Shock

Instant

Shock deals 2 damage to any target (creature, player or planeswalker).

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	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
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (45)

wallisface on Elvan Dinosaurs

4 days ago

Some thoughts:

• 97 cards is waaay more than you should be running. It will lead your deck to being much less consistent, and much weaker. You should always be aiming to get your deck down to 60 cards.

• Your land count is way too low. 29 lands in a 97 card deck equates to only 19 lands in a 60 card deck. Fir reference, burn decks run 20 lands and only play cards costing 1-2 mana (and are happy being stuck on 1 land fir a few turns). For what you’re trying to do I think you need at least 24 lands in a 60 card deck (that’s 36 in a 97 card deck).

• Your mana curve is too high at the moment. Most decks can’t justify running more than 4 cards costing 4-or-more mana, your deck has a whopping 27 (18 if we scale it to 60 cards), which is insanely high. It means most of your turns will be super slow/clumsy.

• A lot of these cards have strictly better versions you should be running. For instance, Lightning Bolt is a strictly better version of Shock, and so there is never any reason to be running Shock in a deck.

Icbrgr on Boros Burn

1 month ago

I completely agree about Pyrite Spellbomb in the SB for the pro red creatures that come out games 2 & 3.... I have been considering Bonecrusher Giant myself but figure id ask you how you think it feels? the 2MV Shock with benefit is it enough? and when tapping out for the 4/3 giant is ever swinging in for a win? +1 looks great love the list!

legendofa on B/R Goblin Burn

3 months ago

You're not likely to cast Lava Axe or Assembled Alphas off 20 lands with no ramp, unless the game goes long (which is what a burn deck does not want). This is more Goblin tribal than burn; burn wants pretty much every card in the deck either be a land or say "(card name) deals (#) damage to (target)" like Shock or Lightning Strike (and if you can get ahold of some, Lightning Bolt). Every card that's not immediately dealing damage is slowing a burn deck down. Goblin tribal generally focuses on lots of creatures pumping each other up and attacking fast and hard, which is more of what you have here. Both strategies are viable, and there's a little bit of overlap, but they're not interchangeable. To give you an idea of the similarities and differences,

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/burn-a2dd1132-5301-4882-907a-7b668da3b58a#paper is a tournament-level burn deck.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-8-whack#paper is a tournament-level Goblin deck.

Also, look for Goblin Grenade.

Coward_Token on UB: LOTR

3 months ago

Orcish Bowmasters: Yeah this card is pretty incredible, even if I personally don't fell it's an automatic inclusion in every black-inclusive deck (someone compared it to Hullbreacher, which I feel is a bit much). EDHrec has a pretty comprehensive take on it here (scroll down). My two cents, aside from that:

• It's easy to zoom in on the "whenever" templating, missing "Flash" and "enters the battlefield". On top of everything else (and that's a lot), half a Shock on a random dork (or Esper Sentinel) is nothing to scoof at.
• Like the damage part, you get a separate instance of Amass for each trigger. In an aristocrats deck, you can sacrifice the Army after each trigger, forcing the ability to make a new token, which can potentially net nice value. (Wheel of Fortune + Phyrexian Altar sounds pretty absurd.) I honestly don't know why they made it Amass, the flavor's barely there and the card is already so versatile.

plakjekaas on looking to upgrade a standard …

4 months ago

The best thing to do is probably to lower the curve a bit:

Kumano Faces Kakkazan  ^Flip is a cheap card that works wonders for the strategy

Play with Fire is a better Shock, and Lightning Strike is a better Roil Eruption

Monastery Swiftspear is probably one of the best red 1-drops ever, and pretty cheap with the BRO reprint. Soul-Scar Mage is pretty similar, no haste, but a chance to progressively kill problematic creatures or mess up combat math with the -1/-1 counters is great.

Den of the Bugbear and Ramunap Ruins can be considered to have some utility in your lands without giving up any colored sources.

Eidolon of the Great Revel is the most expensive card that mono red plays in pioneer right now, that might be a step too far if you're worrying about the budget. But that's probably where you'd want to end up being serious about the deck. In the meantime you could consider cards like Khenra Spellspear  ^Flip, Kari Zev, Skyship Raider or Bloodfeather Phoenix to make sure chapter 2 of Kumano Faces Kakkazan  ^Flip goes to use.

You could look up some lists on MTGGoldfish or MTGTop8 to see what's generally played in the mono red decks, and work your way there bit by bit. I think my suggestions should give you plenty inspiration to get started though.

wallisface on

5 months ago

Nice build! Some thoughts:

• Shock and Tarfire aren't worth running. Spending a card to only deal 2 damage is too low, and the reason that burn decks have to have every burn card deal 3 at a minimum.

