Lightning Bolt

Instant

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

Discussion (48)

wallisface on Daemogoth Titan Pest Deck

18 hours ago

Just adding a thought - the theme here from some of the cards you mentioned is sacrifice. So I would think this could be a deck where the likes of Mayhem Devil could strive.

As a rough concept, something like:

• 4x Witch's Oven
• 4x Lightning Bolt
• 4x Cauldron Familiar
• 4x Stitcher's Supplier
• 4x Bloodghast
• 4x Priest of Forgotten Gods
• 3x Zulaport Cutthroat
• 2x Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip
• 4x Mayhem Devil
• 2x Daemogoth Titan
• 4x Blood Crypt
• 4x Bloodstained Mire
• 4x Prismatic Vista
• 9x Swamp
• 2x Mountain

ThisIsMyAccount on Legendary Lurrus

20 hours ago

zapyourtumor I will say that Unearth looks super good and I am 100% going to add that and go with a more grindy style.

I will also add though that Toralf's Hammer is better than it looks. The deck has little evasion so the +3/+0 can actually make the opponent hesitate to block OR you can put it on what little evasion there is with Hope of Ghirapur or Kari Zev, Skyship Raider to get in for real damage. We aren't playing Lightning Bolt either so the 3 damage can sometimes make a difference. The high mana cost doesn't really feel that bad either because everything else in the deck is so cheap and Mox Amber helps, too.

I also agree that Tymaret, the Murder King is not the greatest magic card but we do need a critical mass of legendary permanents for Mox Amber and a 2/2 that can give SOME* value off of additional legendary cards is the best there is. I am hoping for another decent legendary 1 or 2 drop in rakdos colors in the next set!

zapyourtumor on Legendary Lurrus

20 hours ago

Interesting concept, but I have a few concerns.

First off, this doesn't really look that aggro-ey, besides the fact that the curve is low because of lurrus. With all the hand disruption, bobs, and advantage you can grind out Seal/Tourach and Lurrus, it seems more midrangey.

Also, a lot of the deck seems to revolve around Lurrus being on the field. How well does the deck function if Lurrus gets countered or removed? I see no way to get Lurrus back from the grave if this does happen. I think Unearth might help here as backup.

Tymaret, the Murder King looks terrible. A sac outlet that requires you to hold up 2 mana for a measly 2 damage in modern just doesn't cut it in my opinion. I'd be more forgiving to the card if it was something more than a vanilla 2/2 for 2 mana. You say it's good because it can sacrifice other creatures you control that are targeted by removal to be reanimated by lurrus, but any half decent player will remove the lurrus first and then this card becomes useless. I suggest Village Rites as a different sac outlet for some additional draw, and it also synergizes really well with Kari-Zev since we can sacrifice token Ragavan at end of combat.

Similarly Toralf's Hammer seems really bad as well, requiring you to pay 4 mana for a +3/+0 buff and also letting you repeatedly bolt for 6 mana. I understand that it only adds the buff if the equipped creature is legendary, which synergizes, but even if it just buffed +3/+0 to all creatures the card still feels unplayable. The flip side of the card also doesn't really do anything since the only noncombat damage you have is 2 damage, so the most this card will be doing is 1 extra damage.

Seal of Fire is obviously great with Lurrus, but if Lurrus removed or not on the field then you will definitely want Lightning Bolt over it. I'd maybe change it to a 2/2 split.

TriusMalarky on Daemogoth Titan Pest Deck

1 day ago

Given you're playing in Modern:

Jund Titan seems like a fun build. You'd play 4x each Utopia Sprawl , Arbor Elf , and Ignoble Hierarch maybe with a couple Birds of Paradise . All of your lands should tap for green or black, as you're splashing red for Temur Battle Rage and Thud , possibly Lightning Bolt as well.

An optimal play would be

• Turn One Arbor Elf

• Turn Two Utopia Sprawl, tap it and untap the sprawled land for 4 mana, drop Titan

• Turn three swing with titan and use either TBR or Thud to pull a turn three kill.

Otherwise, you'd be trying to play Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek on top of your ramp to get a turn four kill, backed with interaction.

You get a lot of power from Grisly Salvage digging 5 cards deep for a titan, and also just swinging with titan a couple times typically wins the game if you can use 's great removal suite to keep the board clear.

It probably won't be top tier by any means, as Path to Exile and Thoughtseize easily trash your fast kills, but it should work.

dogehkiin on Hot Sauce

3 days ago

This deck lacks some Lightning Bolt

Mana_Mythic_Legendary on Pursuing Perfection, Part 4: Mono-Red …

4 days ago

At the outset of this article I wasn’t overly fond of pure red as a concept. In my eyes it’s been too aggressive and too narrow in scope to form a deck that would keep me, specifically me, happy. I say this with a double helping of skepticism, because Omnath, Locus of Rage , Okaun, Eye of Chaos , and Rakdos, Lord of Riots all keep me very happy. Today, we’re talking Burn, Chaos, and Sneak Attack as key concepts in mono-red. As always, please bear in mind that our focus here is not necessarily competitive but rather thematic, archetypical commanders.

