Pointed Discussion

i like the idea of giving X-spells a buff with high mana investment for the late-game :)

(1/30/09- Comments made with Type 2 in mind) An early favorite of mine from the set. I have high expectations for this card and it's potential to integrate and perhaps impact the meta. Using Demonfire to compare is only fair. The loss of RFG capability is balanced by the less restrictive casting cost and being able to capitalize on the uncounterable characteristic.

Awesome card, its blaze except its better. Cool art and flavor text too.

Oh come on! This card really rocks, but let's look at the facts shall we? It's better than Blaze for sure, but it costs a fortune, I repeat a real fortune(!!!) to buy or trade. Banefire is a very well designed card, made in a wave of removing faeries from the throne of the strongest T2 deck, but this is a bit of too much. The card does it's work, but I think for the sake of the price and sanity, I'll stay close to my good old friend - Blaze.

"Does the no damage prevention cancel out Progenitus's protection from everything?"
-Reinin

Well protection would't prevent the dmg no but protection also works as a evasive like shroud in that it can't be targeted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_rules#Protection


also why hasn't anyone said anything about the art! look at it it's amazing and the name of the artist's last name is "swanland" and don't even get me started on the flavor text.

It's a great card, without a doubt. And it's a card that's better than fireball.
Simply put, it's a card that's better than older ones. I like it too; admittedly, you can't divvy it up, but you can obliterate a guy with this.

I remember I was about to get Fireballed to death - my opponent had tapped 43 elves for mana. This was it! I was about to Force Spike his ass! I was going to win!

Except it couldn't be countred.

can a swerve send this right back at them? cuz there is no damage prevention its just getting redirected

Blaze upgrade!

Bout time...

this can/will make your opponent's jaw drop in horror, they can do very little to stop this spell if you dump 6 mana into it, and the fact that you can amp the damage as much as you like means after the first, the opponent will know he's on a time limit... even if you only have one of these.

I love this card. It works as removal to some extent early in the game, or as a win condition later.

Baldchimp, the spell can be redirected by swerve etc. or copied. It can even be targetted by a counterspell, although nothing will happen.

Awesome card for a Land Deck.

My most favorite card... goodbye counter-spells, goodbye damage preventors... Run this with Lotus Blooms, Rosheen Meanderer and Seething Song in a mono-red burn deck and the game is over... Run also a Pyromancer's Swath to burn ur opponent to ashes...

I am new to Magic. I bought a starter deck, learned how to play (videos, instructions, and a painstakingly long tutorial) and loved it. I bought four booster packs about a week later, and in one of these four packs was this card.

This card can win the game. Depending on how much mana is spent, it can do a devastating amount of damage to any opponent, without question. The damage cannot be avoided.

can i spened any color mana on the X or does it have to be all moutain ?

How does this affect creatures enchanted with Indestructibility ?

Basically you have a creature that can't be destroyed by damage, but this damage says it cannot be prevented.

MightyMortox

I think when it says the damage can't be prevented it means it can't be prevented by spells that say "Prevent X damage" etc. In the case of a creature that is indestructible the damage isn't really being prevented it just can't occur in the first place. Not sure if that helps at all...

Someone wondered about Progenitus. Well, there's a way to best him with Banefire. Actualy not only Banefire but works everytime: You must finish an opponent earlier ;P
I remember I had 11 life and my opp 14, I had only 14 lands, then he attacked with Progenitusme and I survived with 1 then the banefire came. I copied it wit5h Wild Ricochet and won the game :D

A creature with indestructibility would still be dealt the damage, but it just wouldn't kill it ("A permanent that is Indestructible cannot be destroyed, and cannot be killed as a result of lethal damage").

Progenitus can't be targeted by this spell, it has protection from red among other things ("A permanent or player with Protection from may not be targeted by spells, or by abilities from cards with the given quality (This includes spells and abilities played by the controller of the permanent itself)").

I prefer fireball, which is much more versatile. You can always just wait for your opponent to be tapped out to avoid countering.

Type your comment here.

Very much an epic card. Great for burn decks and the likes.

Also, on indestructibility: yes, you can deal damage to a creature enchanted by it. It just won't die because of it.

lol, you prefer fireball? you have to be kidding me. Fireball is ok when you are targeting one thing, but becomes less and less effective as you add targets, to the point that you might as well tap out and discard fireball and say go. Banefire beats fireball hands down. You want a board sweeper? volcanic fallout.

