The Phoenix get the privilege of being the representative of the Honor Path of Victory in War of Honor – presumably beating out the more courtly Crane so that the box could include the iconic shugenja (spellcasters) of Rokugan. The Phoenix are mostly a defensive deck, although they do have some combat ability.
The Phoenix Open tile pretty well illustrates how different War of Honor’s Paths of Victory can make it from standard Legend of the Five Rings – 2 free honor every turn would be busted in normal L5R, but it’s par for the course in War of Honor.
If you haven’t checked out the War of Honor rules (down at the bottom, a 14MB download) yet, the point of the Limited tile is that tile location affects who can ally with whome (plus whether you get the bonus from the Toshi Ranbo center tile).