Punishing Fire
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Punishing Fire

Instant

Punishing Fire deals 2 damage to target creature or player.

Whenever an opponent gains life, you may pay {{R}}. If you do, return Punishing Fire from your graveyard to your hand.

wallisface on Could Uro come back to …

2 weeks ago

For what its worth, i went through the modern banlist and made a list of cards i’d rather see unbanned because they’d be less toxic than Uro (note this doesn’t mean i actually want any of these unbanned, just that i think they’d be less broken).

legendofa on Modern Banlist

2 months ago

Bookrook By itself, Punishing Fire isn't anything special. If Grove of the Burnwillows is there, it completely eliminates 1- and 2-toughness creatures. Orcish Bowmasters is often brought up as a banworthy card because of how well it kills 1-toughness creatures. PuniFire + Grove expands that range to 2 toughness and adds full control over when it goes off. It's about as close to uncounterable and undiscardable as an instant can get without actually using those words. This combo showed up most in Zoo decks, but any deck that needed a way to kill small creatures used it.

nbarry223 on Dec 4th 2023 Ban announcement

11 months ago

I second that free mana like SSG is deserving of its ban.

I’d like to see some further unbans as well, but only the “safe” ones. Honestly a lot of the dominating cards previously wouldn’t be nearly as problematic in today’s modern, due to how efficient removal has become. A card like Splinter Twin would probably be safe to unban in today’s format, but I am not expecting to see it unbanned because of how dominant it once was (I don’t think its counterpart, Birthing Pod is safe to unban yet, since there’s not enough crazy powerful artifact hate).

Cards I would be happy to see unbanned are:

All the artifact lands
Deathrite Shaman
Ponder
Punishing Fire
Umezawa's Jitte

nbarry223 on Ban list day!

1 year ago

I'm disappointed, but not surprised by the announcement.

They had a lot of opportunity to make the format healthier in my opinion, and definitely missed on it. Clearly the replaying of The One Ring is the "unforeseen loophole" that makes the card too powerful and unfun to play against. It was a huge missed opportunity to make it the first restricted card of the format (yes, it's unprecedented I know, but I think it would make sense, since the opportunity to die to your ring instantly becomes very real).

I also feel like they could have hurt the MH2 elementals a bit by limiting them to 2 copies, removing the unhealthy consistency of a turn 1 overpowered beater that decimates your opponents resources in the process. Anything under 7 copies is a little difficult to reliably get in an opener, especially if it's only half of the combo. 3 colored elemental decks like that aren't super viable, since you need the correct colored card to exile for them.

A semi-restriction like this would eliminate the abuse of the MH2 elementals, while keeping them as powerful tools, instead of just outright banning them. I think it would help to keep the cards' initial intent while removing the consistency of what many (including myself) see as the degenerate side of them. Pitching 2 cards for the effect is fair enough to me, but then getting a beater for an extra mana is just absurd value. This turn one play often ends games, especially with a card like Grief which trades 2 cards (their worst card) for 2 (your 2 best cards) and gives a 4 power beater with evasion for 1 mana. In that context, the card sounds insanely broken, and it really is, that's why Scam is the #1 played deck.

As far as unbans go, lots of missed opportunities there I think. I feel that the artifact lands could be safely removed if we had a "restricted" slot, since having access to 20, enough to make your entire manabase artifacts was the problem. 5 total would be fine, and a fair trade-off to being more susceptible to hate cards.

If the goal is to really move to a more interactive format, why not unban Deathrite Shaman? the "1 CMC Planeswalker" would definitely help in making the format more interactive, giving those midrange control type of decks a much needed tool.

Punishing Fire is another slower toolbox card that could probably be unbanned. The modern of today is far too fast, and giving some tools back to control players may actually shift us away from the Aggro/Combo meta to a bit of a slower format with a more equal spread between Aggro/Combo/Control.

Splinter Twin is potentially safe enough to unban in today's modern. Modern has become such a removal heavy format, that Splinter Twin could probably be policed well enough to not completely dominate the format. There are cards like Force of Negation that keep me hesitant of unbanning it though, so not sure if I would actually unban this particular option, but it is getting close to a reasonable power level in today's meta. If Force of Negation wasn't a card, I think this would be able to be unbanned, but with Force of Negation + Subtlety existing, I just can't get completely behind it. If they were limited down to less than 4 copies, I think it would be reasonable to unban.

Umezawa's Jitte is another option that could potentially be unbanned, but I'm also not sure about it. There's not too much it brings to the metagame, so it may be better to just leave it banned. It may give the smaller creature decks too much of a toolbox that it becomes a jitte vs. jitte format, that pushes other creatures out of the format. There's already enough aggro decks running around, so I don't think we need to give them more tools currently.

StopShot on Dual Land Cycles that You …

2 years ago

Grove of the Burnwillows 100%.

My infinite combo EDH deck would love a spammable Punishing Fire to use against hate bears and deny planeswalker ultimates.

nbarry223 on Best Fae of Wishes Targets?

2 years ago

If only Punishing Fire got unbanned, I could see some value plays becoming possible with Grove of the Burnwillows. Right now, all I can think of are cards with cheaper unearth or flashback abilities, or something that benefits from specific cards hitting the graveyard like The Gitrog Monster, a reanimation package, or maybe even some wonky control shell with Haakon, Stromgald Scourge + Nameless Inversion.

Thanks for the interesting suggestion, I'll have to keep playing around with the idea.

legendofa on Banlist Open Discussion

3 years ago

Punishing Fire isn't a significant threat any more, in my opinion. I only remember it being used in Kird Ape/Wild Nacatl Naya Zoo decks alongside Grove of the Burnwillows, and Wild Nacatl spent some time on the banned list, too. Now it's a non-entity in tournaments.

I think Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is much more banworthy than Faithless Looting, but that might be the salt talking. Pretty much every tiered deck that Faithless Looting was in saw further bans, so I don't think Looting was the problem.

Oof_Magic on Banlist Open Discussion

3 years ago

SynergyBuild I’d sooner see KCI than Second Sunrise unbanned. Most are aware of how infamously long Eggs turns we’re back in the day (when Eggs didn’t even run KCI). Many forget that it wasn’t uncommon to be going off on turn 2-3 with Sunrise.

Safe unbans would include:

Blazing Shoal

Field of the Dead

Mycosynth Lattice

Punishing Fire

Splinter Twin

Tibalt's Trickery

After that you have the tier of discussion, cards which are probably not safe but warrant investigation and testing. These would be:

Birthing Pod

Golgari Grave-Troll OR Bridge from Below

Oko, Thief of Crowns

Umezawa's Jitte

I’m not saying this second listed section is safe to unban. I am saying that I could see the format work it’s way to a point where these could be unbanned.

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