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Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Alchemy | 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 |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Modern Beyond Horizons | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Oldschool 93/94 | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Pauper Duel Commander | Legal |
| Pauper EDH | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Pre-release | Legal |
| Premodern | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Standard | Legal |
| Standard Brawl | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Ball Lightning
Creature — Elemental
Trample (This creature can deal excess combat damage to the player, planeswalker or battle this is attacking if lethal combat damage would be dealt to all blocking creatures.)
Haste (This creature can attack and as soon as this comes under your control.)
At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice this.
BotaNickill on
skelamental
2 months ago
Word, No worries! I have a soft spot in my heart for Ball Lightning and Lightning Skelemental I have a pretty similar deck built. Always good to see another build! I kinda like seeing Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger in there. I have Fling or Thud in the deck too get an extra shot out of the balls. Also, Flamekin Harbinger to search for the balls, and Blightning / Kolaghan's Command for disruption, and Dreadbore to help with removal. Cheers!
StarRushford on Card creation challenge
4 months ago
My remake:
Ball Lightning
Do 3 damage to target creature or player, then 1 damage to each creature. At end of turn, before the cleanup phase, do 1 damage to each creature.
philias on Card creation challenge
4 months ago
TypicalTimmy I'm not one to say, but you did him justice fine
Groumphe, the Preserver
Legendary Creature: Wurm
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may sacrifice it. If you do, create a red spirit token with power and toughness equal to the sacrificed creature's power and toughness, and any keywords that creature had.
"Nothing is truly gone, only changed." Groumphe to Horsuts
4/8
I made Groumphe in the past, to act as a Ball Lightning tribal, but the original was far to convoluted and rigid. This design lets you keep those cards around longer and abuse deathtriggers more freely.
My challenge is to either:
-
Remake a card (either one you made or an existing MTG card)
-
Make a card for Horsuts
DreadKhan on Which is More Important: Total …
5 months ago
In my limited experience, most decks want it's 'key pieces' to be as low to the ground as possible, this is why Night's Whisper is a very good card, it works in hands where you are short of key resources (but not so short that you couldn't risk the hand), and it's still completely worth playing if you draw it fairly late in the game; drawing 2 cards is almost universally a good thing, and only paying 1B to do it means you can either play it early or play it late and follow it up with something you drew. In contrast a card like Tower of Fortunes is a trap in almost every list because you need to input a grand total of 12 mana to draw ANY cards, meaning it's a dead card until you can generate 8 mana in one turn. That makes the card a lot worse in practice, since every game has early turns and only some games go long enough for Tower to really shine.
The same is true about ramping, something like Utopia Sprawl (or Crop Rotation might fit better lol) is incredibly efficient, it can be played turn 1 in many games and if it's drawn late it's literally mana neutral, making it a 'free roll' in decks that can count on having a Forest early. In contrast Explosive Vegetation is unplayable turn 1 in almost any situation, ditto for turn 2, and you will need to have ramped to play it by turn 3. This means that if you're stuck on 2 lands something like Farseek could find you a key land but Explosive Veggies will just sit there making you feel stupid. This makes Explosive Veggies a relatively unimpressive card, and that's why you don't see as much ramp that costs more than 3 (and many Spikey players hate paying more than 2 for ramp), it plays a lot worse in hands that would otherwise be keeps, and they can actually cost you games.
In contrast though there are 'value cards' (usually MV 4-6), these aren't necessarily going to win the game by themselves but these are important in metas that don't expect anyone to win too early. These types of cards can cost more mana because they're doing a lot, but most deck builders quickly realize you can only include so many of this type of card, specifically because they WILL clog your early hands. These types of cards drive up your average MV, most people like something in the 2.5-3.5 range (most prefer lower fwiw). It's worth noting that spells that cost 7-10 mana are often WAY more powerful, but most of these aren't necessary to win games, and due to their sky high MV these are even worse about clogging your hand. People are generally fine with Expropriate from a power level perspective, even if many find it boring, but I think a plurality of decks that are power level 7 and up eschew big mana stuff because they don't need it, if you can win with Rite of the Raging Storm then you don't need Expropriate. In cEDH people actually skew even lower on MVs, especially Ad Nauseam lists, and it turns out it's very possible to win games using almost nothing but MV 2 and under stuff, and unsurprisingly these incredibly fast and low to the ground win cons are the most powerful.
