Lightning Bolt
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy 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
Oldschool 93/94 Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Premodern Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vintage Legal

Lightning Bolt

Instant

Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target (creature, player or planeswalker).

plakjekaas on Doubling Cube instead of Mulligans

2 days ago

And half the top 10 played lands in Modern, according to mtgGoldfish, shuffle someone's deck. Endurance is the 4th played creature of the format and shuffles a deck. Stoneforge Mystic, Primeval Titan, Indomitable Creativity, Urza's Saga, fetches are not the only way to shuffle your deck. Also, Lightning Bolt is still the most commonly played spell and the top card of the format overall. Spell Pierce is third. Unholy Heat typically doesnt need setup if it answers a turn 1 play. Turn 1 interaction is not that improbable. One deck doesn't make a format.

You said you "literally never" heard anyone complain about shuffling a commander deck. When called out, it's suddenly restricted to an established player actively complaining. So I assume you understand hyperbole as a figure of speech. Seeing how I didn't even use the word literally, I'd imagine you understand that my objectively false statement can still be used to paint a picture to strengthen the point that a lot of shuffling does slow the game down, even if you do it on an opponent's turn. If I'm fetching in response to a Lava Spike versus Burn, the time it takes to resolve the spell and pass the turn is a lot less than the time it takes a typical player to shuffle their deck.

The only redeeming quality of the format is that games usually end before turn 5 nowadays, so that even in the less probable case of actually shuffling your deck every turn, you still have time to finish all needed games.

Daveslab2022 on Doubling Cube instead of Mulligans

4 days ago

Also, 99% of the time the game doesn’t pause, and most people don’t want to draw a game.

If I have a fetch on turn 1, I’m going to pass turn and while you’re making your first move I’ll crack my fetch and shuffle up. The only time this is different is when I have interaction on turn 1, which is becoming less and less likely.

Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile used to be the premium removal spells in modern. Now it’s Unholy Heat and Prismatic Ending, the former requiring an amount of setup so not usually cast on turn 1 unless it’s a Ragavan on the opposing side, and the latter is a sorcery speed spell.

TypicalTimmy on Doubling Cube instead of Mulligans

1 week ago

Wasn't there a fix already proposed? The "French" Mulligan, I believe it was called? Where you draw 7 and, when you decide you'd rather not keep a hand of 6 lands and 1 mana rock, you take those seven cards and throw them at the bottom in a random order. You draw the next seven and decide if you'd like to keep. If you do, you choose 1 of the 7 and that too goes to the bottom.

If you do not keep, all 7 go to the bottom and you draw the next seven. If you keep that, you choose 2 cards and those go to the bottom.

  • (They may all get shuffled in, I'm not sure.)

Either way, the best way to end poor draws and needless mulligans is to just adhere to proper deck building techniques, such as land ratios and mana curves. That won't guarantee you 100% of the time that a hand is usable, but it will significantly improve your odds.

Although the BEST method is to implement redundancy. For example, having a "midrange" deck with only 5 removal spells is entirely pointless. You'd want probably 12 removal spells, so you constantly draw back into something new, to keep the midrange game going. Hell, you may want something like 12 instant / sorcery removal spells, a few kill-ability spells such as Steel Hellkite and Meteor Golem, probably like three solid wraths to reset the boardstate, and maybe even a Planeswalker or two that can kill creatures just to have some added and repeatable utility thrown into the mix.

Redundancy. Now when you take a hand, as long as your mana curve is tight and your mana base is fluid, you'll be able to be more flexible in your plays.

We, in Commander, don't get the benefit of running playsets of the best spells in the game. We don't get 4x Counterspell and 4x Lightning Bolt and 4x Mutagenic Growth. So we have to make due with a Dreadbore and a Terminate and a Murder and a Go for the Throat and a Walk the Plank and a Fatal Push. Because now, if you draw a theoretical hand of say, 3 lands, some enchantment, an expensive creature and two of anything listed above, you're probably going to be good. Because you can get your lands out and hold your removal against someone's Commander to buy you time - as is how you'd want Midrange to play. As an example.

But, seeing as this is a General forum, the idea still remains. Redundancy. Run 2x, 3x and 4x of the very best cards. Now, your hand is far more predictable and solid, all the time.

Redundancy is how you win games.

Icbrgr on FNM/Thursday Night Modern Report

1 week ago

@IndepenentMeta I no longer have the decklist on here but it was a Blue moon homebrew... dusted off an old deck and brought it to locals which in essence looked like this:

intended to attack the opponents mana base... then bounce/burn/countermagic

my decklist didnt really have a solid Win Condition.... it had a single copy of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and tamiyo ult with burn.... i was able to be a nuisance at times but could never really capitalize on turning to corner... best games were basically just taking a longer time to lose lol.... its no worries though!

keizerbuns on Assailing Archeology

2 weeks ago

aholder7, thanks for play testing it again! The results are a little disheartening, but pretty much what I expected. Like I said before though, this is meant more as a casual deck for me to play against my group of friends who also just play casual, and as it is I think this deck already has more removal than they like. I like how this deck feels right now in terms of my play group's power level so unless it ends up getting absolutely demolished by my friends, I think I'll keep it as is for now.