Burn

Red patented fast damage output, but the standard RDW strategy has limited viability in EDH. Lightning Bolt and the like often don’t cut it in a format where everyone starts with 40 life. Dig for recurring damage like Irencrag Pyromancer or BIG stuff Molten Disaster , though, and you can reach frightening levels of well done and extra crispy.

I am a huge fan, and not just because of the card. Gloriously savage as this card might be, it still pales in comparison to the character in the books. Anyone who single-handedly roflstomps the blue representation on an entire plane and then EATS HIS OWN DEITY should inspire terror even when rendered on cardstock. Make sure that only you have an odd life total, play any Furnace of Rath effect, turn right, leave only blood and ashes in your wake. Seriously. He might pop off the card and eat you if you don’t.

I knew a guy who played Ashling and 99 mountains. I’m fairly sure he never won with it, but nobody laughed either. Hard to laugh at someone whose general is a water balloon slowly filling with napalm.

I don’t like Purphoros. I freely admit to sulking like a teenager with a bad haircut whenever I see him in a game, let alone in the command zone. Indestructible on generals, I can take and even enjoy. Massive damage output tied to creating horde of tokens, I can appreciate (see my favorite in mono-black, hehe). Both of them together, though, is too much for me to take with grace. But who needs to care about grace when you have so. Much. POWA.

Chaos

Some folks aren't looking for anything logical, like winning. Some folks just want to watch the world burn. Such folks come to Red, the color of all true agents of chaos, where they can ensure no plan, no board state, no hand is safe. Planar Chaos , Possibility Storm , and the iconic Wheel of Fortune are all examples of this wild approach to magic. Go nuts, and drive everyone else crazy in the process. Maybe you'll win, maybe you won't, but you'll certainly make a difference and have fun!

Does anything really need to be said, other than a profound sense of pity for opponents who are praying to top deck? Play things like Seize the Day and seize all their goodstuffs as well.

Come the time to discuss Izzet we’ll talk a coin deck, but I don’t honestly think ol’ double-or-nothing here is just for flipping coins all game. No, you come to this guy to truly take your chances. Who should his partner be? Don’t have one. That, and the prospect of a twincast Warp World will drive opponents bonkers. However, point of order (bleh): Krark is also an unholy terror if you want to break storm spells. Just be sure to bring his thumb.

I'd never heard of Diochan before writing this, and... wow. Just wow. Assuming you aren't stocking a suite of boots or maybe Darksteel Plate , how delightfully risky. How marvelously political. Bring Thornbite Staff for EXTRA wow... Wow!

Sneak Attack

This is an odd, but potent one. Next to the whole glorious theme of chaos, Red's most irritating archetype may well be creating/playing/stealing creatures for a turn, examples being Tilonalli's Summoner , Insurrection , or even the ludicrously rare keyword Dash. There isn’t a relevant mono-red general that temporarily steals creatures as yet, but there are still some real doozies in the neighborhood. Just ask Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and his blue ETB untap friends (disqualified for extra-chromatic fraternization, but still).

The raw potential here utterly terrifies me: spam useful cantrips and have a Combustible Gearhulk in play. Or maybe Utvara Hellkite . EeeeEeeeEEEK.

Red has the least graveyard-related cards of any color and arguably the least thematic business to be fiddling about in there, phoenixes notwithstanding, so Feldon’s a bit unusual. Consider the weight of discard/draw in Red’s wheelhouse (see what I did there?). Consider what can be in your graveyard. Consider that it will cost three mana to wink it out. No more, no less. Solemn Simulacrum . Cavalier of Flame . Bearer of the Heavens . Have yourself a time.

We’ve talked graveyard and copies, but red also makes with the actual Sneak Attack . I suppose Lord Okkoto makes for a world class distraction. A favorite red archetype of mine is the extra combat phase, and the high mighty porkiness is a marvelous opportunity to fetch opponents an epically Savage Beating by dropping all sorts of heinous nastiness without actually paying for it.

And, for my personal favorite...

Rakdos, Lord of Riots and Omnath, Locus of Mana are two of my oldest commanders. Evidently those genes shouldn’t be mixed, because that’s how I surmise we got here. What an absolute beast. I started this article down on red, and ended it with a passionate need to build this monstrosity. As you may have guessed and will confirm in the next article, I am a green player at heart. Neheb sings the song of my people. Loudly. Boisterously. Encouraging atypical silliness like Soulfire Eruption and Apex of Power .

That's it for this round. Thoughts and questions are welcome. I hope you enjoyed it, and will come back next week for Green!

Prior Articles:

Mono-White

Mono-Blue

Mono-Black

plakjekaas on Overperforming Cards?

2 weeks ago

I second Sunforger . But I disagree about it not being that good. It protects your board with Teferi's Protection , Debt of Loyalty , Deflecting Swat and Boros Charm , it removes creatures with Swords to Plowshares , Path to Exile and my favorite: Settle the Wreckage , it kills other problematic permanents wit Disenchant , Chaos Warp or Wear / Tear , can shut players down with Silence , Abeyance or Orim's Chant , and in my deck, it wins the game by searching and casting both Gideon's Sacrifice and Arcbond on the same Indestructible creature. It will even find the Lightning Bolt to start the chain.