Ultimately the less resources you need to put into an effect the better that effect. It's equally true that all things being equal doing the exact same thing a turn earlier is MUCH better, and it keeps getting better each turn sooner (in an exponential manner). The complication for me is that cards aren't very equal, and it's actually possible to build decks that assiduously ignore all of the conventions I mentioned here (my Pavel Maliki deck has 17 5 drops and an average MV of 4.20, while my Sunastian Falconer deck has a gobsmacking MV of 5.35, both are functional decks IMHO) if you simply run better cards that have relatively high MVs, and run enough of them that you will consistently have one or more to choose from. The Pavel deck happily runs some stuff like Omen of Fire that can be completely dead because the deck can usually afford to have dead cards and still be a threat, and the Sunastian deck runs some pretty derpy 'big' creatures, many aren't even cost effective, it just doesn't matter because if you have enough huge creatures it doesn't matter if you paid extra for them, they're still huge creatures that will stomp the opponent into gravy! In effect both decks win the games they win via scale, Pavel tends to have a lot of cards that trade for multiple cards, and Sunastian's effects are often so bulky that they just go right over other decks.
Even in 1v1 some of my weird Legacy decks sneak in some pretty high MV cards, and often these cards can steal games when I'm in topdeck mode (in Legacy anything over MV 2 is considered 'really high' fwiw), even if they cost me a few when I draw terribly and have 5 3 drops in my first 9 cards and I scoop. Ball Lightning is a really bad card by many metrics, but if you playtest a Burn deck in throw one or two in they WILL steal the odd game due to card efficiency (Burn's biggest problem has always been running out of Bolts).
nuperokaso on
Balls Lightning
1 year ago
- Considering that you play Ball Lightning, you should play a mana-base that is almost exclusively red. I suggest that you play 1 Swamp for situations when your opponent plays Path to Exile. Rest of the lands should be dual lands - Sulfurous Springs, Blackcleave Cliffs, Blightstep Pathway Flip, Foreboding Ruins, Reflecting Pool.
- Thud could be replaced with Callous Sell-Sword. The disadvantage of Sell-Sword is that since it targets the creature, it can be killed in the response. Other than that, it's an advantage.
- Consider playing Witch's Mark instead of Thrill of Possibility. It's better against counter-spells, and if there is no benefit to play it as an instant, the Wicked role is a clear upside.
pedroedmarcos on How Phase out and "At …
1 year ago
Hey there,
So, Lets say I cast a Teferi's Veil on my Ball Lightning and in the end of my turn I stack the triggers on a way that it phases out before the sac trigger resolves. Will I have to sacrifice them?
Coward_Token on Murders at Karlov Manor
1 year ago
neo!Massacre Girl: Any good non-symmetrical burn creatures that can take advantage of this in mono-black? (Stuff like Plague Spitter will wear down your own stuff)
Kylox, Visionary Inventor: Very expensive at 7 MV, but seems fun. Works well with token-making spell cards. (Any good Ball Lightning-type token creators?)
Case of the Ransacked Lab: Finally a mono-blue noncreature Goblin Electromancer at this mana value! It turning into a quasi-Archmage Emeritus later on is just the cherry on the top. I like Cases in general too, being obviously very similar to Classes.
Dog Walker: disguise flavor feels kinda weird here
Delney, Streetwise Lookout: AFAIK e.g. Welcoming Vampire doesn't work with stuff like this. At least Esper Sentinel is still good. Also, neat Spark Double imitation with commanders like Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff
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