However, I was tinkering around with the deck a little more to address the weaknesses you stated, and I think I've made a deck list that could possibly hold its ground better against a lot of the decks you play tested mine against. Here's the decklist if you wanna see:

2x Call the Bloodline

3x Canyon Slough

3x Cathartic Reunion

3x Cityscape Leveler

4x Combustible Gearhulk

4x Dragonskull Summit

4x Fabled Passage

4x Fatal Push

2x Geier Reach Sanitarium

4x Lightning Bolt

3x Mind Stone

4x Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa

4x Myr Battlesphere

3x Talisman of Indulgence

4x Thrill of Possibility

6x Mountain

3x Swamp

SIDEBOARD:

4x Dreadbore

4x Inquisition of Kozilek

4x Terminate

I actually really like Call the Bloodline in here because it can be a fairly early game way to generate lifelink chump blockers while also doubling as a cheap discard outlet, but there's probably still better options out there.

aholder7 on Assailing Archeology

2 weeks ago

Methodology: You were on the play in every game. Sideboarding was not included in any game as it usually would help your opponent more than you (and i was lazy).

Murktide: 0-7 Despite Murktide having the disadvantage of multiple dead cards in their deck against you, these games weren't even remotely close. You almost never got to resolve and keep anything of note. Your method of dealing with small threats was to 2-for-1 yourself with shards. Your early game was entirely non existent meaning they usually got 4 turns to try and kill you before you even started playing.

Crashing Footfalls: 2-5 Your first win was because i forced them to keep a once land hand to see what it would take for you to win. even with them missing land drops on turn 2 and 3 and your your turn 4 mishra they actually almost beat you. the second win was because by turn 12 they had managed to not draw a single cascade card, and despite that had you on the ropes most of the game.

Rakdos AggroL 1-6 Your win was when the opponent decided to take the damage option on combustion because they were at 18. turns out flipping a combined 21 works just as well here as it does in black jack. to be fair you actually had a decent board state that game. not certain if you would have won, but it was the only game you weren't out right destroyed in.

Overall: Your inability to fight in the early game is debilitating. You don't necessarily need to drop super big threats, but at least have a plan to prevent your opponent from killing you by turn 4. those Lightning Bolts in the sideboard would be a good start. Also now that i have read jaxis, they are not a good card for you. they are a win more card of sorts. they only do something useful if you don't really need them. Bone Shards's costs are actually a bit steep. Terminate is a really solid removal spell. Fatal Push is great if you want to keep to 1 mana. Dreadbore would be good to keep the planeswalker removal option of shards but i believe you are trying to keep the deck budget. you could get proactive and use cards like Inquisition of Kozilek to remove threats before they can actually bother you. Void Maw much like jaxis is a card that only even works in theory if you are already in a position where you should win. i don't know what creatures you'd want on the lower end. maybe something like Sin Prodder would be your type of fun but probably not the best card. something that produces tokens to block with would be nice but i'm not really sure what the options are for that as thats not really what RB is about.

keizerbuns on Assailing Archeology

2 weeks ago

Wow, it did a lot better than I would’ve imagined! Thanks for testing it out for me aholder7.

I definitely agree that Braids would be better off as another copy of Gearhulk, but just for my playgroup I think I'm going to leave her in as well as the 2 Void Maws. If I do feel like getting more serious with the deck though, I have another Gearhulk and 2 Rust Goliaths in the sideboard that I'd swap braids and maw out for, and 4 Lightning Bolts to replace the Bone Shards with. I did also take your advice on favoring Thrill so I made thrill a 4 of and then took out 1 reunion and 1 tutor.

Thanks for all your help, I feel like this deck has come a long way thanks to your advice!

aholder7 on Assailing Archeology

2 weeks ago

looks like you ended up dropping green. i think that's for the best.

I decided to goldfish the deck a few times and test it out against some of the top decks to see how it fares. I was surprised to see how well it matched up, but here are the results. I did not sideboard because i was lazy.

Murktide (1-2): If they counterspell Mishra or Jaxis, you really don't have much to do and they beat you down. On the flip side, if mishra resolves theres not much murktide really doesn't like that. in the game you lost you almost won from a 19 damage combustion hulk flip. i have also discovered that hulking for 15 is not unusual and any deck you play against should just let you draw as it's too much of a risk for an instant kill from nearly full health. Lightning Bolt would have helped you close games better and served you as solid removal against weak threats.

Crashing Footfalls (2-1): Game 1 you had to use 2 Bone Splinters on their two rhinos out the gate, but they didn't have the counterspell back up to stop you and dind't draw into a second cascade spell until you dropped combustion which kind of hoses 4/4s. game 2 you couldn't get threats to board fast enough. game 3 you jaxis into a battlesphere for blockers and it lets you live just long enough to hulk out. i have found combustion hulk has been a real mvp in all of the matches. I think this match up would not normally be in your favor as each game you had multiple bone shards which is unusual but very helpful in this match up.

Rakdos Aggro (2-0): A discard deck with only 2 cards that can deal with mishra and jaxis did not fair well. they did get you really close on damage both games with the second game winning off a really lucky top deck. I do think you might have the edge in this game.

Overall thoughts: Jaxis and Hulk were MVP in all match ups. Cathartic Reunion requiring 2 discards was a bit clunky to play around. it may be better to favor Thrill of Possibility. I got Void Maw out multiple times, even with mishra out. it was never more useful than a vanilla 4/5. granted a 4/5 was really useful against 4/4 rhinos. You just don't really run out of targets for mishra. if you do, you should probably already have won or you didn't have targets to begin with. Braids was ok in the one match i drew them in. your early game was at it's best with a turn 3 jaxis into battlesphere for 4 free damage and a surprise 8/7 giving you 4 tokens to block with on later turns all while replacing itself with 2 more cards. if that didn't happen you were usually in a weird spot hoping that you had shards and that it would be enough. I did get profane tutor off a couple of times, but i actually never grabbed mishra with it. Sometimes i was grabbing a leveler others it was hulk, but i'm not sure how much i like the card over just another good card. You never get to bone shards a creature that is going to die, do not expect to.

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