Lightning Bolt
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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
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Oldschool 93/94 Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Planechase Legal
Premodern Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Lightning Bolt

Instant

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

Argy on Converting from Modern to Pioneer

1 day ago

To be a little bit more specific, you have a lot of fetch lands in your current build. None of those are Pioneer legal.

Once those are all taken out, you are now left with the problem of fixing your colours.

A lot of your creatures cost a lot of mana. You don't have time to get them out in Pioneer, unless you are playing a lot of Control cards. Which you aren't.

Black needs 4x Thoughtseize and 4x Fatal Push in Pioneer. I would also say that should run 3-4x Murderous Rider, across the Main and Sideboards.

There is no Lightning Bolt in Pioneer.

MindStone is out, so you lose that ramp, and that draw. 2x Talisman of Indulgence is also not Pioneer legal, so you lose another ramp outlet.

Just from that very quick look at your deck, I hope you can get some idea of what I was saying above.

If you want to see a Pioneer netdeck for Rakdos midrange, there is one here:

Rakdos Midrange by Brandon Bryant

I prefer to build my own decks, and I can help you a bit, if you still want to try.

It's going to take a long time, because you will need to learn the meta as you build, and you will need a LOT of play testing.

I estimate it will take about 100 hours to build an original brew, that can win a couple of matches, in an FNM environment.

Caerwyn on The Reserved List is a …

1 day ago

With all due respect, you cannot both state that “I just really dislike bad logic, or an argument that is done in bad faith and with no evidence to back it up” and post your above response.

Every. Single. Thing. You have said is without evidence and is predicated on bad logic - in particular your decision to ignore the fact that I backed up my post with actual evidence. Quite frankly, I think you just did not read my former post on your thread - or you did read and lacked basic comprehension thereof.

Your continued insistence on the following two points show just how disingenuous your thread is:

First, continuing to insist that there is no evidence the majority of players want the RL gone. As I already said, “Magic’s Mark Rosewater has acknowledged before that the majority of players dislike the reserve list”.

Here is the actual quote from Magic’s Lead designer: “Rosewater replied that Magic’s designers ‘know the majority of players would like it gone’. ‘That’s been true for many years,’ he continued, adding that ‘that doesn’t make any of the other obstacles go away.’” [Source] (https://www.wargamer.com/magic-the-gathering/reserved-list-mark-rosewater).

You are simply wrong on this point.

Second, your insistence that the RL props up the value of other cards is nothing but speculation without evidence - the very thing you hypocritically decry in others.

And it ignores the fact that there exists plenty of evidence that your position is without merit - as I already noted, the high cost of non-RL Alpha cards (especially certain staples like Lightning Bolt, certain judge staples, things like the Guru Lands, Kaladesh Masterpieces, etc. all show there are plenty of non-RL ways to create card value. There is no reason to believe that things like limited run printings and exclusive art would drop in price without the RL.

The actual evidence suggests you are wrong on this point.

I could go on, pointing out that your “you can just proxy” argument is not sound and is effectively “you could just make a deck you can never play at official events”; or that your entire point about pricing is predicated on Wizards suddenly deciding to change pricing policy in a way that could invite the very kind of government action they choose to ignore. . . But I will not.

Why? You are probably not going to read this far and, if you do, you’ll likely ignore any evidence that disagrees with you, while wrongly and hypocritically seeming to believe your pure speculation is worth more than others’ logical and evidenced-backed positions.

Khurgar on Modern Lands

4 days ago

Allright, so here's the "how the fk does it work?" part.

The deck is a prett slow one that takes some time before it really activates, so several cards both in the main deck and side board are there to mitigate the pressure that we might suffer from early plays. Lightning Bolt, Fire / Ice and Arboreal Grazer fills these slots in the main deck.

What the deck wants to do is generally to discard lands with Seismic Assault to deal damage to the enemy, then use cards such as Wrenn and Six, Life from the Loam and Slogurk, the Overslime to recur those lands to your hand again.

Trade Routes is used for 3 reasons. The first is pretty straight forwards, use your land cards in hand to generate new cards. Second use is to be able to play your channel lands early in the game to give mana while being able to pick them up later in the game to use their channel effect. And the third one is to make Slogurk, the Overslime to grow rapidly. If you discard a land and opt to dredge a Life from the Loam, Slogurk, the Overslime can grow anywhere between +1 to +4 +1/+1 counters for a single mana, ontop of digging for utility lands that you can return later.

Sadly I have not had a lot of time playtesting it, and I think that the sideboard needs a lot of work. First and foremost I feel like I have doubled down a bit too hard on artifact hate, albeit with a lot of cards with multi purpose.