That must be Sarkhan Vol in the art. He has some pretty awesome hand dragons!

Looks like I'm the only one that didn't quite like it... it's crazy how there's just no way around it except for Misdirection or some other weird card no one will be playing. With a cost like XRRR, or a Kicker cost of RR~RRR, it would look more balanced, but as it is, I just don't like it.

Question. Can you Swerve it back to your opponent? Since, technically you're not countering it, and you're not preventing it. You're just changing WHERE it's hitting...right???

As far as i can think, the only way to stop this from going off is to either redirect it to a different target, or Mindbreak Trap it, as Mindbreak Trap does not counter, it simply removes all spells from the stack.

If you used Boseiju, Who Shelters All and say (sorry not Hindering Light) but any other card that would counter using Boseiju, Who Shelters All as a mana source... Wouldn't that counter the "cannot be countered" since it would resolve earlier on the stack?--

Which one is better? This or Demonfire

This card is really amazing, but I have a question:

If I use the Pariah and Cho-Manno, Revolutionary combo do I get hurt by Banefire if the X is 5 or more?

I gotta agree amazing art, I'm a huge fan of Swanland (really made Jund beautiful) and there are games against counter decks where I've won while this was the only card I managed to play, Un-counter-ability makes this card my favourite blaze/fireball spinoff to date.

HaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKENNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!

Be cautious if you attempt to use an "infinite mana" combo to do obscene amounts of damage to somebody. You never know when somebody's going to play an ability that throws your instant-death attack right back in your face. I know somebody who Morphs a pair of Willbenders in an anti-Burn deck to counter this kind of trick.

"I Banefire you for 50 million damage." "No, my Willbender says that you Banefire yourself for 50 million."

That dragon, there... He's a-firin' his lazar. Seriously, great card.

I have a deck that I call "Manaball". It is fourty mana sources (generally ones that make more than one), card draw, and open ended burn spells. This is among the best of those spells. It basically says "You're dead. Moving on." Unless they Wild Ricochet or something...Ow.
Oh, and Mana, to answer your question (and I've used both cards extensively), it really depends on the deck. Which is a lame answer, so here's a better one: Demonfire has one marked advantage, and that's the option of exiling critters. Beyond that, you have to look at which comes up more in your deck: being hellbent or having six mana. Whichever is true more is your choice. And if you can't decide, try one of each and test it out.

Easy on the eyes and fun!

Swerve

Sorry.

this with a hand full of rite of flames and 2 seething songs (assuming you take the draw) would result in a 14 damage turn one and an empty hand

Time Stop LoL

This + a good bumped Everflowing Chalice (or two) + your land = utter devistation. Need I really say more!? I still like using my Flameblast Dragon though : )

since this deals damage to creatures OR PLAYERS, do Planeswalkers count as players? You can target, Jace, the Mind Sculptor for instance, yes?

Time Stop. Not today!

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I have a question about Banefire's damage. Say I cast Banefire and tap six lands (1 to cast, 5 for damage) and it resolves and goes into my graveyard. Then, when I play Chandra Ablaze's -7 ability (play all sorcery and instant cards from the graveyard without paying their mana cost), does Banefire deal the same 5 damage it did before or do I have to tap lands to do damage, and if so, can I tap however many land I want?

Its probably one of the very few cards that can cancel out Shroud. Rules state that the negative of the ability takes precedence, so if shroud says it can't be targeted, but Banefire says that abilities can't prevent it, Banefire's ability takes precedence, if I understand it correctly.

And yes, it works on Progntius, and otherwise indestructible Eldrazi.

To clear a few things up...

Banefire is a Red spell. Anything that has protection from Red cannot be targeted by it. If it cannot be targeted to begin with, Banefire can't be cast with it as the target. That's just the way things go. Yes, "can't" takes priority over "can," but "can't be targeted" takes precedence in this case. Thus, Silver Knight, Progenitus, Emrakul, etc, cannot be hit and/or killed by Banefire.

Second, when Chandra Ablaze uses her ability, you cannot pay for additional costs, including X and Kicker/Multikicker. The X is considered 0 in this case, meaning it will deal 0 damage upon resolving.

