Pound for Pound, one of the best cards in the game. Sooooo many creatures have met their demise at the hands of this card.
TheWallinator74
★★★☆☆ (3.2/5.0)(2 votes)
Long live the king of burn spells.
wholelottalove
★★☆☆☆ (2.5/5.0)(2 votes)
Just one of the best spells in the game, point blank.
Eppek_the_Goblin
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Excellent by today's standards, Lightning Bolt was even better in the day's of Revised. It saw play in an environment that didn't shy away from burn. Fireball, Disintegrate, Earthquake, and Chain Lightning all helped make "3 to your face" even more deadly. Lightning Bolt also saw a lot of action taking out your opponent's mid-sized creatures. Juggernauts, Phantom Monsters, Hypnotic Specters, Kird Apes, and all manner of knights and bears met their untimely ends thanks to this card.
The_Riddle_of_Steel
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Obviously one of the best cards in Revised or in any set, for that matter. This card has versatility, power, speed, flavor, you name it. And I appreciate the simplicity and modesty of the art for such a brutal card. No silly face of someone getting hit with it. And it was never without a target. A key consideration for any creature back in the days of Revised and Fourth Editions was whether it could be killed by lightning bolt because every red deck played it. The only thing wrong with this card is that it was played so much.
In my early years of playing, I often wondered if the best deck in Magic might be solely Mountains and Lightning Bolts. Fast mana would help if you had any, but probably wouldn't be needed.
I also love the simplicity of the presentation on this cycle of "one mana for three effect" cards: no flavor text, no clutter, no complex rules. Just simple effects that didn't need to be explained or justified with flavor. Normally, I'm a big fan of good flavor text, but in this case, less is more. The streamlined presentation just fits with the fast, direct nature of the spell. And by not attaching some mage's name or motive to the effect through flavor, it allowed the player to assume more ownership of the spell and apply more imagination to how it was cast and why. And on a card that was played this much, any flavor text would just get old and overdone.
When my friends and I first started playing, our favorite cards were simple. We avoided powerful, but complex cards such as Power Sink or just about anything with tiny font, because we didn't really understand how they worked.
Red has always been my favorite color ever since I started playing Magic in Revised and this spell may be a big reason why. I wonder if designers today could resist the urge to crowd this card with more "action-packed" art or flavor text from their favorite planeswalker.
Comments (9)
In my early years of playing, I often wondered if the best deck in Magic might be solely Mountains and Lightning Bolts. Fast mana would help if you had any, but probably wouldn't be needed.
I also love the simplicity of the presentation on this cycle of "one mana for three effect" cards: no flavor text, no clutter, no complex rules. Just simple effects that didn't need to be explained or justified with flavor. Normally, I'm a big fan of good flavor text, but in this case, less is more. The streamlined presentation just fits with the fast, direct nature of the spell. And by not attaching some mage's name or motive to the effect through flavor, it allowed the player to assume more ownership of the spell and apply more imagination to how it was cast and why. And on a card that was played this much, any flavor text would just get old and overdone.
When my friends and I first started playing, our favorite cards were simple. We avoided powerful, but complex cards such as Power Sink or just about anything with tiny font, because we didn't really understand how they worked.
Red has always been my favorite color ever since I started playing Magic in Revised and this spell may be a big reason why. I wonder if designers today could resist the urge to crowd this card with more "action-packed" art or flavor text from their favorite planeswalker.