Sunforger is one of the best boros equipments, at least if you can cheat a bit on the equip cost. But we have Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist , Brass Squire , Puresteel Paladin , Sigarda's Aid , Halvar, God of Battle  ^Flip and a few others to help with that

nUKe13 on nUKe13 Mardu Pyromancer

3 weeks ago

JacenSolo29 as far as the next update goes, I’m waiting to see if there is anything else that drops from MH2, but I think we have the complete list now.

My first impressions are:

1) Faithless Salvaging - this works better than Thrill of Possibility since it can be cast on an empty hand and the rebound can’t be caught by hand disruption. Instant is nice if we really do want to cast on opponent’s end step. Then, if we draw an instant, we can cast with rebound on the stack to get full value.

2) Prismatic Ending - I personally really REALLY like this. Great against aggro, Humans, Jund, Ponza, Death's Shadow (minus Gurmag Angler ). See (https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/is-prismatic-ending-the-new-swords-to-plowshares/)

3) Damn - again, LOVE IT! Definitely love the versatility, but I don’t know if it would replace Dreadbore (hits PWs), Fatal Push (instant and cheaper), or Engineered Explosives (can be triggered at instant speed and can be cheaper). Definitely a consideration for spots that previously included Damnation or Wrath of God .

4) General Ferrous Rokiric - I personally really like this. Immune to most removal (specifically EFFICIENT removal) such as Lightning Bolt , Path to Exile , Fatal Push , and Cryptic Command bouncing it. If you play a lot of multicolor spells, like Kolaghan's Command , Kaya's Guile , Kaya, Orzhov Usurper , Nahiri, the Harbinger , Dreadbore / Terminate , and Lightning Helix , then you definitely benefit from having this.

5) Dragon's Rage Channeler - this has a Magmatic Channeler feel to it and couples well with the graveyard-centric focus. If you opt for utility ARTIFACTS, like Mishra's Bauble , Damping Sphere , or Engineered Explosives , ENCHANTMENTS, like Blood Moon , or PLANESWALKERS, like Liliana of the Veil or any of the previously mentioned PWs, then you have an even easier time to activate Delirium. You do have to attack every turn, but having flying as evasion is really nice. Surveil is good if we start running more Flashback spells, like more Lingering Souls or Smiting Helix .

6) Void Mirror - TRON HATE FTW! This would compete with Damping Sphere as far as utility goes, but still really REALLY nice.

7) Obsidian Charmaw - OMG there are SO many Tron hate cards in this set, and I LOVE it. If Tron or Eldrazi Tron get more popular through all the hate from this set, then this would be great to add create a clock.

8) Vindicate - old EDH tech being added to Modern. I like the idea of destroying anything, but sorcery speed and 3 cmc, with everything else that has come into the game (and power creep), makes me unsure of its power. Could be what we need, but 3cmc is already crowded in the list.

9) Flame Blitz - UW/x, Jund, and maybe Tron typically run more PWs, so if we forgo running PWs, ourselves, then this serves as an extremely cheap PW hate card. Cycling is nice if we draw it and the opponent has side boarded out a majority of their PWs.

10) Harmonic Prodigy - if we bring back Young Pyromancer , add in Dark Confidant , and focus on Prowess, then I think this would rather have a home in a Feather, the Redeemed /spell-slinger deck. Still, it would be ok here, with the high spell count we run.

11) Sanctifier en-Vec - I don’t think we want to use this... definitely expect it in Burn or D&T lists against us.

12) Dauthi Voidwalker - now THIS we can use. Basically Sanctifier en-Vec , but unilateral hate and can help against Dredge or other recursion based decks. I like that we can sac on targeted removal and cast one of their spell(s). can conflict with our spells, but we are usually ok. If we get Blood Moon ed, we can usually laugh it off and power through it.

13) Bone Shards - in the primer, I’ve indicated that Mardu Pyro has different variants (spells/grave, PW, and Aristocrat/tokens). I feel this would slot nicely into an token deck, along with Village Rites , Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger , and Afterlife creatures.

14) Fury - at first glance, I’ve been conflicted. Seems ok as protection from aggro strategies, but I wish it had either 1 more toughness, did more damage, hit players, or cost less. It just seems... meh... I’m skeptical, but I’ve definitely been proven wrong before, so I’ll keep my mind open.

15) Mine Collapse - great if we run a bit more heavy on lands and run late. Too bad it doesn’t hit players though... a common theme from cards this set.

16) Arcbound Whelp / Esper Sentinel /Knighted Myr - another idea that has come to fruition from this set is Mardu Affinity. No, we won’t tech for Hardened Scales , but the removal suite that we run, in addition to these new artifact creatures (and lands!) is tempting enough to test some brews.

I hope this gives an idea of what we could change for the deck. The list was roughly done in the order of what we would tech in to the current build, but anything is possible! Let me know what you all think.

Edit: some of the cards (Knighted Myr, Mine Collapse, and Bone Shards) did not have the links set up in TappedOut as of the time of this post, so I do apologize for that.