[Edi]

Phoenix is good for early expansion. All it needs is Evo 3 and Alteration 3 and it will mop most indie provinces quite handily on its own. Air Shield and then start raining fire darts and fireballs on the indies, they'll route in no time. Fire darts is especailly good, with Fire 6, you can just sit the Phoenix in the far back corner of the battlefield and start slamming them home, even the indie x-bows need to spend one turn running forward before they are in range (by which time Air Shield will be in place). Any infantry or cavalry that actually gets close is going to get hit with massive immolation, and even if the bird gets whacked, who cares, it's immortal and flying, so getting to the front is no problem. When you get fire shield and cloud trapeze later on, it becomes a virtual expansion engine all on its own while you can concentrate on building up troop strength, mages and research in peace.

My friend used it quite successfully in a co-op game we had on the Cradle map. He was playing Machaka and he had just one real army and the phoenix for a good long time, and easily outpaced my expansion with Abysia.

Edi