Firewing Phoenix

A 4/2 flyer for four mana is a glass cannon by design: it clocks fast and dies to anything, including the chip damage of a single blocker. The recursion clause is what changes the math. Paying to return it from the graveyard is a steep, triple-red tax, and that color intensity is the point: this is a card built to anchor a mono-red or heavy-red deck where the mana is never the question, only the tempo. Trading the Phoenix into a blocker stops being a loss when you can buy it back, and the fragile body becomes an asset rather than a liability, because you rarely mind losing something you can repurchase. The 2 toughness keeps it from getting greedy: it will not survive a turn cycle against most decks, so the recursion is a recurring expense, not a free engine. Phoenixes in general live on this tension between disposability and persistence, but the lever here is purely the activation cost, set high enough that the loop drains your turns rather than running away with the game. It rewards a deck that has run out of cards but not out of mana, turning a flooded late game into a steady four-point air assault that the opponent has to answer over and over.