Moving on, the spell itself is amazing. Great for late-game mop-ups, and is pretty much going to win you the game unless your enemy is ready for it. In most practical situations, your enemy doesn't have the cards they need to take this out, since there are few of them, and all you need are lands, you've probably just won.

In terms of planeswalker characters, Sarkhan is one of my least favorite, although this card made me like him SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much more. Anyone who has ever used Blaze or Fireball should agree that this is pretty damn good. Unlike most of the red finishers, the only real answer to this is either Pariah on a creature you're not too attached to, or a Redirect type card. In summary, banefire kicks your opponent in the face with fire while you lol at them trying to prevent it. As soon as i saw a redirect in a M11 draft i took it b/c one of my friends runs banefire lol.

running 4 mana flares, with this hurts xD

Awesome art and uncounterability make this card amazing on so many levels. So much win, and it will see play for quite a while.

So let's say you fire this at a creature where X is 5 or more. The creature's controller responds with a Vines of Vastwood, Shrouding it. Since Shroud makes it untargetable, it would normally counter the spell, but Banefire states it can't be countered. What happens now?

@CrazyLou - Vines of Vastwood makes the creature untargetable, but it does not directly say "counter target spell", not does it give the creature an ability that counters spells. This means that Banefire will be countered by a state-based action because it now has no legal target.

DANK

I know some posts have addressed this one piece at a time, but with the amount of confusion revolving around this card, I thought it would be good to get all the info in one place.

A lot of people are making "can't be countered/prevented" way more complicated than it has to be. The rule of thumb is simple: effects with "counter" or "prevent" won’t have any affect (although you can still play/activate them, nothing will actually happen as per the errata).

If you just keep that in mind, you can really easily remember what cards will and won't work against a 5+ Banefire, or any card that has the words "can't be countered" or "can't be prevented" on it.

Things that won't affect Banefire:
Counterspell/Negate etc.
Guardian Angel (yeah it's an old one, but the first that comes to mind)
Purity's ability
The Pariah/Cho-Manno, Revolutionary combo (it will still "work" and the damage will go to Cho-Manno, but he'll die since he has the word "prevent" in his ability.) Sorry White, you really get screwed by this one D:

Things that will prevent Banefire damage:
Boomeranging the target (Banefire has no target, so it fizzles)
Swerve/Redirect/Misdirection etc.
Muck Drub's come into play effect
Time Stop (ends the turn, and all spells on the stack fizzle)
Mindbreak Trap (this doesn't counter spells; it exiles them)
Ivory Mask/Leyline of Sanctity, since they make you an illegal target, but don't fizzle Banefire unless you flash them out with Leyline of Anticipation or Shimmer Myr (there's your bone, White control)
Venser, Shaper Savant's come into play ability (returns Banefire to hand)
Worship; as per its errata, Worship doesn't prevent damage, it stops damage from reducing your life total below 1
Indestructibility: your Darksteel Myr can take 300 damage, and that damage can go through (there's nothing preventing it) but since the rule on indestructibility is that lethal damage doesn't kill it (and "destroy" effects do nothing), it will still be alive although it's taken all that damage.

Finally, anything with Protection from Red, Shroud, etc. will not take damage from a 5+ Banefire. (Yes, including Progenitus and Emrakul, unless you make Banefire colorless in the latter case.) This applies even if the target is given these abilities while Banefire is on the stack. For example, if you play Banefire on your opponent's Purity, and your opponent taps Mother of Runes to give Purity protection from red, Banefire doesn't do anything. It's not countered, and the damage isn't being prevented, but it no longer has a legal target, so it fizzles. Fizzling is not preventing damage or countering a spell, so the 5+ ability does nothing. The same situation arises with Vines of Vastwood, Neurok Stealthsuit, or other sources of Shroud.

So as you can see, the damage most certainly can be avoided. Your most common culprits in damage prevention/countering won't work, but there's a healthy list of cards that can keep uncounterable, unpreventable damage from going through. Still, it looks like with things like protection from X, shroud, and Unsummon-type spells, it's much easier to get this spell off against a player than against a permanent. Make of that what you will.

