Like many people in recent years, I've been finding myself picking up more and more podcasts as the years have gone on. This has been especially true working remotely from home, as it gives me something fresh and fun to enjoy. It's all the better when I get to listen to friends talk and discuss Magic, which has made it a delight listening to Shivam and Wheeler Love Magic (which I highly recommend you check out if you haven't).

While listening to a recent episode this past week, Ben Wheeler mentioned Lightning Bolt and how it should be played more in Commander. This got me thinking. Lightning Bolt has always been a highly contentious card in the format. The reasons are simple: first, it has a reputation of being an incredibly powerful and famous card, and yet - second - it isn't as good in a multiplayer, singleton format. To many players, it simply does not make sense to use a Lightning Bolt as a targeted piece of removal when it won't kill a lot of targets and loses a lot of its potency due to a lack of an ability to hit people in the face effectively. After all, why do something like Lightning Bolt when you can end the game with something fierce like a Comet Storm?

This made me contemplate the card and wonder how good it and other Red spot removal stands in the format. To that end, I figured it might be good to write up a piece talking about the pros and cons to a variety of these cards, with a focus on the Bolt variants themselves. We all know how universally good Chaos Warp is and we probably don't need to discuss that one too much more, but instead focus on other cards instead. Some are ones lesser known, others you may see at tables quite often, so let's dig in.

Let's start off talking about the card that inspired this whole conversation in the first place. When it comes to Lightning Bolt, there's often the question of "is this actually good enough?" The biggest reason is that people understand Bolt is a good card but do so viewed from the context of 60-card competitive Constructed play. There, you gain access to four Bolts in all formats it's legal in. You're also more likely to see smaller threats more frequently and you also have an additional suite of support spells, oftentimes including even more bolt variants that help not only deal with your opponents' field, but also their life totals.

It's the kind of card that helps you close out games fast and in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, that's substantially more difficult in Commander. Three damage is quite a lot in a Constructed game where players have only 20 life. It's downright paltry in Commander where people have 40 life, and there's usually three opponents! What's more, people are playing creatures often out of Bolt range or are simple tokens not worth spending a removal spell on. This is what makes people question just how good of a card it really is.

The reality is, though, that there are still plenty of decent targets. On the night of writing this piece, I went and looked at the top 100 creatures according to EDHREC. What I found was that the top creatures of the last week had a nice 69 that could be taken out by a Lightning Bolt, and both the one month and two-year counts were 67. Some of these are only technically killable (Spark Double and Champion of Lambholt are arguable, for example) while others are somewhat pointless in taking out because the opponent already got their value (Wood Elves, Mulldrifter, etc.). In spite of that, there's still a plethora of excellent targets. There's no shortage of mana dorks to pick off, cards like Blood Artist and Beast Whisperer to prevent an overflow of value, or stop Grand Abolisher and Drannith Magistrate from their nonsense.

Beyond that, there's also still merit to the burn option outright. Three damage to the face might not mean a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it can go a long way to taking out a problematic foe. How many times has your table gotten the archenemy down to just one or two life only for them to take you all out? Three damage isn't a lot, but it's a great tool to have access to and a good political tool to use in a pinch to help move the game along. It gets even better on this front when you have access to spell recursion, such as Charmbreaker Devils or flickering various Archaeomancer style cards. At that point, with the right setup, Lightning Bolt can become a lethal action that shuts opponents down.

In short, Lightning Bolt offers a ton of flexibility in such a simple and elegant package. It might not appear to do a lot in this format, but what it does is enough, and it's well worth rocking in your 99 if you're in Red. Its value does go down a bit when you play Black as well due to that colors outrageous removal suite, but in most other color combinations and setups, it's a worthwhile inclusion.

Next I want to talk about some of the larger burn spells, but tend to be a bit more situational. There's a lot less to talk about here but I still think there's merit to exploring them a little bit. It both highlights the sheer flexibility of what Lightning Bolt does while noting that in certain situations, these cards can just be better.

When I started brainstorming this concept, three cards came quickly to mind: Flame Slash, Galvanic Blast, and Roast. The common thread between all of these was the fact that they dealt more damage than Lightning Bolt. Remember when I noted above how the past week had 69 creatures that could be killed by a Lightning Bolt? That number increases to 79 when you bump the damage output to four, making cards like Flame Slash or Galvanic Blast (provided you have metalcraft active) generally more effective. Roast takes out more high-toughness creatures, but less overall by cutting out fliers.

