Pointed Discussion

why is this rated so low? You get to wrath the bored and keep all your pro red dudes!

Considering this is pretty much red's Wrath of God, you'd think it'd be higher rated.

It punishes Eldrazi Green, since they enjoy swarming the board with Ant Queen's insect tokens, Garruk Wildspeaker's beasts, Master of the Wild Hunt's (and his replacement, Wolfbriar Elemental's) wolves, and the stationary Nissa's Chosens, as well as the "it's there just to be there" Elvish Visionary.

White weenie and Boros Bushwhacker also suffer heavily from it, as a single Conqueror's Pledge can turn the board into a fireworks show for white weenie, and with Boros' highest toughness being 2, that goes without saying.

This card will be a sideboard option in all decks that run red. Perhaps even a maindeck option, but time will tell.

Unless there is something like Coat of Arms and an additional buffer on the field, this will wipe out most battlefields (hurr). Once you get above five or six creatures, it's a solid board wipe almost all of the time. It isn't Instant, which is a shame, but it's still useful. You could play a Ball Lightning, swing, then cast this, getting the +1 from the lightning and losing a creature that was toast anyway.

My buddy runs a white deck with a splash of green featuring Emeria Angel, Ajani Goldmane, Conqueror's Pledge, and Honor of the Pure. If the right stuff comes out early he can have a few flying 3/3's, a flying 5/5 and (add random creatures here) by turn 5. This is just the kind of thing to deal with that situation. It's not restricted to only doing 2 damage and doesn't have the downsides of not being able to hit things in the air and damaging yourself like Earthquake does.

mutantman nailed it. I want to like this card, but facts are facts. Weenies will die to pyroclasm, and there won't be enough fatties on the board for them to take enough damage.

Well it's certainly not as efficient as Wrath or Day of Judgement, but it's certainly a decent card nontheless.

And if it's not good by itself, Johnny can help making this card better in the right deck than the trusted white removal would be.
Dealing damage rather than just destroying them can be a great advantage - simply use creatures which have a triggered ability for getting hurt, since they will trigger for each creature on the battlefield when Chain Reaction resolves:

*Mogg Maniac, Spitemare and Stuffy Doll will deal damage - and the latter one will even survive.
*Ragged Veins - deals damage like the aforementioned cards, but unfortunately isn't a creature by itself. Yet it might be able to deal some damage before casting Chain Reaction.
*Broodhatch Nantuko, Saber Ants or Druid's Call will give you 1/1 tokens, which can serve as fuel for a second Chain Reaction.
*Repercussion might result in a draw, use that one with care.
*Wall of Hope provides life and might be a gamewinner with Repercussion.
*Mire Blight or Mortal Wound can be used to take out your opponent's fatties.
*Since most of you are convinced that this card won't be able to kill the fatties most of the time, what about putting a Deep-Slumber Titan in that deck?

Cmon use it with Everlasting Torment

It's a Wrath in red, and I love it. Probably sideboard material, but for those of you questioning the comparison to Wrath of God and Day of Judgement, just stop and think: If they're not running lots of creatures, your other burn spells will probably take care of them in the first place. If they are, this is a Wrath.

Perfect vs. Allies with a growing effect like Kazandu Blademaster.

side it in Stuffy doll deck against swarm decks :D

You got four mana for red removal, and you can't kill my 2/2? WTG.

This just isn't a playable card. Anytime there's a large creature swarm, the creatures are going to be small enough to kill with Pyroclasm. Anytime there's a big creature that needs a lot of damage to get in the graveyard, its controller isn't likely to overextend by adding more dudes to the board. I'm just not impressed. There are exceptions, such as Ant Queen, and it's really great in multiplayer and limited, but I just don't see it being played in competitive Magic. And can people please stop calling it Wrath of God?

one really good use for this: killing Sphinx of Jwar Isle (or any shroud flyer)

since you can't bolt/burst/blaze/mutiny a shrouded creature, what can you do? answer: non-targeted damage/removal.
but, pyroclasm isn't big enough, and earthquake doesn't hit flying (which is why it's used in RWU Sphinx). This has potential to wreck some skies!
in a red deck, provided you have some trash to feed it, you have a clean sweeper instead of a stalemate.

How well do you think this will take out a Sliver deck?

@mutantman Mark Rosewater (along with Ken Nagle and Mike Turian) in the WorldWake DevChat pretty much said that they looked at it as a Chaotic Red Wrath. It's a chaotic wrath meaning that it may or may not wipe the board, but still has that potential. In the right deck, it will be.

I don't really like it. As people have said if your opponent is making a bunch of tokens pyroclasm can do the job. Only time this is really necessary is if all your opponents creatures get massively buffed or something.

Looks to me like it was designed to wipe out ally decks. Pyroclasm can't do that. Throw in a few Kor Firewalkers on your side, and the extra few points should wipe out their creatures while leaving yours on the board. Day of Judgement can't do that.

Not long ago, I've written a post about the fact that Wrath of God should have never been white... WotC has even stated on the color presentation article: "When white gets angry...". But when a white mage gets angry, they've become red. And a Wrath of God didn't fit to white at all. It isn't a white slogan: "Killing thousands to save millions...", NO! It's more like "Noone is left behind!".

