Open Fire

Instant

Open Fire deals 3 damage to target creature or player.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (45)

Ryjo on Mono Red Burn Deck

5 years ago

My gut reaction is that your weakest cards are Fanatical Firebrand, Legion Warboss, and Wizard's Lightning. The Firebrand is a 1/1 that in the late game might ping your opponent. The Warboss is just going to create 1/1s that die in combat immediately (though might be a good card against control decks in the side board), and will likely trade if it ever attacks. Without a critical mass of wizards, Wizard's Lightning is just an Open Fire, which isn't very impressive.

Electrify, Radiating Lightning, and Doublecast aren't going to be that good for you. Bombard and Spit Flame are both superior to Electrify, but even then, they aren't that good. Radiating Lightning is going to, most of the time, bolt your opponent, ping all their creatures, and perhaps kill 1 of them. For 4 mana, that is not enough. Radiating Lightning is probably at its best against token decks, but Fiery Cannonade is the better card in mono-red for that. Doublecast needs another spell to work, and even then, that is probably not enough to justify it in your side board.

TrueTribal on Pattern Recognition #68 - Scry …

5 years ago

I have been reading your articles for a while, great job as always.

Here’s an article topic suggestion: Explain the power shift in limited removal over the years, and give your opinion on why it happened.

Ex. Lightning Bolt to Open Fire, Murder to Impale, stuff like that.

Legendary_penguin_of_death on Red Valduk/Champion Of The Flame Auras

5 years ago

Open Fire has 2 cards that are strictly better: Lightning Strike and Wizard's Lightning

Snivy__ on "Mono" Red "Control"

6 years ago

I would probably cut the Open Fires for Abrades or Magma Sprays or Soul-Scar Mages. They can deal a lot more damage for less mana and Open Fire is literally a draft common because it's a 3 mana Lightning Bolt with no additional effects like Incinerate or Incendiary Flow. Even though those last two cards aren't standard legal, Soul-Scar Mage can get in for a lot of damage early, Abrade can either be a Lightning Strike or a Shatter, and Magma Spray can exile any creatures that come back such as Dread Wanderer, Scrapheap Scrounger and The Scarab God

Wood_Elemental on U/R Enigma Drake

6 years ago

Probably try Soul-Scar Mage and Cryptic Serpent. Open Fire is super bad, replace it with Shock.

foyle99 on

6 years ago

Hiya, just a few comments and suggestions here. One, I'm not sure why you've listed the deck as being Standard, as quite a few of the cards in here aren't Standard legal. I'm not one to worry too much about format legality, nor is my playgroup, but I've been to some fairly nitpicky FNM games and you just want to make sure you've got your deck listed as the right format for when you run into someone with a problem. I think the right format here would be Legacy, as you've got a card from all the way back in Urza's Saga. Just a pro tip.

Anyway, on to the cards. One thing i can suggest right off is to replace Open Fire with Lightning Strike. It's also Standard legal now thanks to an Ixalan reprint, and it does the same thing for one fewer mana.

IMHO, any Standard burn deck, or any burn deck, really, is incomplete without Soul-Scar Mage. Prowess AND gives all your burn spells de facto Wither?? Insane card value for a one drop creature. It's also under $3.

If you're not married to the Standard format and want to keep your non-Standard cards, then I'd take out Firebrand Archer for Guttersnipe. Has almost double the value for only one mana more. Also, consider Browbeat. A good option for burn damage to players, but more importantly, for card draw, which is both super important in burn decks with a lot of instants and sorceries and very hard to find in red decks.

Hope this helps!

Ryjo on Red Burn

6 years ago

Before going into Vance's Blasting Cannons  ^Flip and Primal Amulet  ^Flip, I think you have too few lands for the amount of 4 and 5 drops.