• Krenko, Mob Boss is never worth running, it will be too slow to cast with only 18 lands, and is a better fit in a more tempo-based build. As a deck that looks pretty-close to 8-wack, you want to be playing as aggressively as possible. I'd put Goblin Chieftain in a similar boat, though it is still playable (though something to potentially ditch)

• Currently you're only running 4-wack (Goblin Bushwhacker). I think you should be upping that count to 8-wack, by also including a playset of Reckless Bushwhacker.

• For a better lord effect than Goblin Chieftain, I'd suggest Rundvelt Hordemaster. Its lower mana cost is relevant, and can help you maintain being aggressive and not mind losing creatures in combat

Caerwyn on The Reserved List is a …

6 months 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.

PhyrexianPraetor on 【Emotional】▷ RANT ◁ WOTC's GREED has RUINED MAGIC!

7 months ago

As someone who has played mtg since Lorwyn made it’s debut (2007), I have one thing to say. As a home-brewer I don’t mind new cards, I actually like newly printed cards and neat concepts. What I don’t like is when they print new cards that essentially amount to legalized cheating and cards that embody the very reasons why previous problem cards and strategies got banned in the first place.

With that being said, I have recently gotten back into mtg after almost a year of selling my collection due to War, MH1 and MH2 and only play modern with my friends. For quite a few years I was able to successfully bring BW Devotion to Modern FNM and come 1st, 2nd or 3rd quite consistently. All of the other players brought decks like Grixis Shadow, UW Control, Grishoal Brand/Reanimator, Tron, Affinity, Death & Taxes, Naya Zoo, Burn, Mill, Storm, Ad Nauseam, Dredge, Humans, Merfolk, Spirits, Vampires, Zombies, BR Demons, Infect, UR Thing in the Ice, Izzet Drakes and various other decks. There was a high degree of variation among modern players in my area and you were able to perform in a decent manner with a home-brew.

With the introduction of War of the Spark, Modern Horizons and Modern Horizons 2 a lot of those players either quit, started playing edh only or started playing one of the four strategies that were the best in my area (UW Control due to Teferi, Time Raveler, Jund due to Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Archon Reanimator Decks and four/five colour Omnath Decks). With three sets and many standard cards that were ridiculous, WOTC had caused modern to become a format of four separate strategies (after some bannings of course), effectively making it a rotating format and accomplished in contradicting their previous reasons for banning cards in the past by doing so.

For years, cards would get banned due to over-representation of certain decks (Splinter Twin as an example) or how certain strategies got too strong (Infect as another example). Now WOTC prints cards that are way too pushed and are nearly impossible to stop and don’t do anything about them.

If a ban were to happen I would like to see one or two of the below cards banned.

1) Teferi, Time Raveler is a card that literally turns a game of mtg into Hearthstone and prevents the opponent from interacting in any way, shape or form. By far this card embodies my concept of “legalized cheating” the most.

2) Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer isn’t bad when you can answer it. When you can’t, it effectively turns into a 1 mana card that is a combination of Sink hole and Shock. I have rarely seen a player use it’s ability to cast the cards it takes off the top of the deck and usually have seen it hit lands off the tops of said decks. It does too much for a 1 mana card, just like Deathrite Shaman.

3) Omnath, Locus of Creation or Wrenn and Six both generate way too much card advantage for so little investment. All you have to do is play fetch-lands and you will win the game in a matter of turns. One or both have to go. I put these two together due to seeing them both played along side each other more often than not.

4) Mishra's Bauble has always been a card that has attracted the attention of WOTC with possible bannings. Similarly as Ragavan, it does too much for little to no cost and it also contributes to certain strategies in a big way at literally no cost, not to mention that it replaces itself.

5) Expressive Iteration generates too much card advantage. In a way it kind of reminds me of Faithless Looting. Not in the way of abusing graveyard strategies, but drawing a lot for very little cost. EI effectively reads “scry 3 and draw 2”, last time a card did something similar to this, it got banned. The card I am referring to is Preordain. A card that generated way too much card advantage for 1 mana by setting up your next two draws, one of which was immediately drawn after scrying and was one of the cards that lead to Storm being way too consistent in the format.

6) Ovalchase Daredevil isn’t a particularly busted card, but it makes decks that use The Underworld Cookbook way to consistent. Discarding a card to activate an ability is supposed to COST YOU A CARD!!!, not generate card advantage for effectively nothing in exchange. Disagree with me? Storm had received the most bannings in modern’s history due to being “too consistent”, so why does another deck get to have the same level of consistency and not get a second look? Sure, it’s not the most dominant strategy, but neither was Storm and it still got banned into oblivion.