrow removal. The problem with this is that sacred phoenix is only good if you use it so that you can put pressure on the opponent without being so worried about their own back row. If you play defend the castle with heavy back row, you just end up damaging yourself instead of actually doing anything useful with your own phoenix since you just pop your own stuff on revival. Phoenix decks deserve better than this!
My idea is to have a jack of all trades master of none goat phoenix deck. It isn't as useful as an aggro deck in all out offense and it will get out goated by a standard goat deck. So why run this at all? The ability for this deck to pivot in the middle of a match from a defensive to offensive, or offensive to defensive strategy while still keeping field presence and momentum is surprisingly powerful. Instead of being stuck on phoenix being your only win condition, you can choose to summon it when useful, and when you do you can be very aggressive with it, because if it is taken care of you have other options to still carry out a win.
I know I have probably committed heresy, but this deck does run 41 cards. Space is pretty tight so I decided it was better to just go slightly over than to get rid of or lower the count of certain spell/traps since the power and utility definitely comes up in longer games. That being said, consistency is not really a significant issue with the one card difference, and since the deck relies heavily on recruiters you actually go through a lot of deck thinning in the process.
The recruiters allow for you to have a defensive wall that toolboxes some powerful cards when you need them. Mystic tomato and shining angel having 1400 attack allows for you to potentially put your opponent on a clock if you need to, while still being a good defensive wall while grabbing useful cards along the way. Mystic tomato is the best recruiter in the deck, since you can grab apprentice magician and sangan and shining angel provides easy access to magician of faith or d.d warrior lady when you are really needing removal options. If you have tsukuyomi or book of moon you can flip magician of faith down or even go for an old vindictive magician in a pinch. Since you are running so many recruiters, creature swap becomes a very useful way to gain the upper hand. Remember, apprentice magician's old goat rulings mean that it is not usually a good card to use creature swap on, since its effect does not activate in grave, so if it is destroyed while in your opponents control they get the effect.
Kycoo the ghost destroyer is a good offensive, anti chaos monster that does really help keep your opponents at bay and synergizes well with phoenix. Breaker the magical warrior is a good standalone monster with solid attack and the ability to pop spell and traps, and also synergizes with apprentice magician since you can give it an extra counter. That being said, it does not come up a lot so it is best to think of it as a situational bonus and not get stingy with breaker hoping to keep adding counters to it. The same can be said with old vindictive magician and tsukyomi together. It can be great when you recycle it's destruction effect, but it is almost always better to use it as soon as it will give you any monster destruction as a way to keep momentum/one for one your opponents.
This deck runs a mini goat/ metamorphosis engine. This can be useful in slower games, but your strategy does not depend on you pulling it off all the time. It gives you an adaptable strategy and access to thousand eyes restrict is always useful. Sinister serpent fits in well with this engine and has synergy with creature swap and graceful charity. Book of moon is used over enemy controller since enemy controller does not have nearly as much use as book of moon in this deck. The ability to tribute a goat to snatch a monster seems tempting, but since you only have two monsters that could situationally be used to tribute that monster you steal, you are much better off with the utility that book of moon gives you. It works much better with your magician engine as well as the metamorphosis engine while also being a good battle trap alternative and way to protect your monsters in a bind.
This deck does not run a heavy trap lineup since phoenix is not good in a trap heavy deck. The traps that are run synergize with phoenix and the rest of the deck. Torrential can punish priority chaos monsters trying to out phoenix, call of the haunted plays reacting to your opponents spell/trap removal options with a phoenix, jinzo, or sangan in the grave is very powerful, and ring of destruction works with phoenix, is a great game ender, and also a solid chainable one for one removal that pressures the opponent.
This deck does have a solid lineup for using BLS, which can apply pressure to the opponent at all points in the game. Chaos sorceror is tempting, but it does end up contributing to possible bricking, and since it's not as game warpingly powerful as BLS, it is not really worth running in this deck.
While this would not likely contend with the powerful meta decks found in the goat format meta, I believe this is a much more solid take on sacred phoenix as a deck choice and creates a very fun, adaptive deck to use.
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