Lightning Bolt

Instant

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

Discussion (48)

aholder7 on Modern Mogis Lockdown

9 hours ago

okay so a few things of note here.

first. i'd suggest running 4-ofs for your best cards. there isn't any clear reason why you'd want 3 ofs in this scenario except mogis who is legendary in which case it's fine.

second. Lightning Bolt. it's one of the best red cards in the game and it's cost effective way of solving problems cannot be understated. i think it's important that it gets a slot in this deck.

third. your win con appears to be Mogis/burn. Mogis is a very slow way to win. normally for a control deck you are controlling them until you can drop some threat that you can protect that will win the game shortly after that or at least create such a lock as to make getting out of it futile. mogis will never turn on in your deck so at most it's going to be 2 damage a turn from mogis assuming they aren't doing a wide strategy. perhaps a planeswalker like Liliana, the Last Hope who you can +1 to help remove creatures and win off of her ult.

fourth. your mix of control spells is heavily weighted towards destroying creatures after they hit the field. thats something you want to respond to but people play other cards that you'll need to deal with. enchantments like Wilderness Reclamation, artifacts like Amulet of Vigor and non-permanents of all kinds. you also will lose pace with decks that use creature that have ETBs such as Omnath, Locus of Creation and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath which yes you can kill but you'll be losing card advantage. you need a few more proactive responses and ways to gain incremental advantage over your opponent. discard spells like Thoughtseize or at least multipurpose cards like Kolaghan's Command and Collective Brutality can help. other proactive cards such as Blood Moon and Ghostly Prison can shut down or at least slow opposing decks to keep them from racing ahead of you.

with the above things in mind i'd suggest something along the following changes.

cards to remove:

-3 Crackling Doom: soul shatter and other remove should be sufficient

-3 Lightning Helix: lifegain is great for stabilizing but the power removal comes from it's mana efficiency. on turn 2 being able to play a discard spell and hold up a Lightning Bolt for their creature is much more powerful than the life gain from helix. still a great card for sideboard to bring in against lightning fast agro decks like burn or zoo.

-1 Soul Shatter: i'm not sure you need any of these in the mainboard. you have Anguished Unmaking to get around indestructible should it come up. Dreadbore and Anguished Unmaking can kill planeswalkers. That leaves hexproof is the only thing that this gets around that you don't have an answer for already. hexproof is uncommon enough that i'd personally put this in the sideboard, but considering how many of this effect you have in your deck i'm assuming your meta has enough hexproof to warrant 2 mainboard slots.

-4 Divine Gambit: 1 for 1 at best, 1 for 0 at worst. the ability to exile most types of permanents is powerful but the downside seems too risky and likely to set you behind.

-3 Anger the gods: you don't need 7 soft sweeps. with the amount of removal you have a board wide damage spell is likely for hitting tokens or other wide strategies. for most of these scenarios 2 damage should be enough. in the scenarios where 2 isn't enough, 3 likely isn't either. Wrath of God or similar would be a better bet for those situations.

-1 Pyroclasm: you probably don't even need 4 soft sweeps in the main unless you are expecting a dearth of going wide strategies in your meta.

-3 Mogis, God of Slaughter: without a way to turn him on or a way to create a true lock outs like teferi-pool you aren't going to get as much value out of mogis as you need to make him your win con.

cards to add:

+4 Lightning Bolt: this is solid removal or a damage to face if you don't need to use it as such.

+2-4: Thoughtseize: considered one of the best discard spells in the game because it hits basically everything at the cost of 2 life.

+2-4: Duress: you can choose Inquisition of Kozilek or Raven's Crime or another discard spell of your choice. i'd suggest at least 6 discard spells and you can decide the split between your discard spells depending on how aggressive your meta is.

+2 Kolaghan's Command: small creature removal, artifact removal, discard spell. very versatile.

+4 Liliana, the Last Hope, a strong contender for win con. i went with 4 copies because it doesn't have innate protection and you want it early if you can as it provides good value.

+1 Path to Exile: to make it a 4 of.

+1 Fatal Push: to make it a 4 of.

??? Tibalt's Trickery: I don't know if this is a good idea in control. you are giving up a card to change what card your opponent is casting. but they are still getting something. so you are 1 for 0ing them in a way. if they are casting a spell like Scapeshift for the win then obviously this will help but the risk of them flipping an equally scary threat off the top is very real. but your choices in counterspell are pretty limited.

if you are willing to mess around with your mana base you can probably make good use of Blood Moon as well but that would require some careful maneuvering in a 3 color deck.

Xianling69 on I tried building a lockdown …

13 hours ago

i also find it odd you didn't include Lightning Bolt, and chose Dreadbore over Terminate.

sergiodelrio on Interaction between Hostility, Torbran, and …

18 hours ago

Ok, I see I messed up because I didn't even read Crackling Perimeter and was thinking Lightning Boltish spells. Its effect isn't a spell so Hostility does nothing. Only Torban will replace the damage.

Another big misread by me was that your opponent would obviously be the affected player and get to decide. But in the situation at hand, there's nothing to decide

Omniscience_is_life on Doom Blade v Hornet Nest

3 days ago

There are three ways a permanent can be destroyed, as per rule 701.7b--

701.7b The only ways a permanent can be destroyed are as a result of an effect that uses the word “destroy” or as a result of the state-based actions that check for lethal damage (see rule 704.5g) or damage from a source with deathtouch (see rule 704.5h). If a permanent is put into its owner’s graveyard for any other reason, it hasn’t been “destroyed.”

As you can see, just using the word "destroy" puts the creature into the graveyard from play, without having to deal damage to it. And that's what Doom Blade does: destroy without damage. If a source deals noncombat damage, it says as much (for example, Lightning Bolt).

Xianling69 on Building a kitchentable Magic deck …

4 days ago

3 color mana bases are easy with fetch lands and shock lands. if fetch lands are out of budget, you can just use shock lands and check lands. i'd also really recommend some removal spells like Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile

MagicMarc on KALDHEIM!

6 days ago

Frost Bite would be most excellent if it was any target. Still nice but for a second I thought it was a new Lightning Bolt.

CamraMaan on Does Isochron Scepter trigger Aria …

1 week ago

Say I have Isochron Scepter imprinted with a Lightning Bolt, does using that count as a an instant spell that would trigger Aria of Flame? I'm assuming yes, and that its "copy" and "cast" wording gets it to trigger, but I want to make sure. Thanks in advance!

Chandra585 on Card creation challenge

1 week ago

Thunder-lord's Call

Sorcery

Put token copies of Ball Lightning, Lightning Bolt and Warstorm Surge on the stack.

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make this another card in this cycle of sorceries that cast other spells.