Anyways, the rundown of why I included the cards are as follows: Damping Sphere was included to stop decks such as tron and titan, and it also works well versus decks such as breach or storm or other more jank combos such as neobrand.

Pithing Needle and Relic of Progenitus dont need explaining.

Brotherhood's End was included to deal with asmo decks, affinity, prison tron, goblins, merfolk and other similar decks to these.

Force of Vigor is in the deck solely because I have no way to stop a turn 2 kill from hammer, other than blocking with an Arboreal Grazer. I am strongly considering cutting it though.

Haywire Mite is included to stop Kaldra Compleat, but will probably see play in the same games that my other artifact and enchantment hate cards.

Otawara, Soaring City is just so that you are more likely to draw them, especially in matchups where they run pithing needle to stop Boseiju, Who Endures, but is also really good for returning combo pieces to hand, or just big beaters like murktide. Its also really good vs tokens.

Boseiju, Who Endures just a really solid card, deals with most problems the deck faces, such as graveyard hate and blood moon effects.

Bojuka Bog is a fantastic card in this deck. With this card and Trade Routes you can exile your opponents graveyard every turn if you'd like, although it is only in sorcery speed.

Cards that I would like to experiment with: Expressive Iteration is a card that I am gonna experiment with in place of Fire / Ice. I think that Fire / Ice is much better at stalling out the game, but expressive is such a valuable card to have in the mid game.

Academy Ruins and Buried Ruin to be able to get artifacts back from the graveyard.

Shadowspear to deal with agressive matchups where the opponent have no good way of dealing with my constructs or Slogurk, the Overslime.

Orvar, the All-Form versus decks that enjoy discarding your hand, so generally versus decks that runs archong or liliana.

I hope you enjoyed the read, give me some thoughts in the comments if you have any =)

Caerwyn on The Reserved List is a …

5 days ago

Your analysis on a number of points is extremely questionable.

“Not only did this ensure that there was always something to invest in and collect”

This is the initial argument for why the RL was created - they did not know if the game was going to be seen mostly for its collectable nature (like baseball cards) or for the actual game (like nothing else on the market at the time), and the RL is a case of them hedging their bets, sacrificing the game side of things to attract collectors.

It can be debated whether that was necessary at the time of the RLs formation. However, it should be noted that the high price of non-RL Alpha cards, unique printings like Judge Foils and Kaladesh Masterpieces, etc. all show that there are plenty of ways to appeal to collectors outside of the RL.

“gave developers incentive to design new card pieces that could emulate (to a lesser extent) those powerful and sought after effects”

Developers do not need the RL to do this - and they do it all the time on non-RL cards for any number of reasons (see Lightning Bolt and Shock). From the designer’s point of view, the RL actually creates a problem that otherwise might not exist. Say you want to print something similar to a good RL card (let’s remember, a large number of RL cards are unplayable garbage), suddenly you run into an issue where you could take a good card folks are running 4 copied of and make those decks far more powerful by allowing them to run 8 copies of a spell with a similar function.

Overall, that actually reduces design space by removing the designer’s freedom to simply say “this old card is perfect, let’s use that” and forcing them into a position where they have to make unnecessarily complex and avoidable design calculations.

“Thus, ensuring a form of reprint equity that set designers can cash in on to make sure a product sells well and gives WotC the funds to continue to invest in new card development.”

This is just a bad argument. “Rather than let Wizards cash in on actual reprint equity, isn’t it great they can try to cash in on an inferior form of reprint equity?”

Being able to tap into actual reprint equity - including some of the most valuable (though out of reach) reprint equity in the game - would be far better for “giv[ing] Wizards the funds to continue to invest in new card development.”

“If a Reserved List reprint product were produced it would be so egregiously priced that it would make Magic 30th look tame.”

Wizards recently reprinted a couple cards with values higher than most RL cards (Imperial Seal, for example, was something like $800.00 prior to its reprint). The money to be made with Magic is in getting the most number of people to buy product at the highest possible price - that is why they do print to demand, and will reprint sets that sell out (Magic 30 is fundamentally different - it was designed to be a single run so they wanted to milk that one run for all it was worth).

Most importantly, they want to be able to sell boxes to LGSes for things like Draft Night—-and want the products priced such that the game stores are going to purchase large numbers with the expectation they’ll be able to keep demand going for quite a while.

That places limitations on how high a reprint set can go, even one with a few valuable chase cards. After all, it isn’t like they would just release a “oops, all RL” product - they would do a slow rollout and spread the reprint equity over numerous sets.

