New MTG Graveyard Deck Puts 9 Power into Play on Turn 2 Thanks to Reality Fracture

During spoiler season, many Reality Fracture cards received a ton of Constructed hype. Now, after just a few days of these new tools being tournament-legal, we’re quickly seeing those gems have an immediate impact. Darklight Phoenix, in particular, is creating a lot of new, successful brews, like this neat Modern Sacrifice shell that boasts a 5-0 League finish.

Setting Up an Overwhelming Board State

The main goal behind this Jund Sacrifice shell is to resurrect multiple copies of Darklight Phoenix from the graveyard, then ride them to victory. Naturally, your first step towards executing this game plan is to get Phoenixes into the graveyard, which Buried Alive pulls off effortlessly. You also have access to Mill effects like Stitcher’s SupplierStitcher’s SupplierWhen this creature enters or dies, mill three cards. (Put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.) and Malevolent Rumble to further help the cause.

Once you have a stocked graveyard, it’s surprisingly easy to trigger each Phoenix’s return. Simply sacrificing any of your puny black creatures to Flare of Malice or Bone Shards gets the job done while setting the opponent back. With Buried Alive, Flare of Malice, and Greedy Freebooter in your opening hand, you can reanimate three Phoenixes as early as turn two!

Even if your opponent has no creatures in play to target, however, Goblin Bombardment can sacrifice two of your creatures easily. A single copy of BloodghastBloodghastThis creature can't block.
This creature has haste as long as an opponent has 10 or less life.
Landfall — Whenever a land you control enters, you may return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. also does the trick, as long as you have a land to bring it back.

While things admittedly get a bit tougher without a repeatable sacrifice outlet, Phyrexian TowerPhyrexian Tower{T}: Add {C}.
{T}, Sacrifice a creature: Add {B}{B}. gets you halfway there, as does sacrificing an Eldrazi Spawn token. Notably, the extra mana from Tower and Eldrazi Spawns also helps you hard-cast any copies of Phoenix you draw. In really grindy games, even sacrificing Eyetwitch to Tower to turbo out Decorum Dissertation can help you dominate the long game.

Versatile Yet Fragile

Ultimately, much of this brew’s long-term appeal comes from its flexible approach from matchup to matchup. Unsurprisingly, with access to so much cheap removal, your position against creature decks is quite favorable. Bombardment completely demolishes Ocelot PrideOcelot PrideFirst strike, lifelink
Ascend (If you control ten or more permanents, you get the city's blessing for the rest of the game.)
At the beginning of your end step, if you gained life this turn, create a 1/1 white Cat creature token. Then if you have the city's blessing, for each token you control that entered this turn, create a token that's a copy of it. out of Boros Energy, while Flare of Malice takes care of beefy creatures like Quantum Riddler out of Esper Blink. The latter even gets around Kappa Cannoneer‘s brutal Ward ability when facing Affinity.

Yet Bloodghast and Darklight Phoenix’s resilience also makes it tough for removal-heavy decks to win the long game. While exile-based removal like Solitude can in theory keep Phoenix in check, any sacrifice outlet negates this issue.

Unfortunately, as powerful as this deck is once its engine gets going, hate cards can keep it from ever getting off the ground. Surgical Extraction, for example, threatens to remove all copies of Phoenix post-Buried Alive for free. Rest in PeaceRest in PeaceWhen this enchantment enters, exile all graveyards.
If a card or token would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead. is even worse to play against, since it shuts off all of your death triggers. This means you can’t even use Eyetwitch’s trigger to search for Origin of Metalbending.

Still, in metagames where graveyard hate isn’t running rampant, this archetype has all the power it needs to combat a diverse field. Darklight Phoenix is undoubtedly a sweet card, and it’ll be interesting to see if the card lives up to the hype down the line.

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