Now onto the matter of Primal Amulet  ^Flip, it reduces the mana or instant and sorcery spells by , then requires 4 instants and sorceries to have been cast when it is on the field to transform. Primal Amulet  ^Flip is a 4 drop, which means that if you want to cast it, and transform it as quickly as possible, you need to hold onto all your instants and sorceries for 4 turns, which works against the optimal play of Hazoret the Fervent. Only Abrade and Lightning Strike get a reduction from them, which means you're impeding the best card in your deck (Hazoret) for a slight cost reduction for 6 total cards (8 if you count the Abrades in the sideboard. Then, best case scenario, after flipping the Amulet, you have 6 instants to Fork. So I don't think the Amulet is worth it.

Vance's Blasting Cannons  ^Flip, on the other hand might be worth inclusion in the deck. While it also requires you to play in a manner counter-intuitive to Hazoret, it generates virtual card advantage with its impulsive draw. It can help you draw into Hazoret, or help you get the three cards needed to flip it. It also allows you to Open Fire on your opponent, helping to replace the damage Ramunap Ruins dealt over the game. As opposed to Primal Amulet  ^Flip, Vance's Blasting Cannons  ^Flip should be easy to flip, and grants you additional reach to hit your opponent. I think the Cannons will be worth the slots in your deck.

Now, Rekindling Phoenix could be a good inclusion in the deck. It flies, so it should be able to get damage in; it resists non-exile based removal, but Hazoret does as well, though it could replace Glorybringer from the sideboard if your meta is full or removal; it offers an unusual play pattern, if your opponent tries to exile it, you can Lightning Strike or Abrade it in response and get it back later. The only downside I see, is that it, when summoned, lacks the magical keyword that makes this deck tick. If it had haste to begin with, it would be a slam dunk, but I think it still merits a position somewhere in the 75.

TL;DR Vance's Blasting Cannons  ^Flip and Rekindling Phoenix seem good enough for this deck, Primal Amulet  ^Flip is more likely to cost you games than win them for you.

mortilus on Lancer

6 years ago

I'm not an expert, but here is some general advice that I would have ignored if i'd gotten it when i first started:

• You can't win the game just because you have a lot of life (caveat: unless your deck is designed to do that, e.g. Test of Endurance). This means cards like Angel of Mercy and Angel's Mercy are just "delay" cards - they'll keep you from dying for a turn, but nothing else. You need to be able to win otherwise. That's not to say lifegain is bad (Ajani's Pridemate would eat me if i tried), but lifegain for the sake of lifegain is insufficient.
• Walls are good only if your deck is designed to be strong in lategame. Otherwise they are bad. It took me a long time to learn that. They can't attack, generally don't have any abilities that can win the game, and generally don't even prevent you being attacked (walls like Souls of the Faultless are an exception). Blocking a creature without killing it means it will just swing at you again next turn, and next turn it might have a friend, and now you can only block one of them. So unless the deck is designed to be strong late-game, you can generally replace walls with anything else and be equivalent or better-off.
• Card synergies are important. For example, you have Wingsteed Rider, but there are only two cards in the entire deck that will actually trigger his Heroic ability: Mighty Leap and Marked by Honor. Now, the base creature isn't bad (2/2 flying for 3 is decent/average), so i'm not saying take him out. Just, keep it in mind.
• Whenever you see a card, try to look for or think of interesting interactions. Since you're new, there are a ton of cards you're unaware of, and it's hard to keep everything in mind. For example, Enchanted Evening + War Priest of Thune (if everything is an enchantment, he can kill anything) or Angel's Mercy + Sanguine Bond (you gain 7 life and they lose 7 life).
• Some cards are the same as other cards, but one is just straight-up worse than the other. I can't really think of any examples using your cards, so i'll use these instead: Open Fire is strictly worse than Lightning Strike (3 CMC vs 2), which is itself strictly worse than Lightning Bolt (2 CMC vs 1). And it's not "old cards are worse than new cards", because Open Fire was just created/released, whereas Lightning Strike has been released several times. Just something to keep in mind. Closest example I can think of using your cards aren't straight comparisons, e.g. Angel of Mercy vs Serra Angel.
• This is a good resource: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Advanced.aspx It has every single card in MTG, and their rulings. It's one of the few sites I know of where the official site is better than most fan sites