However in my opinion mass destruction isn't black either. Black has invested too much to gain power, that they'll do EVERYTHING to keep their power. As a mafia boss, you won't kill all the people in your district... why should you. You'll rather threaten a few of them until you've blackmailed the money out of them. Let them work for you! You won't kill all your slaves... if you're a black tyrann. You won''t bribe the police to kill them afterwards. So for me, it seems logical, that black has a focus on targeted destruction, while enraged red mages would rather kill everyone, if they can't win at all. They would burn Rome down without thinking about the consequences... cause they aren't patient enough.

So a wrath would perfectly fit to red. However WotC has put too much focus on damage dealing, that there seems to be no way to get a "destroy all..." effect for creatures (or even a "sacrifices all...")... Even if red has enough destroy artifacts, lands or permanents. Speaking of the latter, an Armageddon would be a perfect red card too. As well as Shatterstorm, Jokulhaups or even a red destroy all enchantments. Why shouldn't a red mage be able to burn an Ice cage or Iceberg. Why shouldn't they be able to get rid of an Arcane Laboratory, a Stasis or a Coma Veil? Why shouldn't they be hotter than a chill, be too tough for a Dehydration or too stubborn for a telepathy?

If WotC really want to make a Jace vs. Chandra competition, they should give red a chance! And this means that these opposite colors should have the opposite effects and every side should be able handle what the other side brings up.

Looking forward to nixing my sliver-playing buddy with this one. I love mass-removal for red, Chain Reaction gives me a great tool to contend with many different types of decks.

Use it with Vigor for epic lulz.

Red field-clearing. Whats new? Not much. Does it HAVE to be a new concept? No. It does its job and does it well. It does that job REALLY well if you have a half-dozen goblin creature tokens you don't mind losing.

Some people have commented that this hoses ally decks, which is funny because I keep thinking of trying this IN an ally deck, along with Kabira Evangelist to give pro-red right before this comes down as a one-sided wrath.

If it looks likes like your opponent has a faster start (WW, elves, infect, etc.), you can hold out on playing your hand until after Chain Reaction resolves. Overall, a nice sexy design that is well balanced - thumbs up.

Throw in Safe Passage for one-sided wipe.

Protean Hydra Whilst pyroclasm does take out most weenie creatures, this card does awesome amounts of damage. Stuffy doll obviously comes to mind, as does my friend Protean Hydra. Say the opponent has five creatures (hypothetically) and you have the hydra with like 5 counters on it and a spider umbra. This card wipes the entire board and boosts the hydra up to 10. Next turn swing and fling for 20 damage. Pyroclasm wouldn't offer the same delicious results. Pyroclasm is going to be better most of the time as it is way faster, but this card has its merits.

I love wrath varients... this is actually a pretty good one.

Awesome combo with Brave the Elements. Choose "red" and sweep only your opponent's creatures if you have all white creatures.

I use it to first clear the board, then when my opponent is rebuilding, i just put down my bombs (helkite charger, shivan etc.) and finish him.

*le me playing against vampire deck*
*Turns 1-4 he puts out like, 5-6 vampires*
CHAIN REACTION! lmao now you top deck with a clean board.
i may have half life by this point, but other burns keep the board clean till i put out a dragon.
this would pwn token decks, elf decks, etc etc. basically anything that relies on building a cheap, quick army gets shutdown FAST.

Coat of Arms has never been so terrified.

Best part is that you're running red burn to use this, so you can easily pick off any stragglers with Lightning Bolt and Flame Slash. If they have only a few strong creatures, you shouldn't be having problems burning them all anyway.

As others have rightly pointed out, it's not a red Wrath of God. It's no replacement for Pyroclasm. You don't sideboard it in against Ally decks.

But it is great in multiplayer.

I almost wonder whether one of the designers was a multiplayer fan and snuck it into the set. Every objection against using it in a duel is answered at a multiplayer table. There will always be enough creatures in play. These creatures will (almost) always be too big for Pyroclasm to deal with. Reaction is perhaps the best multiplayer burn spell ever printed. The only knocks against it are that it's a sorcery (point goes to Starstorm) and it's symmetrical (hello, Disaster Radius) but it combos so easily, and all the combos are amplified so much when there are 3-5 other players at the table. Broodhatch Nantuko + Reaction is just a cute trick in a duel. In multiplayer, it often reads "wipe the board and put 20+ saproling tokens into play".

Still can't beat my relentless rats!!! Muahahaha....

Hah. Silly elves. I bring the flame.

@Macsen
Relentless rats will survive if there are zero total other creatures between every player.
Similarly, Might of the masses won't nullify this unless your opponents have no creatures.

so now there is wrath of god/day of judgement for white, Damnation for black, and this card for red. What effects will the blue and green board sweeper for CC have? Evacuation is close and is probably how the blue flavor should be, but the extra colorless mana and the fact that it is an instant prevent it from being part of the mega-cycle. Is there a card i missed?

Repercussion says "LULZ"

This card was clearly designed for multiplayer. In a two-player game this is surely not a red Day of Judgment, if not against weenie decks.

Concerning the flavor of the "red wrath", yes red has massive untargeted damage effects, and when it gets angry it just destroys everything, not only creatures; this card fits the "red rage" flavor.

This is the type of card Mark of Asylum was meant to be played with.

Wrath of Vulshok Refugee.

Everlasting torment

Scoff at Wrath as you dominate anything and everything.

This combo happens to work well with many shadowmoor beasties; in part Kulrath Knight and Necroskitter