One more important note: although Mindbreak Trap works since it exiles the spell rather than countering it, Guile does NOT allow normal counters to work against a 5+ Banefire. While Guile's ability does result in exiling, it reads "If a spell or ability you control would counter a spell...". So since a non-counterable spell (obviously) can't be countered in the first place, Guile's ability to exile cards won't trigger.


That said, this is an excellent spell; just about the best it is at what it does, and for that alone it deserves 5/5 in my opinion. Pretty much the prime reason I sideboard 4x Redirect in most every deck. Also, while a situation where both cards come up seems unlikely, it's a great middle-finger to someone who flipped Erayo, Soratami Ascendant.

@Dragonwizard99
Yes, you can use Swerve to change the target of Banefire when X is 5 or greater. Banefire is not being countered, nor is the damage being prevented. You're simply changing the target to some other poor unfortunate soul.

Step one: infinite mana
Step two: THIS
Step three: SUCCESS!

Bold text? What is this, the bold brother of italicization Vesuva?

Doesn't say I can't redirect it with maybe glarecaster or quite simply, redirect.

This card would be a perfect addition to my Goblin Burn deck. It's strictly better than Blaze, and in my opinion, strict betterness is awesome.

Banefire. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill one motherf*cker in the room, accept no substitutes.

Banefire deals X damage to target creature or player.

If you play Banefire as a finisher, laugh cruelly at helpless blue decks.

These comments seem to be taking a BOLD direction... seriously wtf is up with this.

"As an additional cost to play Banefire, say "Counter this, b*tch."
Blue players shall dread stalling my red deck until turn 6.

A +5 Banefire can be stopped with the right card. For example Mindbreak Trap.

I really wish this had a Fireball ability to have more than one target. I feel that as a rare, it should. It's not very often people play prevention effects.

Also, congrats to Mode for starting this weird bolding thing.

@fingerpainter: Actually it seems to be Lyoncet, and not Mode, who caused the boldness: the break in the long post happens in the middle of bold bracketing, which therefore never ends and continues for the rest of the page.

It is the best at what it does. Kill People. So many decks revolve around massive mana + fireball, this is just such a better card for that card slot. Sure it cant target abunch of creatures like fireball, but it does kill people VERY reliably. Sure it can be swerved, ect ect, but every card can be "Countered" in some way. so you cant really hold that against the card. 5 stars, just cause as I said, it does what you want 90% of the time better than anything else.

What I don't like about this card, is that it doesn't remove the dying creature, like Disintegrate, Demonfire and Red Sun's Zenith do. It's not that I don't like this, but even if its unconterable clause is easier to meet than the Demonfire's one, I like Demonfire more than this, and the Zenith also, for their ability to remove the creature. Against black, green and white, against Unearth, Persist, Undying, Dredge and the like, those cards are better than Banefire...
4.5/5

Some unpreventable, uncounterable, potentially infinite sorcery damage? How does this card not get a constant 5 star rating?!

Bold.

For irony's sake, I run this in a counterspell-laden deck that stalls out the game until this outright murders them. And for those of you complaining that this doesn't RFG creatures, you're supposed to be killing players with this, not their minions.

back in '09 my girlfriend tossed this at me for a game winner... i flipped up willbender. she was not happy. needless to say, she's not my gf anymore.

Sometimes, when part of a comment is bold or italics, the rest of the comments will stay that way. It's never been that way with underline, but that's probably because nobody uses it.

Tightest art in the game.

Really good with Grinning Ignus; 5 or more uncounterable T4.

How to Banefire= Havengul Lich + Heartless Summoning + Priest of Urabrask and spank Banefire for 999dmg with you floating mana. I made a cheap modern deck with this combo, using transmute cards to draw what I need. Also splashed green for Jarad's Orders to get priest into the graveyard and lich to my hand.

@mightymortox
if this targeted an indestructible creature, the creature would survive. Indestructibility does not prevent damage, it just says the creature cannot die from damage. So damage would be dealt but nothing else would happen.

this card is useful as a late game finisher, or to take care of their new fatty befoe it can do any damage. What makes this card good is the 5+ clause, otherwise it's just a sorcery version of volcanic geyser. When you have a few Braid of Fire out, this can get formidible and easily clean up their last 10 or 15 life.

I can't pitch a card to Force of Will against this? Okay, I'll pitch FoW to Misdirection. Good game.