Essentially, each card asks you what are you looking to get out of it? Roast is a great way to look at this. It's a way to handle threats at your own table. It hits a higher threshold of creatures by smacking high toughness creatures, but simultaneously can't take down something like a Niv-Mizzet, Parun or even something smaller like a Faerie Mastermind. In a blind playgroup at a Commandfest, MagicCon, or other large event, playing something like this is a gamble, but it's a great tool in your toolbox when you continually play against the same group of people over and over again. Cards like Rending Volley and Combust are in a similar area. It's entirely possible these cards can be blank if not a single player at your table reps either White or Blue, but in your own personal group where you expect to see them all the time? Go to town!

In some cases, you can even make these larger spells do extra work for you in the process. Lightning Axe and Fiery Conclusion are two cards that immediately come to mind for this, as they're highly specific in their uses, even though they read very generically. Any deck can discard a card or sacrifice a creature as an extra cost, no problem. With so many different kinds of removal, though, it makes them harder to stand out unless you're playing something highly specialized. In Lightning Axe's case, this would involve something that benefits from utilizing the graveyard, such as Chainer, Nightmare Adept. With Fiery Conclusion, you'd be looking to run it in something with a strong sacrifice theme like Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. If you want something that doesn't have most of these hangups, I'd recommend checking out the new Witchstalker Frenzy, which is an excellent piece of high-end creature removal from Wilds of Eldraine.

Another major point is that these spells by and large only hit one sort of target. You may have noticed most of the spells I've covered in this section are only able to deal with creatures. That's intentional, as it's meant to highlight ways you can deal with more problematic creatures. In truth, though, there's also not many relevant ones that can go to the face, and most of them are the ones that require an additional cost such as Reckless Abandon and Improvised Club. Much like Fiery Conclusion, you can make this work in your favor, but it's hard to go off repeatedly with something like Fireblast by comparison.

Two I found that can work far more easily in this category are Exquisite Firecraft, as it's likely you'll have multiple spells in your graveyard in Commander, and Stoke the Flames due to its relatively trivial casting cost.

The last area I want to discuss here is scaling spells. These are spells whose damage output can be increased in one way or another. The most classic instance of these is X spells. They're about as classic of a burn effect as you can get that isn't named Lightning Bolt, harkening all the way back to Limited Edition Alpha with the likes of Fireball and Disintegrate. By and large these are utilized as ways to help close out games with the large amounts of mana you've managed to build up over the course of the game. Remember how earlier I mentioned that Comet Storm is a great way to close out games? This is exactly why.

These aren't the only way some spells scale, though. Two similarly notable cards I think of are Frantic Firebolt and Blitz of the Thunder-Raptor. In both cases, the damage they deal increases for the number of instants and sorceries in your graveyard, which means they can take out just about anything as the games go on. It's a simple concept that is only featured on a shockingly small number of cards. This example is taken to its absolute extreme, however, with Immolating Gyre not only dealing with one opposing problem in this manner, but all of them AND it hits your opponent in the process. I should note as well that it's quite cheap and an excellent board wipe option in spell-heavy decks if you're on a budget.

Finally, the last way that spells can scale is simply through reutilization. One of the more classic examples to this is Hammer of Bogardan, a legendarily powerful card once upon a time that was the chase card of the eras it was in Standard. Today, it's a forgotten relic, but it - alongside its Future Sight cousin Thunderblade Charge - is still a useful tool as a spell that can be utilized over and over and over again as needed. Punishing Fire is similar provided there's enough lifegain to warrant it, and Arc Blade can keep coming back for more as well. This train of thought can even extend as far as including the likes of Chain Lightning and Chain of Plasma, allowing one spell to go all over the table to dish out the beats.

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This piece may have started as a means to justify the existence of Lightning Bolt in Commander, but it grew to be a more enjoyable exploration of burn spells and their applications overall. I hope you've been able to take away something from this and try out some new tools in your arsenal. Many of these are fairly budget friendly today, meaning you can pick them up and try them out for yourself. Who knows, you might even find something fun for not just your next Commander night, but many beyond that.

Just remember one simple thing: always bolt the birds.

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

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