Every point you make about not seeing the data supporting that the majority dislikes the RL

Magic’s Mark Rosewater has acknowledged before that the majority of players dislike the reserve list, while also acknowledging it does appeal to some, such as collectors. It also is important to note that Wizards’ staff do not talk about the RL often, and, when they do, they often stay on script in a way which de facto indicates they do not like it either.

—————————————————————

Overall, I think the evidence shows that Wizards dislikes the RL as much as players seems to—-it ties their hands, cuts into their profits, upsets their players, and means they have to write off entire formats (Vintage, Legacy, high tiers of cEDH) as “something we can’t really cater to”.

From players to designers to management, the overwhelming position seems to be that no one wants the RL - I expect the only reason it is still in the game is because Wizards’ lawyers are saying removing it presents an unacceptable risk.

Daveslab2022 on Yugioh in MTG part 2

6 days ago

I simply disagree. The difference in 1 mana is massive. Lightning Bolt is a multi format staple. Lightning Strike is draft chaff. The card at 2 mana is really powerful. Not to mention that it has Goblin synergy and stays on the battlefield. Maybe if it has to attack every turn, but a 2 mana 6/1 blocker is a pretty big wall.

soul_knightmare on Fiendish Tendencies

1 week ago

Heya, I see that your deck is mostly lacking in card draw/ card acceleration. You have about 3 while most decks need 10+. Remove Costly Plunder for Night's Whisper so you don't have to sacrifice your demons. Remove Feaster of Fools, Spirit of the Night, Bladebrand, Grasp of Darkness, and You Are Already Dead (I know the meme), and add Dream Devourer, Bloodgift Demon, Herald of Slaanesh, Phyrexian Arena, Blasphemous Act, and Rakdos Charm.

I hope this helps your deck building. Other upgrades would mean removing Ecologist's Terrarium, Lightning Bolt, Grasp of Darkness, Warp Artifact, Insult / Injury, Price of Betrayal, Skulltap, Witch's Vengeance, Blight, and Inevitable End which are okay, but could be improved. Pick more cards that draw cards without condition or ramp on two mana, Wish you the best!

kamarupa on speedy Ghalta

1 week ago

One thing about having a lot of mana dorks is that you tend to run out of spells pretty quickly. I think it might be worth it to drop 2xCommune with Dinosaurs and add in 2xHarmonize. Or drop Commune with Dinosaurs altogether in favor of 2xHarmonize and 2xForerunner of the Empire. You never need a dinosaur on T1, and barely one T2, so the 1MV cost of Commune isn't really helping, per se. I'll also throw out Time of Need as a possible tutor for a few of your threats at a lower cost, but you might want to reconsider your creatures to add in a 3rd Legendary to make such a spell 'worth it.'

You need some kind of interaction with your opponent, as wallisface already said. In order to make room for non-creature/non-land spells, you have to cut either creatures or lands. Given some of the high MVs of spells here, I think it's safe to say, you can't afford to cut any lands, so you'll need to cut some creatures. I suggest dropping 1x of each of your elves. 6 is still quite a lot and 3 of each makes their removal less effective for opponents. I'd also cut 2x each of Otepec Huntmaster and Raptor Hatchling. I realize you need dinos for Drover of the Mighty to get buff, and obv Ghalta's discount, but I think you'll be just fine with those numbers and it opens up 6 slots for some utility spells. 28 creatures is still quite a lot. Additionally, having non-creature / non-land spells makes it a lot easy to swap spells with your sideboard.

Beast Within is pretty useful as it hits pretty much everything, but of course, comes with a downside. And of course, I'm 100% with wallisface on Lightning Bolt and Primal Might.

Some sideboard spells I really like: Return to Nature - sometimes getting rid of artifacts, enchantments, and graveyards is crucial.

Elixir of Immortality - just say no to mill

Ratchet Bomb - just say no to tokens.

Lands: Scavenger Grounds could be useful in some matchups.

Castle Garenbrig seems relevant

Field of Ruin is nice against tron and more

Boseiju, Who Endures is really nice.

1xYavimaya, Cradle of Growth might allow for one less forest and one more mountain.

Austin_Smith_of_Cards on Naya's Hero

3 weeks ago

Probably more worth it to play Atarka's Command over Dromoka's Command. Same cost, but Atarka’s is far more aggressive (3 to face plus +1/+1 to board), and can confirm I’ve died to it from my buddy’s Gruul aggro deck a lot.

Also 23 lands seems a little high for a list that tops out at 3cmc, probably fit a couple Lightning Bolts or Bloodbraid Elfs and go down to 21.

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