With Gelectrode et al. decks Flame Jab seems like it would be easier to play than Lava Dart.
Other than that, I can't see any reason to play this card.
EternalLurker
★★★☆☆ (3.5/5.0)(3 votes)
Hah, I see a highly impractical but rather amusing RG combo with this...Lotus Cobra, Fastbond, Crucible of Worlds. Play Gruul Turf, get R, discard it when it returns to your hand, retrace Flame Jab, repeat. You and your opponent keep losing one life. If you started with more, yay!
But yeah, outside of that this is weak. 1R for 2 damage would've made it playable at least. Still, retrace is overall a fine mechanic with Crucible of Worlds.
Bigg_ol_FATTKIDD
★★★★☆ (4.9/5.0)(16 votes)
Anyone else notice that this art is just a Shadowmoor Swamp with some fire on it?
@Angus_Burger: Gruul Turf will bounce itself when you play it (it requires you to return a land to your hand when it hits play), so it will then be in your hand for retrace. Retracing puts into the grave for using fastbond/crucible combo. Repeat as desired.
Two cards, one fairly expensive, to do one damage a turn? It's an ok combo, but I've seen much better. You can just get a buyback burn spell (there are plenty) or something similar. All in all, not really worth losing card advantage to do one damage a turn.
igniteice
★★★☆☆ (3.5/5.0)(3 votes)
This is a highly impractical card to use without a sufficient combo, but once the combo gets started, things get rolling. The cards for the combo:
Four Flame Jabs, 1+ Pyromancer's Swath, and a few Life from the Loam. Once you start paying the retrace costs, you'll get lands into your graveyard. From there, you can return Life from the Loam to your hand by dredging cards. That puts more lands into your graveyard for you to return with Life from the Loam. Play Life, grab 3 cards, then play 3 Flame Jabs for 9+ damage. Next turn, dredge Life back, return 3 cards, and repeat.
Discarding your hand generally isn't a problem, because you'll just dredge back Life from the Loam. Doing that means you never need to worry about discarding lands. The downside to this strategy is that if someone exiles your graveyard (Bojuka Bog for instance), you're screwed. Another downside is that if you can't kill them in a reasonable amount of time, you'll mill yourself.
I don't know why this is rated so low. It see's a lot of play in modern burn decks now. Kills early creatures and tokens, and turns every land into "deal 1 damage to a creature or player"
On second glance, this isn't actually too bad. Better late game.
Basically turns those lands you got into some nice finishing damage. Granted it's best in slower red decks such as Koth's Deck. Just sac those 7 lands you got for the win.
DoragonShinzui
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Lazy? That's freaking clever as hell! It can afford to be lazy!
Arachnos
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
@wstonefi: what is NOT better than Scorching Spear?
Cheap Retrace is nothing to be sniffed at. Even if this spell did literally nothing it would still have uses RE: turning dead land draws into instant spell casts to trigger various things.
SAUS3
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Wow this has such a bad rating. It's actually a good card! This was used in modern people! It's good for life from the loam decks that abuse its ability to gain tons of card advantage through lands.
I use it in my modern peasant deck which is based around worm harvest and other retrace cards. It works as a decent finisher in the really late game, and can be extremely annoying removal.
Maybe add burning vengeance, guttersnipe or young pyromancer and you can have a really mean jund control deck. Done correctly it can be legacy viable, depending on the grave hate in your meta.
Best thing is, you can still run putrid leech or your other favorite jund creatures (lavamancer, deathrite)
Lava Dart is strictly better in my opinion. Instant speed, can be cast with 0 mana open, and sacrificing that tapped mountain sounds a little easier than paying 1 and discarding that mountain I've been holding on to....
Comments (26)
Other than that, I can't see any reason to play this card.
But yeah, outside of that this is weak. 1R for 2 damage would've made it playable at least. Still, retrace is overall a fine mechanic with Crucible of Worlds.
Two cards, one fairly expensive, to do one damage a turn? It's an ok combo, but I've seen much better. You can just get a buyback burn spell (there are plenty) or something similar. All in all, not really worth losing card advantage to do one damage a turn.
Four Flame Jabs, 1+ Pyromancer's Swath, and a few Life from the Loam. Once you start paying the retrace costs, you'll get lands into your graveyard. From there, you can return Life from the Loam to your hand by dredging cards. That puts more lands into your graveyard for you to return with Life from the Loam. Play Life, grab 3 cards, then play 3 Flame Jabs for 9+ damage. Next turn, dredge Life back, return 3 cards, and repeat.
Discarding your hand generally isn't a problem, because you'll just dredge back Life from the Loam. Doing that means you never need to worry about discarding lands. The downside to this strategy is that if someone exiles your graveyard (Bojuka Bog for instance), you're screwed. Another downside is that if you can't kill them in a reasonable amount of time, you'll mill yourself.
Also, zk3, That is hilarious. Good catch.
Basically turns those lands you got into some nice finishing damage. Granted it's best in slower red decks such as Koth's Deck. Just sac those 7 lands you got for the win.
I use it in my modern peasant deck which is based around worm harvest and other retrace cards. It works as a decent finisher in the really late game, and can be extremely annoying removal.
Maybe add burning vengeance, guttersnipe or young pyromancer and you can have a really mean jund control deck. Done correctly it can be legacy viable, depending on the grave hate in your meta.
Best thing is, you can still run putrid leech or your other favorite jund creatures (lavamancer, deathrite)