Syrix, Carrier of the Flame
Recursion is the natural theme for a Phoenix, but the trigger structure here inverts the usual death loop into something closer to an engine. The end-step ping cares about a creature card leaving your graveyard, not entering it: the reward comes when you reclaim a body, which turns reanimation and graveyard-recursion effects into free damage on the way out. Because the damage scales with a target Phoenix's power rather than a fixed number, the payload grows as the board grows, and it fires at end-step timing even though nothing about the ability is technically responsive. The second clause closes the loop from the other direction: when another Phoenix dies, this card earns recast permission from the graveyard, so the death you would normally mourn refunds itself as a returning threat. Built together, the two abilities describe a sacrifice-and-return chassis where every creature entering and leaving the graveyard is worth tracking, and where the payoff pings without ever swinging into a blocker. Both halves demand Phoenixes on the field to matter, and that is the tax that keeps the engine honest: the ping needs a target Phoenix to carry the damage, and the recast needs another Phoenix to die first. It is a tribal engine that rewards a critical mass of the type rather than a color-pair reanimation shell, a narrower and more deliberate ask than the flying-haste body suggests.
